Editorial The Contest of European Meaning

It would appear that British students of Counselling and Psychotherapy learn little formally about politics and ideology. (If this is not the experience of any of our readers, please let us know!) It is widely acknowl- edged that there is a lack of radical self-conscious questioning in all forms of cultural practice. Yet this editorial and its title is based on a popular book (Bolton 1989) written ten years ago for students of photography. Closely adopting Bolton’s argument we can ask the following questions in examining the contest of European meaning within and between European and other countries:

What are the social consequences of European psychotherapeutic and counselling practices?

For example in our work as counsellors and psychotherapists if we give a primacy to autonomy rather than heteronomy/putting others first what are the consequences for social change? When does this encourage “tradition and continuity rather than rupture and change” (Bolton) ? Another example would be, what are the social consequences if we look at individuals in terms of their ability to change, rather than accept who they are?

Further questions here include: how individually, and particularly collectively do we orchestrate meaning? As a consequence, what other ways of understanding have been dismantled and destroyed? With the success of late modernism has the political basis of modernism been pushed aside so that we think of our practice as apolitical? Modernism has re-structured knowledge, and therefore European psychotherapy and counselling should ask what effect have our classification systems and professionalization processes had on meaning? Mainstream

The European journal of Psychotherapy, Counselling 81 Health @Routledge 1998 1364-2537

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psychotherapy and counselling literature appears apolitical. Where change for the individual is examined the social consequences in terms, for example, of notions of how we view the ‘good’, ‘health’ or ‘madness’ are not open to close scrutiny for long.

How does European counselling and psychotherapy construct sexual difference?

The European contribution through, for example, Irigaray, Cixous, Kristeva has been considerable, though the majority of psychotherapy and counselling courses in the United Kingdom will probably not have these writers on their reading lists. European postmodem feminist critiques of psychotherapeutic practice have been one of the most important developments in the last twenty years whose influence has gone way beyond counselling and psychotherapy showing how sexual difference has been constructed across various registers of representation. Indeed there may well be particular resistance to the consideration of the implications of these ideas for practice in various European counselling and psychotherapy circles. One question which is very much linked to the previous question of the social consequence of practice is, should counselling and psychotherapy actively attempt to transform the values of the dominant culture for various minorities own purposes? Another question is the extent of homophobia in both selection procedures for training and counselling and psychotherapy’s theoretical assumptions.

How is psychotherapy used to promote class, national and European interests?

Does lifting repression lift off the chains of oppression or does it become part of a more sophisticated oppression? Mainstream counselling and psychotherapeutic practice offers little analysis of the effects of power in representation, generally encouraging the idea that what is discussed in the consulting room is neutral and above ideology. Thus the refusal of counselling and psychotherapy to consider anything other than to incorporate all that is said into an uncritical history of psychotherapy (i.e. which is self contained, self referential and self justifying) potentially strengthens the role of psychotherapy and counselling as the voice for the status quo. So where are the critical histories of European counselling and psychotherapy?

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What are the Politics of European Counselling and Psychotherapeutic truth( s)?

A recent article (Danto, 1998), uses archival and oral history in attempting to show that Freud proposed the creation of clinics providing free treatment. We may ask: “What is the importance in opening up at this moment in time, what is claimed to be a ‘little known aspect of the history of psychoanalysis’ in terms of changes in the economics of private practice? In fact does an analysis of any counselling or psychotherapeutic truth require in turn an analysis of power which in turn depends upon our understanding of the social and political aims of counselling and psychotherapy? Thus for example the expectations of what is counselling and psychotherapy in themselves confine psychotherapy into a particular discursive space. There again, what are the effects of notions of liberal- ism and objectivity on psychotherapeutic practice - can it actually supplement social activism? Should it? To raise such questions that can seem to involve issues of social integration is different to the ideological closure that would appear generally to characterise, counselling and psychotherapy training.

To chose a final example from Bolton’s work on photography, psychotherapy “can be used to honour or repress its subjects, to either compliment the ‘ceremonial presentation of the bourgeois self‘ or ‘establish and delimit the terrain of the other’ in this way psychotherapy and counselling is seen to aid in the construction of social and moral hierarchies”. Derrida (1995) is now showing us, how the concept of the archive is fundamental to our understanding of meaning, a place where both order is given and a shelter is proved from aspects of its own memory, most importantly ‘what is no longer archived in the same way is no longer lived in the same way’. It is hoped such European development can find their way into our counselling and psychotherapy programmes and that this Journal can aid such a development through critiquing European counselling and psychotherapeutic practice. The questions raised here to borrow from Bolton yet again are ‘intended to be productive rather than exhaustive’ and it is hoped that issues omitted from the above will be taken up by readers.

