The Life of Carl Rogers
I'm not a big fan of autobiographies. The reason is probably bad experiences in the past. I had so much expectations from Gandhi's, and yet after fifty or so pages of painstakingly crawling through a detailed description of his daily routines with very few ideas that could sneak in between, I had to call it quits. There were many others, similar to that. Malcol X's was fascinating, on the other hand; it was written by another person, though.
I guess there could be two types of interesting autobiographies: the ones that describe adventurous lives, and the ones that follow a development of an idea. Rogers's belongs to the second kind. It describes his life as a stage on which the play of his ideas unfolded. The dates, places, jobs are the decorations; his thoughts, desires, mistakes and successes are the actors. And there is a direction, a progression - and that's the one which is so interesting to follow. One meaningful play...
As I was exposed a little to Rogers's ideas in college, reading his work was like meeting old acquaintances. However, differently from people, ideas do not age ("Scripts do not burn", as Bulgakov noted in his "The Master and Margarita"). Reading about humanistic psychology after experiencing two immigrations, marriage and raising kids, a number of corporate positions and such gives a different perspective.
One of the things that is very refreshing about Rogers is his honest and open outlook. The man is not afraid of himself and his ideas - may be, here is the secret of their universal success.
I guess there could be two types of interesting autobiographies: the ones that describe adventurous lives, and the ones that follow a development of an idea. Rogers's belongs to the second kind. It describes his life as a stage on which the play of his ideas unfolded. The dates, places, jobs are the decorations; his thoughts, desires, mistakes and successes are the actors. And there is a direction, a progression - and that's the one which is so interesting to follow. One meaningful play...
As I was exposed a little to Rogers's ideas in college, reading his work was like meeting old acquaintances. However, differently from people, ideas do not age ("Scripts do not burn", as Bulgakov noted in his "The Master and Margarita"). Reading about humanistic psychology after experiencing two immigrations, marriage and raising kids, a number of corporate positions and such gives a different perspective.
One of the things that is very refreshing about Rogers is his honest and open outlook. The man is not afraid of himself and his ideas - may be, here is the secret of their universal success.
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