Self

SOCIETYA Forum for Contemporary Psychology

where sold & £4.50 Volume 34 Number 2 Sept - Oct 2006

Can Spiritual Values Combat Global Warming? Thanissara (Mary Weinberg)

Dr Rogers and the Rebellious Right Arm Clive Perraton Mountford

Self and Society AGM and Workshop: Being and Becoming Glynes X Jacques

Petruska Clarkson Memories by Hilde Rapp, Alexandra Chalfont, David Boadella Glynes X. Jacques, Yuko Nippoda and Richard House

The Meaning of Life Question Petruska Clarkson

published by The Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain - AHP(B) website: www.ahpb.org.uk AHP(B) The Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain AHP(B) is an organisation devoted to exploring the scope of human capacity and potential so as to enhance both the individual and society. It publishes Self & Society and other activities include lectures, workshops, conferences and special events. see the back of the magazine for a membership application form.

Self & Society publishes articles in the field of contemporary and humanistic psychology, particularly those concerning issues of personal development. The views expressed in Self & Society are not necessarily those of the editor or of the AHP(B). We welcome contributions, so please contact Maxine Linnell for an information sheet on preparing a manuscript for publication. Self & Society also welcomes advertising; see the back of the magazine for details.

Editor: Maxine Linnell Editorial Board: Administrator: Anton Smith David Brazier Robin Shohet Yvonne Craig Nazreen Subhan Reviews Editor: Geoff Lamb Gaie Houston Alyss Thomas AHP(B) Magazine Sub-committee: David Kalisch Nick Totton John Rowan Eric Whitton John Buckle • Tony Morris Andrew Samuels Founder Editor: Vivian Milroy

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Layout by Sue Medley, 265A Main Road, Sidcup DA14 6QL - 020 8300 9646, [email protected] Printed in the UK by JFA Printers, New Malden, Surrey Phone 020 8942 7766, Fax 020 8942 7288, Email [email protected] Self Volume 33 Volume 34 Number 2 Sept - Oct 2006Number SOCIETY& 1 July-August 2005

5 Can Spiritual Values Combat Global Warming? Thanissara (Mary Weinberg) 13 Dr Rogers and the Rebellious Right Arm Clive Perraton Mountford 22 Petruska Clarkson Memories by Hilde Rapp, Alexandra Chalfont, David Boadella, Glynes X. Jacques, Yuko Nippoda and Richard House The Meaning of Life Question E 29 Petruska Clarkson 33 Self and Society AGM and Workshop: Being and Becoming Glynes X Jacques

A Note on Self & Society Contents regulars Copyright remains with the authors, who take full responsibility for the 4 Editorial accuracy of their contributions. The editors and AHP(B) can take no 47 Regular Column responsibility for any loss arising from 48 Contentions any action taken in reliance on information provided in Self & Society. 49 AHP(B) Chair’s Page Whilst every effort is taken to ensure that the content in Self & Society is 50 Reviews accurate, on occasion there may be mistakes and readers are advised not 57 Subscription Form to rely upon its content. 59 How to advertise in S&S Self SOCIETY editorial Writing and speaking& about people after their death is complex. I didn’t know Petruska Clarkson – we had the odd dialogue about Self & Society articles, and I once went to a workshop she ran – but she was a member of the editorial board of Self & Society for many years. I enjoyed her writing, heard the stories of her brilliance, and also heard a little about her conflicted side. After her death I looked for people to write a formal obituary, but I think something about her and the nature of her death has meant that we are publishing something else to mark her death in May – a collection of memories, poems and reflections about her, together with one of her own articles, aptly about the ‘meaning of life question’.

On Saturday I’m heading off to Dorset to the Unicorn Voice Camp. I’ll be sleeping under canvas and singing from morning till night, with meals round the circle camp fire in between. I went last year for the first time with plenty of anxieties – about camping at a time when I’d been used to lots of comforts, about how it would be to live for a whole week with five hundred people, and of course about the toilets!

The organisation was as humanistic as I could have asked for. There were daily meetings to share information and clear up any difficulties. The organisation was superb, and the boundaries (quiet times and no alcohol or drugs) were held impeccably. A large group of teenagers were entertained – and very entertaining. There were powerful singing sessions where I wept for the beauty of it all, and joyful, loud and funny sessions, as well as peaceful raga singing. There were meditations and stories, cabarets and a café. Camping was a wonderful way of reconnecting to the weather and the land, and the compost loos were amazing! There was a sense of care and respect, for the individual, for the camp community, for the local village, and for the impact we might have on the earth. I had my down times and frictions, but I felt supported through them and was allowed space when I needed it. It was an experience of living out values, not talking about them. At the end a friend said she’d like to bring more of that into her own life, and I felt the same.

This will be Mike Fitter’s last Regular Column for now. Thanks to Mike for entertaining and enlightening us for the last two years – I hope we’ll hear from him again.

Letters for the next issue of S&S should be with me by September 22nd.

And I hope you’ve enjoyed your summer, wherever you’ve been.

Maxine Linnell [email protected]. 0116 2891378

4 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Can Spiritual Values Combat Global Warming? Thanissara (Mary Weinberg)

In the cherry blossom’s shade, there’s no such thing as a stranger. *Issa

Can spiritual values combat global fought at great expense to our moral warming? My first unedited response integrity, not to mention life itself. is: ‘I certainly hope so otherwise we’re all stuffed!’ A more considered To diagnose our current situation, response is to look at the without a radical shift in direction, is assumptions that fly under the to look out across an extremely banner of ‘spirituality’ and delve bleak landscape into an absolutely deeper into a practical and applicable suicidal result. It is increasingly clear approach to the truths of ‘spirit’. we’re at an unprecedented cross Alongside this inquiry is a need to road. The stakes are the highest they open further into the implications of could ever be and the onus of our global oil addiction and the resolution rests almost entirely on emergence from the great denial of our global capacity for restraint, its consequence. wisdom and cooperation. In short we are being intensely challenged to The issue of oil dependency is make a quantum shift in our literally exploding in our faces, right evolutionary process, to take a here north of London at Buncefield fundamentally different track which Oil Depot, not conveniently ‘over would be well served by guidance there’ in the oil fields of Iraq where from timeless spiritual values. The a bitter and degrading war for control only real question is: Can we make of the last remaining drops is being that shift in time? Can you and I,

5 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 society, governments, global and considered habits that are deeply corporate institutions take on the embedded in the denial of implications of what the ‘science consequence. of global warming’, the ‘ending of oil’ and ‘truths’ of ‘spirit’ reveal Emerging from Denial to us. Implied in this quantum shift is a re-visiting of our While browsing a popular national knowledge of the spiritual. book store in the States recently I was pleasantly surprised to see Religious institutions, operating in ‘The Party is Over’* being our present spiritual vacuum, promoted. This well researched need a hefty step of courage, and leading edge book by Richard insight and vision to undertake a Heinberg about the ending of oil re-defining of ‘God’ and is summed up by the cover ‘Enlightenment’ and the historical picture: a man in business suit tendency to see ‘spirit’ or with tie squew whiff and undone, ‘nirvana’ as ‘beyond’ or ‘in spite as if emerging into the dawn from of’ the world. Alongside this there last night’s raucous party, with a is a vital need for a clear gasoline pump to his head like a comprehension of an ethical gun ready to go off indicating that response which emerges from a it’s only a question of time until consciousness that discerns that the bullet completes its job. there are no ultimate separations. We are all deeply involved in a Alongside the increasing seamless oneness, in a world of availability of books, web sites causes and effects that and articles addressing our energetically interact generating environmental crisis, it’s a shared inheritance. encouraging to see ‘The Independent’, a strong UK Daily, An ethical awareness is different frequently head-lining with sound from a societal and religious reports on green issues. And moral which can, and has, been further, even the disgraceful walk used to justify deeply unethical out of the US negotiator on behaviours. For example the Climate Change at the UN societal and even religious moral conference in Montreal, was pressure used to support countered by former President Apartheid would have (hopefully!) Clinton’s absolute support for the directly conflicted with an internal irrefutable science of global ethical understanding of a shared warming. Most scientists now humanity between blacks and concur that in the absence of a whites. With such awareness the consistent plan to combat rising individual may well be compelled green house gases, the next 20 by conscience to make an ethical to 50 years would see more choice at the possible expense of droughts and floods, waste lands ‘tribal’ acceptance or a societal causing mass migrations, ‘moral’ choice at the expense of reduced crop yields, species individual ethical conscience. extinctions and increased diseases such as malaria. It is the awakening of such an inner ethic in response to global What was a previously ‘fringe’ warming, probably at the cost of awareness of the complete lack our herd mentality and coveted of sustainability of our plundering comfort zone, which stirs us from way of life is moving centre, and dreams of desire and ill to the surface, by the undeniable power of its truth. When I recently

6 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 commented to my brother, a While a great swirl of London cabbie; ‘Phew, these Machiavellian manipulation of street cameras are everywhere world politics and economic in the UK’ he replied; ‘Well we’re resources, due to unabashed going to run out of oil and there’ll corporate greed, swarms like a be chaos. They’ll need to use the million bees through the media cameras to control the situation’. and on the streets of choking If it is the case that estimates cities, there is an unmistakable, from the Association of the Study perhaps still shaky, yet clearly of Peak Oil is about right then emerging knowledge that all is not there are about 1 trillion barrels well as the oil age threatens to left. (US department of energy collapse. It’s as if we look up and estimates about 2-2.7 trillion). see the under-belly of a dinosaur One trillion barrels will peak ready to fall and die on top of us, production about 2007 (plus or suffocating our very life breath. minus a few years), the US Yet even though we see the energy department predicts shadow looming, like the about 2030. (This was before proverbial addict, we can’t seem Hurricane Katrina delivered a to take out the needle and go devastating, yet under reported, through ‘cold turkey’. Behind, blow to US oil supplies). Most under pinning and deeply observers agree that oil pervasive to our oil industrial age production follows a bell curve, has been the ability to fuel, plentiful on the upslope and literally, our deep discontent, rapidly scarce on the fast slipping questing, seeking and ultimate down slope. As demand outpaces inability to come to terms with production, causing prices to soar, limitations. Perhaps we can slip subsequent pressure on oil in a question here of a ‘spiritual’ dependent economies will cause nature: ‘What are we looking for them to collapse. Besides the and when is it enough?’ calamity of global warming, which ever way you look at it, we are What are we looking for and facing the potential for severe when is it enough? economic shock and the possible eruption of resource wars. If you’ve sat in stillness for a while and tried simply to ‘just be’ (try it If unprepared for shifts into just now – say ten minutes?), significant access to alternative most likely you’ll be quickly energies there is a strong confronted by the restless mind likelihood nations will default to always ‘getting somewhere’, coal, (alongside China’s already ‘getting something’. Sometimes rapid construction of new coal- that movement is aimless fired power plants), which would distraction, yet often it is an accelerate warming to an assumed habitual agitation, of alarming level. If spiritual values reasonable good intention, to can not bring us to our senses, improve upon the present then at the very least, we will moment experience. But how ver need to draw on them in times of far that primordial discontented great and unprecedented ‘itch’ takes us, literally to the challenge. There’s something of moon and back, we never seem the spirit which is not at all about to be able to ease its discomfort. imagining pink clouds we can float While under its sway we never away on, but of looking squarely seem to ‘get there’. This was well into the face of what is right in illustrated by a comment from a front of us.

