One of the requirements of the client-centered approach of Carl Rogers is to accept messages from the client or the person you are talking to at all costs. Now, however, in everyday life, both in the U.S., as far as I know, but at least in my mother country, Germany, we use the term acceptance in a meaning that is not meant here. For us, acceptance means approval of it. So people say, for example, “I understand what he’s doing and why he’s doing it, but I can’t accept it.”
When we speak of acceptance in the context of Carl Rogers, which we want to guarantee unconditionally, of course, we mean something else, namely we use acceptance in the more original meaning, borrowed from Latin in the 15th century. Here, “accept” has a double meaning: first, to accept something, like a delivered letter, and the second meaning associated with it refers to taking, grasping, understanding.
To accept in full meaning means, to take the letter again as a comparison,
- not to reject the letter as such
- open and read it and
- understand the content of the letter
It doesn’t really make sense to try to separate the process of reading from the process of understanding. If I, who do not understand Chinese, were to read a Chinese letter, I would not understand anything. It would be nonsense to hold it in front of my eyes for half an hour, then return it with the remark: OK. I have read the letter. So, to accept something or someone means a lot. But still: acceptance is not approval.
cancel nature
No. Not a typo. The headline is actually cancel nature, not cancel culture. Our cancel nature, let’s call it our unconscious for my sake, serves our security. We should only recognize what we can understand. In a famous story, a youth desperately wanted to see God. The will was finally granted to him and he instantly fell into madness. Our cancel nature protects us quite reliably from things, that exceed our capacity as human beings.
Cancel culture, on the other hand, is an instrument of domination designed to prevent us from understanding things whose acceptance would not drive us mad. Cancel culture is a perversion of the healthy cancel nature to keep us at a distance from each other and to remain strangers.
Parrhesia, just like partner-centered communication is resistance against domination structures. We meet our fellow human beings with 100% acceptance.
This does not mean that we always approve of what they do. They usually don’t do that themselves. It only means that we do not reject their desire to express themselves to us.
Practicing this alone makes a huge difference in everyday communication. In the therapeutic setting, it can support a mood in the client in which he finds new impulses for healing and growth.
