Carl Rogers glaubte, dass da-sein und emphatisches Zuhören die größte Hilfe und Unterstützung sind, die man einem Menschen bieten kann.
Er schreibt über seine Arbeit:
„It is my purpose to understand the way he feels about in his own inner world, to accept him as he is, to create an atmosphere of freedom in which he can move in his thinking and feeling and being, in any direction he desires. How does he use this freedom? It is my experience that he uses it to become more and more himself. He begins to drop the false fronts, or the masks, or the roles, with which he has faced life. He appears to be trying to discover something more basic, something more truly himself.“ (Rogers 1961)
Er deutet damit auf etwas ganz Grundlegendes. Etwas Paradoxes. Menschen verändern sich erst, wenn sie sich annehmen wie sie sind.