Carl Rogers' 10 famous "Can I" questions. Great questions to ask yourself about your helping relationships in your dental practice.
I believe that each of us working in the field of human relationships has a similar problem in knowing how to use such research knowledge. We cannot slavishly follow such findings in a mechanical way or we destroy the personal qualities which these very studies show to be valuable. It seems to me that we have to use these studies, testing them against our own experience and forming new and further personal hypothesis to use and test in our own further personal relationships.
So rather than try and tell you how you should use the findings I have presented, I should like to tell you the kind of questions, which these studies and my own clinical experience raise for me. Some of the tentative and changing hypothesis which guide my behavior as, I enter what I hope may be a helping relationship, whether with students, staff or family and clients. Let me list a number of these questions and considerations.
1. Can I be in some way which will be perceived by the other persons as trustworthy, as dependable or consistent in some deep sense. Both research and experience indicate that this is very important, and over the years I have found what I believe are deeper and far better ways of answering this question. I used to feel that if I fulfilled all the outer conditions of trustworthiness—keeping appointments, respecting the confidential nature of the interviews, etc. - and if I acted consistently the same during the interview, then this condition would be fulfilled. But experience drove home the fact that to act consistently acceptant, for example, if in fact I was feeling annoyed or skeptical or some other non-acceptant feeling, was certain in the long run to be perceived as inconsistent or untrustworthy.I have come to recognize that being trustworthy does not demand that I be rigidly consistent but that I be dependably real. The term “congruent” is one I have used to describe the way I would like to be. By this, I mean that whatever feeling or attitude I am experiencing would be matched by my awareness of the attitude. When this is true, then I am a unified or integrated person in that moment, and hence I can be whatever I deeply am. This is a reality which I find others experience as dependable.
2. A very closely related question is this: Can I be expressive enough as a person that what I am will be communicated unambiguously? I believe that most of my failures to achieve a helping relationship can be traced to unsatisfactory answers to these two questions. When I am experiencing a attitude of annoyance toward another person but am unaware of it, then my communication contains contradictory messages. My words are giving one message, but I am also in subtle ways communicating the annoyance I feel and this confuses the other person and makes him distrustful, though he may be unaware of what is causing him the difficulty.
When as a parent or teacher or therapist or administrator I fail to listen to what is going on in me, I fail because of my own defensiveness to sense my own feelings. It has made it seem to me that the most basic learning for anyone who hopes to establish any kind of helping relationship is that it is safe to be transparently real.
If in a given relationship I am reasonably congruent, if no feelings relevant to the relationship are hidden either to the other person or me, then I can be almost sure that the relationship will be a helpful one.
One way of putting this which may seem strange to you is that if I can form a helping relationship to myself - if I can be sensitively aware of and acceptant toward my own feelings - then the likelihood is great that I can form a helping relationship towards another.
Now, acceptantly to be what I am, in this sense, and to permit this to show through to the other person, is the most difficult task I know and one that I never fully achieve. But, to realize that this is my task has been most rewarding because it has helped me to find what has gone wrong with interpersonal relationships, which have become snarled, and to put them on a constructive track again. It has meant that if I am to facilitate the personal growth of others in relation to me, then I must grow, and while this is often painful, is also enriching.
3. A third Question is: Can I let myself experience positive attitudes toward another person-attitudes of warmth, caring, liking, interest, and respect? It is not easy. I find in myself and feel that I often see in others, a certain amount of fear of these feelings. We are afraid that if we allow ourselves to freely experience the positive feelings toward another they may trap us. They may lead to demands on us or we may be disappointed in our trust, and the outcomes we fear. So as a reaction, we tend to build up distance between others - aloofness and “professional” attitude, an impersonal relationship.
I feel quite strongly that one of the important reasons for the professionalization of every field is that it helps to keep this distance. In the clinical areas, we develop elaborate diagnostic formulations seeing the person as an object. In teaching and administration, we develop all kinds of evaluative procedures, so that again the person is perceived as an object. In these ways, I believe we can keep ourselves from experiencing the caring which would exist if we recognized the relationship as one between two persons. It is a real achievement when we can learn, even in certain relationships or at certain times in those relationships, that it is safe to care, that it is safe to relate to the other as a person for whom we have positive feelings.
4. Another question the importance I have learned in my own experience is: Can I be strong enough as a person to be separate from the other? Can I be a sturdy respecter of my own feelings, my own needs, as well as his? Can I own and, if need be, express my own feelings as something belonging to me and separate from his feelings? Am I strong enough in my own separateness that I will not be downcast by his depression, frightened by his fear, nor engulfed by his dependency? Is my inner self hardy enough to realize that I am not destroyed by his anger, taken over by his need for dependence, nor enslaved by his love, but that I exist separate from him with feelings and rights of my own? When I can freely feel his strength of being a separate person, then I find that I can let myself go much more deeply in understanding and accepting him because I am not fearful of losing myself.
