Chapter 14

Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont is a small, experimental college that, in addition to working with students, often organizes conferences and seminars for faculty to discuss important issues. I was asked to give such a seminar in February 1958 on the subject: «The Significance of Psychotherapy for Education.» Teachers and administrators from the eastern part of the country, especially from New England, made the difficult journey through deep snowdrifts to spend three productive days together.

In this chapter the reader will find that my views on teaching and learning are set out somewhat differently than in the previous chapter; this is due to the fact that the material published here was being prepared for a conference, so I did not want to disturb the peace of mind of my colleagues, but at the same time I did not intend to change the basic meaning of the psychotherapeutic approach.

For those familiar with the second part of this book, the sections «The Process of Cognition in Psychotherapy» and «The Conditions of Cognition in Psychotherapy» will be redundant and can be skipped, as they simply repeat the basic conditions of psychotherapy described earlier.

Here I have most aptly expressed the significance that client-centered psychotherapy probably has in the field of education.

* * *

What is presented in this chapter is a thesis, a point of view regarding the implications of psychotherapy for education. These are preliminary statements, made by me with some hesitation. In connection with these theses, I have many questions that remain unanswered. But they still have some clarity, and therefore they can serve as a starting point for making clear distinctions.

Human Meaningful Learning in Psychotherapy

Let me start by saying that my long experience as a therapist convinces me that psychotherapy contributes to the learning that is meaningful to the client, which occurs and exists in the psychotherapeutic relationship. By meaningful learning I mean learning that is not simply the accumulation of facts. This is a teaching that changes the behavior of a person in the present and in the future, changes his attitudes and his personality. It is a pervasive learning that is not just an increase in knowledge, but a deep insight into existence.

The presence of such learning is not only my subjective feeling. This is also confirmed by scientific research. Client-centered psychotherapy (the direction with which I am more familiar) has received the most scientific research. We know that as a result of such psychotherapy, knowledge or changes of the following kind arise.

A person begins to look at himself differently.

He more fully accepts himself and his feelings.

He trusts himself more, can manage himself better.

He becomes more like the person he would like to be.

He becomes more flexible, less rigid in his perception.

He sets more realistic goals for himself.

His behavior becomes well thought out.

He refuses bad habits, even such chronic ones as chronic alcoholism.

He begins to accept others more.

The grounds for what is going on inside and outside become more accessible to him.

He changes the basic qualities of his personality for the better.

I think that’s probably enough to indicate what constitutes meaningful knowledge that makes a difference.

Learning Meaningful to Humans in Education

I think it was right to say that teachers are also interested in knowledge that is very different from the usual. Simply knowing the facts also has its value. Knowing who won the Battle of Poltava or where Mozart’s «hundredth opus» was first performed can bring a large amount of money to the bearer of this information. But I think teachers will be a little embarrassed to say that acquiring this kind of knowledge is the essence of learning. In this connection, I was reminded of a comparison made by a professor of agronomy, from whom I once studied. As a participant in the war, he compared knowledge of the facts with ammunition. He used to end his lectures with the exhortation: «Don’t be a damn ammo box, be a gun!» I think that the vast majority of teachers share the statement that knowledge exists primarily in order to use it.

If teachers are interested in knowledge that is functional, that makes a difference, that extends to the person and his actions, they should turn to psychotherapy for examples and ideas. It is necessary to simply and clearly state the process of obtaining knowledge during psychotherapy in order to use it in education.

Conditions for acquiring knowledge in psychotherapy

Let’s see what it takes to get the knowledge that arises in the process of psychotherapy. I would like to list as clearly as possible the conditions that seem to me to be present when this phenomenon occurs.

For evidence supporting these claims, see references (Rogers, C. R. Client-Centered Therapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1951) (Rogers, C. R., and R. Dymond, (Eds.). Psychotherapy and Personality Change, University of Chicago Press, 1954).

Face to face with a problem

The client first of all faces a situation that he considers a serious and important problem. Perhaps he finds himself unable to control his behavior; or he has many conflicts and is confused; or his family collapses; or he feels unhappy at work. In short, he is alone with a problem that he could not solve, although he tried to do it. Therefore, he burns with the desire to know, although at the same time he is afraid that he will discover something in himself that disturbs him. Therefore, one of the conditions that is almost always present is an insecure and ambivalent desire to know or change, which grows out of the difficulties the client faces in life.