7 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 wealthy and well traveled friend momentum of habitual seeking, in his fifties, a top executive of grasping and fulfilment of one of the largest South African ambition. Within that is the mining industries. When, at a possibility to access a direct slightly inebriated dinner party, he experience of the beauty and confessed his need to repress fear mystery of this moment. In short in order to speculate with millions to taste, ‘enough ness’. As Wes of dollars on the gold market (an Nisker, the West Coast satirist activity which gave him said a new mantra is needed: nightmares), I asked him 'When does it stop'? His candid answer “Enough, Enough, we’ve got was devastating in its irony, 'When Enough Stuff!” I am successful'. Wes also ‘jokes’ that America But there again, perhaps not so should resign as super power, surprising, a tad more honesty take a ‘great leap back’, and would render my own ambitions, become ‘just an ordinary nation’. probably not the same ones, but Somewhat tongue in cheek, but not without their consequences. there is also something about how There is something about it just we pick up the ‘battle’ for the life being plain difficult to STOP! How blood of the planet. Knowing, as to stop the tyrannical pursuit of we do, the implications of global the perfect and the satisfying warming and the corresponding bolstered by an endless need for inability to take stock and shift control and power? Control, into an international response, it’s power and pursuit can have their difficult not to feel a bottomless place when guided by a wisdom wail of despair, frustration and that knows interconnectedness, outrage. Even so, in the response, that is generous and caring and if we can’t hold a lightness, a that appreciates and honours the perspective of ‘enemy’ as a sanctity of life. However all too dimension of ‘ourselves’, we will often blind pursuit, time and be contributing to the very again, leads us to precisely the aggression that polarises wrong place, a destination which dialogue. inevitably stimulates further discontent. In the very looking So as we engage the inquiry, ‘out there’ we miss an essentiality holding and protecting our own of ‘here’. Here in terms of who is hearts well being, is it possible to it that is looking anyway? Do we know the difference between a know that? heedless fulfilment of restless grasping and a meeting of our Accepting limitation is a tough call real needs? The deepest need to make. In the fleeting realm of perhaps is to know our place in the senses, and within this very this universe and in that body, we are faced with the finite. placement to feel a depth of Yet it’s within these experiences belonging and acceptance. The we expect to find an everlasting great need to feel love, loveable and stable permanence that will and able to love. appease us. Until we see the forms of life as the ever emerging Who is Looking? formless spirit and savour their exquisite and dynamic play, we’ll ‘God’ and ‘Enlightenment’, two never be sated. Implied in depth words of great promise and spirituality is the cultivation of this potency layered with historical ‘stopping’, a relinquishment of the

8 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 assumptions and manipulations There are more worrying that usually muddy the true ‘religious’ trends that can boast meanings, words that frequently the sort of numbers that convert intimidate rather than liberate. into the titanic political lobby that There’s a certain way that is currently shaping the White religious currency operates under House agenda and US Supreme the supposition that earthly Court. With 4% of the world experience is a training ground population pumping out 25% of for the real place we need to be. carbon dioxide pollution, it’s not It would really be better, all will looking too rosy with ‘President be solved and we will be saved, Oil’ backed by someone like when we reach a heavenly realm, Pastor Ted Haggard and his or eternally dwell in an ethereal ardent Rapture Theory transcendent state, where we’re multitudes. (Non Christians will no longer bothered by mortal be left behind while Christ concerns. Even if our modern secretly and suddenly whisks spiritual idiom speaks to a much away believers. More sinister is more inherent here and now that many Evangelicals believe realisation, there are centuries of the Second Coming of Christ conditioning that whisper (or needs to be heralded by a nuclear shout) that it’s never really ‘here’ Armageddon, whose initiation is and we’re never ‘good enough’ waiting only for apt orchestration anyhow to enter the Garden. from US leaders). What if it’s only ever here, with Pastor Ted, with his weekly these conditions as they are, what hotline straight to President if this is the Garden of Eden, the Bush’s ear, is part of a movement Enlightened Field, and the real of Mega Churches which function problem is not that we need to more like conglomerates than catapult ourselves beyond, but places that encourage inquiry, that we actually need to more openness and reflective wisdom. fully arrive? We need to more fully Pastor Ted preaches that ‘spiritual arrive and notice the jewel that war requires a virile, worldly we hold in our hands. What if the counterpart’ and says; ‘I teach an real problem is not the ‘world’ or ideology of the use of power, of ‘ourselves’ but our distorted military might as public service,’ relationship to ‘what is’. We are and purports pre-emptive war as under the sway of a habitual necessary for overcoming sin and tendency to look too far for that a precedent is set in the Bible something better and to resist for ‘ferocious’ war. He declares what is present, a tendency to ‘The Bible is bloody; there is a lot interpret the flow of life as a ‘Me’ of blood’. From this virulent breed that needs to ‘own’ and ‘possess’ of Evangelism, reaching out to 30 something ‘out there’. The insight million US supporters through of non-attachment is not about 45,000 churches and over 200 shutting down our capacity to feel, million world wide, globalisation resonate and pick up life, it’s not is merely the vehicle for the a strategy of life denial, but rather spread of Christianity (their it aims at an inner balance within branch of it!) and free market a heart that can simply ‘let be’. economies are the ‘Truth’. However if such a realisation of a ‘here and now’ perfection can be Facing off in the Muslim Quarter, named as a spiritual value, it’s who just happen to be sitting on going to have a hard time the bulk of the very liquid upon encouraging mass conversion. which control of the world

9 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 depends, is the equally fierce new grass growing through rhetoric of feminine repressive concrete, and in that I take hope. I jihadist movements that are deeply take hope that we can know and anti-democratic. (We have to appreciate - directly - the wonder though, about the present sacredness of all life. We can realise state of democracy in the US, and that the one that knows this, the UK, particularly after Prime intimate and impersonal within the Minster Blair’s total disregard for heart of each being, is that which is public and parliamentary intrinsically transcendent and can opposition to the Iraq war). respond from the knowledge that However, while a more liberal the world and self are one. interpretation of Jihad is to undertake a spiritual struggle, on Guardians of the World the whole it is used to justify the deadly tactic of suicide bombing The two Buddhist terms Hiri and endorsed by the promise of a Ottappa refer to Ethics and Morals paradise beyond. The Quran states or more loosely termed, a sense of that jihad is a sure way for entering conscience. Director of Sharpham a paradise where all desires (that Buddhist Studies, Dr John Peacocke are forbidden in Islamic society) designates ethics as a ‘self’ are perpetually met. A tempting regulating process and morals destination when faced with an (such as the 10 commandments) as overwhelming disempowerment in regulating society. To negotiate the face of prohibitive and both is to hold a tension which oppressive theocracies and remote allows each to be co-informing. In monarchies, an economic Buddhist understanding Hiri and instability that frustrates Ottappa are literally Guardians of opportunity and a righteous the World. When they falter outrage at the reckless cultural and internally there is psychological militaristic invasions of the West. breakdown and when there is a failure of them in society the glue In the midst of such intensity that maintains sanity and cohesion around issues of climate warming comes undone. In many ways with and oil dependency is the potent the break down of Judeo-Christian and poisonous agenda of religions morals in secular society, or as that see life on earth as a means John Peacoke succinctly puts it, a rather then an end in and of itself. disappearing God to underwrite This alignment of medieval morals, we are in new territory. We religious forces, (with their great have seen that in the absence of dualistic need to ward off ‘evil’ and an acute inner ethic, human therefore perpetually wage war), consciousness can easily be flanked by political and militaristic manipulated, as in fascism or power along side corporate denial justifications for war, towards and greed raises a terrifying and horrifying actions. An inner sense astonishingly impenetrable wall of of ethical behaviour is a delusional intransigence. developmental step beyond this susceptibility to ‘pack mentality’. Within this environment one can’t be too naive about the challenge How prepared are we for a shift of growing the delicate flower of a from morality as an external (often self-empowered embodied historically repressive and spirituality that is resonant with the intimidating) force into an urgent oneness of all beings. However I need to empower an internally have seen, many times, delicate arising ethic, an ethic which can hold flowers and defenceless shoots of values that are deeply resonant

10 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 with the inter-connectedness of collapse, sometimes spectacularly everything, an appreciation of (the Berlin Wall, Apartheid, the causality and a great sense of care draconian rule of Ceausescu). for the whole web of life. An ethic which doesn’t deal in absolutes but Meanwhile it wouldn’t be too is able to meet complexity, grey dramatic to say we are in the midst areas and respond with wisdom of a deadly battle, therefore as rather than fixed views and warriors one needs to be well judgements. An ethic which will equipped. The best weapon is a most likely put us at odds with the very precise training in snatched, exploitative and mindfulness. A mindfulness that hedonistic paradigm we’re in and can hold to the present moment in perhaps even at odds with our own the face of increasing intensity inner tendencies which skim over without defaulting to fear, violence, consequences for the sake of denial and distraction. Beyond expediency, habit and careless ethics, mindfulness is the desire. immediate guardian. Mindfulness, attention to the present, allows for The development of a personal ethic a space within which there can be that can inform our activity isn’t just response rather than conditioned wishful thinking. It is a demanding re-activity, it allows for the spiritual practice that, when possibility to be a conduit of an developed within everyday life, can intuitive and universally wise come to the fore when morally solution. I believe if we stay openly challenged. A healthy sense of mindful, inquiring and passionate conscience is the very bedrock in our engagement, the ways which allows us to be truly human, forward will self reveal. compassionately sensitive and appropriately responsive. If we The Sanskrit word for mindfulness, were to boil the fundamentals of all Smrti, (Sati in Pali), suggests a re- ethical behaviour into one great membering of that which has been guide line it would be to do as least split apart. It’s as if holding a still harm as possible. point of presence allows the fragmented, the abandoned and Ways Forward torn, to re-group and heal. Implied also in the practice of mindfulness As we look to future prospects the is the ability to tolerate uncertainty. astounding reality is that we have As mindfulness matures we delve the technological ability and chance, further into the unknowing ness of if we earnestly made the necessary the heart, a stripping away of energy changes, to turn the layered survival strategies, so as situation around. However the to arrive into a dimension of being corporate and political will is lacking. that can recognise it is, or we are, Actually the political will is in fact, the totality. Such subservient to the corporate agenda recognition has stunning of complete ownership and control implications for our whole right down to the last strand of orientation within life. The deep pain DNA. It is deeply dismaying that and fear of our separateness, and America, (more precisely the White the destructive behaviour that House), with its great potential to emerges from our alienation, can be the very leader that’s needed, begin to thaw and be replaced by is currently going in completely the a true understanding of the power opposite direction. However history we have to steward, guide and has told us that even seemingly guard our precious earth. After all, impenetrable regimes eventually even though we are temporary

11 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 visitors, this marvellous planet is moving to sustainable solutions the only home we have; it offers and who hold spaces of sanity will, us the gift of life. When we are like points of radiant fire, illumine able to be more ‘home’ within our a path forward. My sense of it is being and upon this earth, we can that the fringe will naturally move simply relax more and grasp less. centre as the real need for To be able to ‘let go’ in the midst alternatives becomes absolutely of embracing active engagement globally apparent. However, there’s is to be fluid, effective, resonant, a certain way that those who hold strong, grounded and graceful. values of the spirit hold back. I feel it in myself; we sort of watch the To shed compulsive acquisition cosmic arising and passing from and the armouring that locks us the equanimity stalls. At into isolated bubbles is to arrive intermission we natter in the into a prayerful relationship with corners about how crazy it all is. life. Let us evolve prayer from a Perhaps we need more courage to wish list offered to a sky god into step out from our cosy alternative a meaningful and appreciative life styles and spiritual centres to resonance with the awesome passionately engage the dialogue. mystery that we are interwoven within. Mother Theresa was once Rather than let the bullet express asked how she prayed. Oh, she the utter disregard and brutal said, I just listen. When then antagonism to nature and life, that asked what God says, Mother is played out on the world stage, Theresa responded, oh God also we need to ‘bite the bullet’, find, listens. She went on to elaborate; create and then hold a middle and if you don’t understand that I ground of compassion and wise can’t help you! To keep listening reflection in the midst of an is a prerequisite for the renewal increasingly polarised world. that’s needed. Perhaps this article is my attempt to step further in that direction, to As the structures of society, that step into the need to hold hope, to are currently buoyed by our oil hold up possibility and to recognise dinosaur, fray and falter, those that a small delicate flower can individuals, communities and push through concrete to meet the organisations that are already morning sun of a new dawn.

* The Party is Over, Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. Richard Heinberg, New Society Press, 2003. * Poem by Issa, translated by Stephen Mitchell from The Enlightened Heart. HarperPerennial Press 1989

Thanissara (Mary Weinberg) is a Buddhist practitioner of thirty years and spent twelve years as a nun in the Forest Sangha of Ajahn Chah. She teaches internationally and lives in South Africa & the UK. She has written a book of poetry called 'Garden of the Midnight Rosary'. Contact [email protected]

12 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Dr Rogers and the Rebellious Right Arm

Clive Perraton Mountford

My Rebellious Arm

It was my right arm which defied the party whip. I usually know what my arms are doing, but for several moments, the right one seemed to declare independence. I’d been asked to indicate my ‘counselling orientation’ at a Saturday workshop by raising my hand. This was several years ago now. At ‘person-centred’, my arm hesitated long enough for myself and the colleague beside me to notice.

