Positive Intentions

The term positive is generally used to mean "desirable" or "beneficial", and negative is generally used to mean "undesirable" or "bad". However, in neuro-linguistic programming they have a specific meanings in the phrases positive intent and stated in the positive, and negative intent and stated in the negative.

In this sense, the term is used to mean linguistically stated in the affirmatory. In other words, a goal or intent is said to be positively stated if it is stated by reference to a state or thing one desires, and it is said to be negatively stated by reference to a state or thing one wishes to avoid.
Virginia Satir originated a slightly different meaning of the phrase positive intention. She believed that digging deeply into a client's dysfunctional or damaging behaviour should find that the client is trying to achieve a positive intent through undesirable behaviour, unconsciously ineptly and harmfully, and that the dysfunction could often be helped by finding other ways to honor that positive intention.

In a similar vein, psychiatrist R. D. Laing[1] had argued that the symptoms of what is normally called mental illness are comprehensible reactions to impossible demands that society and family life place on sensitive individuals.

The following statements are all positive intent or stated in the positive, regardless of whether they are beneficial or damaging wishes:
Stated in the positive
• I want a car with a 6 litre engine.
• I'm hoping to retire in 5 years.
• I'd like to steal/harm/take something or someone (stated in the positive in the technical linguistic and NLP senses, and would constitute a "positive intention", though negative in an everyday sense).

The significance of this comes from the psychological phenomenon claimed by some, that the mind does not always process neuro-linguistically negatives well. For example, when one focuses on what he or she does not want, the mind may, at some level, imagine the object to be avoided more than the relational word "not.

A person's intention in performing an action is his or her specific purpose in doing so, the end or goal at which he or she aims or intends to accomplish. Whether an action is successful or unsuccessful depends at least on whether the intended result was brought about. The aphorism in NLP is that all human action fulfils a positive intent at some level. Often, the intent, if explored, will be quite surprising and revealing, and suggest new directions of thought, especially to people who habitually think in terms of negative intention.
For example:
• I don't want to take that job
Possible positive intention: I want to be able to relax
Possible effect: the client may come to see that the job need not in fact be in conflict with relaxation, or may explore ways to remain calm at work. Otherwise, if the job be detrimental, the client should consider a different career or other forms of relaxation outside work.
For these reasons, in NLP it is generally seen as more beneficial to focus on the opportunities a person has, other than those he or she wants to be gone.


[1] Ronald David Laing (1927 –1989) was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of lived experience rather than simply as symptoms of some separate or underlying disorder.