The Power To Define Reality

I write this essay from my personal experience in a long career as a consultant to people who are working in North American organizations. The organizations have had different social aims — large and small profit-seeking corporations, governmental and not-for profit groups.

I listen to clients tell of their hopes and struggles and I work to help them find their next step; I notice synergies and miscommunications between people and offer suggestions; I seek in a person’s complaints what he or she wants and is committed to do. Upon reflection I ask myself, “Toward what possibilities have my clients and I been moving?” I encourage workers at all levels of an organization to exercise their active, resourceful,
and personally responsible selves. I believe people will more readily find happiness and fulfillment if for themselves they can become clearer – “Who am I?

This is a paper I delivered in 2002 to a group of colleagues whose interest is approaching people in work organizations from a Person-Centered spirit.

By all accounts, Ludwig van Beethoven lived through experiences of depression. Yeah, “Roll Over Beethoven, dig these Rhythm and Blues,” ’cause l’m talking with you today about Blues and its rhythms, and about American people preceding me by a generation or two. As a child I listened late into the nights to my tiny black Arvin radio tucked against my pillow. I fell a dream to live broadcasting jazz and the Blues from New Orleans, New York, Nashville, St. Louis and Chicago. Hear today my telling you – sounding – the old nights, and the old guys and gals, their blues, their depressions, and oppression and legacies: this is a way l’ve come to understand and express my personal and social move away from fear and despair. My topic is Depression and some of its contexts and some of its possibilities.