Why was it hesitating? I was a on a pleasant Saturday morning recently trained person-centred in Norwich, holding a covert counsellor who had gone so far conversation with his arm, as to sell the family home and then—more troubling conclusions travel 6000 miles to acquire the aside—it is reasonable to training of his choice, I advertised suppose him under the influence as a person-centred counsellor, of Gene Gendlin’s ‘experiential and I had the reputation of a focusing’. That was indeed the passionate and radical exponent. case. However, the bodily sense My arm, however, had other that I was not a person-centred ideas, and when I gently counsellor was entirely enquired what sort of counsellor unimpressed by the suggestion it was part of, it replied, ‘An open- that I was a focusing-oriented centred counsellor.’ I did ask counsellor, and it continued to what that was, but no clear remain unsatisfied by my answer was forthcoming. tentative offerings for the next several years. Only in the last Given someone sitting in a few months have I finally got personal-development workshop

13 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 what Gendlin might call a ‘handle’ me!”, however, such education on all this. seems entirely right and necessary so long as power is It is my current sense of what not lifted from their hands. my arm’s rebellion was all about that I want to share with you Anyway, I began to think of this here. And if this is this also the less structured use of focusing as longest attempt to explicate a felt conversational focusing and to sense on record, perhaps the distinguish it from the more Guinness Book of Records will be formal meditative focusing which interested as well. I shall begin I had first learned: by saying a little about the practice of experiential focusing · In conversational focusing and my exploration of some of there is more movement its possibilities. between the felt sense—and therefore for most of us the Four Initial Modalities belly—and the head and our cognitive processes. The steps When I first learned about taken are frequently very small, focusing, I was introduced to and the focusing takes place what I now think of as meditative within a broader context of focusing: feet on the floor, eyes therapeutic conversation and closed, clear a space, etc. This relationship. is the kind of practice described in Gene Gendlin’s little self-help · In meditative focusing twenty book Focusing, and for a year or minutes to half an hour at a time two I thought of experiential may be spent with the evolving focusing as this whole package. felt sense, with its shifts and changes, and the focuser’s Focusing worked for me, and I communion is more with found that it worked for some of themselves than with their my clients. With familiarity, focusing partner. however, I began to recognize that some of the packaging was In addition to meditative focusing not always necessary or useful. and conversational focusing I I started to introduce focusing in was soon to become familiar with a less formal manner, and to two other and quite different gently and informally encourage focusing modalities. clients towards an awareness of their felt sense such that I, as The first of these was whole– the counsellor, might ask ‘Does body focusing which I was that feel right?’ while patting my introduced to by Kevin belly, and the client would McEvenue. Because whole–body respond by resonating what had focusing is initially nonverbal, it just been said with their felt allows me access to that which sense of the matter and finding is beyond language and possibly an answer. rooted in experiences I had prior to the acquisition of language. Clearly, this gives the counsellor I’ve never tried whole-body an educative function, and some focusing with a client, but I have will view that as inconsistent with introduced it to counselling good practice. When a client who trainees, and many are as has little or no sense of their impressed as I am. experiencing is saying “Help

14 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 The second of the two additional occasion, she will then re-enter modalities is something I the dream with me alongside, stumbled upon with the help of and the dream will continue to some very creative clients. This unfold and evolve with me once kind of focusing always starts off again acting like the director of as meditative but transforms into a psychodrama. quite a different kind of journey. It as though for some people Given these clearly distinct ways there are times when moving of focusing, ‘experiential into the body and relating to the focusing’ is certainly not identical felt sense of an issue invites a with the whole meditative cascade of metaphors and focusing package. What is symbols like those which arise in experiential focusing then; how dreams. What is more, the shall we define it? Common to focuser is able to move around the four modalities I have in and interact with these in the described is the simple act of manner of a psychodrama. When bringing awareness to a felt sense I have been the focusing and acquiring a handle for it. companion, my role has felt (Or—following Gendlin more more like the director of a precisely—encouraging a felt psychodrama. Yet everything sense to form, bringing that is happening feels rooted in awareness, and acquiring a the focuser’s body and its handle.) This may take place knowing. within any number of settings and be facilitated in a variety of What should we call this manner different ways. It seems quite of focusing? To me, it is reasonable that there should be dreamscape focusing. a variety of therapeutic focusing modalities. I have used dreamscape focusing myself, and I have Closely Held Focusing counselled several clients who liked to work this way and Meditative focusing, conversational seemed to make substantial focusing, whole-body focusing, and progress. One young client found dreamscape focusing: that makes that over two or three weeks all four distinct focusing modalities his pain coalesced into a kind of which, until a few months ago, I rock in his chest; he took the was using in concert with, but still rock out and placed it on the arm somehow separated from, my of his chair (while in the person-centred counselling dreamscape), and he left it there practice. Then I watched a New when the session ended (and he York Focusing Institute video was back in the ‘real world’). recording of Gene Gendlin When he returned the following teaching focusing (there are week, the rock was not to be several to choose from on their found anywhere in my office, and website), and some of the it was certainly not to be found colleagues I watched the video in his chest. with were quite critical of Gene’s way of doing business. I thought I have also worked with a client about the difference between who sometimes likes to begin what Gene says in the Focusing making sense of a dream by book and what he now seems to choosing an aspect of it and offer—most of that meditative seeking the felt sense of that. On stuff has gone out the window,

15 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 and Gene is now very vocal and doing and why. We recorded the active—I thought about how my session, and I later had it own ways of offering focusing transcribed. have changed, and I decided to try something which I had never The following day, and at the yet tried as a counsellor. request of another student, I offered a session of When I was a schoolteacher, approximately thirty minutes particularly when I was a novice Gendlin–style focusing. The schoolteacher, I used to observe focuser’s eyes remained open competent colleagues and throughout most of the session, commit their modus operandi to and I was vocal and active in memory. If I found myself faced responding to her and in with a situation I did not know supporting her as she struggled how to deal with, I put myself in with an evolving felt sense and the shoes of a chosen colleague emerging understanding of what and dealt with it as though I was that was all about. We felt that them. Over time, what I had the session was productive, and internalised blended with my own when the student said that she ways of being and became would like to take things a little something uniquely mine. further, we conducted a similar Thinking about it now, I still do focusing session the following this today when I am teaching— week. Both these sessions were my pedagogic configuration is a recorded and transcribed as well. mosaic of subconfigurations which are an homage to talented In all, I recorded three focusing colleagues—but until a few sessions in which I attempted to weeks ago I had never used this work ‘Gendlin–style’. By the time tactic as a counsellor. I am not we made the third recording, I entirely sure why that is—the had tried something similar with tactic is tried and proven—but a couple of clients as well, and it perhaps my reluctance has to do was all beginning to feel entirely with the desire to be authentic comfortable and authentic. It and fully myself. Even so, as I won’t do, though, to go on calling reflected on the arguments about this way of offering focusing what Gene was ‘up to’, it came Gendlin–style focusing; that’s a to me that the only way to bit like calling Carl Rogers a answer the question was to try Rogerian therapist. I shall call it ‘doing it like Gene’, see how that closely held focusing for reasons felt, and find out how it was for which I hope will become clear. the focusing companion. It is, I believe, a distinct and very powerful focusing modality. At this juncture serendipity stepped in. I met with my Here is a brief excerpt from one professional year counselling of the transcripts to give a flavour students two days later, and one of closely held focusing. of them wanted to talk about F1) …It… having seen Gene Gendlin in a focusing video and the way in C1) Go to the feeling of it which he worked… I offered to F2) [pause] If I was…what is try being a ‘Gendlin–style’ the feeling? If I was good focusing companion with a volunteer so that we might get a better sense of what Gene was

16 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 enough…he wouldn’t want to top C14) But unusually for you… himself. F15) Yes [small laugh] C2) Can you stay with the C15) …there’s no real sense of feeling of ‘if I was good enough, what this is about he wouldn’t want to top himself’? F16) No…just that if…yeah F3) Yep there is…if he loved me as much C3) Are you… as I love him… F4) Oh yeah I can bring that C16) Ah straight up for you… F17) he wouldn’t want to leave C4) You…you’ve got that me… That’s what it is. F5) Yeah C17) Does that feel right? C5) You’ve got that…you’ve F18) Yeah…yeah [sniffs] got that…and maybe…maybe try C18) If he loved you as much asking that what’s that all about? as you love him… That feeling of ‘if you were good enough he wouldn’t do this’… F19) Yeah F6) [pause] It’s just an C19) …he wouldn’t want to insecurity, that’s not a feeling. leave you It’s…it’s just a fear F20) C6) It’s just a fear… Yeah…he’d…he’d…he’d…yeah…he’d want to be…he’d want to see it F7) It…it just yeah…I…I can’t out. think…I can’t… C20) He’d want to see it out C7) You can’t… F21) Yeah…that’s what it is F8) I can’t grasp… C21) That’s what it is C8) You can’t grasp… F22) Yeah…it hurts F9) …what that is…it’s… C22) It hurts C9) Just wait…just wait if you can…let yourself be aware of it. F23) Yep [pause and lets out a Just stay with it if you can… deep breath] F10) [pause] It just feels like Perhaps this already an insecurity demonstrates why I call the C10) It just feels like an modality closely-held focusing. It insecurity is as purely a focusing process as meditative focusing. The F11) But I can get a handle…it focusing companion, however, is won’t come…I can’t… much closer to, and much more C11) OK actively in relationship with, the focuser. The companion can F12) It’s very elusive… ‘hold’ the focuser, and help them C12) It’s very elusive to be with and beside their experiencing just as they might F13) Mmm during a more conversational C13) There’s insecurity exchanges. Throughout this part of the session, and indeed F14) Yes throughout most of the rest of it,

17 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 the focuser and companion were I wanted to know what I was up in steady eye contact. At no time to. did the focuser feel alone. As she subsequently made plain, if she Brian’s (1997) demonstration had, then none of this would have video recording The Cost of been possible. Integrity illustrates what I believe to be the makings of an A Continuum of Possibilities answer. He does not just offer loving presence and acceptant The landscape occupied by these relationship and leave the matter now five different focusing there. He is guided throughout modalities might grow clearer— his interaction with a client by and they themselves might what in focusing terms would be become conceptually more called his own ‘felt sense’, and distinct—if I provided a way of he responds to his client in such relating them one to another. To a way that they are gently (and do that, I want to look back to the not always so gently) encouraged beginnings of my own counselling deeper into their own career. experiencing and into relationship with their felt sense. I trained as a person-centred I have asked Brian whether this counsellor with Brian Thorne and statement meets with his in the practice of Gene Gendlin’s approval, and it does. He also experiential focusing (with agrees that it applies to Carl Campbell Purton) within the same Rogers’ later work as well. In ten months. In consequence, other words, two of the most when I began to earn my living effective and influential as a counsellor I was aware of representatives of what one what were apparently two distinct might call ‘mainstream’ person- therapeutic modalities rooted in centred therapy can be the same client-centred heritage: understood as working in ways ‘Thorne-mode’ (loving perception which are partly explicable in and relationship) and ‘Gendlin- focusing terms. mode’ (focusing-oriented). I soon began to differentiate focusing- A lot more might be said about oriented ways of working in the all of this, but I want to stay close manner I have been discussing, to the question: How does a and so it was easy to conceive of therapy of loving perception and Gendlin-mode as consisting of relationship relate to experiential several related kinds of practice, focusing? In partial answer, I but I struggled to relate any of propose that there is a continuum them to the kind of loving of therapeutic practice which has perception and relationship which a therapy of loving perception I had learned about from Brian. and relationship at one end and meditative focusing at the other. What had experiential focusing to The other focusing modalities I do with the loving presence and have discussed can be placed deep, acceptant relationship which upon or related to this continuum. Brian deployed with such efficacy? I’m not saying that the continuum This was far more than an will provide an exclusive account academic question for me because of the ways in which person– I knew that I offered both focusing centred and focusing–oriented and a variant of loving perception counselling and accompaniment and relationship to my own clients. may vary. It is simply one

18 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 possible way of bringing characterized as ‘person– conceptual order to what is centred’. At least as I practice it, presently a confusing array of the therapist is afforded practices. For ease of reference, considerable freedom of I shall now begin talking about response. There really is a the Thorne end of this continuum conversation. This is not true of as conversational therapy and so meditative focusing where the add a sixth distinct therapeutic emphasis is upon a more ‘client- modality to the five already centred’ and literal reflection of listed. Thus the continuum the focuser’s utterances and consists of: experience and where there may also be some process Conversational Therapy assistance. It is not true of closely held focusing either, but Conversational Focusing the style is more conversational in this latter case. Closely Held Focusing In conversational therapy it Whole-Body Focusing • is common for there to be no Dreamscape Focusing very clearly expressed goal at the outset of a session and no Meditative Focusing explicit job description for the therapist. In a focusing session, Whole-body focusing and there is always a clearly dreamscape focusing are offset expressed goal even if it is only because they relate to the to get a sense of how things are continuum rather than being for the focuser right now, and the clearly and directly in the line of focusing companion usually has its development. a pretty clear job description. Why This All Makes Good • Both conversational focusing Sense (In Practice) and closely held focusing can only take place within a relational I now need to try to persuade context and in both cases the you that this continuum proposal focusing partner’s role is more makes good sense. I shall do so expansive than in meditative initially with a short list of claims focusing. The companion’s role about the therapeutic modalities is notably more expansive in the I have identified. After that, I will case of conversational focusing propose some modifications to than in closely held focusing and standard person-centred theory moves between that of a focusing which help make to sense of the partner and a conversational relationships I am proposing. therapist. That will lead us back to the rebellious right arm which started • Given all this, conversational all the trouble. therapy and closely held focusing can be positioned on a Here is the short list of claims: rough continuum that runs between conversational therapy • Conversational therapy is and meditative focusing. At the grounded in and takes place conversational end there is no within the context of a warm, need for an explicit goal or job acceptant, and authentic description, and the companion’s relationship which can be broadly responses are those of a genuine

19 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 conversation. At the meditative someone whose eyes are closed end there is always an explicit and who is very much engaged goal and the companion usually with their own experiencing, has a job description of some provide that person with a clear sort; the companion’s responses sense that they are being consist almost entirely of understood and held, and, at the reflecting what is offered by the same time, not intrude upon focuser. Conversational focusing their process. It might even be is closer to the conversational that meditative focusing is not therapy end of the continuum, the best style for trainee and closely held focusing is closer counsellors to cut their focusing to the meditative end. Closely teeth on and that it is not the best held focusing involves more style for many counsellors to focusing, less conversation, and practice. Providing the right kind more emphasis upon the literal of relationship under these reflection of what the focuser is circumstances requires that the saying and doing. focusing companion have both considerable personal presence • Given my description of the and the capacity to be present continuum so far, one might be in a relatively egoless way. forgiven for asking whether the relationship is most important in • There is now one noticeable conversational therapy and least loose end hanging. At least, I can important in meditative focusing. see one noticeable loose end. I believe that to be false. The What are we to make of whole– therapist or focusing companion body focusing and dreamscape may seem less a part of the focusing in light of the continuum process as one moves away I have described? Perhaps the from conversational therapy and focuser enters these modalities towards the meditative end, but when a kind of internal brake or to conclude that the therapist or censorship is released during companion is less a part of the focusing. Speaking for myself, it process involves serious is an effort to sit still in a chair misunderstanding akin to and focus. There is something concluding that a classical client– somehow more natural about centred therapist is not really getting up and beginning to part of the therapeutic process. move and that is whole–body The therapist or focusing focusing. Is the same true of companion provides the dreamscape focusing? Just as relationship within which when dreaming and asleep, the awareness and process best focuser would relinquish the occur. usual interpretive laws of ‘reality’ and dreamscape experiencing • This last point has an would emerge. In other words— important corollary which I will and as suggested by the list state as a question: Is presented earlier—whole–body relationship harder to provide focusing and dreamscape when accompanying someone focusing can be understood as who is engaged in meditative diverging from the main focusing than when with someone continuum as the focuser’s who is practicing conversational practice and the companion’s or closely held focusing? It is a style of accompaniment moves delicate thing to accompany towards the meditative end.

