The Mary Kilborn Lecture

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The Mary Kilborn Lecture
May 17, 2006
The Humanity of the Counsellor
Dave Mearns
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Humanity what is it?

• How about
• A willingness to make contact with another
  human being to reach out to meet them on their
  ground and to be prepared to be fully real in
  that meeting.

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• Sometimes humanity is one-way and sometimes it
  is two-way

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Some personal experiences of humanity, with

• The P.E. teacher
• The leader of the Partick X gang
• Peter in the List D school
• Doug the teacher
• Rick and others
• Carl Rogers.

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• When you meet the Buddha you have to kill him to
  meet the person

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• Carl Do you know what you are doing with him
  the patient?
• Dave Not a bloody clue, Carl.
• Carl Thats alright then.

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A Schema of Working at Relational Depth
B Negotiating client processes (including
difficult process)
C Contact with the existential process
A Offering our humanity
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Overview of Dominic in terms of the schema

• A Offering our humanity
• Openness to the whole person
• The counsellors struggle for integrity
• Not being put off
• Authenticity
• Seriousness
• Showing your working.

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• B Negotiating client processes
• Drunk Dominics cynicism
• Sober Dominics existential distance
• The dynamics between sober Dominic and drunk
  Dominic.

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• C Contact with the existential process
• D20 I dont know what Im about.
• D21 Im so full of crap.
• D24 I think Im serioussincere. But really, Im
  only a drunka fuckin drunk.
• D28 Im so fuckin full of shit.

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• D32 Im alivebut its killing meand everything
  I love.
• D33 One part of me is really hooked on it. It
  is the only buzz I get and I cant get enough
  of it.
• D35 And I cant carry it any more.
• D41 It feels like living when youre drunk

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D42 Ive been scared of living all my life Ive
been scared of livingIve never felt sure of
myself the way other people do D46 Part of me
tries to break free, but it hasnt got
experience it doesnt know how to do
it. D48 So all I can do is to go into that
feeling of being sad and get drunk. Thats the
closest I can get to living.
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A Schema of Working at Relational Depth
B Negotiating client processes (including
difficult process)
C Contact with the existential process
A Offering our humanity
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A Striving to offer our humanity

• not finding our own depth
• when our own needs are tied up with the client
• when we cant find in our self, or in our
  imagination, the flavour of our clients
  process.

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Normality is people like us!
A Client A B Client B C The average
counsellor
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How broad a humanity can we offer in the
counselling room?

• the counsellors configurations
• existential touchstones.

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Definition of existential touchstones
Life events and self-experiences from which we
draw considerable personal strength and which
help to ground us in relationships as well as
making us more open to and comfortable with a
diversity of relationships.
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The Developmental Agenda
What parts of our self or self-experiences can we
reclaim to broaden the humanity we can offer in
the counselling room?
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A Schema of Working at Relational Depth
B Negotiating client processes (including
difficult process)
C Contact with the existential process
A Offering our humanity
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B Client Processes
Psychotic Process (Prouty) Fragile Process
(Warner) Transference Dissociated Process
(Warner) Ego-Syntonic Process Existential
Disconnection
RestrictingExistentialContact
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The Developmental Basis of Ego-Syntonic Process

• The person has survived a parenting in which love
  and acceptance was not reliable. Negative
  experiences would follow when positives might be
  expected there was no way to rely on the
  relationship. Ridicule, hate or abuse would come
  when love might be expected.
• To survive, the person needed to
• Withdraw their emotional attachment.
• Find ways to control the relationship
• Find ways to control themselves in relationship.

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Sandy
The fellow who has a parent who is sometimes nice
and sometimes horrible thinks that is the way the
world is. Now, in my own case, that is how it
was. At the time when I came to the school I
think the difficulty was, among other things,
that I was confronted by Patti his counselor,
who was an exceptionally fine human being and a
very affectionate and decent human being. I
wasnt able to accept the affection, which caused
even more anger because everyone likes to accept
affection.
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But if you condition yourself to not accepting
affection because, if by accepting it you only
let yourself in for the next downfall, you put
yourself in a position where you dont dare to
hope that the affection is for real and you keep
testing to find out if it is for real, and thats
the process where, step by step, you find out
whether it is. In a sense, maybe, that explains
my own need to hurt them, whether or not the
affection would continue to comeBettelheim, B.
(1987). The man who cared for children.
Horizon. London BBC Television.
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Ego-Syntonic Process in Adult Life
The persons self-protective systems become
generalised to other relationships (cf Sternes
RIGs Representations of Interactions that
have become Generalised). The seriousness of the
resulting pattern can vary hugely. The person may
become

• popular but unreachable
• alone and lonely
• controlling
• cold
• cruel
• homicidal and suicidal

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In its mild expression their ego-syntonic process
leads the person to be confused and scared in
relationships. They know that things go wrong for
them and they come to expect things to go wrong.
But they genuinely do not understand why they go
wrong. They have done their best. They have even
tried to think about what the other person wants,
and be that (within limits). But it always goes
wrong.
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In another expression they attract relations but
fail in relationships because, ultimately, they
have to be so controlling. They need to define
the reality and protect against its changing.
They provide well on a material level, function
well enough in more superficial relationships,
but they must not make themselves existentially
vulnerable. Usually they are genuinely surprised
when the other person leaves them. Again, they
had done their best.
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In a more serious expression, the person is
dangerous to themselves and others. They are so
threatened by relationship that their
self-protection manifests itself not in confusion
or controlling, but in detachment and even
violence. Their fear is so profound and the
degree of adjustment they have obtained so
tenuous that detachment and even destruction (of
self or other) are the only existetial
protections they have left.
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The Hook in Ego-Syntonic Process

• But there really was someone there to love I
  saw him I saw him often.
• Its not just a rescuer thing its much
  stronger than that. I couldnt let him go
  because there were times I really saw him.
• Its so frustrating sometimes she was a
  wonderful person she was the fullest human
  being anyone could wantbut then it would
  evaporate in tears and anger.
• He couldnt let me in. For 20 years he couldnt
  let me in. We could even talk about how he
  couldnt let me in Maybe that was it at times
  he wasnt who he was.

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B Client Processes
Psychotic Process (Prouty) Fragile Process
(Warner) Transference Dissociated Process
(Warner) Ego-Syntonic Process Existential
Disconnection
RestrictingExistentialContact
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Existential Disconnection
The separation of the person in their everyday
life from the existential significance of their
life (c.f. Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in
Lost in Translation)
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Difficult process rarely defines the whole of
the person. Often there is a dissonant part that
houses a different conception of self. Its
appearance can be erratic and its voice very
small. Often its dominant feeling is sadness.
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Does humanity have a future in
counselling? Can politics help?
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Counselling in schools Counselling in primary
care Research its politics and its humanity.
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Stiles, W.B., Barkham, M., Twigg, E.,
Mellor-Clark, J. Cooper, M. (2006).
Effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural,
person-centred and psychodynamic therapies as
practised  in UK National Health Service
settings. Psychological Medicine, 36, 555-566.
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Will the humanity of the counsellor corrupt the
medical model of mental illness?
Will the medical model of mental illness corrupt
the humanity of the counsellor?