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26/7/2020 Who Dare Speak For SCoPEd? Katherine Streeter In 1998 I was involved in lobbying for the protection of an ancient timber circle that had emerged from the sand and peat of a Norfolk beach. Seahenge provoked strong feelings and I got a number of phone calls from people objecting to my opinions. Some calls were silent and constant, some were loud and abusive and a few of them were death threats. I was confused to begin with, then shocked and when my then 6 year old daughter picked up the phone to a couple of these calls I got hold of a very loud whistle.
In 1990 I did a two minute piece on Channel 4 about the Poll Tax Riots and twice my phone calls were played back to me over my own phone. That was frightening. It’s a given that anyone who stands up with something to say will attract negative attention and a minority of that negativity is likely to be extreme. Although it’s important to challenge this behaviour it’s never going to be wiped out, it’s an ugly part of human nature observable across history. Less clear cut but just as inevitable is more subtle abuse. It’s less Flashman using his superior strength to torture someone, more Jane Eyre’s female cousins running to mamma to tell on Jane for retaliating after their brother physically abuses her. This “Take Her, Not Me!” reaction is often used by people anxious about their own status, backing the powerful against the less powerful. In recent years there have been accusations of bullying from people who work for BACP, most notably Andrew Reeves who gave an account of receiving a letter which accused him of smelling of fish. Having been in the same room as Mr Reeves I can confirm that he does not smell of fish and that this attempt at insult is as powerful as Monty Python’s “Your Mother Smells Of Elderberries.” Of course, no one deserves abusive correspondence, Mr Reeves is absolutely entitled to any feelings this correspondence elicited in him and to write anything he wants about that experience. What happened, however, was that this article was interpreted as a man being viciously attacked by people who were critical of SCoPEd. The narrative of anti-SCoPEd therapists being bullies, and BACP-affiliated people being frightened of that abuse while bravely standing up for the truth has taken root. This weekend, The Legend Of The Bullying Of Andrew Reeves was referenced yet again by an institutionally powerful person as the reason they were so anxious about publishing an article encouraging BACP members to stand for election to the BACP board. It had, apparently, taken them "ages" to summon up the nerve. Every time I hear this story I think of a person on Twitter who became a contributor to the SCoPEd debate: they were diagnosed with a rare metabolic condition colloquially known as ‘Fish Odour Syndrome' which means that that sufferers actually smell of fish. This problem caused their life to collapse. A bitter irony is that they met a BACP registered therapist in a high status role who dismissed their medical condition and made a psychiatric diagnosis that he was not qualified to, which resulted in a cascade of life-changing harm. Therapists are not separate from society and we’re all living through a period of history where polarisation and conspiracy theories have become mainstream responses to profound anxiety, confusion and a powerful desire for certainty. We’re at a place where if I don’t say “no one deserves abusive correspondence, Mr Reeves is absolutely entitled to any feelings this correspondence elicited in him and to write anything he wants about that experience,” some people will assume that I think Mr Reeves deserved abuse, wasn’t entitled to his feelings and shouldn’t have written about them. I’m referencing Mr Reeves not because I think he’s a terrible person or because I want to bully him, this has very little to do with Mr Reeves as a private individual and is everything to do with illustrating the dynamics of power playing out in groups. His article was a pivotal moment in the SCoPEd debate when the myth of anti-SCoPEd therapists being bullies was firmly set and when polarisation occurred almost instantly: who wants to be on the side of abusers? Mr Reeves later clarified that there was no proof at all that therapists who opposed SCoPEd had anything to do with the abuse sent to him, but that was like the Sun apologising for a bogus story 3 weeks after publishing it, at the bottom of page 18. A small number of prominent people were assumed to be behind targeted abuse and a simplistic fiction of frightened but determined goodies standing bravely against insolent, malicious baddies leaped, fully formed, into being. Appealing to emotion is an old political manoeuvre, kissing babies, telling people that you can make their interests great again, that they’re victims surrounded by wicked enemies, “shining like the sun in the dark.” (Yes, really.) Dan Olweus, considered a pioneer in bullying research, defines bullying as “repeated negative behavior, both verbal and physical, that occurs within an asymmetric power relationship.” (My emphasis.) The narrative is of therapists with institutional power feeling bullied by an unspecified group of therapists who have no institutional power. A sub-narrative has emerged, of therapists with no institutional power feeling bullied too. As all therapists know, feelings are vital information but not always the best guide to objective truth. Who are these bullies? What are their methods of bullying? Are they calling people at home to offer them