Tag: engagement

Reaching Across The Divide

Here is a sort of précis / romp through this piece I wrote a year ago for Thresholds – a BACP quarterly that addresses spiritual issues in counselling and psychotherapy. The article sprang from our efforts, early in the Coronavirus pandemic, to manage therapeutic contact across video-conferencing platforms. I was struck by my and others’ experience of finding the process particularly effortful and was led to reflect on the difference between this medium and the “real life” analogue situation, and to explore how it might shed light on what goes on in the latter (hitherto much commoner) setting.

I contend that the digital medium favours content over process whilst psychotherapy relies on content in the process which may therefore be lost, or at least harder to apprehend. The issue of timing, in particular, is important in communication; minute hesitations can say so much in the real world, but may be put down to latency when on-line. The platform algorithm, selecting which video of moving mouth parts to patch onto which bit of compressed speech, and often arbitrarily promoting one speaker over another, I liken to an enthusiastic and naïve co-worker in the therapy room.

This technological solution to the problem of being together during a pandemic brings obstacles to communication which I liken to the concrete obstacles that had to be overcome by adherents of non-conformist churches meeting together in Britain in the 17th century. This comparison, in turn, leads me to reflect on the common ground between psychotherapy and religion; a conviction of reality and benefit on the inside, struggling with an external demand for sufficient “evidence” to satisfy a sceptical audience.

I conclude (via yet another analogy drawn this time from marine biology) that when humans communicate, factual content has to be accompanied by some animating essence that I decide to call animus.

Bit of a stretch? Nah! But sorry; if this has whetted your appetite, you will have to get through the paywall.

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Narrative Matters

Narrative Matters

We have kept a lot of our children’s books. They represent such good value in terms of revisit rate, and they remind us of happy times.

I just had another look at Creation Stories retold by Ann Pilling and illustrated by Michael foreman (Walker, 1997). The first story tells how, before there was anything else, there was an egg. A giant popped out and grew (over the next eighteen thousand years) pushing the land and sky apart until he could rely on them to stay in their place, at which point he went on to other tasks like carving valleys and mountains. When he died, all of his body parts were used in some way; his hair for forests, bones for rocks, and his tears formed the rivers.

I am impressed by the multiple layers of wisdom in this tale. At the level of content (and with a nod to the likely purchaser) it acknowledges the tiring job of the parent in creating and maintaining the space in which offspring can grow. It also introduces us to the importance of sustainability.

But at the level of process we realise that those who developed and treasured this story chose, for their progenitor, not an immortal but a flesh-and-blood being very much like us. Someone who can get tired and weep; Someone who dies and decays, and for whom it is possible to grieve.

Also, we are not invited to believe this story as a literal representation of fact, or required to believe the improbable; Dogma, immortality, and unreachable qualities, are not held up as objects of devotion or aspiration.

In this way generations are taught the importance of symbolic truth and the ordinariness of cosmic events, as well as the crucial role that narrative has in making sense of our existence and contextualising our experience.

We can take reassurance from the fact that stories will do this important job for us, particularly if they are obviously located in the symbolic realm, rather than the concrete. It is better if these stories don’t take themselves too seriously. Stories that are too eager to convince us of their truth and too bullying in their insistence upon compliance are harder to make friends with; are less adaptable; are more likely to drive us from our neighbour over issues of difference.

A parent reading this story to their child might stand to learn at least as much as the child, if not more. And I generally think that that is the mark of a proper children’s story.

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Music Again

Music Again

This post is a sort of dialogue with a podcast interview about music therapy. I provide the link here and encourage anyone who reads this blog with any interest, to listen to the podcast. The interview is really more about the creation of therapeutic space, but it also economically exemplifies what I have called “Therapeutic Attitude” and has added to my own conception of it.

Philippa Derrington is a Senior Lecturer within the Division of Occupational Therapy and Arts Therapies at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh and leads the MSc Music Therapy course there. Here she is interviewed by Luke Annesley, a jazz musician and music therapist who produces the British Association for Music Therapy podcast series Music Therapy Conversations.

Music Therapy Conversations. Episode 25. Philippa Derrington

In this interview, Philippa describes setting up a music therapy space in a school, in the corner of a garage, and using large instruments (to occupy and therefore command space) and anything she could salvage from the school skip. In doing this she demonstrates beautifully one aspect of therapeutic attitude, which is taking responsibility for the space.

Therapy is exploration and, as such, requires a secure base (1,2). The therapist is as responsible for this aspect of therapy as any other. If a therapist is lucky enough to be able to totally control the physical environment, then they can (and should) do so creatively. But it may be that significant aspects of the environment are fixed and out of the physical control of the therapist. When this is the case the therapist can make sure that, when in the room, they “extend themselves to its boundaries” (3).

