Old Paradigms Die Hard

We're living in one of those moments in history when things appear to turn on a sixpence while fringe voices have been wailing in the wilderness about the dangers they've been aware of for years.

At the same time as we watch ordinary people - our neighbours, friends, clients and family - respond to our own countries' rise in Authoritarianism and racism with varying degrees of denial and acceptance it's easy to ignore what's happening in our own professions. 

Isaac Cordal Follow The Leaders

The BACP sent out a questionnaire paving the way for supervisors to be required to report on supervisees (that's all of us). Therapy Today refused to print any letters on the subject and were forced to offer an apology after a number of therapists resigned, took debate to therapy fora and, since the official venues for debate were closed, wrote directly to the BACP Chair Andrew Reeves.

After looking for 10 minutes on the website I can't find that apology anywhere. 

There were a fair number of therapists who, before the BACP offered their sort-of apology, said "But why shouldn't we report on each other? Therapists are dangerous. Not you and I, of course, but Them." 

Apparently the fact that murder is illegal and people still murder each other, or that doctors may not sexually abuse patients but some still do, that dentists may not perform unnecessary work but some still do, that police may not harm innocent people but some still do hasn't reached them. The BACP properly sets standards against which clients may judge their counsellor and seek redress if necessary. How making us report on each other furthers that is beyond me.

Perhaps it's easier to understand what's happening in counselling and psychotherapy by hearing about what's happening in a closely allied profession.

"I was at the flagship clinical psychology event in the UK at a debate on the future of the profession. And all I could see around me were white faces, mainly – and I do hope they’ll forgive me for saying so – of a certain age. Now there were exceptions, of course. A few ethnics, some younger folk. But there were a lot of old people in suits. And even though I had been around these people – all decent people, I’m sure; some of whom I know, and none of whom I wish to denigrate – all day, it wasn’t until I saw them as a group that I realised how homogenous they appeared to be. And so I began to wonder why this might be.  

There are 12 000 clinical psychologists in the U.K., but only around 2-300 attend the conference. And, from the few I have attended, it’s often the great and the good who come; those who are established and respected and whatever else. I went because I was speaking, but otherwise I wouldn’t have (I’m not a huge fan of 3-day conferences, for many reasons and in any case, the sheer cost of it was prohibitive). But many of the clinical psychologists I know couldn’t give two hoots about it and that, I think, is concerning.  

Put bluntly, we had a debate about the future of the profession attended primarily by people who may well not even be practising in ten years’ time. Those people may know their stuff; they may have built careers and won awards and got tenure and have a publication list as long as your arm, but they are not the future. People who are barely-qualified are the future. People struggling to get onto training are the future. And the people who use our services are the future, because they know what our profession needs to do differently. And whilst there were one or two explicitly ‘service user’ voices, they were drowned out by the rest of us with our doctorates and our academic posts and our reputations and our egos.  

And as the panel stopped talking and the audience began to contribute I knew that nothing that anyone had said would make any difference in the real world and that many of the conceptual debates will go on for years to come and that although we might have clapped and patted each other on the back we need to start having radically different conversations with radically different people if we are ever to make any progress. "

As our grandmothers, alchemists, theologians and philosophers have been saying for centuries, "The Personal Is Political." The choices you and I make in every aspect of our lives have a political dimension. Organic food is cheaper now than it's ever been because a couple of generations of minorities spent huge amounts of their own income and time growing and buying it. Children are not expected to work up chimneys because a minority of people thought this was barbaric, even if it did increase the income of poor families and provide opportunities for employment.

Read  Carol Hanisch's essay that birthed the phrase "The Personal is Political." It's about therapy. 

If it's too strong for you, too radical, too Lefty Liberal then you might be the problem. 

When Fascism Affects You, You Tend To Notice. Otherwise, Not So Much.

One of our best known therapists Emmy van Deurzen is being affected by Brexit wondering, with good reason, if she'll be allowed to remain in the country she's called home for decades. Many of her social media posts have been about the ways in which Brexit is being challenged across Europe, including the UK. This morning Emmy shared this article:

This is a photo shot on the streets of Munich, Germany on 10^th March 1933; just six weeks after Hitler came to power.  The picture, published across the world and later in many history books, was a chilling portent of the hellish events that were about to consume Germany and much of the rest of the planet.  Many have seen this photo, but few know the background behind it. 

Dr Michael Siegel, an eminent 50-year-old German Jewish lawyer, is shown in the photo, bruised, barefoot, trousers ripped, being marched by Nazi ‘brown-shirt’ auxiliary police.   The sign hanging from his neck was scrawled with the message,  ‘Ich bin Jude, aber ich werde mich nie mehr bei der Polizei beschweren’ – ‘I am a Jew, but I will never again complain to the police’.

