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How People Change

Louis Cozolino and Vanessa Davis

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
-Carl Rogers

SOMEONE ONCE ASKED me if I knew the difference between a rat and a

human being.* I was curious, so I played along; here is what he told me.
If you take a hungry rat and put it on a platform surrounded by five tunnels
with cheese hidden down the third tunnel, the rat, smelling the cheese,
will explore the tunnels until it finds the cheese. Rats have excellent spa­
tial memory, so if you put the same rat in the same place the next day, it
will immediately go down the third tunnel. If, in the meantime, you've
moved the cheese to the fifth tunnel, the rat will still go down the third
tunnel expecting to find the cheese where it was before. So what's the
difference between a rat and a human being?

* Throughout this chapter, "I" refers to Louis Cozolino.

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