UNCONDITIONAL POSITIVE REGARD IN CIVICS

TWO QUESTIONS: As therapists, counsellors, – Civic Councillors and Council service providers? – social workers, and other members of helping/caring professions, how can the best help be given clients to enable them to help themselves?

As parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors, how can children or indeed a constituency(?) be encourage  to grow into healthy and happy people with a positive sense of self-worth?

 

What is Unconditional Positive Regard? A Definition

So, what is unconditional positive regard? .... A general definition is the attitude of complete acceptance and love, whether for yourself or for someone else. When you have unconditional positive regard (UPR) for someone, nothing they can do could give you a reason to stop seeing them as inherently human and inherently lovable. It does not mean that you accept each and every action taken by the person, but that you accept who they are at a level much deeper than surface behavior (Rogers, 1951).

In therapy, the idea is much the same, although with a more specific purpose: to build a positive, trusting relationship between the therapist and the client.

It is a defining feature of client-centered therapy  – and an important feature in many other forms of therapy – in which the client is accepted and supported by the therapist no matter what they say or do (Rogers, 2001).

The Psychology Behind Unconditional Positive Regard

“The kind of caring that the client-centered therapist desires to achieve is a gullible caring, in which clients are accepted as they say they are, not with a lurking suspicion in the therapist’s mind that they may, in fact, be otherwise. This attitude is not stupidity on the therapist’s part; it is the kind of attitude that is most likely to lead to trust…”

Carl R. Rogers

In the caring professions all this makes perfect sense and when the notion of UPR is applied to 'civic administration' it also makes sense. What sense is there in treating those who provide 'civil servants' with a living as some kind of villain, dysfunctional persona, undeserving person, whatever? 

When 'rankism' finds its way into the world of 'public administration' it is typically closely followed by increasing dysfunction. Rankism is abusive, discriminatory, and/or exploitative behaviour.  People who 'pull rank' in a particular hierarchy typically meter-out abuse such as bullying, racism, ageism, sexism, ableism, mentalism, anti-semitism, homophobia and transphobia. 

In the 21st C rankism should not be tolerated anywhere, in any way or at any time.