ABSTRACT
This chapter looks in detail at the way the emotions are fostered through conversation. There are two aspects to failure in communication—failure because we do not have the same level of emotional equipment as the person with whom we are engaging and failure because the one we are engaging with does not have the same level of emotional equipment as ourselves. If the psychotherapist conducting the therapy is emotionally impoverished but does not know it, then this will not guarantee that the patient will grow emotionally through communication with him or her. We need something more than consciousness if our client or patient is going to solve his or her problem through communicating with us. Being open to communication with O—this act of communication that is most profoundly within oneself and yet deeply in the other—that this act, which opens a channel of lasting communication, strengthens the personality and endows it with emotional robustness that is lasting.