Under what conditions does a person meet with a therapist? Recently, I have formulated the necessary and sufficient conditions that the therapist must provide if he wants the client to have useful changes or meaningful knowledge (Rogers, C. R. The necessary and sufficient conditions of therapeutic personality change. J. Consult. Psychol. 1957 , 21, 95-103.). Several aspects of this theory have recently been extensively explored through experiment, but it is still considered more of a theory based on clinical experience than a proven fact. Let me briefly describe the conditions that I think are necessary, which the therapist must provide.

Congruence

In order for psychotherapy to give a positive result, the therapist in the relationship with the client must be relatively whole, holistic, congruent. I mean that in these respects, he should not be a facade, not a role, but exactly the way he is. I have used the term «congruence» to indicate the consistency of what is experienced and what is conscious. This happens when the therapist is fully and truly aware of what he is experiencing at the moment in the relationship with the client. Then it is completely congruent. Until he is largely congruent, he is unlikely to develop meaningful knowledge.

Although congruence is a really complex concept, I think each of us usually intuitively knows whether the people we are dealing with are congruent. When communicating with one person, we understand that not only does he mean exactly what he says, but that his deep inner feelings also correspond to what he expresses. Therefore, if he is angry, or in love, or ashamed, or enthusiastic, we feel that he is the same on all levels — in his experiences at the organismic level, in his awareness of this at the level of consciousness, and in his words and messages. In addition, we learn that he accepts his immediate feelings. We say about such a person that we understand him well. Usually we feel comfortable and safe with such a person. On the contrary, when communicating with another person, we can see that all his words are just a “sign” or “facade”. It is not clear to us what he really feels, what is hidden behind this facade. It is also unclear to us whether he understands what he really feels. He may well not be aware of the feelings he is experiencing. With such a person, we want to be prudent and careful. This is not the type of relationship in which protection can be dropped, or in which meaningful knowledge can emerge.

Therefore, the second condition of psychotherapy is that the therapist must be congruent in the relationship. He freely and deeply accepts himself, actually experiences his feelings and reactions and is aware of them as they appear and change.

Unconditional positive attitude

The third condition is that the therapist must feel warm feelings for the client — affection that is not related to the possession and receiving of personal pleasure. It’s an atmosphere that just shows, «I like you,» not, «I’ll like you if you act like this and that.» Standal (Standal, Stanley. The need for positive regard: A contribution to client-centered theory. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1954) called this attitude «an unconditional positive attitude», since it does not require as a condition some value necessary for the manifestation of this relationship. I have often used the term «acceptance» to describe this aspect of the psychotherapeutic climate. It includes both a sense of acceptance of the negative, «bad,» painful, frightening, and abnormal feelings expressed by the client, as well as the expression of «good,» positive, mature, trusting, and social feelings. It includes accepting and liking the client as an independent person; allows him to have his own feelings and experiences and find their own meanings in them. The acquisition of meaningful knowledge is possible insofar as the therapist can create a security-giving climate of unconditional positive regard.

Empathic Understanding

The fourth condition for successful psychotherapy is that the therapist correctly, sympathetically understands the inner world of the client, as if he were seen from within.

To understand the inner world of the client as if it were your own, but without losing this «as if» — this is empathy, sympathy, which, it seems to me, is necessary for psychotherapy. Understanding the client’s fear, anger, or embarrassment as if it were your own, yet without your own fear, anger, or embarrassment associated with it, is the condition we are trying to describe. When the client’s world is clear to the therapist and he is easily oriented in it, then he is able to convey in words his understanding of his world to the client, both what is clear to him and what the client is not yet able to put into words, what he is barely aware of. The importance of this all-pervasive understanding for psychotherapy was revealed in the works of Fiedler (Fiedler, FE A comparison of therapeutic relationships in psychoanalytic, non-directive and Adlerian therapy. J. Consult. Psychol. 1950, 14, 436-45), where in describing relationships, created by experienced therapists, the statements below come first.