When I have managed to put an idea into words and another practitioner from a different discipline expresses something similar, I find it hugely affirming. As I listened to this podcast I found myself thinking over and over again, “this is Therapeutic Attitude!”

Take, for example:

PD: “Respect takes first place for me in work with any adolescent” (16m00s)

– and compare with –

AW “A crucial aspect of therapeutic work with children is the forming of a respectful relationship with them: discussing, offering genuine choices, and relating to them as valid, motivated humans with a right to, and the potential for, a life of their own, rather than simply existing as a product and part of the lives of others.” (BWSG p 151)

Or:

PD “A most important element is being able to get alongside the young person” (18m40s)

compare…

AW “…my position is alongside the child, looking at the conundrum, as though to say, “Is this what you would like us to think about?” (p12)

And:

PD “…the importance of not-knowing, and staying with that.” (20m09s)

compare…

AW Chapter Four on Uncertainty which leans heavily on D. W. Winnicott’s “..contain conflicts…. instead of anxiously looking around for a cure” (4) and John Keats’ concept of Negative Capability (5).

I am excited enough by the similarities, but here is a point of divergence or extension which gives me pause for thought. Luke and Philippa have a conversation (14m08s) about how in the school she is “always a music therapist, but not always doing music therapy”. This is really interesting. I wrote a section (p11) “Being a Psychiatrist” in which I contrasted being a psychiatrist with doing psychiatry, but I wanted to make a different point and distinguish between (in the frame of virtue ethics) being a psychiatrist as opposed to performing a set of tasks which constituted psychiatry but which might as well be alien (being versus doing). I still think that my point is an important one, but Phillipa and Luke’s point is also, and they complement one another . A therapist must have therapeutic attitude when “doing therapy” but the attitude is also important when in one’s professional role – being a therapist – but not actually in session. Philippa clearly protects the sessions in betweenwhiles, but only to the extent that each client requires. This is a form of “holding in mind”. The attitude extends beyond the session and becomes part of the professional person; Perhaps even the person.

Have a listen!

refs:

  1. Bowlby, J. (1988). A Secure Base: Clinical Applications of Attachment Theory.
    London: Routledge.
  2. Byng-Hall, J. (1995). Creating a secure family base: Some implications of
    attachment theory for family therapy. Family Process, 34: 45–58.
  3. Being With and Saying Goodbye. Cultivating Therapeutic Attitude in Professional Practice p89.
  4. Winnicott, D. W. (1971b). Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry. London: Hogarth & The Institute of Psycho-Analysis. p2.
  5. Gittings, R. (1966). Selected Poems and Letters of John Keats. Oxford:
    Heinemann Educational. p40-41.

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A new home in free musical improvisation

A new home in free musical improvisation

I do have concerns, though, about those children who have been taught to play a sport, a musical instrument, or a complex board game, to the exclusion of playing which is the freer, more creative, and developmental activity.  = Being With and Saying Goodbye, Ch 5 Thinking

I joined Oxford Improvisers in 2018 because I am a musician as well as a clinician and was in need of stimulation and a new direction. This turned out to be a brilliant move, and further explanation is perfectly relevant to Therapeutic Attitude.

In Oxford Improvisers I found myself immediately welcomed, and at home. Home, of course, is a secure place from which one can venture.

“Exploration requires a secure base, as attachment theory has taught us, but there is no certainty* in terms of the anticipated outcome. The confidence shown by the clinician, then, must be a confidence in process coupled with an optimistic acknowledgement of the uncertain future” (BWSG Ch 4).

In that chapter, which is on Uncertainty, I consider “an appropriate analogy [for the practising clinician] to be that of the improvising musician who uses landmarks and artistry, and is confident that the result will be music whilst not being at all sure what will actually come next”. I was already describing clinical work in child and adolescent mental health as improvisation, though I had little experience of musical improvisation at the time.

The picture above, taken by Gabriele Pani and tweeted for @OX_Improvisers , shows overlaid objects; a piano (barely visible in this version), toy piano, guitar, watch, plastic spoon, drum sticks and mallets. What moves me about this picture is that each of these objects is taken seriously and lightly at the same time. The same is true of participation.

The difference between participants is respected; indeed this difference is essential to the activity. At the same time participants are valued equally; valued to the same extent, but for different reasons or qualities.

Uncertainty is not only accepted; nor even simply embraced; it is encouraged and nurtured. Any “rules” introduced are not to constrain movement, but to provide something to bounce off.

