Mika Haritos Fatouros

To be the president of the European Association for Counselling is a challenge and a responsibility and I felt the need to communicate my  thoughts to you.

The primary goal of my presidency is to recognise the importance of good training in counselling. This will, eventually, help to establish counselling as the leading profession in prevention. Solutions to major problems and prevention requires changes in attitudes, behaviour and life  styles -and this is a difficult venture.  A few examples of preventive counselling:

Prejudice and discrimination with minority populations.              Life crises.

Copying with loss, illness, fear and uncertainty.                                        Substance abuse.

Stress at home and at work that affects the immune system.                    Women and counselling.

Dropout from school and consequences.                                                  Children and women abuse.

School and neighbourhood violence.                                                       Crime and juvenile

                                                                                                           deliquency.

The accreditation procedures we are hoping to finalise this year and the expansion of EAC with new European countries will clear the way to our  goal on prevention. Let us go forward with pride in counselling, with discipline in the profession, with feeling and commitment to

service in the public interest.

Who’s Who in EAC      2001 - 02

How to contact EAC

Introduction

These notes began life as a starter paper produced in my capacity as Senior Lecturer in Counselling Studies at the University of Edinburgh.  My colleagues and I were embarking on a rewrite of the counselling programme in preparation for its first five-yearly academic review. Among other concerns, we wanted to revisit the core orientation of the programme, which is a dialogue between person-centred and psychodynamic perspectives.  In this paper, I consider the meaning and some of the implications of dialogue.

Limitations and problems:               

It is clear from the above list of accretions that the word dialogue is a value-laden concept.  Very positive values are associated with it.  Like other human positives, it is therefore available for idealisation.  What are some of the problems and limitations of dialogue?

The following contributions are taken from a paper by Tracy Essoglou and Angel Shaw given at a conference in honour of Paulo Freire's 70th birthday held in New York in 1991.  They argue that Freire's concept of dialogue fails to do justice to the experience of women, which is characterised by ambiguity, self-doubt, bitterness and self-censorship.  They speak of the complexity of that which is unspoken and uncertain:-

            "Women inhabit the domain of the mess, the inchoate, the epistemologically

            inadmissible."

            "Whole dimensions of subjectivity can be negated in dialogue."

            "In the absence of the validation of a multiplicity of languages, women are

            obliged to speak the master's language."

            "Language is a locus of power and servility…."

“Some Notes on Dialogue”  continued

            "The realm of the senses (and I would add, of the emotions, relationships and

the inner world – CK) is rendered suspect by the triumph of rationality."

            "There has to be an acknowledgement that women are in a constant state of

            of defining themselves."   

            Quoted in Challenging Education, Creating Alliances:  the Legacy of Paulo Freire in the New Scotland, Colin Kirkwood, The Scottish Journal of Community Work and Development, 1998, Vol. 3.

In my view, all of these comments are spot on.  I would argue that they apply not only to women but also to men.  And they certainly apply to both students and teachers on counselling courses!

Another limitation is around people engaging or saying they are engaging in dialogue when they have other aims which may not be compatible with dialogue:  for example, the use of dialogue as in effect the pursuit of war by other means.  Take the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Bloc.  There was some of the rhetoric of convergence, but both sides were trying to win.

Ten years ago, many of us felt great hope in relation to the initiation of three significant dialogues:  between the blacks and whites in South Africa, between Palestine and Israel, and the dialogue initiated by John Hume between the nationalist and republican traditions and the protestant tradition in the north of Ireland ("it is people who are divided, not territory").  It is arguable that at least two of these dialogues have run into trouble because both sides have treated dialogue as another means of attaining their separate objectives (war by another means).

There is, particularly but not exclusively among politicians, a tendency to use the word dialogue lightly, as a good-sounding word which can improve my image or associate me with positive values and help me achieve my objectives.  Whether this is a limitation of dialogue, or simply a limitation on the part of human beings who Alasdair MacIntyre would describe as lacking the virtues, is a moot point.

This consideration of limitations underlines the convergence dimension of dialogue as an objective, where convergence means a willingness on both sides to go beyond their present positions, to learn from, collaborate and find common ground with others.  The late Janet Hassan, the child psychotherapist, referred to this as expressing the objective of conjoining.  The poet Bertolt Brecht, referring to the  relationship between two people, described it as the third thing.