Here are the statements.

• The therapist is quite able to understand the feelings of the patient.
• The therapist is always sure that he understands the patient’s point of view.
• The therapist’s remarks correspond exactly to the mood and content of the patient’s thoughts.
• The therapist’s tone indicates that he is fully capable of sharing the patient’s feelings.

Fifth condition

The fifth condition for gaining meaningful knowledge in psychotherapy is that the client should perceive the therapist’s congruence, acceptance, and empathy. However, this is not enough. They must be successfully communicated to the client to some extent.

The learning process in psychotherapy

Our experience is that, given these five conditions, a process of change must inevitably begin. The client’s frozen perception of himself and others becomes more mobile and open to reality. The client reconsiders the established ways of interpreting the meaning of his experience and begins to doubt many of the «facts» of his life, discovering that they are «facts» only insofar as he himself believed them to be so. He notices feelings in himself that he was not previously aware of, and often experiences them very vividly in his relationship with the therapist. Thus, he learns to be more open to his experience — internal and external. He learns to be more of his experience—to be the feelings he feared as well as the feelings he found more acceptable. He becomes a more mobile person, changing, able to learn.

The main «spring» of changes

In this process, the therapist does not necessarily have to «motivate» the client or give them the energy to bring about change. Motivation (in a sense) is also not entirely provided by the client, at least consciously. Let’s just say that the motivation for learning and change arises from the tendency of life itself towards self-fulfillment, the tendency of the organism to fill all the various channels of possible development until it is felt that they strengthen the organism.

I could go on like this, but it is not my purpose to focus on how the process of psychotherapy and the emergence of knowledge proceeds, or on the motivation for this emergence; I am interested in what conditions make them possible. So I will simply end this description of psychotherapy by saying that this meaningful learning for the client occurs when the five conditions are met.

When the client perceives himself as a person facing a serious and important problem.

When the therapist in a relationship with a client acts as a congruent personality, capable of being what she is.

When the therapist feels an unconditional positive attitude towards the client.

When the therapist has a subtle sympathetic penetration into the inner world of the client, which he can express to him.

When the client experiences some degree of congruence, acceptance, and empathy with the therapist.

The importance of the above conditions for education

What do these conditions mean for education? Undoubtedly, based on his experience, the teacher can give a better answer than I can; but at least I would like to share with you some of my thoughts on this matter.

Meeting with problems

First, learning that is meaningful to the learner usually takes place in situations that are perceived as problematic. I think I have given enough evidence for this. Having taught various courses and groups on my own according to my experience, I have found this approach to be more effective in seminars than in regular courses; during longer courses than short ones. Individuals who come to seminars or long courses encounter problems that they perceive as problems. A student attending an ordinary university course, and especially a compulsory course, tends to perceive that course as a place where he is usually passive, or discontented, or both; the experience, which he certainly has, is almost never relevant to his own problems.

However, I did have cases where the average university group perceived the course as an experience that could be used to solve problems that really concerned them; in such cases, there is an amazing feeling of liberation and a leap forward. And this existed in relation to a variety of courses, for example, a course in mathematics or a course devoted to the study of personality theory …

Therefore, the first value of psychotherapy for education is to allow the student at any level to come into contact with the important problems of his life, so that he encounters the problems and controversial issues that he wants to resolve. I am well aware that this conclusion, like others that will be discussed below, directly contradicts today’s trends in our culture, but I will comment on this later.

I think it is quite clear from my description of psychotherapy that the main implication for education is that the task of the teacher is to create an atmosphere in the classroom that facilitates learning that is meaningful to the student. This general formulation can be broken down into several subparagraphs.

Teacher congruence

If the teacher is congruent, this is likely to contribute to the acquisition of knowledge. Congruence implies that the teacher must be exactly what he really is; moreover, he must be aware of his attitude towards other people. It also means that he accepts his true feelings. Thus, he becomes frank in dealing with his students. He can admire what he likes and get bored during conversations on topics that do not interest him. He can be angry and cold or, conversely, sensitive or sympathetic. Since he accepts his feelings as his own, he does not need to attribute them to his students or insist that they feel the same way. He is a living person, not an impersonal embodiment of program requirements or a transmission belt for the transfer of knowledge.

