Kelly has a fascinating conversation with psychologist and professor Caroline Fleck to discuss her new book “Validation: How the Skill Set That Revolutionized Psychology Will Transform Your Relationships, Increase Your Influence, and Change Your Life.”   

You say in the book, “You can’t just write off someone as a jerk. Instead, you have to figure out what’s reasonable or valid in the jerk’s perspective, which will inevitably challenge your conclusion that they’re just a jerk.”

“And you know where I had to learn how to do that? When you’re a therapist, you don’t get to choose your clients. Certainly not when you’re training, when you’re coming up. They’re assigned to you. And folks who are coming to therapy, especially folks with severe psychopathology, they’re often saying and doing things that are incredibly problematic, to put it non-judgmentally, and severely asshole-y, to put it judgmentally, like a lot of problematic stuff. That’s why they’re seeing me. And I’ve got to figure out how to work with this person. And there is no way to work with them if you cannot humanize them. And so that becomes my strategy: to find something valid in what they’re saying, in what they’re doing or what they’re feeling. I don’t need to validate all of it; I just need to find the small little kernel of truth in their perspective. I need to see that and then I can build off of it. But that is the name of the game. Like you can’t just go, they’re an asshole. You don’t have that luxury.” 

And we should stress that we’re not talking about Nazis or condoning truly abhorrent behavior. 

“Yes, yes. I would say that again…I’m gonna just get myself in trouble. It’s fine. Like many psychologists, they’re not going to tell you this, but I’ll tell you this. We’re often deeply fascinated by serial killers. I will read Wikipedia article after Wikipedia article to fall asleep. It’s just like playing solitaire before bed, which is a very screwed up thing to say. But the reason I do it, and I think a lot of psychologists are drawn to it, is we are trying to solve this puzzle. We know that we would have to potentially work with this person, right? And we have to solve for the question, ‘How can I validate them without reinforcing something that’s problematic? How can I find the humanity in their experience and still be effective and not condone them and hold on to my values?’ And that is a real exercise, but it’s one I encourage people to explore.” 

You say over and over again in the book that you can’t fake validation for it to be effective. 

“No, as soon as you fake it, you’re doing something else. It’s manipulation, it’s exploitation, but it’s not validation. It’s different. Although it can look the same, right? You’re using some of those same tactics that I might use to validate someone, but you’re not coming at it authentically. I could make up a story that resonates with something you share, and you could feel, ‘Yeah, like she gets it.’ Right? But it’s not true. It’s inauthentic.”