20 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 It is hard for me to know just tears souls apart runs even what further questions these deeper and is even harder to points raise; I’m still very close bring to awareness. It is the to it all. However, there is one incongruence which results from thing which seems in need of a person being out of step with further explanation; it is my their deepest physical— founding assertion that ’organismic’ if you like— conversational therapy and knowing, with that level of meditative focusing are related awareness which focusing draws closely enough to form the ends from. of a continuum. To provide that additional support, I must engage An example of the opposite of with some theory, or perhaps it this kind of incongruence was would be more accurate to say summed up by Rogers (1956) some ‘explication of practice’. in a paper which is still not been Theory so easily takes on a life published, and whose of its own, forging those ‘iron publication might, I think, have chains of dogma’ which Carl altered the course of what I’m prophetically warned against going to describe below. (Rogers 1959); whereas what I Anyway, in that paper Carl says want to discuss is very closely the following about the state of linked to, led by, and must be his client: ‘Her viscera, her tear easily modifiable in light of, ducts, and her awareness…are ongoing therapeutic practice. congruent’. Her viscera, tear ducts, and awareness… Exactly. A Therapy That Walks On There is a kind of congruence Two Legs available to us which involves a ‘lining up’ of all aspects of us and My point of departure is the our experiencing, and when, unexceptional observation that instead, parts of us are routinely people come for therapy, just as and habitually ‘out of line’, or Carl Rogers averred, because when a certain situation or they are in a situation of relationship always seems to unbearable incongruence. throw us out of line, then we suffer. This, in my experience, Such incongruence is not usually is the primary reason why just a matter of thinking or feeling clients coming for counselling. one thing and doing or saying another. That is the simplest sort The antidote to at least the last of incongruence, and I doubt that two kinds of incongruence is it alone would bring a person to theoretically very simple: therapy. The incongruence I have awareness and acceptance. The in mind is not even easily kind of congruence Rogers is reducible to the ‘denial and describing above comes—as he distortion’ described in Rogers’ notes in the same unpublished famous 1957 and 1959 papers. paper—when there is deep and This kind of incongruence means bodily awareness and when that I don’t deceive you about there is acceptance of what is what I am thinking and feeling so in awareness. In other words, much as I deceive myself by not counselling is about helping a thinking and feeling what is, as it person to achieve greater were, in me to think and feel. The awareness, acceptance, and kind of incongruence which really self-acceptance. Without these things one stalls; ‘process’

21 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 becomes log-jammed, or in must work with her clients to help Gene Gendlin’s phrase we them achieve the awareness and become “structure bound”. As I acceptance which ease write this, I am thinking it occurs incongruence and lubricate when and because we try to process. She must furnish the control our experiencing—that is kind of relationship which eases what incongruence is—and all we fear and pain and facilitates self succeed in doing is putting a love. monkey wrench into our own works. (Gendlin himself does not These are what I think of as the see ‘structure bound’ and two legs of therapeutic practice: ‘incongruent’ as theoretically equivalent notions, but I am • One leg—the awareness leg— inclined to try to relate them.) is about being with clients in such a way that self-awareness and Why do we do this? Why would self-acceptance are promoted. any half-way sane creature do this to themselves? • The other leg—the relationship leg—is about offering I think the answer is that we fear relationship of the kind which the to be our experiencing, and famous “core” or “counsellor” perhaps we are so constructed conditions point towards. that we cannot fully be our experiencing in the absence of My sense is that over the past acceptant others. Maybe too, fifty years, since Carl wrote his there is a further wrinkle here. formative papers towards the Pain really is hard to bear, and end of the 1950s, these legs have we humans are skilled at keeping diverged until the client/person- our pain at bay. Pain experienced centred/experiential tradition is with another—another we can close to dismemberment. I want trust not to increase our pain or to make a fuss about that and use it to exploit us—is more see if some of us, at least, can’t bearable. Many of us, however, regain a more comfortable have had a preponderance of posture. It seems significant to experiences which demonstrate me that the order in which the that others will add to or use our 1956, 1957, and 1959 papers pain. Therefore, we cannot be were written is the opposite of our pain, and we cannot be our that in which they were published, experiencing. Our very survival and it is the last of the three to depends upon continued be written which most clearly incongruence. evidences the two ‘legs’ and has a distinct ‘focusing feel’ to it. If people come to counselling because of incongruence, or The awareness leg has been because they are structure developed in the work of Gene bound, and fear is heavily Gendlin and the process implicated in all this, and if for experientialists. The relationship most of us being open to our leg was already pretty substantial experiencing really is hard to by the 1960s although the recent achieve in solitude, then the work of Brian Thorne—which counsellor’s job description is draws together person-centred almost a logical deduction. She practice with the apprehension of divine love—adds detail to a

22 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 previously sketchy dimension. of therapeutic modalities. The (See, for example, Thorne 2002.) conviction is supported by my For the most part, however, experience of working at those these developments have different points along the occurred in isolation from each continuum which I have other, and the two legs have been identified: my clinical experience presented separately in the tells me that this way of thinking literature. It is interesting how about the theory makes good little attention writers like sense. Mearns, Thorne, Merry and Sanders have paid to the need There is a little more to add here to help clients achieve greater because it was only while awareness of their experiencing: learning to offer closely held the emphasis has been on the focusing that I first felt that I was relationship. directly and fully experiencing the connection between I don’t know why this has experiential focusing and a occurred, but it seems salutary therapy of loving perception and to me that the two theorist- relationship. The division in my practitioners who have most practice that I had experienced influenced my own work walk until then vanished within three securely upon both legs when with short sessions, and the way that clients and trainees. Gene I offer therapy seemed to have Gendlin oozes ‘core become ‘one thing’. It feels as conditionality’; he is about as though right now this may well ‘person-centred’ as a person can be driving further changes in the get. Brian Thorne is the master way that I offer and conceive of of conversational therapy and, therapeutic accompaniment. Or as I pointed out earlier, this perhaps I should simply say in involves a steady deepening of the way that I conceive of myself the client’s level of awareness. as offering therapy because so Yet Gene talks and writes almost far as I can ascertain my clients exclusively about focusing, and are not aware of any difference… Brian talks and writes almost The point I wish to really highlight exclusively about relationship is this: the practice of closely and loving perception. Why? held focusing was revelatory for Therapeutic practice so obviously me, and I am told by students requires both aspects in equal that it has changed their measure. conception of person-centred practice as well. That was the To put this another way, I am advertisement! persuaded that the client/person- centred/focusing-oriented Open-Centred? tradition is an essentially and originally two-legged creature Of course, everything I am which has become confused and saying here is predicated upon a bit lame over the past half my belief that the standard century. This conviction is my conception of person-centred primary theoretical reason for theory is vitiated by the claim to asserting that conversational ‘necessary and sufficient therapy and meditative focusing conditions’, and by its insistence belong upon the same continuum that the source of all psychic ills

23 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 is those dread conditions of things. She can offer worth. (See Mountford 2006a, interpretations; she can argue 2006b, and 2006c.) In other with her client; she can offer words, I am contemplating a advice…she can do pretty much theory whose centre has rotted whatever—in that moment—will out and saying: Well, actually, help the client achieve awareness there is still a lot of sound wood and acceptance and maintain it left here to build with. If you through time. She can also disagree with that view of consistently operate along the matters, then you may well continuum which stretches disagree with other things that I between conversational therapy am saying. and meditative focusing. To me that feels like an ‘open’ approach I may be contemplating an to therapy, open-centred account of therapeutic practice counselling rather than client or much of which I believe is still person-centred counselling. sound, but I am not sure that what I am contemplating is best Is this also an ‘integrative’ called person-centred approach to counselling ? My counselling. For one thing, as I answer is a definite No. have also recently argued elsewhere, the original person- For one thing, no additional centred recipe for relationship theoretical commitment is holds good for relationship with needed by an open-centred sentient nonhumans and perhaps counsellor; everything I am the whole ‘created order’. For claiming is already either explicit another thing, it isn’t at all clear or inherent in Rogers’ three to me that an effective counsellor papers from the latter 1950s. For is ‘centred’ on their client or any another thing, the counsellor’s other specially privileged object. way of being and way of relating They are centred on, or open to, to the client remains in whatever is moving through their accordance with the conditions awareness or potentially spelled out in the person-centred available to their awareness recipe. It is simply that the open- while with their client. They are centred counsellor no longer there for their client. They are views these conditions as there in the service of their client anything more than a recipe, and much as a trusted mountain she is freer from constraint guide might be, but that does not because she is no longer make them person or client mesmerized by conditions of centred. worth theory and the fear of creating more of the same. Fear What is more, if we lose the cripples counsellors as effectively hallmark person-centred conviction as it cripples their clients. that counselling is all about conditions of worth, and replace That does, I believe, take us it with the assertion that back to what my arm was counselling is about the client’s protesting about in a personal- increasing levels of awareness development workshop, on a and acceptance, then the pleasant Saturday morning in counsellor can justifiably do Norwich, several years ago. some pretty non-person-centred

24 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Bibliography Gendlin, Eugene T. (1981) Focusing second edition. New York: Bantam. Gendlin, Eugene T. (1996) Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy. London: Guilford Press. Mountford, Clive Perraton (2006a) “Open-Centred Ecosophy”, in Campbell Purton and Judy Moore eds. (2006) Spirituality and Counselling: Experiential and Theoretical Perspectives. Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books. Mountford, Clive Perraton (2006b) “Dr. Rogers and the moral umbrella”, Self and Society, Vol 33 No 5 March-April 2006. Mountford, Clive Perraton (2006c) “Take six core conditions…”, Therapy Today, May 2006-Vol 17 No 5. Rogers, Carl (1956) “The Essence of Psychotherapy: Moments of Movement”. Unpublished paper given at the first meeting of the American Academy of Psychotherapists, New York New York, October 20 1956. Rogers, Carl (1957) “The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions of Therapeutic Personality Change”, Journal of Consulting Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1957. Rogers, Carl (1959) “A Theory Of Therapy, Personality, And Interpersonal Relationships As Developed In The Client-Centred Framework” in S. Koch ed. (1959) Psychology: A Study of a Science vol.3. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. Thorne, Brian (1997) The Cost of Integrity. Videotape produced by Center For Counselling Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Thorne, Brian (2002) The Mystical Power Of Person-Centred Therapy. London: Whurr Publishers.

Clive Perraton Mountford teaches a distance education course in environmental ethics for the University of British Columbia, is senior lecturer in counselling and coordinator of the person- centred counsellor training program at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, and is a person-centred and focusing-oriented counsellor in private practice at Counselling People in Norwich. He was born in Stoke on Trent, England, emigrated to Western Canada when he was 18, and continues to make a home in both countries. The contrast seems to fuel his feelings about environmental degradation. E-mail: [email protected].

25 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Petruska Clarkson

31st October 1947 - 21st May 2006

Memories by Hilde Rapp, Alexandra Chalfont, David Boadella, Glynes X. Jacques, Yuko Nippoda and Richard House.

Petruska was by all accounts a remarkable woman. She had a rare gift for touching people’s heart and for creating a therapeutic environment in which people felt safe enough to release and work through deep pain. Petruska had a way of holding people, both emotionally and physically which gave them the courage to come through a transformative experience to a place of metanoia, a change of mind. I have personally witnessed people turn themselves around from facing a painful past in ways that held them captive in a state of victimhood, to finally face forward towards a future full of challenge, but one in which they could feel and be alive, no longer numbed by pain. Petruska sought to bring about a world in which love, truth, beauty, justice and peace could be lived fully, and she sometimes wore the mantle of the prophet, admonishing us to stop dithering, to stop bystanding, and to embrace this commission to live our full potential as human being with courage and sincerity. Petruska set out with great urgency on the path to that frontier of the human project where the brave have always fought against injustice and bureaucracy, convention and mediocrity, small mindedness and all the other fetters which imprison the human spirit. She struggled greatly with her own, sometimes intemperate, frustrations with the inevitable brakes that hold back the chariot that she so hoped would carry psychotherapists to join her there. She could often not muster the compassion for her colleagues that she so readily extended to her clients, when it came to recognizing that the vicissitudes of every day life slow down our progress. Not all of us see our role as that of being embarked on a quest for the philosopher’s stone traveling together as a new fellowship of spiritual warriors. Petruska was loved, and feared, admired and denigrated, much appreciated for her depth, poetry and wisdom, and much misunderstood in her stringent critique and harsh criticism of the profession.

