unconditional positive regard

When I wrote this zine, I had just finished a doctoral thesis using some ideas drawn from humanistic psychology as one of its theoretical lenses. I had also started counselling training, though I later moved into other forms of helping work. 

Unconditional positive regard (basically, complete acceptance of another person, particularly between a client and a therapist or other helper) is a concept that’s come up again and again in both of these endeavours. I think it's far more interesting (and complicated!) than it's sometimes given credit for, so I wrote a zine about it. 

This is not meant to be an authoritative source; different people think different things about unconditional positive regard, and this is just me thinking through some of the ideas about it that I find most interesting. 

I think I wrote it with an audience who have some familiarity with psychology and/or therapy in mind, but hopefully it'll make sense even if you don't. 

Made with the Electric Zine Maker, which was fun.

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If you'd like to read this on paper, download the PDF, print it on two sides of a piece of paper (A4 or US letter), and fold it like this.