Constructive Forces Operating in the Individual

Psychotherapy represents a process in which interacting forces operate. It is initiated by a person who seeks to change by using the skill of another who, by training and experience, is able to accept the responsibility for helping patients to achieve change. For this experience to become therapeutic, constructive forces inherent in the individual seeking help must be mobilized. The therapist, symbolizing as he does a new, illuminating influence, becomes a constructive force only as the patient utilizes his skill and knowledge to achieve that new balance in himself which we call change. In other words, so far as therapy is concerned, there is no constructive element in the therapist's knowledge except as a patient is helped to use it; here we are speaking primarily of skill.

What forces inherent in human nature can be awakened and released through the mediation of the therapeutic experience? For me this goes to the heart of the question to which we are addressing ourselves.

In every human being, from the moment of birth, two forces operate in relation to each other and continue through life. The simplest way of stating this is contained in the universal questions each new person needs to answer out of his own life experience: What can I be in and out of myself? And, who and what can I be in my relations to significant figures in my life and in the world I live in? How can individuality