“Encounter in human beings is always to a greater or lesser extant anxiety-creating as well as joy-creating. I think these effects arise out of the face that genuine encounter with another person always shakes our self-world relationship: our comfortable temporal security of the moment before is thrown in to question, we are opened, made tentative for an instant—shall we risk ourselves, take the chance to be enriched by this new relationship (and even if it is a friend or loved one of long standing, this particular moment of relationships is still new) or shall we brace ourselves, throw up a stockade, block out the other person and miss the nuances of his perceptions, feelings, intentions? Encounter is always a potentially creative experience; it normally should ensue in the expanding of consciousness, the enrichment of the self. (I do not speak here of quantity—obviously a brief meeting may affect us only slightly; indeed, I do not refer to quantities at all, but to a quality of experience.) In genuine encounter both persons are changed, however minutely.”

Rollo May, The Discovery of Being