26 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 I fear that she may have been, in the end, too much alone with the task she had set herself, too hesitant to entrust herself to others in the way that she had encouraged others to entrust themselves to her, and perhaps as harsh with herself as she was loving with those who opened their heart to her. Be this as it may, we should respect that Petruska, like all of us, ended her life enveloped in the same mysteries that shroud the twin miracle of those two radical transformations that mark our human span on this earth, our birth and our death. Like all of us, Petruska will take her secrets into the grave with her, and so it should be. In the end, psychotherapy, even when practiced by a great artist like Petruska, is but a small candle in the wind as we stumble through the darkness of our individual and collective ignorance. We need to learn to be content with such light as it does give and neither diminish its importance, nor exaggerate it. We should be able to see enough by it to set our feet on that path that Petruska invited us to follow, to journey where love, truth, beauty and justice come alive as we walk out into that bright field where we finally understand why we are here. Petruska has taken some of that light with her and I hope it helps to light her way to that great unknown we call peace. Hilde Rapp

How You Can Help AHP(B)

In order to help sustain AHP(b) as a healthy organisation with a sustainable future, our focus often needs to be placed on increasing our membership base and attending to the essential task of receiving sufficient income to cover the costs of running AHP(b).

One of the ways in which the costs of producing S&S can be offset is by having paid adverts and leaflet inserts from sources compatible with our humanistic approach. In the past S&S used to have more people wanting to advertise with us than now, so we are looking for a volunteer to help co-ordinate the ads in S&S.

We would also welcome volunteers who would be willing to network with their contacts about advertising with S&S as a way of reaching out to humanistically minded people. And - for those of you who need to advertise your own professional offerings - please do consider S&S when planning where to publicise your events.

If any of these spark an interest for you, please contact Tony Morris on [email protected]

27 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 A Modulation Transfer Function for the Famed One For Petruska Hilde Rapp London 19 March 1992

I am a poet I receive the multiple transmissions of other’s small gestures of relating as they reach out towards the vastness of creation imploring the creator shamed by the significance of the created afraid of the power of fellow creatures such as yourself shining like a jewel in the crown of the profession with a vibrant dark red light which illumines that which is invisible to the untrained eye and which eclipses the light of other beams falteringly searching for their own truths ever worried that if they see too much they will as all great books of wisdom warn be blinded by the power of the revelation

I am a goldsmith forever fashioning suitable settings for those that shine but you like the Gravida forever stride as you shine and shine as you stride breaking out of every setting with a burning passion to commune with that rock that red earth from which you came and which withstands the onslaught of those who mine the rich veins of our creativity that place of wilderness and wildness in which human passions are mere wrinkles on the face of time

Tempeternity is your setting from which you sing to us from the future

28 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 and your voice breaks all glass that glittersMasculinity and is yet not precious stone and only other jewels withstand your song without breaking as they delight in hearing you sing their truths to them from the future

But those other vessels of the sacred fire fashioned from coloured glass will break and spill their precious spark unless they are shielded from the force of your impact

Sooner or later they will cry oh pluck out that jewel from the crown of creation it hurts our sensibilities put out its dark fire and stop its vibrations so that we may be safe from this crystalline voice which admonishes us to be true to our promise and which shames us by exposing our insufficiency to contain a bigger spark and to shine more brightly in our own place in the crown of creation

They will cry bring down that star and let the sky darken so that our gentler subtler fire fairy fire which does not hurt the eyes of the little ones and which does not burn the dimming eyes of the aging and which does not scorch the moist eyes of those yet young in experience even though no longer innocent may play on our walls as we turn the magic lantern 29 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 of our imagoes to cast its lights and shadows to entertain us so we do not become too fearful in the dark nights of the soul

Can you not shield your fire as all the old books of wisdom prescribe can you not clothe your brilliance in the customary veils of modesty so that you do not shame those who dare not desire so much beauty?

Perhaps you cannot bridle your passion perhaps you cannot adumbrate your truths perhaps you must sing and shine like a star and permit others to interpose such filtres and devices as will mask your light and soften your voice in those places where it is not yet decided what is fearful aspiration and what is spiteful denigration of that which is too much alive and ever generative and abundant neither chalice nor blade but fiery liqid stone iridescent with its own mercurial potential ever forming and unforming itself in perpetual responsiveness to its source where creator, creature and created are still one multiplex manifold chaos of all our yesterdays and all our tomorrows

Let me be a modulation transfer function let me bend your light so that it may reach those who wish for illumination yet are afraid of too much brightness let me be a handkerchief over your mouth so that you do not blast the delicate violet with your breath let me be a baffle so that your clarion call

30 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 does not bring down the newly mortared walls of the professional enclave where those as yet undecided shelter from the winds of change

Let me be the screen which knows both sides of the puppet play which sees the performance of the great puppetmaster in all its glorious colours and who hears the gongs in all their clarity and yet modestly translates all that was too brilliant into shadows and all that was too piercing into gentler tones.

Then there will be an audience for your stories even among those who dare not sit on the side of the royal couple but need stories for all that.

I too know how to shine and I still know how to be afraid and so I can shine light onto the fear of shining and I can be afraid of those who fear the light and I can lighten the fear and fear the lightening of responsibility I am not a bystander but I stand by those who are afraid and yet act.

In time I will send you a new handkerchief through which to speak with the soaring clarity of the eagle of farsight and the pearly gentleness of the dove of remembrance to those who shelter from the winds of change behind the arras of accreditation

You must trust me to know how much energy I can transform and by what means I do dare disturb the universe albeit in ways dissimilar to yours I will try again to decode your messages about building a tower in the midst of our professional field from which winged messengers of complex weathersystems may fly out carrying letters which bear the stamp of the Royal Mail even if they never travel in any mailbag to reach their destination. You have, after all taught me well and you were not the first to do so!

31 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Partial recall of Petruska

Alexandra Chalfont

In the early nineties I trained in She supported dialogue generously hypno-psychotherapy, and was with editorial contribution, and familiar with other modalities when I invited her to draft a code vicariously through literature, of ethics for this kind of publication, other fields of work and some self- she responded quickly and experience. A few years later, on enthusiastically. Little wonder - I the quest to choose a had accidentally addressed a psychotherapeutic way of working central area of interest for her: and a training that more fully met ethics. my personal criteria, I published dialogue, a magazine for Shortly after this I found myself psychotherapy trainees. This popping in regularly to work with afforded a perfect opportunity to her as an editorial assistant, interview and talk with some senior particularly on parts of the Ethics practitioners in the field, book. I also decided that I had discovering their values, found a perfect fit for my own personalities and way of working. values and way of learning in her I thought this might be a way to Dieratao psychotherapy course. find my teacher of choice for this Dieratao, learning by enquiry, the time in my life. Petruska was on practitioner as researcher, self- my short list and, after a couple of motivated, self-directed, in rich and phone conversations, opened her invigorating exchange and co- door immediately; we sat there, learning with colleagues from a two women of about the same age, wide spectrum of environments in with very different life-experience, psychotherapy and psychology, and had the sort of discussion inspired by knowledge and which shifts personal worlds, the research from many fields of kind of discussion that Petruska human endeavour and artistry; this was an artist in holding with so was, for a while, to become my many people; with those who had learning as well as my working lost all meaning, as well as those environment. who generated new life meanings Walking into her school, Physis at and discovered hitherto Ealing Common, was to encounter unrecognised connections in old physis both literally and and new knowledge. Here was a metaphorically; early in the woman of blazing intellect, as morning you tripped over an odd widely and deeply informed as I assortment of dogs that ran to could wish, and untrammelled by crowd the entrance, pint sized to the myopia of the single viewpoint. counter-high, clamouring for She spread herself across the greeting; often Petruska would be couch in vivid colours, and laughed squatting at the PC in her dressing the raunchy laugh which let slip her gown, in the day’s first flush of vast appetite for life. creativity, drumming out drafts of

32 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 the latest manuscript, or plucking with the haste of months or weeks. sumptuous blooms from the front Last winter I was in Croatia doing garden. After I arrived she would a spot of training, and learned with disappear to dress for the day’s surprise (I don’t know why with demands, delights and battles. And surprise) that she had also been battles there were, as I witnessed. there not so long before. I During these years she became resolved to get in touch, soon. By uncompromising in her position late Spring I had googled her name toward those colleagues in whom to find Physis had all but she thought to detect ethical disappeared from the web, no imperfection, to such an extent that active address available. Then the eventually some in the profession news that she had chosen her own gently (or perhaps not so gently) time to die. No stopping you doing shook their heads and turned exactly what you want, Petruska. away. As well as her ethics book, How dare you, you cow! That’s it, her book ‘The Bystander’ illustrates though, isn’t it, you do dare. Or her beliefs here vividly, and can despair. What’s left, for me, is the serve as valuable discussion imprint of a friend and inspiring material in any psychotherapy colleague and teacher with pivotal course. influence. Well, like so many others, Petruska, I’ll help Of course, I have almost all her perpetuate the spirit of your work books on my shelf, and I’m in this way or that through my thinking, thank goodness. At least own: through teaching your five- that. For around the turn of the relationship model, through century family and other concerns quoting Rumi, through a tag-line on took me in other directions, and I the training course I’m currently saw her only a couple of times designing: ‘in the spirit of Dieratao after her move from Ealing to – learning by enquiry.’ Thanks. Harley Street, the years passing

Alexandra Chalfont works, inter alia, as a psychotherapist, trainer and translator. She is the founder of ifocus connections, a training consultancy which resources counsellors, psychotherapists, coaches and health professionals in their personal and professional development.

Petruska Clarkson

Petruska was a boundary-crosser, always looking for the next edge to cross. She was a defender and protagonist of double roles and a great de-mythologizer of our superstitions. She understood the depth and complexity of the therapeutic relationship better than many. With her death we say goodbye to a great meta-psychologist.

David Boadella

33 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Quest for a teacher. Glynes X Jacques London. June 2006

Did you prepare yourself, in robes of golden glory, or let deep Bacchanalian strings carry you on your way? Did you choose a good day, Or have a diva sing, that Sunday in May as Amsterdam opened her arms to Spring.

I remember your feet, fit for Michaelangelo marble and keen eye, eager to inspect and hone the power of a word. Someone said your trousers were ripped. “Only Alah is perfect!” you quipped, while putting on your lipstick.

Did you decide there was nothing more to learn or give? Were you tired of being yourself, in this little isolation? Did the Cosmos see you coming with Tristan’s potion Did you toast the Soul’s Eternal Nation?

I wonder how a curious mind turns out its own light Long before that Sunday. Yet in that flicker my darkness made ignition, that marvelous transmission And bore up its sails to new transition.

But sleep. Whatever the reasons or non reasons, Respects or transgressions, secrets or Confessions, set off your boat and may the shores of other destinations bring peace and new devotions.

34 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 My last letter to Petruska Yuko Nippoda

Dear Truska (as you wrote in your last email to me) I think this is a very good way to say goodbye to you. Since I heard about the sad news, it has been extremely difficult for me to come to terms with it. Lots of emotions have come up to me. However, one thing I clearly want to say is - I am feeling very proud and privileged to have known you, shared lots of time with you and learned a lot from you. I enjoyed the experience of working with and for you since 1993, not only in psychotherapy and organisational consultancy, but also research and writing, at metanoia and PHYSIS. Various workshops and particularly Dierotao ‘Learning by Enquiries’ were amazing. Your training was the most exciting I have had. Taking in individual resources and exchanging energy of the participants, I had a transformational experience. I learned how human beings can grow and change through relationships. Coming as I do from a society which emphasises conformity, an individuation process needed to have taken place. Your sensitive and supportive approach enriched my individual strength, and I felt my worth was acknowledged and transformed. The individual tutorials and daily life discussions I had with you were very useful. They helped me enormously to grow and change as a psychotherapist through the relationship with you. I really feel that I was in a privileged position to assist you with your research and also to have co-written a chapter. It was a live learning from experience and it rooted my writing interest. I remember your saying ‘You have writer’s eyes’ when you saw my tired eyes after doing lots of writing. I’m also pleased that I translated your book ‘Gestalt counselling in action’ into Japanese. It is the biggest treasure that I worked with you when you were on top form. I certainly convey that to younger generations. I also thank you for giving me a warm family atmosphere. Both of us are from another country and I felt understood on what it is like to live in another culture. You had amazing parties and dinner parties with your colleagues and friends, which I enjoyed so much. Do you remember that our first dinner party was a Japanese meal? Not only that, you and I and Vincent had meals together sometimes. I remember the three of us went to pick up flowers for your birthday making lots of jokes and laughing. You loved flowers very much. We sometimes went for a walk and played with your dogs. Do you remember that you and me were dancing in the library of your house with 60’s music? I never knew that you were such a good dancer until then. Something I remember is that we exchanged gifts for our birthdays and Christmas. I always had creative ideas for my gifts and you liked them so much. I still have many of your gifts. Some years ago, I was so upset that the parcels from my family in Japan got lost one day. Then you organised people in the training group to contribute small things and put them in the big box and gave it to me as a birthday present. It was truly touching. I was so looking forward to seeing what comes out of the box one after another. You were very caring and generous. I spent an extensive amount of time with you and I have lots of good memories. That’s a shame that I cannot put everything here. They were happy days. Of course, we didn’t always have happy times. We sometimes had disagreements. You showed some anger to me and I did, too. However, we worked it through and dealt with it. Something I valued was that when you were challenged, you thought about it and came back with your answers.

