Counselling in Scotland

Counselling in Scotland WINTER / SPRING 2016 THE POETIC SELF SEARCHING FOR WHOLENEss IN SOCIETY THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF BEREAVEMENT IN PRISON COUNSELLING TRAINING IN HIGHER EDUCATION SCOTLAND’S YEAR OF LIstENING Contents 2 03 Editorial OFFICERS OF COSCA JOHN DOddS Contents Dorothy Smith Chair 04 The Poetic Self Anne Goldie Vice Chair BENET HAUGHTON JOURNAL EDITORIAL GROUP 07 Searching for Wholeness in Society Brian Magee [email protected] COLIN KIRKWOOD John Dodds [email protected] 11 A Confined Encounter: The Lived Experience STAFF of Bereavement in Prison JANETTE MASTERTON MSC Brian Magee Chief Executive Angela Ramsay Development Officer 21 Counselling Training in Higher Education (Individuals & Courses) KATE SMITH / JOHN MCLEOD Jenny McLintock Development Officer (Recognition Scheme) 25 Scotland's Year of Listening Marilyn Cunningham Administrator Danielle McCutcheon Assistant Administrator 27 COSCA's Register of Counsellors and Alan Smith Book-keeper Psychotherapists and New Members As a charity, COSCA welcomes donations or other assistance from benefactors who may have been helped by counselling or who wish to support the development of counselling in Scotland. While all reasonable care is taken in the selection and verification of the material published in this journal, COSCA does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the statements made by the contributors or the advertisers. The views expressed in the journal are those of the individual contributors and are not necessarily of COSCA. Material published in this journal may not be reproduced without prior permission. Charity Registered in Scotland No. SC 018887 Charitable Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in Scotland No. 142360 Counselling in Scotland is printed on environmentally friendly paper, from sustainable forests. Counselling in Scotland WINTER/SPRING 2016 Editorial John Dodds 3 Editorial s I am sure all of the journal readers talks about the meaning behind, and between the will be aware, COSCA celebrated its words exchanged in the therapeutic relationship. A25th Anniversary in 2015. And in November, As he says, not the 1+1=2 but a third thing, Shona Robison MSP, The Scottish Government which he describes as “an aesthetic of knowing Cabinet Secretary for Health, Wellbeing and Sport which some poems and art forms, at certain congratulated COSCA on the first re-accreditation moments can conjure up, highlight or bring nearer of its Register of Counsellors and Psychotherapists. and, which, if followed allow us to enter a world hitherto not experienced”. In a letter to COSCA earlier that month, the Cabinet Secretary acknowledged COSCA’s great Taking a much broader sweep is Colin Kirkwood achievement of being awarded the re-accreditation in his piece, Searching for Wholeness in Society, an from the Professional Standards Authority for edited version of his contribution to the Bridge Health and Social Care under its Accredited Pastoral Foundation, Scottish Conference, St Registers scheme. In her letter, she said: “This Andrews on “Searching for Wholeness: searching Government supports the PSA’s Accredited souls, a searching community, a searching Registers scheme as a proportionate and efficient society”. In his thesis he explores the notion that method of promoting good practice and high “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”. quality care, and I note that COSCA remains the sole professional body in Scotland with a I was pleased to receive close to publication date PSA accredited register of members. This is an an excellent article about counselling training achievement of which you must be proud, and in higher education. In it authors Kate Smith rightly so”. and John McLeod talk about about the situation where one of Scotland’s leading providers of Our Chief Executive, Brian Magee, stated that counselling training in Scotland has attempted “this letter of congratulation comes at a very to close its doors to students wishing to study significant time in the history of COSCA. It is counselling at Masters level. The authors discuss, our 25th anniversary this year and to receive among other things, the tensions that exist such a high level endorsement of our work is very between the “gold standard” of course validation/ encouraging. Going forward, it will inspire us to accreditation (from COSCA, BACP and others) continue to raise awareness of and improve access and the realities of funding and strategic planning to safe and effective counselling and psychotherapy in the higher education system. services in Scotland”. All in all a diverse and interesting journal, I hope As far as this issue of the journal goes, although we you will agree. I would be keen to hear your have fewer articles in terms of number, one piece is views on running longer