preferential treatment if they shut up or to tell them to stop complaining? Are they sharing personal information with each other about the people they’re attacking? Are they using Twitter to contact a therapists’ professional body, to publicly name and accuse them of egregious behaviour? Have they openly diagnosed anti-SCoPEd people with mental illnesses? Do they accuse people of wanting to harm clients? All this and a great deal more has happened to the 5 or so people - all women, none with any institutional power or personal elevated status beyond being White - who’ve most publicly opposed SCoPEd. DARVO anyone? BACP, UKCP and BPC have a huge membership and ruling authority over therapy. BACP alone has 50,000 members and pays its executives, some of whom have backgrounds in the corporate world corporate salaries. That’s real, undeniable power and status. Each individual person working for BACP, paid or unpaid, may not feel personally powerful but whether they want it or not (and if they don’t want it why have they asked for and accepted it?) they have power, authority and massive influence. Therapists Connect’s event on Monday discussing SCoPEd has not been able to find one person who wants to speak in support of it, despite BACP, UKCP and BPC having paid staff dedicated to it. Hanging in the air, inflamed by those tweets about having to “summon up the nerve” to write in defiance of fictional bullies is the unspoken, “We’ll only be abused.” Disagreement is not abuse. Asking legitimate questions is not bullying. Illuminating inconsistencies is not an attack. SCoPEd will have a seismic impact on the therapy landscape, on therapists’ already pitifully limited opportunities to move beyond unpaid work: are therapists really expected just to sit back and let their betters get on with it? If it’s such a brilliant project it should be a cinch to explain and defend it. There may be circumstances that we’re not aware of which mean that not one single person feels able to advocate for SCoPEd, but bullying is categorically not one of them. Olweus, Dan. Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Blackwell, 1993.  Updated 11/9/20 There’s an understanding that lockdown is over but the science doesn’t seem to have changed. This is from my previous blog, 27/5/20
"People can carry the virus without having symptoms but still be highly infectious. The viral load – how many viruses are in the air – seems to become critical at around 15 minutes in a closed space, even if the 2m exclusion zone is maintained. "Given how little is known about the production and airborne behavior of infectious respiratory droplets, it is difficult to define a safe distance for social distancing. Assuming SARS-CoV-2 virions are contained in submicron aerosols, as is the case for influenza virus, a good comparison is exhaled cigarette smoke, which also contains submicron particles and will likely follow comparable flows and dilution patterns. The distance from a smoker at which one smells cigarette smoke indicates the distance in those surroundings at which one could inhale infectious aerosols. In an enclosed room with asymptomatic individuals, infectious aerosol concentrations can increase over time. Overall, the probability of becoming infected indoors will depend on the total amount of SARS-CoV-2 inhaled. Ultimately, the amount of ventilation, number of people, how long one visits an indoor facility, and activities that affect air flow will all modulate viral transmission pathways and exposure (10). For these reasons, it is important to wear properly fitted masks indoors even when 6 ft apart." The therapy world is, like every other profession, in a state of flux because of C19, we’re having to think about how to respond to changes that sit at the heart of our work and this has hardly begun. Here are some of the things we’re talking about. People cry in therapy and it’s seldom a matter of ladylike sniffles and a lace hanky: how do we manage tissues? Do we ask clients to bring their own so that they don’t touch and therefore potentially contaminate the box that everyone uses? Do we ask clients to take their own used tissues with them? Is it OK to sit in a room with a bin with virally loaded tissues in it? Is the therapist responsible for emptying a bin with a viral load? Why should a minimum wage cleaner have to do it instead? How is emptying the bin done to minimise contamination? Do we wipe down every surface a client comes into contact with after every session? What with? How do we dispose of whatever we wipe things down with? Will these chemicals smell? Will the therapy room become more like a hospital? Should the therapist and client wear masks, even if they’re two metres apart and the window is open? We spend 50 minutes together talking, sometimes talking loudly. Wearing masks or visors has implications for the viral load but particularly for the therapeutic relationship, the alpha and omega of therapy. What does it mean when the other person in the room is a potential source of illness and possibly death, not just for ourselves but for our families and society? What’s it like to know that when you leave, the therapist will attempt to remove every trace of you from every single thing you’ve come into contact with, and will be watching to see what you touch? It’s normal for people to explore boundaries, to accidentally leave personal items – an umbrella, a water bottle, gloves - that will now take on entirely new meaning: normally the therapist would keep the item safely until the client returns but what do we do during a