A problem, rather than a limitation:  this is the possibility of dialogue for people (many of us) who have experienced certain kinds of dislocation, disruption or suffering.  Here I'm thinking a new thought, not one I've yet formulated fully.  I have in mind four or five sorts of situation, all involving different kinds of loss.  First, there is the loss involved in moving from one place/home/landscape/people/language/culture to another (dislocation).  Second, there is the loss of a parent, caregiver or sibling through death or separation/divorce.  Third, there is the experience of abuse or betrayal of trust and the relationship complications that ensue.  Fourth, there is the loss of capacities involved in becoming disabled through accident, illness or genetic inheritance.  And fifth there is the loss involved in dramatic changes of economic circumstances through loss of job, home, income and status.  These can and frequently do occur in combination:  all of them involve traumatic loss and change of circumstances and relationships, and pose, willy-nilly, both the need and the reluctance to engage in new dialogues with new people in new conditions alongside mourning what has been lost.  Some of us get stuck in the 

mourning (perhaps we all do, to some degree:  the trauma is never entirely overcome), and we may not really engage in the encounter/dialogue with the unwished-for new.  We are to a greater or lesser degree alienated:  a part of us is engaged elsewhere.  This generates complications in dialogue.

Dialogue in counselling training between PC and PD perspectives.  

How does all of this apply in a counselling training programme which is trying to embody dialogue?   The answer is:  in many ways.  Rather than start to list those, I want to draw this starter paper to a close by listing some gleanings and suggestions from experiences so far.  These aren't in any special order.

·         There has to be trust and a sense of safety on the course.  This seems to be a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for genuine dialogue.  One key determinant in creating a sense of trust is the behaviour, relationship and fundamental attitude of the tutors.  There has to be a sense that the tutors are sincere, know their stuff well, share what they know to the best of their ability, but also share their not knowing, unsureness and even their vulnerability.  All this as well as having a capacity to enable or facilitate confident explorations and reflections by the students.

·         For the inter-personal and inter-perspectival aspects of dialogue on a counselling course to be real, there has to be a genuine sense that the tutors like and respect each other and will go on listening and communicating with each other even when there are differences, misunderstandings and the going gets rough.  You cannot dialogue with someone you do not respect, and dialogue can't be just a fair weather phenomenon.

·         Dialogue can be about convergence or about difference.  It is bound, often, to be about radically different starting points, stances, ways of knowing and conclusions.  But it is not, I think, a battle for victory by one side or another.  Covert or overt contempt for the other point of view will put a blight on dialogue very quickly.  Course members will sense it.  My sense is that where difference is concerned, dialogue sets about patiently clarifying, exploring, deepening the exploration.  That also applies where convergence is concerned:  the convergence may only be apparent.  Dialogue is not about making it all into one undifferentiated soup.  Freire, at the conference already referred to, spoke about democracy as the courage to be different, to respect the difference and to try to learn from it.  He went on:

I don't believe in unanimity.  Democracy is the confrontation of difference and

the necessity to overcome antagonisms…… it is possible for us to grow together

in the differences, never trying to forget the differences:   to get unity in diversity

,…  not to collapse us all into one.

·         I suspect that up until now we have given insufficient thought to what is not said, what is felt or thought and kept silent.  Enabling/allowing more of it to be said involves a special kind of stance on the part of the tutor.  Such a lot here turns on how the tutors behave, on their conception of how to be a tutor.  They make a major contribution to creating the atmosphere of the course:  the students contribute to that strongly as well, of course.

·         A powerful metaphor for an aspect of what we are trying to do is an image given to me by a friend when I was an undergraduate:  he told me how much he enjoyed being at the edge of

the sea, because three different elements meet there:  the land, the sea and the sky.  The

“Some Notes on Dialogue”  continued

point is that they are different.  And they actually do meet.

·         Another linked metaphor is the meeting of languages.  If you go and live in another country and immerse yourself in its language, lots of things can occur.  One is that, paradoxically, as

you become more aware of the language that is foreign to you, you become more sharply aware of your own language and culture.  It's a sharpening of awareness due to contrast, but

it's not – or need not be – an either/or relation.  Looking at the Alps from a rooftop in the Veneto is not the same as looking towards the highlands from a rooftop in Perth, but it’s a meaningful juxtaposition.  There are differences, and there are connections.

