Unfeigned love!

 Provides the means to finally break free of Behaviourism

 In my last blog before Christmas (here), I proposed that only safety need be unconditionally provided alongside direct feedback and holding high expectations to secure relationships of teacherly authority.  A paper* that I came across over the break provided a framework to explain this. In essence, McKee argues that unconditional love as practiced at the time he was writing was a revolt against conditional love and, as such, still linked love to behaviour – whatever you do I will still love you and by doing this I expect that your natural goodness will emerge i.e. you will behave in the way that I desire.  McKee views this as a refusal to love.

McKee argues that what is actually needed is ‘unfeigned love’ where you help the other to ‘soften their hearts’ (or have an aha! moment) and thereby change their perception and thus their behaviour to what the child already knows they ought to be doing.

The parallels to cognitive coaching are not coincidental (although this practice was unknown to McKee).  We achieve this change in perception in the child by having high expectations of them and the use of feedback, in an unconditionally safe environment.

Unconditional love, as described by McKee, is simply being kind to people without helping them grow into appropriate behaviours – at least with conditional love (when it was effective) we could get the behaviours.  But neither of these approaches is effective anymore.

With unfeigned love we finally break the connection between love and behaviour and can leave Behaviourism behind.

Of course, there are people practicing unfeigned love already, but probably calling it unconditional love and thus not being able to articulate just how different it is from what others are also proclaiming with the same term.

* McKee, Trevor R. (1986) "Love Unconditional or Love Unfeigned: Justice and Mercy in Human Development," Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy: Vol. 12 : No. 2 , Article 4.

John Corrigan is an expert in helping individuals to bring their whole of mind to their daily life and increase their effectiveness and the effectiveness of those around them. This expertise scales from the individual to the team to the organisation.  At the core of this work is the concept and practice of teacherly authority.  Earlier blogs can be found here.

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