Behind the above questions is perhaps a whole further set of assump- tions, arguments for change in European counselling and psychotherapy and for change in the history of history and interpretations of inter- pretations and this involves the relationship with changes in European society. Is it too grandiose to consider how European counselling and psychotherapy can best change European society? Is it something that just happens? Or are such doubts just the acceptance of the attempted separation of European culture and society promoted by late modernism?

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I t will be interesting to see to what extent this year’s European Association for Psychotherapy’s Conference on ‘Social and Political Dimensions of Psychotherapy’ will be examining some of the questions raised here as opposed to attempting to sell their wares in the name of the Conference themes of helping ‘unemployment, loneliness, addiction’, ‘related professions’ and ‘institutions’. However if such developments are seen, and it could be argued need to be seen, within a political context, is it possible that they can be an essential part of practitioners critical thinking, if not as ‘critical theory’ then at least as not too suspicious. Perhaps the most important question is why (with the possible exception of sexual difference) are such questions not explicitly discussed? Is it a combination of current stake-holderslvested interests successfully allowing through only those counselling and psychotherapy approaches which appear ‘natural’ so that seriously questioning the current status quo is, if not ‘communist’, then wrong?

I t is not our intention to produce a journal specifically on the politics of counselling and psychotherapy and health, for reasons which include our own interests and expertise as well as problems of marginalisation. What we do however wish to do is encourage contributions that keep us awake to the political dimensions (to include but go beyond rivalries for professional licensing) within mainstream European counselling and Psychotherapy practice.

This edition starts with Bernadette Bartlam and Ray Woolfe examining issues for practice in the developing area of infertility counselling. This is followed by Petruska Clarkson’s paper on the growing field of super- vision in counselling and psychotherapy with her intervention priority sequencing model. We very much hope to be publishing more in this field as there is an enormous gap in the provision of supervision from trained supervisors for those working therapeutically in health settings. The final paper in our practice section is Michael Jacobs on ‘Seeing and being seen’, this again we hope will be topical not only in terms of counselling and psychotherapy but also in terms of the implications for examining the effects of faceless electronic communication on our experience.

Our theory section starts with Erica Burman, Jaya Gowrisunkur and Kuljeet Sangha’s examination of ‘Conceptualising cultural and gendered identities’. This we regard as a particularly important paper as it opens up refreshingly the whole issue of difference in a way that is different to mainstream examinations of culture and gender in counselling and psychotherapy. Next David Boadella writing from Switzerland, provides a lively exploration of notions of health in terms of quality of life. This is followed by a paper by George Berguno examining an important but neglected area on the role of constraints on descriptions in phenomenology.

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The research section starts with Dennis Greenwood and Del Loewenthal’s paper on issues in offering therapy to a person diagnosed with dementia. In so doing questions of the case study method are raised (an area of particular importance to counselling and psychotherapy and where yet surprisingly relatively little is written) as well as issues for counselling and psychotherapy in general. Ole Dreier provides an important account of how clients perspectives are used as a basis for research on the effects of psychotherapy in Denmark.

More on European developments is provided in the form of Chris Oakley’s paper on the perniciousness of professionalization. This paper written partly in response to Digby Tantam and Emmy van Deurzen’s paper on creating a European profession of psychotherapy which appeared in the last edition of this journal, can be seen as a commentary on the politics of European professionalization. Our book review section concludes with the Review Feature by Elisabeth Roudinesco on Ilse Grubrich-Simitis Buck to Fred’s Texts: Making Silent Documents Speak. So perhaps particularly with these last two papers we are starting to have some critical histories of European counselling and psychotherapy for practitioners. Hope you will still subscribe to the Journal!

Del Loewenthal Robbi Campbell

Bolton, R. (1989), The Contest of Meaning, Mass: MIT Press. Danto, A. (1998), ‘The Ambulatorium: Freud’s Free Clinic in Vienna’, Int. J.

Derrida, J. (1996), Archive Fever, A Freudian Impression, Chicago: The Psycho-Ad, 79: 287-300.

University of Chicago Press.