On Becoming a Person

Written by one of America’s most distinguished psychologists, Carl R. Rogers uses this book to take us through his experiences as a therapist. He discusses personal growth and creativity throughout the book, as well as how they can be successfully developed into making us more flexible in relationships, and less open to suggestion and control.

I found this book incredibly tough to read in parts, it took nearly three months to complete since my background is not in psychology or psychotherapy. Nevertheless, I loved it, it’s a great book and it ties in nicely with Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Roger Martin’s The Opposable Mind and The Design of Business, which I have previously recommended.

I love learning and improving on my own qualities and if I don’t feel that I am progressing in either of these I become unhappy. So, it was a no-brainer for me to pick this book up.

The particular areas that stuck most with me were The Person Who Emerges and Second Stage of Process. These areas helped increase my understanding of certain types of behavior and helped to teach me new concepts that I had only just begun to grasp.

The Person Who Emerges

This section talked about openness to experience in which the person becomes open to a wider range of experiences that build towards helping them grow.

The most valuable piece I took away from this was that we as people need to learn that reality doesn’t accommodate for us, we need to work with it instead.

Second Stage of Process

This is actually the second of seven stages. It discusses the idea that many people perceive problems as being external to themselves, outside or their control and not their fault.

Nobody likes to admit they are wrong or that they may even be causing their own problems but I think in many cases this is exactly the problem. This also reminds me of the reality model that is discussed in The Opposable Mind.

Final Words

Although I found parts of this book difficult to read, I forced myself through it and I am still to this day happy that I did. Some sections of it were beyond my understanding but that’s OK, I feel that in a year or two I will be able to return to this book and read through it again, further building on the foundations of my understanding so far.

I highly recommend this book to everyone, since I believe from the two sections alone that I have mentioned, everyone could learn a great deal from them and the book as a whole is great in helping people work towards personal growth.

If you want to find out more about the book or purchase your own copy, you can head on over to Amazon.

Phil.