·         Are there limits to the value of a dialogical orientation in counselling training?  Probably.  Our external examiner has highlighted one of them when she comments that the weaker students find the dialogue difficult, especially in the early stages.  This is a most helpful observation.  As soon as Gabrielle said it, I was aware, (a) that it was true, and (b) of a certain defensive reaction on my own part.  This touches on something quite important.  It is fashionable, in our culture, to decry fundamentalism, and I understand why we do that.  But much harder and more challenging is to understand the need for fundamentalism, which is, I suggest, at bottom, the need for a good-enough foundation.  The etymology here is the Latin fundus, bottom in the sense of base, the hopefully solid ground on which a building is constructed.  (In both Old French and Middle English, fundament means the buttocks, the solid base on which we sit!!)  Contemporary relativism and nihilism have undermined many (particularly western and patriarchal) fundamentalisms but have perhaps failed to address the need for something reliable that you can root yourself in.  We as counsellors and psychotherapists, particularly in the longer term work we do with clients who are deeply distressed in their early relationships, know about what can happen when that foundation is disturbed, destroyed or betrayed.  And most of us have also experienced it ourselves to some degree.  When we ask counselling students, on our courses, as we do, to explore themselves as one of the four main strands of training, we are in effect asking them to explore what Carl Rogers calls their self-structure and what Harry Stack Sullivan calls their self-system.  If they are to do this with confidence, what can they hold on to during this process?  What will stay solid for them?  What foundation can they rely on?

·         An image which recurs in my mind is one of two or three strong, mature beech trees growing in a cluster on a slope in a field.  On the down-slope side, their roots are partially exposed and the observer can see how they have gripped some rocks embedded in the ground, and also gripped each other's roots.  This is an image of a complex foundation.  An analogous if rather exaggerated image is the bible story about the wise man who built his house upon a rock and the foolish man who built his house upon sand.  Those of us who teach on a dialogical course usually have had our training in a person-centred or psychodynamic setting.  Is there some sense in which these are better grounded, more strongly rooted, or is it actually deceptive to say that any one perspective is pure and singular, sure and steadfast?  Is each of us not, in our own unique way,  rooted around a particular sequence of relationships, experiences, learnings, etc., which have some elements of wobble and plurality built in?  Do we need to give more thought to what is the solid ground of our programme or is it clear enough?  A meeting of two or more different languages and cultures?  A commitment to dialogue with and genuine relating to the other?  Maybe it is clear.  I think I'm saying we need to be sure we have a grounded sense of what we're about.  And we need to be able to create a learning environment in which the students experience that as a reliable, secure and consistent-enough experience.  This places a lot of weight on

the core tutors on the course, on their consistency, their knowledge, their capacity as teachers and as facilitators, their personal sincerity – above all, their relationship.  Maybe

“Some Notes on Dialogue”  continued

what I'm edging towards is that our core orientation is not solely that it’s a dialogical course, but also that it’s a persons-in-relations course. (The reference here is to the Scottish  philosopher John Macmurray).

A concluding thought:  to me, the counselling relationship is inherently and essentially dialogical, a

meeting of two people with different body-psyches, experiences, ideas, values, relationships, attitudes and languages.  The counselling training relationship is also essentially dialogical, and it is not a contradiction of that fact that it is a teaching/learning relationship. *

One of the formative experiences of my early twenties was observing a disputation organised by Father Antony Ross who was catholic chaplain at the University of Edinburgh.  The disputation was introduced as a medieval form of debate.  One of the rules was that each side had to identify something central in the case put forward by the other side – something central, not marginal – that they could accept, and weave it into their own argument.  What struck me about this rule was that it was obviously designed to moderate the tendency to try to destroy the case advanced by the opposition comprehensively, by building in a requirement to achieve some common ground, some degree of convergence.  It demonstrates a recognition of the centrality of difference in human affairs, and constitutes an attempt to engage with it in a way that is constructive.  Coming as I did from a Northern Irish protestant background, there was a link for me with my encounters with catholicism and with catholics as persons.  Considerations of this kind, generalised, underlie my sense of the existential necessity of dialogue in human relations and specifically in learning, therapeutic work and politics.

REFERENCES

Buber, M (1958) I and Thou, Edinburgh:  T & T Clark.

Freire, P (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Harmondsworth:  Penguin.

Kirkwood, C (1998)  Challenging Education, Creating Alliances:  the legacy of Paulo Freire in the new Scotland in The Scottish Journal of Community Work and Development, vol. 3, Edinburgh:  Community Learning Scotland.

MacIntyre, A (1985) After Virtue, London:  Duckworth.

Macmurray, J (1961) Persons in Relation, London:  Faber and Faber.

Lee, H (translator) (1955) Plato The Republic, Harmondsworth:  Penguin.

All EAC Members are invited to

COSCA’s 3^rd Annual  Counselling Research Conference

Thursday 19 September 2002 in Edinburgh

Chaired by Professor John McLeod

of

University of Abertay Dundee

and

Full details, including calls for papers for both events, can also be found on www.cosca.org.uk                                www.eacnet.org