35 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 I came to know many people through you. I am regularly in touch and see them; some of them are long-term friends. I do feel close to them. You moved to Harley Street. I also thought the time came for me to leave the nest. Since then, I didn’t see you as much as before. However, we were still in touch. I had a life-threatening illness and I suffered a lot. You kindly rang me and listened to my agony. Your empathy and very useful information helped me tremendously to go through the difficulties. Then last year, we met again and made very good contact. I always thought I wanted to meet you again and work with you when the opportunity arose. Now I feel utterly sad that I cannot do that any more. When Sue Fish passed away, I felt tremendously sad and a real sense of loss. I remember seeing you at her memorial service. How sad that I am now writing this eulogy to you. I enjoyed working with both of you so much. I think that I am very lucky to have been trained by both of you, who I respect and admire greatly as psychotherapy trainers. I still feel that you just live far away and that’s why I am not seeing you. Then suddenly the reality hits me. You no longer belong to this world. It makes me so sad. What is difficult is that you took your own life. It has affected me so much since then. I have been thinking about life and death on many occasions due to my life-threatening illness. That’s why I still wanted you to live. Bye bye Petruska, I will sign off in the same way as ever. Lots of love as always, Yuko Nippoda

Yuko Nippoda is a UKCP Registered Psychotherapist. She was trained by Petruska Clarkson and worked alongside her for many years, participating in training courses and workshops in psychotherapy, supervision and organisational consultancy, including some joint projects. She also assisted Petruska on the administrative side in the office for many years.

Visit the joint AHP(B), S&S and AHPP stand at the BACP Therapy Today Exhibition Business Design Centre, Islington, London Friday 6 and Saturday 7 October 2006

AHP(B) seminar at 11.30am Saturday 7 October

Details on our website nearer the time. See also www.therapytodayexhibition.com

If you can help on either day contact Tony Morris 020 8788 3928 [email protected]

36 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Memories of Petruska Clarkson Richard House

I can’t say I knew Petruska well - certainly nothing like as much as would be needed to write an authoritative obituary - but our lives did touch from time to time over the past fifteen years of her life, and I would like to share these vignettes of experience as my modest testimony to her professional life.

I first met Petruska at a party held by Sage Publications in the early 1990s (I was one of their freelance editors at the time), to mark the opening of their new offices in Bonhill Street. I travelled to London, quite shy and uncertain of myself in those days - and I remember walking into the room and immediately noticing a tall and strikingly attractive woman whose presence seemed to dominate the room (I guess there were maybe 100-150 people there). I noticed her before I knew that this was indeed Petruska. I somehow briefly introduced myself to her, and she recognised me as someone who had worked on one of her book manuscripts and who had recently had a piece published in Self and Society.

I also remember composing the index for her Handbook of Psychotherapy (which she edited with Michael Pokorny), and it was a pleasure to receive a specially written letter from her through the post (‘those were the pre-email days’!…), thanking me for the quality of the index. In my experience, freelancers rarely received such fulsome acknowledgement, and the kindness and graciousness of this gesture really struck me at the time.

My next and most extensive contact with Petruska was when there was an editorial difficulty over a controversial article I had submitted to Self and Society in the mid-1990s. As a result of this, I went to a weekend workshop she was running on ‘Eros in the Consulting Room’, which made a significant impact on me. Petruska was a brilliant woman with an extraordinary breadth of reading and knowledge. I thought I had a lot of books - until I spent the weekend in her consulting room, shelved wall-to-ceiling on all four sides with the most impressive collection of books imaginable. Petruska went out of her way to comment on and support the article I had submitted to the journal. The article was ultimately published (see S&S, 23 (2), 1995, pp. 34-9), and Petruska’s strong support of it was very affirming at what was a challenging time for me.

Several years ago, Petruska was also very kind to write a major review of my book Therapy Beyond Modernity. And while her review has not yet found its way

37 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 into print, it was massively encouraging to me that someone of her stature had clearly read the book deeply and, notwithstanding its inevitable shortcomings, had really understood and concurred with the counter-cultural arguments what I was trying to develop in it. It was only after the book came out (in 2003) that I discovered that Petruska had been arguing similar things in some of her own writings, and I now really regret not having quoted her work more extensively in the book - which in retrospect makes her review of the book all the more generous. Yvonne Bates and I were also delighted that Petruska agreed to include a chapter from her book on ‘the transpersonal’ in our Ethically Challenged Professions anthology.

I know nothing of the circumstances of Petruska’s death, other than that she took her own life (which, as my friend Grace Lindsey Cook reminded me recently, can be very different indeed from ‘suicide’ as conventionally understood). I also didn’t know her on a personal level, though I am aware of the professional difficulties in which she became embroiled, and the challenges she launched at the allegedly double standards of many of those involved in the therapy institutions. But what is surely incontrovertible is that Petruska made a major and lasting contribution to the development of therapy in Britain and beyond - and I sincerely hope that any enemies that she may have made in the course of her sometimes controversial career will be able to recognise and value the magnitude of her contribution to understanding and extending this difficult work that we strive to do.

Richard House is Senior Lecturer in the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education at Roehampton University and also works with the early years in Norwich Steiner School as a Kindergarten and Parent & Child Group leader.

John Rowan’s newly revised Guide to Humanistic Psychology reviews, promotes and critiques humanistic psychology in today’s world. It is essential reading for all those interested in human development.

Published by UKAHPP as part of their 25th Anniversary Celebration

The Guide it is available to members of AHP(B) at the special price of £3.75 inc. p&p. Send a cheque payable to AHP(B), or pay online on the Membership Details page of the website, addresses inside the front cover.

None members should purchase by cheque for £5.75 payable to UKAHPP from UKAHPP Box BCM AHPP London WC1 3XX T: 0345 660326 [email protected] www.ahpp.org

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Many psychotherapists and others have asked me : How do you introduce the transpersonal into a psychotherapy session? I have always been rather surprised by this question for two reasons (a) I do not see how any healing can take place without the transpersonal - I surely do not do it myself! and (b) how can you do therapy of any kind without knowing how this unique person makes sense of their life - and inevitable death?

So at the initial consultation I someone responds by saying: I almost invariably ask the client think this life is all there is and (or clients) what I have come to we just have to make the most call the meaning of life of it, I have been given an question. The words may differ answer which is at least as (and depending on whom I am perhaps more) important than speaking to and their own their GP number or whether they particular language, but the are currently taking drugs or question is essentially very medication. Other examples are: simple: ‘what are your ideas about the meaning of your life?’ ‘I was just born cursed, unlucky or ‘What is your you religious or in every way’ could indicate a spiritual background?’or ‘How do fatalism which could be very you make sense of what has destructive to our work together happened to you?’ - particularly if supported by a belief in a psychologically No one has ever found this question damaging kind of fatalistic strange or uncomfortable. Even if astrology.

39 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 ‘The cause of all my trouble in 1. It identifies which language relationships is that my mother that unique client uses to refer died at birth’ can indicate her to ultimate issues and important way of understanding life’s values. I can either join them in dilemmas around which we can the conversation using together begin to build a information from my previous conversation around the way this knowledge or inform myself particular client construes her through questions, reading, world. films, consultation with people who know more about it than I ‘You know, I was very devoutly do - and there are always those. Christian as a child, but after a priest abused me sexually, I 2. It often acts as the very best completely lost all faith in myself, screening question in the mutual God and life itself. I just can’t see assessment of suitability for the point of it all.’ This client could psychotherapy between therapist be indicating a very serious and clients. As the examples suicidal risk - a vital part of above show, the psychotherapist assessment and far more can get quite precise indications indicative and likely to facilitate of psychosis, rigidity, lack of a further frank discussion than meaning (existential anomie), clinically asking: ‘Are you suicidal or homicidal tendencies contemplating suicide?’ in short how the client construes his or her world. ‘The devil sent me because God wants me to kill all prostitutes’. 3. It creates a mutual frame The potential danger to self and of reference to which we can others along with the disordered both refer in our work in future. thinking mandates extreme For example, if someone uses the caution in continuing to see this I Ching (an ancient Chinese form person. of divination which Jung also used) this information gets ‘The British government has logged in the psychotherapist’s ruled that I cannot take the body resources for future use. There of my dead child home to be may come a difficult time in the buried in the ancestral grounds psychotherapy where the client and now I will never rest, has forgotten that they have had because his spirit cannot come good guidance from the I Ching to peace.’ The cultural (Wilhelm, 1951) in the past - and background needs to be the psychotherapist can explored and respected while remember and remind the client anticipating serious of this resource in their personal transferences around issues of repertoire at a most crucial time. racism, colonial exploitation and what the Australian aborigines 4. Extensive research from MIND call ‘the stolen generation’. (a mental health organisation for people who have been ‘users’ of Why is this ‘meaning of life’ the psychiatric system) has question so important? In no repeatedly found that some form particular rank order, here are of spiritual, religious, some of the reasons: transpersonal perspective on life for is - according to the people

40 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 themselves - more important in meaning, beliefs and spiritual recovery and health practices to be brought into the maintenance than - and psychotherapy - if and when the certainly more than psychotrophic client wants to. The medication. To ignore this transpersonal dimension of dimension of human experience human experience becomes or make it ‘undiscussable’ in discussable - whether in art, psychotherapy is therefore to nature, science, service to refuse to use a major source of others or whatever. strength and courage for the individual. I believe this also has This is an extremely important ethical implications. point because so many clients have told me they felt and 5. Individual exploration of what clearly understood (through the meanings different names/labels/ silence of their therapists or words have for that unique client analysts on these matters or their at that particular time (and it may ignoring of such subjects when change) can reduce collective or the client brought them up) that cultural countertransferences such things ‘don’t belong in of the psychotherapist and aid psychotherapy’. As I have shown the process of ‘bracketing’ off elsewhere (Clarkson, 1995a p. p. previous assumptions, simplistic 170 180), the therapist’s understanding, superficial imposition of their own values on knowledge and so on. (Don¹t the client happens as much expect your client to ‘teach’ you through what is not spoken in their time to correct, for about and non-verbally example your racist distortions; conveyed than what is actually rather make your own friends in said. that cultural community.) 7. It helps to establish the If the psychotherapist has, for psychoanalyst or psychotherapist’s example, in the past been awareness of the limits of their personally abused by a competency. This is a Protestant minister, or has requirement in most, if not all, ‘escaped’ from an oppressive professional ethics codes and Catholic background, or is facilitates responsible referral or struggling with an arranged the need for additional resources. marriage, the psychotherapist If you are not comfortable needs to work through their real dealing with ambiguity, or potential countertransferential ‘unknowing’, paradox or distortions (or biases) by means simultaneous contradiction, refer of their own therapy and/or the client to people who are. I supervision or spiritual direction. am not personally in a position This is part of the psychological to support a mother whose ten- cleansing which every client year old daughter is being taken deserves from their to have her clitoris and vaginal psychotherapist. lips amputated by a Harley Street surgeon. (‘Female 6. It indicates right from the first circumcision’ like ‘friendly fire’ - session that there is place in the is a nominative euphemism psychotherapist’s world view which blurs the physiological and which allows for values,

41 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 emotional impact of the real facts examples of fine sources of for particular normative groups.) inspiration.

8. It helps to establish the need 10. Finally, through the meaning- for additional resources or of-life question death and expert consultation. I am not dying becomes available in authorised to conduct an the consulting room - or exorcism or to deliver absolution wherever the psychotherapy is in the confidential safety of the taking place. All religions and confessional. However, I know spiritual traditions contain psychologically informed people narratives or stories about in most religious traditions who living and dying – ‘the are. (Priests for example cannot meaning of it all’. When faced be forced by the law to disclose with major life decisions (such as information received in the abortion, marriage, divorce, confessional; psychotherapists forgiveness, ‘making amends’, can and have been.) emigration, a dementing parent, a genetic heritage of breast 9. It frequently is a rich and cancer or some other kind of fatal valuable source of personally disease, the psychological meaningful metaphors for the aftermath of natural disasters, client which can be used, or involvement in a war, a change referred to later as the client of vocation) it is sometimes rewrites or enlivens their own helpful to ask the client (in personal life story or myth. whichever language they would Murray Cox and Thielgard (1987) prefer) to imagine what they in their wonderful book ‘Mutative would have wished they had Metaphors’ demonstrates done now if they were on their movingly and convincingly how deathbed many years hence. the introduction of Shakespearean characters and And if someone does not have images can change even the access to, or does not want to most psychiatrically disturbed avail themselves of, the rich criminal inmates of a prison like hoard of cultural, religious, Broadmoor. The language of artistic, poetic, scientific or astrology or archetypal myths natural stories of our earth, they (such as Jamaican folklore or will still have to find some kind Bolen’s (1984) work on the of meaning for their lives to get archetypes of Greek Gods and through the nights when the Goddesses in every person are despair and pain of being human becomes overwhelming.

