"Using a gouache of humor, science, and compassion, he'd set forth the foundations of our friendship." [from pages 124-125 of the book.]

[From pages 124-125 of the book]

I had arrived on campus that summer's end quite full of myself.  Not only was I the first child in my family to go to a university without the intention of committing a crime, but the first child out of all 40 cousins on either side of our family to have reached the age of 18 and still have no intentions to marry. 

It made me a "know-it-all."  However, in less than an hour, which was all that it took to get to know each other, Owen had exposed in me what I'd already believed about most of my fellow students: How much smarter I was than they; what an individual I was; and how bright, how very bright I was going to be.  Question followed question from his streetwise and quick mind, as he gleaned from me my family history and what I was doing in Peoria; in that Socratic order was his meaning.

Harry Stack Sullivan

Abraham Maslow

 Before he'd ever taken a single course in psychology, before he'd ever read Maslow, Horney, Perls, and Sullivan, he'd forged for himself a technique of observing and understanding, at high speed, who and what he was currently dealing with, either in confrontations or in conversations. He might have had time yet to come into contact with the sons and daughters of Freud and Jung, but he nevertheless knew how a man thought and what he feared.

Frederick "Fritz" Perls

 

Karen Horney

He'd told me who I was, for what it was worth: Those revelations were as enigmatic in their origins as they were concrete in their disclosure.  He'd told me who he was, leaving enough unsaid to maintain his privacy and his mystique.  And wielding a paintbrush with all the vision of recorded history, as if by the hand of a Renaissance master, he'd placed a canvas before me.  Using a gouache of humor, science, and compassion, he'd set forth the foundations of our friendship. 

Some quotations from Maslow, Horney, Perls, and Sullivan:

"Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge." [Perls]

"When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one's own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the term." [Sullivan]

[2 from Horney]: "Life itself still remains a very effective therapist."    "Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression."

[2 from Maslow]:  “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”   “The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.”