I can present only one piece of evidence to support this view. When I think about my teachers, it seems to me that each of them was a living person. I wonder if your memories match mine? If this is so, then the main thing is not whether the teacher went through the required part of the program or used the best audiovisual means, but how congruent, alive he was in his relationship with the students.

Acceptance and understanding

Another conclusion from psychotherapy that is useful for the teacher is that learning that is meaningful to the student can take place if the teacher accepts the student as he is and is able to understand his feelings (taking into account the third and fourth conditions psychotherapy). The conditions for the emergence of meaningful knowledge will be created by a teacher who is able to warmly accept the student, treat him unconditionally positively and sympathetically understand his feelings of fear, foreboding and discouragement that accompany the perception of new material. Clark Moustakas, in his book The Teacher and the Child (Lerner, Max. America as a Civilization. New York: Simon & Schuster, — 1957), gave many excellent examples of individual and group situations, from kindergarten to high school, in which the teacher worked to achieve this goal. Perhaps you are worried about the idea that when a teacher takes these positions and wants to accept the feelings of students, they will express not only attitudes towards school, but also a whole gamut of other feelings, such as ill will or dislike for parents, brothers or sisters, feeling uneasy about themselves. Should such feelings have a right to be expressed in school? I think yes. They are related to the formation of a person, to his successful learning and effective functioning. The ability to deal with these feelings with understanding and acceptance is definitely associated with knowledge of the rules of division or geography of Pakistan.

Funding

Here I will discuss another implication from psychotherapy that is important for education. In psychotherapy, the means for self-exploration lie within the person. The therapist is only able to provide very little information that can help, since the information needed is within the person. But in education, things are different. There are many scientific tools, techniques, theories that are raw material for use. It seems to me that everything I have said about psychotherapy suggests that these materials, these tools, should be provided to students, not imposed. This requires ingenuity and sensitivity.

I will not list the usual means that come to mind — books, maps, textbooks, materials, records, instruments, etc. Let me focus on how the teacher uses himself, his knowledge, his experience as these tools. If the teacher’s point of view is similar to mine, then he may want to make himself useful to the class in at least the following ways.

He will introduce students to his special experience and knowledge in this area and help them use this experience. But this does not mean that he will impose his experience on them.

He will make it clear to the students that he can present his own views on the work in this area and its organization, for example, in the form of a lecture. He will do this in an unobtrusive way to give the students the opportunity to turn to him if they are interested.

He will try to let the students know that he can provide various means to advance in knowledge. He will help the students to find these means themselves.

He will do everything possible so that in his relations with the group his feelings are understandable and at the same time not imposed or restrict their freedom.

In this way, he can convey the excitement and enthusiasm associated with his own knowledge without insisting that students follow his path; the disinterestedness, contentment, dazedness, or pleasure he feels towards the actions of one student or the whole group, without becoming a «stick» or «carrot» for the students. He will be able to say to himself: «I don’t like it,» and the student with the same freedom will be able to say: «But I like it.»

Thus, whatever medium he provided—a book, a workplace, a new tool, an opportunity to observe an industrial process, a lecture based on his own research, a painting, a drawing, or a map, his own emotional reactions—he would feel that they are accepted, and I would hope that they will continue to be accepted if they are needed and useful for students. He would offer to use himself as a means, as well as all other means he could find.

Main motive

It should be clear from the foregoing that the teacher would mainly rely on a tendency towards self-actualization in students. The hypothesis he could put forward is that students who are in genuine contact with life’s problems want to learn, want to grow, want to discover, hope to learn, want to create. He would have realized that it was his function to develop such a personal relationship with his students and create such a climate in the classroom that these natural tendencies would bear fruit.

About what is omitted

Above, I outlined the consequences that can take place if you follow the features of psychotherapy in education. To make their connection clearer, let me revisit what I left out. I have not included lectures, talks, or visual aids that are forced on students. All this can be part of learning only if the students explicitly or implicitly want it. Even so, a teacher whose work is based on hypotheses derived from psychotherapy would quickly sense a change in students’ desires. He may be asked to give a lecture to a group (giving a lecture that is asked for is very different from giving a normal lecture), but if he felt growing boredom and disinterest, he would react to this by trying to understand the feelings that arose in the group, since his response to their feelings and attitudes would prevail over his interest in the material being explained.

