I discussed Carl Rogers and his “unconditional positive regard” with the late coauthor Chris Cowan of the influential management book Spiral Dynamics. Chris had a counselling background. He likely knew from first meeting me in August 1997 that I was autistic / neurodivergent - I was not formally diagnosed until age 49 in October 2022. Ex-partners realised this, and has unfortunately to cope with it as well.

Cowan pointed out to me that “unconditional positive regard” is vital for rapport-building; for mentalisation-based Theory of Mind (a specific issue for autistic / neurodivergent people - that neurotypical people often claim that we lack); for maintaining the frame; and as an interpersonal communication strategy that helps you as a medically qualified therapist to deal with issues that arise - such as the always unfolding nature of the therapeutic relationship, and of transference and countertransference.

It is necessary but it is not sufficient to deal with complex and difficult cases.

The specific issue of mentalisation and transference/countertransference based delusional beliefs - and the human vulnerabilities and the specific psycho-social risks involved in close, dyadic relationships - is central to my own on-going research. It is a significant part also of my own “lived experience” of what are very confronting, frightening, disturbing, and highly emotionally valent issues. When people find out about them, I am usually isolated and stigmatised by people: they both don’t want to know (very understandable), and as this is outside their @nntaleb Mediocristan span of everyday normal experience but is rather in the tail risk, extreme event, volatility world of Extremistan (see Taleb’s Incerto series, notably Skin In The Game), they often get a huge Shock when they realise that this is Reality and not just a fashionable idea that can be “toyed with” & then discarded. People with that attitude / defence mechanism don’t cope very well with the phenomenological lifeworlds that are actually involved in things like pereitraumatic annesia, dissociative fugues, psychosis, & so forth - that are both very emic and liminal experiences, & that are still very much part of a person when they are going through the very difficult reintegration part of separation-liminality-reintegration (Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage). 

People are often too fused or over/identified here with their Mediocristan cognitive-emotional structures & their causal beliefs. They don’t respect you. They won’t listen to you. They ignore your very matter of fact warnings. They mistakenly think that their experience of going to a few seminars for professional development / training is superior - and more highly moral -than what you have been through. 

Deep down, they just dislike you, they feel a very cold contempt for you, they treat you differently, they covert bully you and maliciously gossip about you to also dehumanise and to discredit you to others - which further isolates you as both an outcast and an out-group member who just deserves this differential treatment. 

This is in part how “mobbing” or coordinated group-based bullying occurs, & how & why moral panics and persecutory witch-hunts occur & reoccur in many different historical periods (including in contemporary life) and in varied life contexts. It is very understandable. It is also very hard as a target, victim or scapegoat. No-one helps you or stands up for you. Things that could de-escalate & resolve matters all just conveniently “fail”. Senior, responsible decision-makers are negligent, inactive, corruptible, & are also highly clique-oriented & thus often vulnerable to groupthink (Irving Janis) & to halo effects, positive illusions, over-identification with Veblen goods & status attainment (they forget about survivorship bias), anchoring, & confirmation biases.