5. The next question is closely related. Am I secure enough within myself to permit him his separateness? Can I permit him to be what he is-honest or deceitful, infantile or adult, despairing, or over-confident? Can I give him the freedom to be? Alternatively, do I feel that he should follow my advice, remain somewhat dependent on me, or mold him after me? In this connection I think of the interesting small study by Farson (1955) that found that the less well adjusted and less competent the counselor tends to induce conformity to himself, to have clients who model themselves after him. On the other hand, the better-adjusted and more competent counselor can interact with a client through many interviews without interfering with the freedom of the client to develop a personality quite separate from that of his therapist. I should prefer to be in this latter class, whether as parent, supervisor, or counselor.
6. Another question I ask myself is:Can I let myself enter the world of his feelings and personal meanings and see these as he does? Can I step into his private world so completely that I lose all desire to evaluate or judge it? Can I enter it so sensitively those I can move about it freely, without trampling on meanings, which are precious to him. Can I sense it so accurately that I can catch not only the meaning of his experience which are obvious to him, but those meanings which are only implicit, which he sees only dimly or as confusion? Can I extend this understanding without limit?
Think of the client who said, “Whenever I find someone who understands part of me at the time, then it never fails that a point is reached where I know that they are not understanding me again… What I have looked for so hard is for someone to understand.”
For myself I find it easier to feel this kind of understanding, and to communicate it, to individual clients than to students in a class or staff members in which I am involved. There is a strong temptation to set students “straight” or to point out to a staff member the errors in his thinking.
Yet, when I can permit myself to understand in these situations, it is mutually rewarding. And with clients in therapy, I am often impressed with the fact that even a minimal amount of empathic understanding - a bumbling and faulty attempt to catch the confused complexity of the clients meaning - is helpful, though there is no doubt that it is most helpful when I can see and formulate clearly the meanings in his experiencing which for him have been unclear and tangled.
7. Still another issue is whether I can be acceptant of each facet of the other person, which he presents to me. Can I receive him as he is? Can I communicate this attitude? Or can I only receive him conditionally acceptant of some aspects of his feelings and silently or openly disapproving of other aspects? It has been my experience that when my attitude is conditional, then he cannot change or grow in those respects in which I cannot fully receive him. And when - afterward and sometimes too late - I try and discover why I have been unable to accept him in every respect, I usually discover that it is because I have been frightened or threatened in myself by some aspect of his feelings. If I am to be more helpful, then I must myself grow and accept myself in these respects.
8. A very practical issue is raised by the question: Can I act with sufficient sensitivity in the relationship that my behavior will not be perceived as a threat? The work we are beginning to do in studying the physiological concomitants of psychotherapy confirms the researches by Dittes in indicating how easily individuals are threatened at a physiological level. The psycho galvanic reflex- the measure of skin conductance-takes a sharp dip when the therapist responds with some word, which is just a little stronger than the clients feeling.
In addition, to a phrase such as, “My you do look upset”, the needle swings almost off the paper. My desire to avoid even such minor threats is not due to a hypersensitivity about my client. It is simply due to the conviction based on experience that I can free him as completely as possible from external threat, then he can begin to experience and to deal with the internal feelings and conflicts, which he finds threatening within himself.
9. A specific aspect of the proceeding question but an important one is: Can I free him from the threat of external evaluation? In almost every phase of our lives-at home, at school, at work-we find ourselves under the rewards and punishments of external judgments. “That’s good”, ”that’s naughty”.” “That’s worth an A”; “that’s a failure.” “That’s good counseling”; “that’s poor counseling.” Such judgments are a part of our lives from infancy to old age. I believe that they have a certain social usefulness to institutions and organizations such as schools and professions
Like everyone else, I find myself all too often making such evaluations. But, in my experience, they do not make for personal growth and hence I do not believe that they are a part of the helping relationship. Curiously enough, a positive evaluation is as threatening in the long run as a negative one, since to inform someone that he is good implies that you also have the right to tell him that he is bad.
So I have come to feel that the more I can keep a relationship free of judgment and evaluation, the more this will permit the other person to reach the point where he recognizes that the locus of evaluation, the center of responsibility, lies within himself. The meaning and value of his experience is in the last analysis something, which is up to him, and no amount of external judgment can alter this. So, I should like to work toward a relationship in which I am not, even in my own feelings, evaluating him. This I believe can set him free to be a self-responsible person.
10. One last question: Can I meet this other individual as a person who is in the process of becoming, or will I bound by his past and by my past? If, in my encounter with him, I am dealing with him as an immature child, a ignorant student, a neurotic personality, or a psychopath, each of these concepts of mine limits what he can be in the relationship.
”Reprinted from The Personnel and Guidance Journal, 1958, Vol. 37, pages 6-16. ACA. Reprinted with permission. No further reproduction authorized without written permission of the American Counseling Association."
Testimonials
