Abstract
This chapter investigates the nature of therapeutic relationships, pointing out that most therapies—including Freud’s and Rogers’s therapies—are based on a non-judgmental counseling attitude. I will argue that the sense of liability responsibility (judgments of the client’s blameworthiness) is essentially incompatible with the non-judgmental counseling attitude. Of course, counselors, as ordinary, normal people, can have personal opinions about whether their clients deserve blame/punishment or not. Yet, counselors, as mental health specialists, omit this aspect of responsibility on purpose. Even if they happen to have personal negative opinions about their clients, they forbear to express these opinions for therapeutic reasons.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
There is no universally accepted list of reactive attitudes. Strawson related reactive attitudes to a pretty vast spectrum of emotions, including anger, resentment, hurt feelings, forgiveness, gratitude, love, indignation, moral disapprobation, shame, guilt, remorse, compunction, feeling bound or obliged, and feeling responsible (1962, 29). By contrast, Wallace defends a restrictive list, which includes only resentment, indignation, and guilt (2014, 141f). The argument is that some feelings classified as reactive attitudes by Strawson do not evidently presuppose moral responsibility. Love and hurt feelings, for example, often occur outside moral transactions. For instance, it is possible to love a person or a thing that cannot be classified as a moral agent (e.g., a child, a disabled person, a robot, a dog).
- 2.
Schafer, for example, describes the analytic attitude as follows: “The analyst remains neutral in relation to every aspect of the material being presented by the analysand… In his or her neutrality, the analyst does not crusade for or against the so-called id, super-ego or defensive ego. The analyst has no favourites and so is not judgemental” (1983, 5).
- 3.
Moore and Fine point out, however, that though neutrality prescribes to avoid imposing values upon the client, some therapists’ values are always operative in a therapeutic situation, such as “search for truth, knowledge, and understanding, and those emphasizing orientation toward reality, maturity, and change” (Moore and Fine 1990, 127).
References
Amadi, Chinedum. 2013. Clinician, Society and Suicide Mountain: Reading Rogerian Doctrine of Unconditional Positive Regard (UPR). Psychological Thought 6 (1): 75–89.
Freud, Sigmund. 1912/2001a. ‘Recommendations to Physicians Practicing Psychoanalysis’. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 12, 111–120. London: Vintage, Hogarth Press.
———. 1913/2001b. ‘On Beginning the Treatment’. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 12, 123–144. London: Vintage, Hogarth Press.
———. 1915/2001c. ‘Observations on Transference-Love’. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 12. London: Vintage, Hogarth Press.
———. 1919/2001d. ‘Lines of Advance in Psychoanalytic Therapy’. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud 17, 157–168. London: Vintage, Hogarth Press.
Gibson, S. 2005. On Judgment and Judgmentalism: How Counseling Can Make People Better. Journal of Medical Ethics 31 (10): 575–577. https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.2004.011387.
Hoffer, A. 1985. Toward a Definition of Psychoanalytic Neutrality. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 33 (4): 771–795. https://doi.org/10.1177/000306518503300402.
Kirschenbaum, Howard. 1989. In Carl Rogers: Dialogues : Conversations With Martin Buber, Paul Tillich, B.F. Skinner, Gregory Bateson, Michael Polanyi, Rollo May, and Others, ed. Valerie Land Henderson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Moore, Burness E., and Bernard D. Fine. 1990. Psychoanalytic Terms and Concepts. Yale University Press.
Rogers, Carl Ransom. 1961/1995. On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Rogers, Carl Ransom, Howard Kirschenbaum, and Valerie Land Henderson. 1989. The Carl Rogers Reader. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Schafer, Roy. 1983. The Analytic Attitude. Karnac Books.
Skinner, B. F. 1971/1976. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. Penguin Books, Reprinted.
Strawson, Peter F.. 1962/2008. ‘Freedom and Resentment’. In Free Will and Reactive Attitudes: Perspectives on P.F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment”, ed. Michael McKenna and Paul Russell, 1, 19–36. Ashgate.
Wallace, R. Jay. 2014. Emotions and Relationships: On a Theme from Strawson. In Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility, ed. David Shoemaker and Neal Tognazzini, vol. 2. Oxford University Press.
Watson, Jeanne C. 2016. The Role of Empathy in Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, and Practice. In Humanistic Psychotherapies: Handbook of Research and Practice, 2nd ed., 115–145. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/14775-005.
Wilkins, Paul. 2000. Unconditional Positive Regard Reconsidered. British Journal of Guidance & Counseling 28 (1): 23–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/030698800109592.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Beliavsky, V. (2020). Neutral Attitude. In: Freedom, Responsibility, and Therapy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41571-6_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41571-6_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-41570-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-41571-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)