AND CONGRUENCE Congruence, however, is an important concept articulated by Rogers (1951) that has much to do with the process of referring to the direct referent. We may understand by congruencethat it described the degree to which the direct experiencinggoing on in the sensory and visceral level of the person was accurately symbol ized in the experience. Thus, we can say, in contrast to the previous elaboration, that Rogers did indeed address the issue of the clients referring to and explicating the direct referent. Although this was written before Rogers developed the concept of congruence, Rogers wrote in 1951: The experience of discovering within oneself, pres ent attitudes and feelings which have been viscerally and physio logically experienced, but which have never been recognized in consciousness, constitutes one of the most deepest and most signif icant phenomena of therapy (p. 76).Congruence, together with empathy and acceptance, may pro vide the key concept to describe the referring process in psycho therapy. Empathy and acceptance provided the safe climate in the relationship that allowed the client to refer to and explicate her direct referent, resulting in the clients gradual recovery of the state of congruence. However, several problems remain and need clarification.First, we must clarify that Rogers did not specifically equate congruence and the process of referring to the direct referent. To him, congruence meant the degree of overlap between the self concept and the ongoing experiential flow. His formulation reminds us of the psychoanalytic model. Only those experiences that matched the self concept were admitted into awareness, whereas others were repressed from awareness or were perceived in a distorted form.We must also be reminded of the fact that Rogers (1957) assumed that the therapist was congruent in her relationship with the client, while the client was in an incongruent state. Many client centered therapists then had to assume that the therapist must be congruent in therapy, as this was the necessary and sufficient con dition of therapy. Theoretically, the client, on the other hand, was supposed to be incongruent in the therapy session. Gradually in therapy, the client would become congruent, at which point, ther apy would no longer be needed.As therapists, we must admit that we cannot be congruent throughout the therapy session. It may even be said that the incon gruence of the therapist contains a richness that really makes the therapeutic relationship function.From these observations, it may be said that Rogerss concept of congruence comes close to explicating the process of referring. However, due to certain theoretical limitations mentioned earlier, the concept of congruence needs to be further refined. THE REFERENCING PROCESS Happening TogetherLet us now consider the process of the client referring to the felt sense or direct referent. In doing so, we use a new paradigm of thinking, called a process model (Gendlin, 1998). In this way of thinking, we assume the position of interaction first. As Hendricks (2002) explained, we are used to seeing things as if they were sepa rate entities. For example, we normally think of the lung as sepa rate from air. However, we