I find it so compelling when experts get simple. You can sense it when a basic groove is played by a virtuosic musician. There’s magic when something humble is pulled from a knowledge base so big.

I felt this when I first came across Carl Rogers, the psychologist who made me want to be a therapist. Growing up in a rigorous religious context and with a civil engineer father, Rogers was a scholar who eventually produced “19 Propositions” about humans and personality.

Rogers made many contributions, but he is best known for producing a proposition that underlies most forms of modern psychotherapy.

Rogers said that practicing unconditional positive regard, genuineness and empathy are the fundamental foundations for effective therapy. If you can do these three things, you will have an effective healing relationship. If you cannot, you probably will not.

It may sound obvious now, but in the obsessive rationalism of 20th century social science, this was a radical concept.

I think of Rogers a bit like Einstein for the practice of psychotherapy. His elegant ideas have been clinically proven again and again across so many cultures and contexts. The quality of the relationship (unconditional positive regard, genuineness, and empathy) are foundational in what makes therapy effective.

To me, Rogers’ theory has something in common with Kind of Blue, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, The Mona Lisa, and so on.

What, if anything, sticks in your mind as a powerful simplicity produced by an expert?