UPR has no clear cut meaning, terms such as ‘acceptance’, ‘prizing’, ‘respect’, and ‘warmth’ are used. However the difficulty arises in that these words all have very different meanings amongst themselves, and are all classified under the term UPR. UPR seems to mean positive regard for things whether they are good or not. Is this really possible? Rogers (1957) pp36 defines UPR as follows ‘It involves as much feeling of acceptance for the client’s expression of negative, ‘bad’, painful, fearful, defensive, abnormal, feelings as for his expression of ‘good’, positive, mature, confident, social feelings, as much acceptance of ways in which he is inconsistent as of ways in which in which he is consistent. It means caring for the client, but not in a possessive way or in such a way as simply to satisfy the therapists own needs. It means a caring for the client as a separate person with permission to have his own feelings’
Through my own experiences I have found it difficult to maintain UPR for long in a difficult situation, and found it difficult to always adopt this attitude while being honest about my own values and beliefs. I assume I would find it impossible hold my client in UPR if they were a brutal rapist or a paedophile. I will now explore how Rogers proposed this may be done and if it can be done.
There is an emphasis on personal development for the therapist using the person-centred approach. So that he/she may relate to the client from a place a place of self-awareness and self-acceptance. The therapist must not only be in touch with his/her own experiences, at a given moment, but also be responsible for what is communicated to the client from these experiences.
Rogers argued that the person experiences UPR only to the extent that he/she experiences unconditional self regard. Rogers referred to this self accepting person as the ‘fully functioning’ person. This is the direction in which the person-centred therapist must be moving. Rychman (1993) notes that some studies have found that non-defensive people are more accepting of others. Maddi (1996) cites numerous studies that indicate self-accepting people also appear to be more accepting of others. Pescitelli, D (1996) On-Line
The ‘fully functioning’ person has the following qualities; ‘openness to experience’, this means they have an accurate perception of one’s experiences in the world, including ones feelings. It means being able to accept reality, again including ones feelings. If you cannot be open to your feelings, you cannot be open to actualization. The ‘fully functioning person will live in the here and now, Rogers called this ‘existential living’. Here the present is the only reality. It doesn’t mean we should plan or even day-dream about the future. It is just about recognising these things for what they are: memories and dreams that are being experiences in the present.
Another quality present in the fully functioning person is ‘organismic trusting’. This means they trust themselves, do what feels right, what comes natural. This is about trusting your ‘real self’. You can only know your real self if you are open to experience and living existentially. So organismic trusting assumes that you are in contact with the actualizing tendency. Rogers said the fully functioning person acknowledges that feeling of freedom when choices are available to them and takes responsibility for decisions made. He called this ‘experiential freedom’. Finally he referred to the quality of ‘creativity’. He stated that the fully functioning person, in touch with actualization, will feel obliged by their nature to contribute to the actualization of other, even life itself. How does one reach this way of being?
The fully functioning person will have received UPR, has few conditions of worth, and has congruence between self and potentialities. The therapist may have received this through personal therapy. And may have done group work during training which may have provided them with the possibility of enhancing self-awareness and personal congruence. Congruence is the key to self awareness. It is only when one is aware of the ‘real self’ that they can work on accepting the real self. The individual is congruent when the self concept is in agreement with inherent potentialities and this leads to openness to experience and a fully functioning person. To be consistent with the basic principles, training, or education of the psychotherapists in the person-centred approach is rooted in the development of the personality of the therapist, rather than in the training and practising of skills. It is rather like a process of becoming. So if we assume that the therapist is self accepting and accepting of others, is it really possible for him/her to give UPR to the client always? What about congruence, this awareness the therapist has of his/her ‘real self’, values and beliefs, where does this fit in or not fit in?
Rogers said that there are some necessary conditions for therapeutic change. These conditions are: psychological contact between the client and therapist, the client being incongruent in the relationship, the therapist being congruent in the relationship, the therapist experiencing UPR towards the client, the therapists empathic understanding of the inner world of the client and his/her communication of it, the clients experience of the positive regard and the empathy at least to a minimal degree. The three core conditions are, as said by Rogers; congruence, UPR and empathy. Congruence is the therapist being what he/she is, when in the relationship with the client. They must be genuine without ‘front’ or ‘façade’, openly being the feelings and attitudes which at that moment are flowing through them. The feelings of the therapist must be available to their awareness, and they must be able to live these feelings, be them, and be able to communicate them if appropriate. Being congruent is being aware of what one is experiencing inside. UPR is, a deep, respectful and genuine unconditional caring or ‘prizing’ of the client – ‘unconditionally’ in the sense that the caring is not contaminated by evaluation or judgement of the client’s feelings, thoughts and behaviour as good or bad. Therapists value and warmly accept the client without placing stipulations on the acceptance. The therapist expresses this quality of genuine regard through empathy. Being empathic reflects an attitude of profound interest in the client’s world of meanings and feelings as the client is willing to share this world. The therapist receives these communications and conveys appreciation and understanding, with the effects of encouraging the client to go further or deeper. An interaction occurs in which the therapist is a warm, sensitive, respectful companion in the typically difficult exploration of another’s emotional world. These conditions must not be seen as techniques or methods but rather as a way of being with the client, by the person of the therapist.