I have not included any program for assessing student learning through some kind of external assessment. In other words, I have not included exams because I believe that testing student achievement directly contradicts psychotherapy findings that are useful for meaningful learning. In psychotherapy, life itself tests. Sometimes the client successfully overcomes examination obstacles, sometimes he is not able to cope with them. But, as a rule, he finds that he can use the possibilities of psychotherapy and his experience in it for a future successful re-examination in life. I think this example is suitable for education as well. Let me present you with a fantasy that will clarify my words.

In such an education the demands of life would be part of the means provided by the teacher. The student would be given the necessary knowledge that he would not get into a technical college without additional math classes; that he won’t get a job at X Corporation until he has a college degree; that he would not be able to become a psychologist until he had done his own scientific research for a Ph.D.; that he could not become a doctor without a knowledge of chemistry; that he won’t even be able to get a license and drive a car without passing the exams. This is a list of requirements set not by a teacher, but by life. The teacher only provides the means that the student can use to pass these tests.

In such a school there will be many such tests. For example, someone dreams of becoming a member of the Math Club, but until he gets a certain mark on a standard math test, his dream will not come true; or make his own movie, but until he shows sufficient knowledge of chemistry and laboratory equipment, he will not succeed; he will not be able to attend the literature circle until he proves that he reads a lot and knows how to compose. In fact, appreciation in life is an entrance ticket, not a club over the recalcitrant. Our psychotherapy experience would suggest doing the same in school. The student would respect himself, have his own motivation, he would be free to choose whether or not to make an effort to get this entrance ticket. Thus, it would save him from conformity, sacrificing his creative abilities, save him from living by someone else’s standards.

I am well aware that the two elements I am talking about — lectures and interpretations imposed by the teacher on the group, as well as the evaluation of a person by the teacher — constitute the two main «pillars» of today’s education. So when I say that the experience of psychotherapy obliges them to be excluded, it becomes clear that the significance of psychotherapy for education is truly amazing.

Possible results

If we are to take into account the astonishing changes which I have described, what will be the results that would justify them? Several observations have been made of student-centered learning outcomes (Jackson, John H. The relationship between psychological climate and the quality of learning outcomes among lower-status pupils. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, — 1957., Faw , Volney, A psychotherapeutic method of teaching psychology, Amer Psychol, 4: 104-09, 1949, Faw, Volney, «Evaluation of student-centered teaching,» Unpublished manuscript, 1954), but these works are far from perfect. First, the situations studied varied widely in their degree of conformity with the conditions I have described. Most of these studies have been short-term, although one of the more recent studies of primary school students was conducted throughout the school year. Some studies included the use of appropriate controls, others did not.

These studies show that in those classes in which the teacher at least tried to create an environment close to the one I described, the following results were obtained: the actual study and assimilation of the program is approximately equal to the assimilation in the control class. According to some studies, the results are slightly higher, according to others — slightly lower. In the student-centered learning group, the results show significantly higher levels of personal adjustment, creativity, self-acquisition of knowledge outside the classroom, and student responsibility than in the regular classroom.

Reflecting on these works and making plans for new, improved studies that would be more meaningful and convincing, I came to the conclusion that the results of such studies will never give an answer to our questions. Because all of them should be considered based on the goals of education. If we value the acquisition of knowledge above all, then we can dismiss all the conditions I have described as useless, since there is nothing to show that they lead to an increase in the amount of factual knowledge or its faster assimilation. In this case, we will be quite satisfied with such measures as the establishment of educational institutions for scientists along the lines of military academies, which, I understand, some members of Congress advocate. If, on the other hand, the development of creative abilities is important to us and we regret that all our main ideas in atomic physics, psychology and other sciences were borrowed from Europe, then we may want to try those ways of improving the teaching that promise greater freedom of thought. If we value independence, if we are concerned about the growing conformity of science, values, attitudes that our current system is causing, then we may want to create conditions for the acquisition of knowledge that promote unique, self-directed, self-directed learning.

