Therapy Today

Letters
Male
counsellors
must
protect
themselves
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In the May 2010 issue of
Therapy Today, James Hennah
wrote a letter raising three
issues: one highly context
specific; the personal; the
final, his response to both.
The first issue was about
the difficulties he experienced
as a man working with
children and young people.
The second, drawing on the
first, was about his anger at
being discriminated against:
he wrote about how he
experiences women
practitioners as both socially
and numerically advantaged
in the world of counselling
and psychotherapy relative
to their male colleagues. In
the third he drew upon the
ideas of Stephen Biddulph
(2008) 1 to call for male
counsellors in children’s
work to unite specifically for
working with boys and young
men. Perhaps because of the
specialist aspects of the first
issue, the replies to date have
focused upon the second and
third: the nature and the
polemic of gender politics
are easier and more generally
stimulating to discuss than
the professional and
corresponding personal
difficulties of a colleague.
As a man who has
counselled children in
schools for 10 years, I
recognise what Mr Hennah
writes about. I have been
viewed with suspicion by
parents, staff and colleagues.
I have learned to hesitate
about exploring difficult and
uncomfortable transferences
and counter-transferences
in some supervisory contexts.
I have experienced being
forbidden to work with a
vulnerable female client
following a sexual abuse
disclosure, not because of a
fear that I might contaminate
the evidence in a criminal trial
but because of the school’s
fear that the child might make
‘I have learned to
hesitate about
exploring difficult
and uncomfortable
transferences in
some supervisory
contexts’
an allegation about me. On
these occasions, it seems as
if for a girl or young woman
to engage therapeutically with
a man makes her something
dangerous in the eyes of
the school, a danger that
generally disperses when
she is referred on to a female
therapist.
I am not sure what to
make of Mr Hennah’s remarks
about women and physical
contact with young clients.
I have a formal policy that
with children and young
people I do not touch my
client: despite being aware
of the well-argued case for
the contractual use of
therapeutic holding when
working with children
(Sunderland, 2006). 2 I believe
that such an intervention,
however well intended in
therapeutic terms, is open to
misinterpretation by others.
I do not know the extent to
which other practitioners
of either sex adopt a similar
approach; I would however
suggest to any that have not
formalised their policy one
way or the other on physical
contact with young clients, to
do so with their supervisors
and with those who are
responsible for the welfare
of the children. The scenario
I used to inform my decision
was to wonder what account
I could give for my actions
if a child client said of me,
‘He touched me and I did
not want him to do it.’
Frankly, I think that in
such a situation, my gender
would not be in my favour.
This all reflects the
territory of children’s work
and I think that men, in
particular, just have to deal
with it. Men have to accept
the reality that in society
they are seen as dangerous
and women not: the existence
of data to the contrary seems
to make little or no difference
and men working with
children can have to think
and behave more defensively
than women. This seems to
me to be the most important
implication of the issue that
Mr Hennah raises: in the
context of children’s work,
male therapists have to
compromise their
effectiveness by working in
ways that protect themselves
and their employers even
when it is against the
therapeutic interests of
their clients. This should
be a matter of concern for
all practitioners regardless
of gender. I cannot see a
solution to the problem in
Mr Hennah’s call for men
to come together to form
a ‘Biddulphian’ source 1 of
fathering to lost boys: any
children can benefit from
contact with boundaried,
containing men. What
seems more appropriate
to me is to engage in
reflection and dialogue
with my peers, like this
one that Mr Hennah has
so courageously started.
When this does not happen,
all that may be left are
misattunement, hurt and
risk to therapist and client.
In reflection, sadly now
well after the event, I wonder
what the thoughts and
feelings were of a female
former colleague in a
supervision group some years
ago. I had talked about the
warm counter-transference
feelings I had for a 16-year-old
34 Therapy Today/www.therapytoday.net/November 2010