In June I was a participant at the Embodying Social Justice conference at Roehampton ". . . for therapists with an interest in the links between social justice and therapeutic practice." It was excellent. During one plenary anxiety about the upcoming referendum was very clear along with fears about a perception of increasing right wing sentiments across the country. I said, "You're describing fascism. We need to say the word," which went down like a silent lead balloon across the entire theatre. I felt ashamed and over exposed.

I'll admit to an amount of dark pleasure allied to despair at post-Brexit events. 

Emmy van Deurzen's post today reminded me that we cannot feel everything in the world and that we are naturally more likely to feel strongly about something when we are affected by it.

So whilst poor people have not recently been paraded in the street with a sign around their neck in an attempt to humiliate them, to prove the superiority of people who are empowered to do this and to serve as a warning both to other people who are poor and to people who would defend them, we do have the Jeremy Kyle Show. 

Also: On Benefits, On Benefits And Proud, Benefit Buster, Britain's Benefits Tenants, Benefits Street, The Big Benefits Handout, Portsmouth on Payouts, Real Benefits Street and colossal numbers of media reports on benefits 'cheats', people on benefits with more than 2 children, single mothers on benefits, and so on. It's only very recently - coinciding with the effects of austerity hitting the middle classes - that less voyeuristic, less vitriolic, less baiting reporting has been forthcoming. Veterans and the disabled get a sympathetic hearing. But disabled people have to be in desperate situations. 

Bus stop adverts have had posters on them encouraging neighbours to inform, anonymously, on neighbours. 

There are dozens of these posters. For a selection search Benefit Cheat Poster. 

You can call a freephone number to anonymously leave details about any person you don't like. If the person is on benefits their benefits will be suspended before they have any indication that there's a problem - suddenly they're going into rent arrears and have no money. 

When the huge majority of people on benefits say they have no money they don't mean they have to cash in an ISA or break into some savings. They mean they have no money. Then the person is interrogated. And whatever the outcome a permanent record of suspicion is kept on them.

No record is kept of how many malicious calls are made. Because that is not important. What is important is keeping people on benefits in fear and keeping people who are not on benefits ashamed and afraid of going on them.

Your bank account is supposed to be confidential between you and your bank. If you are very poor a DWP employee and Housing Benefit employees are entitled to examine your bank statement and ask why you are purchasing anything they don't approve of.

Surveillance photographs can be taken of your washing line - to see if there are any mens clothes hanging in a household where there are no men - of who comes in and out of your house, of who is in your living room, who you're eating with. Who picks your child up from school. Your social media profile will be examined by the State. 

As a nation we are already content that food is not a human right. Poor people may visit a Food Bank. But only three times. We are content that a home is not a human right even (often especially) for children, one in 4 of whom is living in poverty. 

• 5.9 million homes in England fail to meet the Government's Decent Home Standard. [2]

• More than one million children live in overcrowded housing. [3]

• More than 70,000 homeless children in England are living in temporary accommodation. [4]

• 3.6 million children in the United Kingdom live in poverty after their housing costs have been paid. [5]

And we know that poverty has a catastrophic effect on the lives of children, including making them vulnerable to sex traffickers, when they then are treated with further State contempt and dismissal.

So the poor have enduring experience of a fascist state, across time. Workhouses. Flophouses. Welfare to Work. The benefits cap. The under-occupancy charge. Benefits sanctions. The myriad of disability benefits assessments. The sheer number of pages it takes to fill in a request for unemployment benefit. The documents that are printed to tell a person how to fill in these forms. The appeals - usually won. All of these carefully designed processes cost much more than any benefit fraud - still linked with 'Benefit error'. All of them are to create a Radical Other. All of them are to create fear about being that Radical Other or trying to support the Radical Other.

Take a look at this interview on Channel 4 News. Anecdote after anecdote after anecdote when there is endless evidence. MP Kwasi Kwarteng is correct when he says that the UK populace feels that punishing the poor is the correct way to manage them. Them.

It's fascism. Counsellors just aren't affected by it. 

Theories of Personality

John Singleton Copley's Watson and the Shark

All psychological models, all counselling theories are based on an understanding of human nature. Without this understanding the model has no foundation – how can we know what helps people grow and what prevents growth if we don’t have an understanding of what an individual is, what human nature might be?

So as counsellors we will meet clients in a certain way based on our models' understanding of human nature. As people who are also counsellors what do we, as individuals, actually believe about human nature?

Do we believe people are inherently selfish? Greedy? Passive? Self-absorbed? Violent? Racist? Sexist? 

That people like to be told what to do? 

That people can’t think for themselves? 

That people like to control other people?

Do we believe that human nature is fixed?

Do we believe that inequality is natural?