articles, as we have done much longer than usual. The case study, A Confined this time, and as ever we are always keen for more Encounter: The Lived Experience of Bereavement in articles, not only from qualified practitioners, but Prison, is a fascinating and often moving account of also from counsellors in training. the subject by Janette Masterton BSc, a volunteer counsellor at Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland. I’d like to close by wishing you all a very Happy New Year. Once again we have a beautiful piece by Benet Haughton, this time on The Poetic Self, in which he John Dodds, Editor Counselling in Scotland WINTER/SPRING 2016 The Poetic Self 4 Benet Haughton “Of all psychologies sins the most mortal is its felt in the body and the heart. This brief essay neglect of beauty” – James Hillman The Soul’s Code.1 probes a little into the mystery of this healing process with no attempt to definitively answer “It was impossible that the girl should it. It remains a mystery whatever knowledge and The Poetic Self understand, yet it seemed almost as if she understanding we have of it. What is clear is it understood the poet’s words. How could this has nothing to do with application of technique be? The great spirit of Nature rolls through all or knowledge in a cognitive, abstract sense and things, it is true, clouds and rocks and trees and everything to do with trust, trust in a knowing animals; though they seem not to be aware of that we are participants in God’s work of it. The meaning and the movement of the verse creating life3. seemed to have passed into her face.” – George MacKay Brown, The Golden Bird.2 Cognitive knowing is only a small fraction, perhaps as little as five per cent of the total I recall many years ago an analyst working that passes between us and our patients4. The with a child. What remains at this distance in so called cognitive unconscious accounting time but remains vividly is the sense that the for the remaining 95 per cent! Why this five therapist was talking nonsense as far as the child per cent looms so large is perhaps due to the was concerned. She was speaking in a language importance we feel it bequeaths us in control so sophisticated that only someone trained in of our environment…hence the sum 1+1=2 analytic jargon would be able to translate the makes more sense in evolutionary terms, in flow of words. But as it was the child, far from terms of control of objects and of survival. turning away in boredom or disgust was sitting, But there is a kind of knowing that has to do her little face up turned, looking directly at the with everything that is not a calculation and therapist drinking in her words. So what was it intellectual abstraction. 1+1=3 makes more the child was hearing? The tone? The mood? The sense as an expression of the human need for self- play of words, the way they sounded? Whatever transcendence, where we are in the service of a it was they resonated through with her deeply. goal outside and higher than ourselves. As I get older I find that 1+1=2 matters far less This comes about through a knowing in than 1+1=3. The holy grail of psychotherapy and through the senses; knowing without is not getting the sum right so much as knowing… intuition; the knowing that is born co-creating the sacred third, the healed patient. of apprehension of mystery; a knowing that is The movement between the rational and the a bowing of the head in humility. This kind of mysterious can be addressed satisfactorily, or knowing is aware of tragedy and celebration, of so I feel, by attention to what is beautiful and the heft of things that we experience in the body pleasing. What is healed in the patient is not just and the senses and the soul. It perceives things an increase in capacity to store knowledge but that are as they joined to the poetic and aesthetic primarily a pleasure and satisfaction in living. life of the world. This is the medium in which This is an aesthetic experience where the misery, we swim, but above all it understands that we alienation and sadness with which we initially do not know very much at all and that all our face our patients is replaced by the relative lives we are learners. “Humility is endless,” says ease and happiness they show when they leave TS Eliot5. But we are learners who can know us which is found in rekindled desire for life, who we are. Counselling in Scotland WINTER/SPRING 2016 Benet Haughton Octavio Paz puts it well in his poem, Brotherhood encourage a reframing of the holes, to see them as a participative and even allies rather than I am a man enemies in gaining self-knowledge? And can we I do not last long not see in ‘the line that pleases by what is not The night is enormous there’ an apt description of mutual appreciation But I look up and the stars are writing.

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