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Letters Male counsellors must protect themselves Contact us We welcome your letters. Letters not published in Therapy Today may be published on our website (www.therapytoday.net) subject to editorial discretion. Email your letter to the Editor at therapytoday@bacp.co.uk or post it to the address on page 2. 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
female client and was seeking support both to manage these and to understand what they meant. My colleague had two responses to what I brought. The first was that she was glad I was talking about my feelings in the group, as by doing so it might make it harder for me to act on them. Secondly she thought that perhaps it would be best if I stop working with the young woman in both her interests and mine. I felt judged and unsupported as a professional; more significantly I felt rejected and rejecting and I resolved to be far more circumspect around where I took such sensitive issues in the future. I was tempted to shut up about my relationship with my client, but recognising that secrecy and furtiveness were greater dangers than any feelings I may have been holding about her, I eventually took the issue to the supervisor I saw for my adult work. She, perhaps because she was less impacted by the cultural implications of what I brought, was able to offer a containing yet still challenging response. Whilst I think that may have been the wise move at the time, with the benefits of experience and hindsight I am now wondering whether my colleague was scared of me and what I was bringing; I wish that I could revisit that moment to re-explore what was going on for both of us. Perhaps she did see me primarily as a potentially abusive man and her supervision as the best she could do to keep my client from harm. I want to think that her fear was more to do with us both being out of our depth around my strong, worrying and unfamiliar feelings towards a young woman. Again, continuing my reflection, I am not even sure that my colleague’s gender is relevant in this discussion: I can easily imagine getting a similar response from another man. Perhaps the experiences of Mr Hennah and I are due to the fact that there are many more women than men in this business and that statistically we are more likely to have such an experience of being judged with a female colleague than a male one. I seek to be nonjudgemental in my work and I think that there would be few in this profession who would not say the same. But it amazes me how insidious my own judgemental fantasies can be, particularly in the grey, often sexual areas where love, desire and developing adulthood mix and merge with the black and white certainties of the Children’s Act and the popular press. Notwithstanding all I have said, I am continually surprised by how easy it can be for me to become caught up in and go along with the social process which, with some support from history, polarises men and the rest of society into abuser and abused. I am a counsellor and psychotherapist not an amateur historian, a police officer or a gender politician. Within the bounds of the need to keep clients safe, my interest is ultimately about what happens between two people, be they client and therapist or, as in Mr Hennah’s case, a passing stranger and a teacher, anxious not to lose her job and be pilloried in the local paper, as the woman who allowed an abusive man to get near her primary school charges. John Drouot Diploma Humanistic Counselling; Diploma Management Studies; MBACP (Accred) references: 1. Biddulph S. Raising boys: why boys are different – and how to help them become happy and well-balanced men (2nd ed). Berkeley, California: Celestial Arts; 2008. 2. Sunderland M. The science of parenting. London: Dorling Kindersley; 2006. Observing strict boundaries I found the article ‘Boundaries and boundlessness’ (Therapy Today, October 2010) very interesting, in particular the part about well-known counsellors having taken risks and kept quiet. I would agree with Nick Totton that a barrier to taking practice forward is the perceived need for ‘defensive practice’ and perhaps also ‘defensive reporting’ in order to avoid vulnerability to misconduct hearings. After a ‘near miss’ myself some years ago, several things about the spectre of professional conduct hearings have become very clear to me. Any complaint about improper behaviour made by a woman will have a man defending himself at a disadvantage, on the back foot, as it were. There is no likelihood of me allowing boundaries to become relaxed, to permit ‘boundary crossings’ as described in the article, however much in the client’s interest I believed that might be; showing that strict boundaries had been maintained would be a cornerstone of any imagined defence I might need to make. Also, I find myself very careful when assessing prospective female clients. I no longer accept female clients with abuse issues, or who are or have been involved in complaints issues or litigation. This is in case there are repeating patterns of behaviour involved, which would make a complaint against me much more likely whatever I had or had not done to provoke one (Kearns, 2007) 1 . Obviously the very fact that I have this concern would also mean that it would not be ethical for me to work with the issues those clients are bringing. The dilemma in the same issue (October 2010) described a situation concerning boundaries, where the question arose as to whether a counsellor should be reported to the Professional Conduct Committee, in order to receive an educational and developmental sanction. Within BACP this is a quasilegal procedure, and the use of professional advocates and lengthy submissions is commonplace, at a huge emotional cost (and a significant financial cost) to the member. None of the respondents mentioned the destabilising effect that such a referral could be expected to have on the counsellor’s relationship with his other existing clients, and his past clients, and the cost to those clients in terms of uncertainty and confusion at what they might consider the ‘naming and shaming’ (Kearns, 2007) 1 of their counsellor by his/her own professional body. November 2010/www.therapytoday.net/Therapy Today 35
Page 1 and 2: Therapy Today November 2010, Vol. 2
Page 3 and 4: Contents Sarah Browne Editor For se
Page 5 and 6: Mental health groups praise governm
Page 7 and 8: In practice Words and labels Kevin
Page 9 and 10: In training Walking the line Alex E
Page 11 and 12: Increasingly, counsellors and psych
Page 13 and 14: defined as the assumption that diff
Page 15: Questionnaire Jeremy Clarke A natio
Page 18 and 19: Viewpoint References 1. Wampold BE.
Page 20: Training Becoming a counsellor Surp
Page 23 and 24: ‘Trainees were primarily concerne
Page 25 and 26: © hans neleman/the image bank/gett
Page 27 and 28: my work. This is not because I am o
Page 29 and 30: November 2010/www.therapytoday.net/
Page 31 and 32: Dilemmas The counselling-coaching i
Page 33: Kate Cunnion (counsellor, superviso
Page 37 and 38: Reviews Evidence for the economic v
Page 39 and 40: Co-creating therapeutic conversatio
Page 41 and 42: News From the Chair How are develop
Page 43 and 44: Could you write an information shee
Page 45 and 46: Case Study Research in Counselling
Page 47 and 48: skills and attitudes as a tutor to

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