school has just started today..a rainy day in pittsburgh….everything motivates me to concentrate on the reading list. i am still on my first theme ; character. carl rogers’s on becoming a person is my current reading..he is from the field of psychoteraphy. his reflexive approach makes the reading more attractive and readable, but i lost in some specific psychology terminology.

his approach in psychoteraphy asserts the importance of the relationships between the client and therapist instead of the importance of the methodology. his magic four in a ‘manufactured relationship’ : congruency, empathy, positive attitude, match between the expressions of client and therapist.

he is one of the pioneers who mention ‘empathy’..

i like the manufactured relationship allegory while talking about the relationship between client and the counsellor. it reminds me the relationship designers try to create in a design artifact. how can we create a succesful ‘manufactured’ relationship in design? should it be a manufactured one? or should it be a guidance to a relationship? can those four make sense in design? these four point out the role of emotion in design.

i want to insist on empathy. lets begin with the definition:

empathy (em·pa·thy) (em¢p[schwa]-the) [Gr. en into + -pathy] intellectual and emotional awareness and understanding of another person’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior, even those that are distressing and disturbing. Empathy emphasizes understanding, sympathy emphasizes sharing, of another person’s feelings and experiences.

(Merck Medicus medical dictionary)