A few issues in conclusion

I have tried to sketch out the changes in education that could be brought about by the advances in psychotherapy. Very briefly, I tried to suggest what would happen if the main goal of the teacher’s efforts were to develop such relationships and such an atmosphere that would promote learning coming from the student, developing him, meaningful for him. But such a direction leads in a completely different direction from the modern theory and practice of education. Let me mention some of the issues and questions that need to be answered if we are to think constructively about this approach.

First of all, how do we imagine the goals of education? The approach I have outlined has advantages in achieving some specific goals and has no advantage in achieving others. The question of the aims of education needs to be clarified.

What are the real results of the type of education I have described? Much more precise inventive research is needed to find out what the advantages of such an education are compared to the conventional one. Then on the basis of these facts we can choose.

Even if we tried to apply such an approach in order to promote learning, we would be faced with many controversial issues. Can we bring such a situation to the judgment of students? Our entire culture — through tradition, laws, union and government efforts, through parent-teacher relationships — is deeply connected to keeping young people away from any contact with real issues. They should not strain, they should not be held responsible, they have no rights in civil or political matters, they do not play a role in international relations, they just need to be protected from any direct contact with the real problems of life of individuals and groups. They are not expected to help around the house, earn a living, contribute to science, deal with moral issues. This is a deeply rooted opinion that has existed for more than one generation. Can’t it be reversed?

Another problem is, can we allow knowledge to be organized in the individual and by the individual, or should it be organized for the individual? In this case, educators line up with parents and national leaders, insisting that the student must be led. He must be brought into the knowledge that is organized for him. It cannot be trusted to functionally organize knowledge for itself. As Herbert Hoover says about high school students, “Children of this age can’t be expected to define the kind of education that which they need until they have some kind of guidance. To most people, this seems so obvious that even doubting it seems abnormal. Even the president of the university doubts whether education really needs freedom, remarking that «perhaps we have overestimated its value» (Time, December 1924, 2). He says that the Russians have made excellent progress in science without it, meaning that we should learn from them.

Another question is whether we would now like to oppose something to the strong trend that understands education as the acquisition of factual knowledge. Everyone must teach the same facts in the same way. Admiral Rickover (H.J. Rickover (1900-1986) — «the father of the American nuclear submarine», a well-known critic of the American education system. — Note ed.) is convinced that «somehow we have to invent how to introduce one and the same standards in American education… For the first time, parents would have valid yardsticks to measure schools. If the local school continued to teach such pleasant subjects as «Adaptation to Life» … instead of French and Physics, her diploma would be lower than the diplomas of other schools ”(ibid.). This point of view is widespread. Even such a supporter of advanced views in education as Max Lerner once said: “Everything we ever what we can hope for from the school is to equip students with tools that they can later use to become educated people” [5, p. 711]. It is clear that he does not hope that there will ever be meaningful learning in our school system, but he feels that such learning must take place outside of it. All the school can do is provide the necessary tools for him.

One of the most painless ways to implement such factual knowledge-tools is the «teaching machine» invented by B. F. Skinner and his colleagues (Skinner, BF The science of learning and the art of teaching. Harvard Educational Review 1954, 24, 86-97 ). Their group shows that the teacher is an outdated and ineffective tool for teaching arithmetic, trigonometry, French, literary appreciation, geography and other factual subjects. I have no doubt that these ‘learning machines’, which give immediate rewards for ‘correct’ answers, will develop and come into wider use. Here is a new contribution from behavioral science with which we must come to terms. Does it replace or complement the approach I have described? This is one of the issues to consider when facing the future.

I hope that by posing these contentious questions I have made it abundantly clear that the question of what constitutes meaningful knowledge and how to acquire it poses serious problems for all of us. Now is not the time for evasive answers. I have tried to define meaningful learning as it manifests itself in psychotherapy, and I have described the conditions that facilitate it. I have also tried to point out some of the consequences of these conditions in learning. In other words, I offered one answer to these questions. Perhaps you can use it as a starting point for your own new responses to the twin slogans of public opinion and modern behavioral science.