Unconditional Positive Regard

Unconditional positive regard describes an essential attitude that person-centered therapists adopt toward their clients, promoting growth and personal change (Wilkins, 2000).

As mental health professionals, therapists recognize that they must deeply value their client’s humanity while being undeterred by any particular client behaviors for a successful outcome (Mearns & Thorne, 1988).

Typically, the client experiences this as ongoing acceptance, understanding, and warmth (Mearns & Thorne, 1988). While recognized as an attitude, unconditional positive regard can be learned through practice and good technique, encouraging change in the client and a positive outcome from therapy.

What Is Carl Rogers’s Unconditional Positive Regard?

Supporting only ‘positive’ aspects of a client while discouraging ‘negative’ aspects would suggest that therapists have an agenda different from their clients. Empathy and acceptance would be conditional (Wilkins, 2000).

Instead, effective client-centered therapy requires unconditional positive regard, where every aspect of the client’s experience is accepted while working toward a positive outcome (Bozarth, 2013).

According to Carl Rogers, one founder of the client-centered approach in psychology, individuals have a strong need for positive regard, particularly in therapy. Such “warm acceptance of each aspect of the client’s experience” occurs when the client believes they are making a difference to the therapist’s experiential field (Rogers, 1959, p. 209).

Crucially, for personality change to occur within the client, the therapist must experience and display unconditional positive regard and empathy toward them (Bozarth, 2013). As a result, Rogers (1957) describes unconditional positive regard as one of several necessary and sufficient conditions required for a positive outcome to the therapeutic process. Importantly, that acceptance must be equally present for negative and abnormal feelings (pain, fear, and defensiveness) and positive, social, and confident feelings (Rogers, 1957; Wilkins, 2000).

While psychologists from classical and post-classic person-centered approaches sometimes disagree on exactly what unconditional positive regard is and how it should be adopted, it is clear that consistency in therapy is vital. The therapist must, throughout treatment, care for the client while accepting and permitting their right to have and share their feelings and experiences (Bozarth, 2013).

Ultimately, “the communication of unconditional positive regard is a major curative factor in any approach to therapy; congruence and empathy merely provide the context in which it is credible” (Wilkins, 2000, p. 23).