non-directiveadj.

1898 Science 18 Feb. 251/1 All but one pair of mesenteries are non-directive.

1923 Jrnl. Exper. Zool. 28 120 Insects with one eye blinded usually turn, in non-directive light, toward the functional eye if they are photopositive and toward the blinded eye if they are photonegative.

1970 Jrnl. Acoustical Soc. Amer. 47 388/1 For frequencies below both of the coincidence frequencies, the directivity pattern is nondirective.

1996 Proc. IEEE Ultrasonics Symp. II. 1459 This field is nondirective and is detected by a hydrophone.

1942 C. Rogers Counseling & Psychotherapy v. 122 In non-directive counseling, the client comes ‘to talk out his problems’.

1951 Mind 60 398 The Rogerian non-directive technique is of no avail.

1958 J. Barth End of Road iv. 57 In such situations I most often adopted what in psychology is known as the ‘non-directive technique’: I merely said, ‘Oh’? or ‘Ah’, and gave the horse his head.

1988 A. France Consuming Psychotherapy iv. 82 One gradually builds up an image of the various ways in which one is being encouraged in certain directions, even by a mainly non-directive therapist.

1999 Information & Managem. 36 273 Independent-thinking people doing non-programmable tasks for which a non-directive leadership style is most suited.