pandemic? Double bag in it sealed plastic bags? Where do we store it? If we have bagged it how do we return it to the client? What’s it like to be with someone when you can only see half their face, particularly if you knew them pre-C19?Visors, being wide open at the bottom, don’t seem to stop the wearer from spreading the virus at all, just from having particles blown into their face while intubating or extubating a very ill patient, while medical staff wear masks under visors. What happens if the client begins crying? Do they take the mask off? Do they put it on again? If they accidentally leave a mask as they might leave a water bottle, what do we do with it? Where do they put the mask when they take it off in the room? Should they never take it off? Both masks and visors are uncomfortable to wear for long: how will the therapist manage the discomfort of wearing one for protracted periods of time? How will that discomfort impact the therapeutic relationship? Why should a client trust that the therapist has effectively sterilised the chair, door handles and anything else they might touch? How does all this work in a shared office where it’s impossible to keep any distance at all from other people in corridors and stairs and where pushing and pulling fire doors is impossible to avoid? What happens in autumn and winter when cycling or walking to work becomes less attractive or even possible and windows must be shut? We can be utterly content to be sealed into PPE in a HEPA filtered room but travelling on public transport to get to and from therapy holds a very real risk of cross infection. Do we increase our fees to take taxis, car hire or ownership into account? Do we contract to only work face to face when certain meteorological conditions are met, or to work one way when R is at a certain level and another way when R reaches a different one? Whose data do we agree to work with? Consistency is a foundation of therapy, a dependable routine and environment that allows the client to swiftly and safely relax without worrying about what might change without them knowing. It’s why therapists give clients as much notice as possible about holidays and so on, and why holidays, room changes, any changes at all, can be so ripe with material. Therapists should be content to talk about money, sex, erotic transference, fear and hatred: the feelings that masks, any yearning to return to face to face work or fear of it might engender are all very worth talking about. Insurers are giving varying advice but all mention risk assessments. Hospitals have infection control teams, it’s a clinical speciality. Therapists aren’t health care workers let alone infection control experts, we cannot make realistic risk assessments about working face to face with multiple people during a pandemic caused by a very new, virulent virus whose long term effects can be appalling. One of the main sources of information that I’m attending to is the Financial Times Corona Virus Tracker which currently shows that new cases of the virus in the UK have only just dipped below new cases throughout the entirety of the EU. Public Health England stats are dependent on a pretty meaningless testing regimen and it seems that at the time of writing the R for London has crept up to 1.1 So I’ve decided that for the next few months I’m going to continue working online. Long term clients tell me that while the work was different to begin with they have settled into the new routine. New clients haven't had to contend with those changes but for both groups the main issue is privacy and so far everyone has been able to find some. Clients tell me that, not having to do therapy in their lunch hours, to rush to my office and then rush back to work, they now have more time after a therapy session to transition back into the flow of life. Even those with children who remain at home find that they can take some of the time that they’d otherwise spend getting to and from therapy for themselves. It’s not perfect, but neither was having to keep it all in because they didn’t want to leave the office looking upset, or being anxious about getting back to work or home on time, or all the other pressures of living in a culture where time is more precious than money. Working face to face in a therapy room seems to be a pretty perfect way to transmit and receive C19, never mind the other important ramifications for a psychotherapeutic relationship the majority of which remain unknown. We can’t control or know everything and all our choices have implications. While some other therapists are anxious to return to pre-C19 ways of working, my understanding is that it's not going to be possible to do that safely until a reliable vaccine is in use, and I'm not willing to use my clients or myself as guinea pigs to soothe a yearning for a return to something that was once straightforward but now is not. Loss, nostalgia, mourning for the past, the simple need for human presence are all valid, all real, and all necessary to talk about in therapy. In the meantime we will all have to get used to living with the uncertainty caused by C19, but my aim is to adapt to swiftly changing realities and to offer as much stability, consistency and safety as I can to people who put their trust in me. |
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January 2022
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling COVID 19 Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Fear Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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