THE DISEASING OF JUDGMENT

Since the early 1920s, Western culture in general and American society in particular have become increasingly hostile to the conscious act of judgment. During the 1930s, therapeutic professionals and sections of the helping professions expanded the meaning of nonjudgmentalism from a method of support to assume the general status of a positive personality trait for those seeking to help others. In their 1935 Newsletter, for example, the Family Services of America noted that social workers' desirable "personal qualities would include, among others, sensitivity, freedom from prejudice, non-judgmental and non-managing attitudes, a genuine feeling for people, maturity, capacity for self-development." Brock Chisholm, the Canadian psychiatrist and first Director General of the World Health Organization (1948-1953), adopted an aggressive stance against the exercise of judgment.