Further Reading:

Victor Frankl; Man’s Search For Meaning Beacon Press.

The excerpt above is taken from Petruska Clarkson: (2002) The Transpersonal Relationship in Psychotherapy - The Hidden Curriculum of Spirituality. London: Whurr.

42 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Self and Society. AGM and Workshop

Being and Becoming 20th May 2006

A Personal Review of the Workshop Glynes X Jacques

How do we find a common denominator in a value system of diversity? Should we have commonality? Does this contradict the philosophy of individuality and personal difference?

I went to the AGM because of the people in this room. Who are this workshop title ‘Being and group of AHP(B) people? Where Becoming: a celebration’. Any do they all come from? AGM launching the day with a Els gives us our next instruction. promising workshop, will get We are going to make a collage. written into my diary. ‘Make a visual representation of In this workshop led by AHP(B) what being humanistic means to member Els van Ooijen we were you.’ We take magazines. Glue asked to put our names on a and felt tips. The room becomes sticker and say how we were a buzz of intense tearing and feeling. We mingle and introduce snipping. I’m not sure how long ourselves. I discover only a I ripped and pasted but it was all handful know each other. Our too brief. I reluctantly join a small workshop leader breaks us up group to discuss my groping and we return to the circle. I focus abstractions. We are to find ‘one on the central theme of how we word themes’ in our creations. work as humanistic therapists. Four heads stare at the colourful We are guided through a body images that lay on the floor. ‘This relaxation meditation. I am is the dark and the light.’ ‘This is given a brief space to settle into my humour.’ ‘This is me my own private world. Just as I struggling for potential.’ I scribe am getting into myself, I am a few of the key words, trying to asked to focus on my clients. I balance compliance and a desire balk, I am not the slightest bit for rebellion. Desire for space to interested in my clients. I am explore our personal images the much more interested in the way we want to, (client led)

43 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 The AGM Photo Album

44 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 against complying with the collective nouns, which were leader’s instructions to ‘find one neither nouns, nor collective. No word’ Now we must call them matter. I am actually enjoying out. Which words could be myself. There is a kind of grouped together? Els collected enjoyable anarchy, a critical in the word stickers, grouping mass, which is forming its own them by similarity, energy, momentum. The rebel is loose movement, etc. and part of the field. Participation is a central, important Now we are asked to find a experience, rather than believing collective noun, which sum up we are conducting objective these random words. What is the research. collective noun for, seeing, witness, view? What seems to I reflect on the nature of this matter here is the mutual participation. In the spirit of collaboration of identifying humanistic practice participation themes. At this point I am does not have to be active. And conducting an inner philosophical not everyone in this little group debate about how groups is active. For those who are conform to instructions with doers, it is sometimes hard to enormous trust and good will. We learn from the quieter reflective allow external process to be sections and give up the driven imposed without explanation. part of themselves. ‘But who How interesting that we can find would write the reports, be the our own private reasons for Chair etc?’ I hear you shout. going along with suggestions. At Perhaps it is our own shadow, the same time, there is a quiet that while we support clients to body of active thought. I wonder take a step back occasionally, we if these are qualities of the don’t trust our own organisation humanistic position, a willingness to thrive if we give up our to explore and experiment established identities. I am without sacrificing the ability to looking at something of a reflect and assess. microcosm in this room.

Now we have a list of words Next we are asked to place our described as collective nouns collages on the ground, moving them near to, or away from Actualisation. Spiritual others according to their degree Dimension. Amazement. of relationship. Then we stand in Witness. Now. Energy and positions which represent where Being. Interpretation. we feel we belong in the Acceptance. Love of Life. organisation. We are going at a gallop. A web of bodies emerges Now we have to grade them by from a central figure. Perhaps, placing stickers beside the needless to say, I am on the outer qualities we feel to be the most boundaries, a ‘one-foot out and important. As a random slice of one in’ kind of position. time, it is quite interesting to Connected and observing. watch who chooses which words. None of my words actually Something else is forming here. appear. They were all lost in the There is an atmosphere being fictional translation called created in the very process of

45 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 participation. A sense of sense of presence, moments belonging to something created by being part of a important, even from the edges. collective. I feel moved and look out into the leafy London square. From this position I experience I feel a sense of looking at a past palpable warmth, which fills the and a future. That all groups room. This collective quality is change is a phenomenological not easily accountable on paper. truth. This seemed to be a It is a field created by the moment readying for new phenomenon of group process. change. A holding energy is formed by a

Recording History. A digital film This brings me to an offer to take this idea further. That much of our collective and individual experience is not accessible is a fact. Few of us write books or papers. I would like to invite participants to share their feelings, thoughts and philosophies about humanistic practice in a documentary film. This is a wide definition, which includes how you apply your humanistic belief to your loves, life and politics. There are many creative ways you can do this. Be interviewed, do a voice over, write a letter, a questionnaire, or other piece that someone else reads or answers, participate in a discussion. Any inventive way to communicate which reflects your relationship to humanistic practice will be considered for contribution. A loose initial deadline for all submissions is Sept 30th 2006. I hope to begin filming for this in the Autumn. Anyone who would like to take other roles, like organising the shooting schedule (this means ringing people up) will be welcome. Glynes X Jacques Please email or phone me for more information. [email protected] 07766 082272

46 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Mike Fitter is a chartered psychologist the and IPN member. regular He practices as an organisational psychologist and can be contacted COLUMN by email [email protected] Mike Fitter

This week I returned from France, two weeks at the Amida retreat centre, an intensive period receiving teachings on the Larger Pure Land sutra, training in Buddhist ministry, and participating in the day to day life of a lively community.

After this contribution, I hand over the Regular Column to the next writer. I realise I’ve been its author now for nearly two years. Checking back my first piece was about the challenges of leadership and the creative edge between structure and chaos. That seems relevant to my stay in France. Developing knowledge and skills in Buddhist ministry significantly requires development of leadership qualities, particularly in the ceremonial aspects. I’ve been learning about the ritualised forms conducted by the celebrant. I’ve enjoyed holding this role, working in close co-ordination with the bell- master, the two roles together, depending on the way they are held, substantially affecting the spiritual experience of participants. Of course one ‘lets the robes’ do the work, but that requires ‘getting the self’ out of the way, which means really drawing on one’s practice to deal with performance anxiety – at least for me, in the past having tended to think of myself as a rather shy person who avoids being the focus of attention. It’s exciting too to have the opportunity to explore and experiment with variations of the ritual forms, creating new forms that might suit a particular group, for example beginners. The experimental process requires acting at that edge between structure and chaos.

In the occasional periods of free time I enjoyed opportunities to explore the French countryside, beautiful and unchanging over many decades in this overlooked region of central France, a place that tourists rarely visit. It seems that this year sunflowers have become the agricultural crop of choice. There are field after field of them, must be hundreds of thousands, even more than came to hear the Buddha lecture in his heyday! During an evening stroll it’s quite a sight to see a field of many thousand, all looking as one to the East, waiting for tomorrow’s sunrise. When we arrived in France they were all standing tall, upright, giving a sense of optimism, of hope for the coming day – having total trust, like faithful disciples. It’s hard to describe what a deeply uplifting emotional experience this was, one could only watch and admire for a considerable time. How much the contrast then on the evening before leaving France. Their heads were beginning to droop, a community whose time is passing, giving an overwhelming sense of sadness, of disappointment even (plenty of scope for projection here), of days gone, of a life lived. A bittersweet quality, life’s like that. 47 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Contentions Steve King

The Disconnectedness of Men

Women come out of women. When they’re old enough they realise they are the same thing they came out of.

Men come out of women. When they’re old enough they realise they are not the same thing they came out of.

With women there is a line of direct connectedness that reaches back all the way to the first woman. With men there is no direct line of connectedness. But an entire patriarchal social and economic system has been erected and maintained largely to create the impression that one does exist.

This illusion is powerful and functions to protect men from the anxiety and pain of disconnection by providing an image of a connectedness that does not exist. Letting go of it is hard, but it must be done before men can discover their true connectedness.

This is a developmental bottleneck for the whole race. Trapped by the illusion, we have a situation in which men are given the choice of two defective models of masculinity.

The first is the traditional patriarchal. It is by nature disconnected.

The second is the illusion of connectedness. To be completely accurate, it is only partly an illusion. The valid part is the idea that men can connect in a way that is real and profound. This is true. However, the illusion is that it is the same way that women connect and this is a denial of the fundamental disconnectedness of men

This is the trap in which the so-called ‘new man’ is caught. He is not fully male nor can he be female. It is tragic and paradoxical because while it is fuelled by the healthy desire to mature and connect, it involves a backward step towards identification with the mother, a refusal, finally, to separate, differentiate and grow up.

Given that this is the choice presented to most men, and that there is so little awareness that there is a third choice, once the abyss of disconnectedness is crossed, is it any wonder that we are stuck?

01364 642041 [email protected]

48 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 AHP(B) page Tony Morris Tony Morris

A major commitment engenders great change

In the previous issue of S&S I reported that helpers, and new energy, had emerged from the AGM. Hence we are currently contacting volunteers to lead one day workshops in the near future, something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. And I’m delighted to say that Julian Nangle is devoting a huge amount of effort and enthusiasm to organising a AHP Festival in 2007. We were going to call it a conference, but a festival, a celebratory event, is more in line with our aims and the humanistic way of being. It’s going to be exciting, interesting (no talk’n’chalk, or PowerPoint slides!) and with engagement with others; just like the old days when the humanistic movement was the new kid on the block. We are close to deciding a venue, dates, facilitators and activities, with an announcement coming in the next S&S.

Many small efforts build security

In contrast, with the previous S&S we included over 500 forms to members whose tax status we don’t know, so that they can sign and return it, so that Anton can compile Gift Aid claims. Did you get a form? Did you dismiss it? Because, heartbreakingly, fewer than 20 of the 500 have been returned. So if the notice below applies to you, then please take 5 minutes, a stamp and envelope, and respond. Launching workshops and the festival not only requires time and effort, but secure finances. So please provide us with the monies to do so with confidence and peace of mind.

The Tax Man Giveth as well as Taketh Away

Donate £9 to AHP(B) for the cost of a stamp.

We can receive over £9 per year in Gift Aid from almost all members, without you having to make a donation. But only if we know if you’re a UK tax payer. And we only know this for a small proportion of the members. So we’re losing a huge source of income that could totally transform our finances.

So, if we don’t know your tax status, there will be a Gift Aid form with your copy of this S&S. So PLEASE, look for it, sign it and post it, even if not a UK tax payer. If you’ve mislaid it, then ask Anton for another.

If you’ve previously signed our Gift Aid form then thank you, we’ve already made claims on your behalf.

49 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Self SOCIETY& Reviews Help for the Helper (Self Care Strategies for Managing Burnout and Stress) By Babette Rothschild with Marjorie Rand pp253 Pub Norton (£18.99)

Although I have previously heard a lot about Babette Rothschild’s work in the field of post-traumatic stress and in spite of (or was it because of) being both a body orientated psychotherapist and a graduate in neuroscience, I have not yet read any of her books. When it was suggested that we review her latest contribution in S&S I decided that I’d take the opportunity to find out more about her work.

For therapists and counsellors to look after themselves is, at the same time, a basic given on all good training courses and an idea neglected by both new and experienced practitioners. Part of this may well be intrinsic to our motivation to become helpers and it is this ‘helping others and neglecting ourselves’ process which needs to be explored by every trainee therapist and counsellor. This is especially true of those who aim to work ‘at relational depth’ and is yet another argument for personal therapy as an integral part of counselling/psychotherapy training.

The strength of Babette Rothschild’s book is that it locates the relational involvement, empathy, countertransference, projective identification etc, firmly in the body. The ‘strategies’ referred to in the subtitle, encourage the therapist/counsellor to be aware of her body processes and of their changes in response to what is being worked on in the therapy room.

I’m less comfortable with the neuroscience. This isn’t new for me as I’ve been aware of other writers who are currently linking neuroscience and psychotherapy and have mixed feelings about their work too. Here my difficulty is with the idea of monitoring brain processes of which, by definition, we are unaware. My question is ‘Do we really need to think in terms, say, of ANS arousal when monitoring our process with clients? What is wrong with breathing, tension, posture and general “felt sense”?’ Having said this, I can appreciate that, for those with less background in physiology, the detailed explanation of the neurophysiological processes can do much to normalise a counsellor or therapist’s inexplicable bodily responses to working with traumatised clients.

Help for the Helper consists of four main chapters, flanked by an introduction and a conclusion. The first chapter sets out the risk to therapists who work at relational depth with clients. It gives definitions and a brief history of commonly observed phenomena in the counselling relationship such as empathy, projective identification and countertransference. Empathy is usually thought to be

Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 50 advantageous in promoting relational depth, but Babette Rothschild identifies the danger of ‘empathising too much’ particularly when working with trauma victims. This chapter also contains definitions of commonly used expressions such as ‘compassion fatigue’,’ burnout’ and ‘vicarious traumatisation’. In its context, the information in this chapter is new, but, in a wider context it is, as Babette says in her introduction, ‘common sense’. Human beings are intensely relational and feel each other’s feelings to an alarming extent. If this were not true, drama, music and poetry would make no sense at all.