That some people are more or less able  to make decisions about other people?

Do we believe that various physical attributes determine how intelligent a person is?

Do we believe that a persons cultural background determines what rights they should be entitled to?

Do we believe that people pass on their cultures to their children and that some of those cultures are harmful?

Do we believe that human nature is inherently corrupt, greedy and competitive?

Is success is due to personal striving?

How do we define success? This seems a simple matter but being part of the world we will be immersed in the concept that success is a standard of living, a way of living that involves wealth, in a world where wealth and power are analogous.

Many therapists use inspirational quotes like these from Ayn Rand

“A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.”

"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity." 

“Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one's values.”

“The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.”

Ayn Rand developed a philosophy of Objectivism

“Objectivism's central tenets are that reality exists independently of consciousness, that human beings have direct contact with reality through sense perception, that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of conceptformation and inductive logic, that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness (rational self-interest), that the only social system consistent with this morality is one that displays full respect for individual rights embodied in laissez-faire capitalism.”

Sounds very similar to many of the foundations of counselling theory.

The father of Capitalism, Adam Smith had a concept of human nature, too.

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortunes of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.”

He describes empathy

“As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is on the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did, and never can, carry us beyond our own person, and it is by the imagination only that we can form any conception of what are his sensations. Neither can that faculty help us to this any other way, than by representing to us what would be our own, if we were in his case. It is the impressions of our own senses only, not those of his, which our imaginations copy. By the imagination, we place ourselves in his situation.”

He wrote clearly about the need for charity, for small profits and fair wages. Read more here.

Concepts of human altruism and selfishness underlie financial theories. Are human beings inherently self interested individuals or altruistic and community minded? How might these virtues be balanced and to what end? Read more here

Counsellors are not separate from society. Just like the client, we bring our backgrounds, beliefs and experiences into the room with us. What is preventing us from discussing this at depth? Is there any counselling course that presents the very clear, reproducible evidence that empathy reduces with wealth and asks participants to explore this, at all let alone deeply? Why isn't this basic to every single course?

Who benefits?

'Fairness' As A Policy Basis.

Reading through some policy development discourse and statements it seems that ‘fairness’ has become a basis for all kinds of decisions, from what used to be equality of outcome to political party sloganeering.

“This may be true of professional public discourse, which has a way of sucking the life out of potent words, but I don’t think it’s true of the way that ordinary voters understand the concept. 

Fundamentally, fairness is about the desire for a moral order.”

Whose morality? Yours? Mine?

We know that until very recently a majority of people in the UK said they wanted a return to the death penalty: the most recent poll in 2015 suggested that 48% of British people were still in favour and a year on I’d put 50p on that figure being significantly above 50% today. Morality is incredibly fluid, across time and geography.

Why did ‘Equal Opportunity’ become ‘Equality of Opportunity’ which in turn became ‘Equality of Outcome’? Why has ‘fairness’  - so much less measurable, less defined, less meaningful - become the mot juste?

Cui Bono?

Here’s a good article on the subject, which recognises three definitions of ‘fairness’.

Fairness as Equality

Fairness as Equity

Fairness as Need

In summation it draws our attention to the essential condition of this discussion, the same condition in every human situation: power.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘”The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

When you cry down the phone I feel like crying too

A DWP member of staff writes about how stressful it is to speak with vulnerable people in crisis.

 "I have a script I read from, over and over again, the same for every customer. Some of the questions are opaque at best: “has your doctor told you that special rules apply to your condition?” is one which flummoxed the woman this morning who has cancer; the script specifies that I should not offer an explanation of the term unless I’m asked. She did ask, so I read the follow-up line “special rules means your doctor has told you that your condition has a life expectancy of less than six months.” No, she said, not yet, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief that I wouldn’t need to ask another series of questions about this, pushing the call-handling time up further."

Tackling poverty and mental health – what we know and what we can do

 The UK is the world’s sixth largest economy, yet today 13 million (that’s 1 in 5 people) are living here in poverty. Given the daily struggle that people living in poverty experience life to be, it is perhaps not surprising that this review found that poverty increases the risk of mental health problems and is both a cause and consequence of mental ill health.

The 2015 Monitoring poverty and social exclusion report found that within the lowest socio-economic class, 26% of women and 23% of men were at a high risk of mental health problems. It is clear that there is much that we can do to prevent both mental health problems and poverty by tackling the root causes of both and by mitigating their impacts on individuals, families and communities. 

Iris Elliot 

Head of Policy and Research at the Mental Health Foundation. 

How many therapists working with the DWP will read this report?

How many counselling training establishments, whose students will practice on clients who are too poor to be able to choose private therapy, will read this report?

How many agencies who use counselling students to service the needs of their client base will read the report?