From the conclusion of Chapter 3, The Nature of evidence, I have selected the following points:

  • For the development of an individual existence there must be freedom of movement.
  • If statistics and “facts” are to be used in relation to human growth, they must be understood such that the individual’s room for manoeuvre can be demonstrated.
  • This amounts to an attitude of irreverence towards the apparently immovable.
  • Humour in the clinical setting reveals the creative space between how things are and how they might be.
  • Despite humanity’s constant search for certainty, possibility and hope can only exist where there is uncertainty.

This all contributes to the attitude of clinical practice that evolved through my own working mid-life and that I have come to call Therapeutic Attitude. Small wonder that I found myself a new home with a group of free musical improvisers on retirement from my NHS job. Therapy has to be creative and for therapeutic creativity one requires freedom of movement within a safe space.

♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪♫♪

*PS in the lines quoted above I actually wrote “security” but “certainty” gets us closer to what I was thinking.

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Therapeutic Alliteration

Therapeutic Alliteration

Every argument worth making, it seems, can be summarised in a limited number of words all beginning with the same letter. So here are the Four Ps of Therapeutic Attitude. The last one is A, so I made the middle two either P/A to balance it out.

By the way, the “you” addressed here may be a therapist, but not necessarily. Everyone can bring some therapeutic attitude to the table in whatever relationship they are in. If you are in a position of professional responsibility, then I believe you have a duty to do so. Oh, and first check out Attitude

So here are the four Ps: Position, Posture, Purpose, and Appreciation. That’s P for ‘preciation.

Position

Are you visible? Accessible? Are you in a place in your own life that enables you to park your issues and engage fully in the therapeutic relationship for the allotted time? There is little point in having all the other attributes of a therapist if you are hidden away or beset constantly by other demands. Position can also refer to your “position on issues”. Where are your red lines? I suggest, very simply, “Support the other if you can do so without harming anyone”. If you have read much else of what I have written you will know that I have other red lines; I will not serve the machine, for example. Red lines are relatively static and provide the channels through which Purpose (see below) is directed.

Posture/Appearance

Body posture is both a useful metaphor, and a way to evidence and influence a more internal posture. You need to be upright without being rigid; relaxed without being slumped; alert without being rapacious; responsive without jumping to conclusions or into action. Some aspects of your posture will become evident from your responses. To maintain therapeutic attitude, you need to be located in the real world, but not too subservient to it. Stable, yet poised for movement. How you appear will hopefully inform others as to your position and likely style.

Purpose/ Approach

The purpose of therapy is to enable positive developmental change; enable and encourage, but never force or demand. The agenda arises in – is set and owned by – the other person. Any other would-be influences can be considered part of the environment. If the client has been sent or brought by a third party – then the agenda of that third party is something that you and your patient or client can look at with interest. Someone may come to you with an agenda and that is fine, but you will be curious towards it, and ready for it to change.

Appreciation

Appreciation of the other includes warmth, greeting, acknowledgement (that they are real and valid), acclaim, and humour. There are two keys to appreciation. One is Sensitivity. There is no merit to acclaim, for example, if it is insensitive. Some people are not rewarded by a fanfare, but rather a shy nod. Others will only notice a fanfare and will experience a shy nod as a brush-off or will not notice it at all. The other key to appreciation is genuineness, and it is at the point of appreciation that genuineness is most crucial. It is possible to manufacture Position, Posture, and Purpose and act them out – possibly against the grain, though this will require a good deal of effort – but genuineness must be genuine. Fake genuineness, when detected, simply results in disengagement; if undetected, fake genuineness can be toxic. Therapeutic work, therefore, is a vocation. You do it because you really want to, and because it really matters to you.

TA = P + P(A) + P(A) + A(P)SG . What could be simpler?

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Pebbles and People

Pebbles and People

Whenever let loose on a beach I immediately find myself looking at the ground around me, stooping, and picking up objects for closer examination. Sometimes it is shells or driftwood. Occasionally it is a useful piece of nylon string. But what I find fascinates me most frequently are pebbles.

On the beach at Filey in Yorkshire, about ten years ago it occurred to me that, although I was exercising great discrimination in selecting pebbles, I might just as well shut my eyes and pick up the first one I stumbled across and that single pebble would give me as much satisfaction.

This observation troubled me slightly, and bided its time, quietly fizzing in the very back of my mind until a few months ago on a beach in Pembrokeshire. That idea about “any old pebble” popped up to greet a new niggling observation. I was noticing in myself a sense of affection bordering on love and nostalgia towards the stones I was picking up and, with some reluctance, releasing again to the wild.

Suddenly these were people. Indeed, they were my patients! Do I have a favourite? No, of course not. Is any one not worthy of love? No. Is any of them perfect? No. Do they share features, and yet retain, each of them, a uniqueness? Yes. Do I take a particular interest in some over others, for a time? Yes. Does each of them accompany me for a time and then leave? Yes. And do I have a sense of the number that I can safely carry, and the number that I can examine closely, at any one time? Yes.

