The Martin Buber-Carl Rogers Dialogue

The authors highlight hundreds of errors, major and minor, in previously distributed and published transcripts--beginning with the typescript circulated by Rogers himself. They also show how an accurate text enhances our understanding of the relationship between Buber's philosophy and Rogers's client- and person-centered approach to interpersonal relations. Anderson and Cissna discuss the central issues of the conversation, including the limits of mutuality, approaches to "self," alternative models of human nature, confirmation of others, and the nature of dialogic relation itself. Although Buber and Rogers conversed nearly forty years ago, their topics clearly resonate with contemporary debates about postmodernism, forms of otherness, cultural studies, and the possibilities for a dialogic public sphere.