Barriers and Gateways to Communication

- Carl R. Rogers and F.J. Roethlisberger

Barrier: The Tendency to Evaluate

"This tendency to react to any emotionally meaningful statement by forming an evaluation of it from our own point of view is the major barrier to interpersonal communication."

Gateway: Listening and Understanding
 "Real communicationoccurs, and this evaluatative tendency is avoided, when we listen with understanding..... It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from ther other person's point of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about."

Need for Courage: If you really understand another person in this weay, if you are willing to enter his private world and see the way life appears to him, without any attempt to amke evaluative judgments, you run the risk of being changed youself.  You might see it his way; you might find yourself influenced in your attitudes or your personality.

This risk of being changed is one of the most frightening prospects many of us can face..."