Of course the analogy has its limits. Any analogy that is total or complete ceases to be an analogy or of any interest. I do not see myself as of any use to these stones. I don’t expect any of them to be in any kind of predicament that I might be able to help them through. In fact the roles are somewhat reversed. It is more likely that they can help me with my predicament.

But do they talk to me? Yes.

What makes these pebbles like people to me? What is it they share?

A pebble’s character is shaped by two things: their inherent material, and their experience. Each stone is made of a material which may be soft, hard, brittle, porous. These features, in turn, have their distant origin in constituent and experience – their chemical makeup and the terrible forces that gave birth. There may also be a fault line, or a sheering plane due to differing materials joining. And then there is the tossing and churning, the action of water, and jostling with their fellows which has brought them to their current shape. The interaction of these two broad sets of influences is important. Some will have been more or less resilient to this abrasion. Others may have seemed impenetrable until they split after a sharp tap, to reveal a hollow interior. And then this, in turn, was smoothed and adapted. And some may have been brought here from elsewhere, finding themselves in the company of other shapes and colours.

I found myself moved by the stories of these stones. And by the fact that, yes, some of them caught my eye – bright colours or a wet shine – but that I could pick any one of them, take an equal interest in it and enjoy its company – for a time.

Ultimately, of course, the analogy relaxes its grip and we fall back into our respective places. I turn to my human companion, perhaps compare notes, and move on.

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Post script – check out Leaves Leaving

Transference: A reflection on not being the Other

Transference happens. We could argue about how much, exactly how, and whether the name is right, but that would be pointless. The point is that we can, at times, react towards another person as though they were not who they actually are (friend, boss, shop assistant etc), but an important other from our own past or distant lives.

Some of us do it more than others. Some people seem almost to do nothing else. It can be trivial, but it can also seriously hamper relationships and personal development. People who enter therapy are likely to be doing so exactly because they do have problems with their relationships and their personal development. They may be expected to be particularly prone to this type of relating. For this reason, therapists need to be adept at managing the situation.
                                                                                                                                                          Therapy encourages transference by 1) establishing a particular kind of relationship which has inherent in it a degree of asymmetry, and then 2) having as its remit the exploration of areas in which the patient or client is unconfident or unskilled and which evoke earlier relationships. Some styles of therapy may further encourage this by their use of silence and by developing what has been called the “frustration tension”.
                                                                                                                                                                  The therapist cannot simply dismiss the confusion by saying, for example, “Stop it. Don’t be ridiculous! I’m not you mother!” They have to keep it going enough for it to be seen, understood, and worked with. It would be unforgivable, though, if the therapist were to encourage or consolidate the confusion, by continuing to play the part and recapitulate the original trauma.
                                                                                                                                                                      In other words – and here I am getting to the crux of it – the therapist has to be able to be enough of all these others (these fathers, mothers, lovers, siblings etc) to be plausible to the client’s unconscious whilst manifestly NOT being these people. In a sense, they need to be able to be any number of people whilst emphatically not being them.
                                                                                                                                                                           Not being should perhaps have a hyphen, because this activity of not-being is different to a simple absence. As in the mind-experiment of trying to not think of a pink giraffe, not-being to a large extent draws attention towards being. Not-being subsumes a degree of being. In a sense, it flirts with being. Think, for example, of the counsellor whose skill set should include knowing how one might take the session deeper, in order to not-do so. Or the doctor who is required to be able to prescribe a medication before their decision to not-do so can take on significance. The mountain guide must know what would be a reckless action in order to be saved from carrying it out.
                                                                                                                                                            Adding to this, the therapist must also be genuinely themselves and 100% present whilst in a way leaving much of themselves outside the room: bringing their skills, attention, and beneficial intent into the room – giving them a voice – yet leaving their own factual lives outside. They have to remember the right things. They have to remember who they are without the constant rehearsal of self-revelation and, whilst stripped in this way, they have to not-accept the roles and characteristics transferred within the therapeutic relationship.
                                                                                                                                                            Therapists, then, if they are to be therapists rather than functionaries, have to be sufficiently capable and supported to perform this balancing act; a balancing that includes things repeatedly touched upon in Being With and Saying Goodbye such as equipoise, believing whilst suspending belief, uncertainty, and paradox. The space between being and not being (which I have here called not-being) is what Winnicott might have termed a “potential space”. It is there yet not-there; the essential ambiguity needed for the play that is therapy.
                                                                                                                                                                    Do think, reply, discuss. Here, or @afwesty via Twitter