Chapter two looks at the neurophysiology of empathy. It gives a detailed picture of the functioning of the nervous system and substantiates the concept of empathy as a somatic phenomenon. This chapter also includes a ‘skill-building’ section which gives strategies for controlling the usually unconscious process of mirroring between client and counsellor. The concept of somatic empathy is again, by no means new. Nathan Field’s excellent paper, ‘Listening with the body’, written I think in the 1960’s was groundbreaking in its time, but has been little followed or developed. Perhaps his concept of ‘somatic countertransference’ was contentious, particularly as it focussed on sexual arousal and therefore erotic countertransference.

I’m not sure about the assumption behind the skill-building section in this chapter, which seems to be that too much empathy is bad and must be controlled. I prefer Mearns and Cooper’s more flexible approach. In essence, this suggests that the therapist needs to be aware of the effects of working relationally with trauma victims, but must then make a conscious choice to either move into that relationship or to stay nearer to the edge of it.

The third chapter is on arousal/calmness and is again subdivided into theory and practical sections. I found the case histories and practical exercises most useful, but the psychophysiological description of arousal is also beneficial. I particularly liked the section on boundaries and distance. Some humanistic trainees, in an endeavour to empower their clients, are reluctant to have any input into the distance at which they sit. Perhaps it is important to negotiate this, but we, as the therapists, need to feel ok in order to do our job effectively.

The fourth chapter is on the psychophysiology of clear thinking and is particularly important. Being able to think, as well as to feel, is a balance which is difficult to achieve both for the individual therapist and for those involved in training. Contemporary academic culture prizes thinking over intuition and feeling and it is important to redress that imbalance. In this chapter, Babette Rothschild is more concerned about allowing the brain to function in the presence of trauma or stress. This includes being able to make assumptions about our overall emotional state as therapists and I particularly liked the ‘self- history’ exercise which is worth repeating however experienced we are or however much ‘work’ we’ve done on ourselves.

Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 51 Babette Rothschild concludes her book by revisiting some of the concepts she’s dealt with in the body of the book and including a brief case history which illustrates the strategies she has discussed earlier.

Overall, I found Help for the Helper very readable book with some thought-provoking strategies and exercises. I shall certainly be using some of them, but others I found more geared towards control than suits my style of practice. Certainly I would recommend Help for the Helper to anyone working with trauma victims and especially to those without a background in either bodywork or neuroscience.

Geoff Lamb holds a first class degree in neuroscience and completed a bodywork training with Tricia Scott in 1985.

The Integrity Model of Existential Psychotherapy in Working with the ‘Difficult Patient’. Lander, N.R. & Nahon, D. (2005) (pp232) £18.99 London and New York : Routledge.

Nedra Lander and Danielle Nahon have produced both a fine tribute to the legacy of the late Hobart Mowrer and a potent example of how the ideas and practices of a distinguished psychologist can be developed and fashioned for a new generation.

One of Mowrer’s key beliefs was that our vulnerabilities are really our greatest strengths. This book is a powerful example of that belief in action. The authors have been prepared to put their own professional and personal struggles on the line and to allow the reader to enter the heart of what it means to offer another human being a relationship where there is no facade and no retreat into techniques or pseudo expertise. Instead, the writers demonstrate what it means to remain resolutely faithful to their own values and to see human unhappiness and dysfunction as principally caused by a failure to live out such fidelity. The relationships they describe are characterised by a closeness of relating which gives fresh and invigorating meaning to Buber’s concept of the I-thou encounter. They also demonstrate that there is such a thing as healthy and appropriate guilt within both client and counsellor and that this needs to be addressed, not in a spirit of judgementalism but with the deep acceptance which is the mark of stern love. In short, this is a book which encapsulates the existential approach to experience at its best. There is no pretence and no evasion. Instead there is a willingness to engage at the deepest level and not to be afraid. No wonder that the writers record such outstanding success with those who are often the most damaged and present therapists with their most intractable challenges.

The importance of honesty in relationships is clearly not a new concept, but the importance of Lander and Nahon’s contribution lies in their insistence that honesty alone is not sufficient within the therapeutic relationship. Honesty needs to be deployed responsibly and not used, as is often the case in social interaction, in order to blame the other or in some way to point a finger of accusation. What

52 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 is more in Lander and Nahon’s Integrity Model, great emphasis is placed on closing the psychological space with others. In some ways it could be claimed that their manner of working makes the creation of intimacy not only desirable but essential, especially in the case of those who are badly damaged or have earned some of the most powerful psychiatric labels. It is an intimacy, however, which in no way imposes itself or violates the other’s being. On the contrary, it is a closeness which by its commitment and willingness to be vulnerable honours the other’s identity and cherishes the opportunity to enter into relationship with them. For those who have perhaps been diagnosed, labelled and held at arm’s length the restorative power of such intimacy can be quickly discerned. Lander and Nahon’s moving case studies leave the reader in no doubt that here is a mode of working which can establish contact and bring new hope for those who have languished, perhaps for years, under the burden of diagnostic labels such as personality disorder, antisocial personality, addict, schizophrenic and post-traumatic stress disorder. The same three-fold principle of holding resolutely to cherished values, of maintaining a sense of profound responsibility and of seeking to close the psychological space is shown to be equally effective when applied to the resolution of cross-cultural difficulties and international conflicts. Final chapters are also devoted to an exploration of the Integrity Model within the context of the workplace, and in its application to issues arising from burnout and organizational stress.

The book is unlikely to be popular in current psychotherapeutic circles. In an age which seems to demand quick-fix solutions and is wedded to the so-called empirically validated approaches, Nedra Lander and Danielle Nahon present an altogether different path. It is not a path that will be entered on by the faint-hearted, for it demands of the therapist of whatever tradition a level of commitment, vulnerability and courage which our current culture does little to encourage. On the contrary, their book is likely to be dismissed as naive, lacking in scientific rigour or even as arrogantly grandiose. Perhaps such accusations are inevitable for here are two therapists who are bold enough to put their own life stories on the line (and their own professional relationship) and to state unequivocally that the practice of counselling and psychotherapy is essentially an ethical, moral and spiritual undertaking. They go further and join Ernesto Spinelli in not only allowing but inviting the ‘world dimension’ into the therapeutic relationship. If what we do as therapists in the privacy of our consulting rooms has no relevance to the current violence, anguish and bitter hostility within the global community it is perhaps wholly appropriate to question its validity. Lander and Nahon’s book seeks to present a healthy form of relatedness which not only includes those who are often placed at the extreme end of the psychiatric continuum but has profound implications for couples, families, the workplace and even for international relations. Those who accuse them of naiveté, grandiosity and evangelical zeal are, I suspect, unwittingly pointing to the book’s importance and seditious power.

Brian Thorne

53 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 CLASSIFIED

Body-language in the therapeutic encounter. A theoretical, clinical and experiential opportunity to explore the place of COUNSELLING CREATIONS the body in the therapeutic Consulting rooms to let dialogue. Facilitated by Asaf Rolef Join a new counselling Ben-Shahar (UKCP reg). centre in Hackney, £8-10.00 individual For more info or booking form see £10-15.00 group rooms. www.imt.co.il or contact Maja Flexible contracts 07733-074321 [email protected] or Asaf 01707-661501 [email protected] Call 07766 082272 for detailsand viewing. 13-14 October 2006, The Open Centre, Old Street, London EC1V 9FR £120, booking essential.

Have your own details on the AHP(B) website

For members who offer a humanistically oriented service (not only therapy) you can have your details on our Links page of the website, including links to your own email address and website, or your postal address if not online.

Details and a brief description of your services must be under 50 words and should be emailed or posted to

Tony Morris [email protected] 6 Burston Road Putney SW15 6AR T: 020 8788 3929

54 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Founded in 1823 and based in Bloomsbury, Birkbeck has an excellent reputation for providing high quality part-time courses. Educating busy Londoners

Certificate & Diploma in Psychoanalytic Psychology

I Come and study a range of courses on psychoanalytic themes I Build up a portfolio of modules and earn a certificate or diploma I All courses university validated and CPD relevant I Courses start in September, January and April.

September and January course titles and start dates:

I Freudian Foundations of Psychoanalysis (Tuesday evening - 26 September and Friday morning - 29 September) I Jung & Analytical Psychology (Tuesday evening - 26 September) I Klein & Object Relations (Friday evening - 29 September) I Existential Psychotherapy (Thursday evening - 28 September) I Narcissism & Depression (Wednesday evening - 27 September) I Memory & Remembering (Monday evening - 25 September) I Psychoanalysis & Leadership (Wednesday evening - 10 January) I Search for Meaning - Victor Frankl (Thursday evening - 11 January) I Passion & Obsession (Monday afternoon - 8 January) I Psychoanalysis & Film (Monday evening - 8 January) I Meaning of Fairy Tales (Tuesday evening - 9 January)

And more...

For full details, a prospectus and enrolment information call 020 7631 6604/6602; e-mail: [email protected]; website: www.bbk.ac.uk/ce/psychology Body, Movement & Dance in Psychotherapy An International Journal for Theory, Research and Practice New for 2006 - inaugural issue now available

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Dr Helen Payne - University of Hertfordshire, UK

Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy is a new international, peer- reviewed journal exploring the relationship between body and mind and focusing on the significance of the body and movement in the therapeutic setting. It is the only scholarly journal wholly dedicated to the growing fields of body (somatic) psychotherapy and dance movement therapy. The body is increasingly being recognized as a vehicle for expression, insight and change. The journal encourages broad and in-depth discussion of issues relating to research activities, theory, clinical practice, and professional development. Topics in forthcoming issues: Body Psychotherapy and Dance Movement Therapy as these areas relate to the following: Children and adolescents; Families; Couples; Touch; Trauma; Assessment, Observation and evaluation; Research; Body image and identity; Training and supervision; The limits and opportunities of the body; The sacred and the body; Psychosomatics; Mind-body interrelationship; The Arts.

SUBSCRIPTION RATES 2006- Volume 1 (2 issues per year) Print ISSN 1743-2979; Online ISSN 1743-2987 Institutional rate (print and online) US$161; £92 Institutional rate (online only): US$153; £87 Personal rate (print only): US$52; £30 Society Rate: US$25; £15; AU$39; EUR21 Student Rate: US$25; £15; AU$39; EUR21

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56 Self & Society Vol 34 No 2 Sept - Oct 2006 Self & Society is published by the Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain, a charity whose purpose is the promotion of humanistic ideals in everyday life.

Become a member of AHP(B) for £36pa and receive Self & Society every two months. Membership entitles you to priority bookings and reduced fees for AHP(B) workshops and conferences; access to website copies of S&S and enables AHP(B) to promote the principles of humanistic psychology. The Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain AHP(B) BM Box 3582 London WC1N 3XX Tel: 08457 078 506 [email protected] www.ahpb.org.uk

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Self & Society is published in July, September, November, January, March and May.

Commencement of Postage# Individual Organisation Student Membership and Free in Membership Membership Membership* number of issues of UK S&S before renewal Dir Dir Cheque Dir Debit Cheque Cheque Eur Othr the following July Debit Debit July-Aug. £36.00 £33.00 £48.00 £42.00 £24.00 £21.00 £6 £12 6 Issues, a full year Sept.-Oct. £30.00 £27.50 £40.00 £35.00 £20.00 £17.50 £5 £10 5 Issues until renewal Nov.-Dec. £24.00 £22.00 £32.00 £28.00 £16.00 £14.00 £4 £8 4 Issues until renewal Jan.-Feb. £18.00 £16.50 £24.00 £21.00 £12.00 £10.50 £3 £6 3 Issues until renewal Mar.-Apr. £12.00 £11.00 £16.00 £14.00 £8.00 £7.00 £2 £4 2 Issues until renewal May-June £6.00 £5.50 £8.00 £7.00 £4.00 £3.50 £1 £2 1 Issue until renewal

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The Association for Humanistic Psychology in Britain - AHP(B)

Humanistic psychology explores and promotes a holistic understanding of people as individuals, and in communities and organisations, within society and culture. It values people as whole beings, though comprising many interacting parts, body, feelings, thoughts, senses, imagination and spirit. Such exploring offers a deeper knowledge of what it is to be human, where difference is an opportunity for learning, growth and expansion. This understanding of human potential is both positive & facilitative. The .. humanistic movement sees us as organically trying to become more integrated and more ... whole. It encourages authenticity, spontaneity, personal responsibility, creativity, love, ... good will and personal power. This enables people, communities and organisations to .. create and control their lives with integrity and with sensitivity to others and to the world.

AHP(B) started in Britain in the 1960s as part of an international grouping of associations interested humanistic psychology. AHP(B) seeks to act as a forum for ordinary people hoping for a more conscious and humane society, and for those striving to be human in a a rapidly changing world. Membership includes a subscription to S&S and occasional activities include workshops, festivals and conferences. s Self & Society is AHP(B)’s lively bi-monthly journal containing articles, essays, book reviews and letters and is our voice in society. It provides a rich and sometimes challenging forum for information and discussion. It is available for purchase by non-members. Articles from past issues are available on our web site: www.ahpb.org.uk.

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