One can see that UPR ties in with empathy and congruence and is only effective in assisting therapeutic change when delivered with empathy and congruence. They must all exist alongside one another yet are so different and even conflicting amongst one another. There is the difference between congruence on the one hand and UPR and empathic on the other. Congruence is more a state of being which is only communicated if appropriate. Whilst UPR and empathy are states and experiencing which need to be communicated to or experienced by the client. Can anyone possibly embody the core conditions of congruence and UPR at the same time while working with brutal rapist or a paedophile? In their comprehensive investigation of the core conditions Mitchell et al (1973) identified genuineness as being of core importance. It was found that a significant relationship was found between counsellor effectiveness and genuineness. Owen, D.W et al (1992). Richard Worsley a counselling supervisor and trainer and director of the counselling diploma in City College, talks about such a dilemma in the passage below, taken from Worsley. R (2002).
‘When I am with a client I am usually aware of some aspects of their processing. These ways of being and behaving affect me, create feelings in me – compassion, anger, irritation, frustration, admiration, can also be there. In other words I am already and extricable involved with my clients processing. Therefore I need to be open to and accepting of the client’s process, for it is an expression of their selves. I need to know how I am with this within me and to be prepared to share this with the client when that seems appropriate.’
Worsley goes on to say;
‘Clients process is a part of their won frame of reference, part of their experiential and existential world; I can hear them better when I understand their process.’
Here Worsley is talking about empathy, and that a therapist can only be congruent, being aware of what he/she is experiencing inside, and hold the client in UPR if he/she has an empathic understanding of the clients ‘self’. This again shows that UPR can not exist alone and is only effective when existing alongside empathy and congruence.
In remaining with the three core conditions is an embodiment of the therapist’s faith in the clients actualising tendency. However it is particularly unclear to what extent a therapist needs to feel empathic, accepting and genuine in order for these attitudes to manifest themselves to the client. Does this mean a therapist must be in a constant state of accepting, genuine and understanding? Keith Tudor a therapist, supervisor and trainer talks about this in the passage below, taken from Tudor, K (2002)
‘Conditions develop in the relationship. My positive regard, at times more conditional than unconditional; my tentative, sometimes accurate, understanding: both are offered, accepting, rejecting, distorted, denied, reformulated, negotiated – and, thus, co-created – in a relationship. Person-centred therapy is indeed as Rogers first conceive it ‘relationship therapy’.
The conditions all occur in varying degrees each on its own continuum of more, or less. Questions have arisen regarding the ability to perceive UPR in the therapist. Campbell Purton argues that the more disturbed the client the less likely they are to be able to perceive such as attitude in the therapist. Purton, C. (2002)
UPR stems from the Rogerian belief of ‘good in all human beings’, when experienced by the counsellor it is communicated to clients through a general attitude of respect for and understanding of them as individual people, and being supportive of them is best achieved through empathic understanding without judgement. The person-centred therapist accepts that although one’s character is flawed it doesn’t have to remain flawed, as human beings are innately good.
One could assume that if the therapist is a self-accepting person, or as Rogers would term a ‘fully functioning’ person, he/she will be able to assume the attitude of ‘acceptance’ towards the client. I wonder about the people who have limited potentialities and their ability to become ‘fully functioning’? Is one ‘fully functioning’ if one has fulfilled all potential, even though there is an extremely limited amount in the first place? Empirical support for the fully functioning person is somewhat mixed. The openness to experience characteristic has been supported. However, some studies found that openness to experience and organismic trusting did not inter-correlate contrary to expectations. Pescitelli, D (1996) On-Line.
Rogers acknowledged that UPR exists as a matter of degree in any relationship and the therapist is not expected to be in a constant state of acceptance genuineness and understanding. The degree of psychological contact at any given moment in the relationship varies and is affected by, the dialogue, verbal and non-verbal between the therapist and client. The particular and changing nature of the client’s incongruence, all evoke different responses in the therapist in terms of UPR as well as congruence and empathy. Rogers recognised that the therapist is only human, and often enough a bit more ‘human’ than most. He said that the therapist must show UPR in the therapeutic relationship. In other words, when the therapist leaves the office, he can be as ‘human’ as anybody.
So I could conclude that it is not always possible to hold a client in UPR and the therapist does not have to put aside their own values and beliefs and assumes the attitude that anything goes, as this would be incongruent. Rather the therapist needs to be aware that these values and beliefs to him/her and not to the client. My own difficulty to adopt an attitude of URP while being honest about my own values and so on, and my ‘feelings of unease’ while working with certain attitudes and beliefs, possibly arise from some very deep-rooted issues within myself. So first I need to explore these issues and accept them as my own. I need to feel positive regard for myself, in order to work effectively with this attitude.
Rogers is reputed to have been a very gifted clinician. However it is difficult to know whether the therapist that follows his model is truly practising Rogerian therapy as it was intended the concepts of UPR, congruence and empathy allow too much room for interpretation, although Rogers likely possessed these qualities. Rogers himself pointed out that every theory including his own contains an unknown amount of errors and mistaken interference. He believed that a theory should serve as a stimulus to further creative thinking. And his theory appears to have succeeded in this intention. Roger’s theory has very strong heuristic value and continues to generate debate and interest around areas such as UPR.
