The Coronation: Reflections from a Republican Therapist

I don’t bear King Charles or the royal family ill-will. My guess is, like most of us, they’re decent human beings trying to do their best for themselves and the communities around them. William and Kate, I know, have done some valuable work around child mental health. And if people around the world find community, meaning, and pleasure in the royal family and royal celebrations then good for them. I kind of wish I did. There’s enough misery going on in the world that having something to celebrate can’t be bad for people’s psychological health.

But what I worry about is the kind of mind-set that is fostered by the coronation, the royalty, and particularly the recent invitation to ‘swear allegiance’ to the King. We’ve been invited to ‘pay homage, in heart and voice, to our undoubted King, defender of all,’ and swear, ‘true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law’ (see here). Personally, as a therapist, I just think, ‘What the ****’ Here’s why…

When people come to therapy, it’s rarely to do with insufficient homageness/subservience to authority, or lacking some sense of a sovereign being in their lives. That’s rarely why people suffer.

Rather, in many cases, psychological problems come down to: (1) A lack of self-esteem, and/or (2) Not feeling empowered or being assertive, and/or (3) Deferring choices to others and then not feeling that one’s life is as it should be. People who come to therapy often have a pervasive—albeit implicit—sense of powerlessness: ‘everyone else can do things but me’. So choices don’t get made, others are seen as being more responsible, clients feel that they can’t say or choose towards what they want. And then life becomes unbearably empty and dull: ‘I don’t have what I want because I’ve never felt able to try and get it.’

Here, the role of therapy, so often, is to help clients see that they do have choices. Not all choices—not that they can do whatever they want—but that they have some choices, and that within those limitations they have contingent power, they can move forward. They don’t have to rely on others to lead them and to tell them how to live their lives.

So, to me, pledging homage and subservience to royalty seems the kind of thinking and behaviour that’s associated with poorer mental wellbeing, rather than better. It’s about deferring to authority, seeing someone as better and more important than you and with some god-given right to do something that you can’t do yourself. It’s an ideology that seems to run counter to the the work that therapists do: to help people feel like they’re an equal, that they’re capable and able, that their lives are their own rather than another’s.

Therapeutic wellbeing, so often, is about helping people own and embody their power. It’s about supporting people to recognise that they are ‘adults’, that they’re responsible human beings who can (and need) to take part in the development of their communities: not expect others to do it for them: they’re ‘citizens’ rather than ‘subjects’ (as Deborah Flynn-Harland wrote in response to an earlier draft of this blog). These are people that have the capacity to take leadership: who recognise that we can all lead, and develop, and be brilliant—not just a chosen few.

As a society, we worship all kinds of celebrities. Football players, musicians, artists, business moguls. That’s probably not ideal too. But the difference is that these people, in most cases, have at least done something—we look up to them because of what they achieved and what we might not be able to do ourselves. But with the royals—or with nobility and other inherited privileges—they haven’t actually done anything special or different to earn their status. They just got born into a particular class. So when we pay homage to them, when we look up to them, we’re essentially regurgitating an ideology that says, ‘You are not as good as others just because of who they—and who you—are. You’re not as worthy because you are you.’ And what does that do to people’s psyches?

I’ve been reading Jonathan Haidt’s The righteous mind (Penguin, 2012), and it’s a brilliant book about how we develop and maintain particular moral positions. Haidt argues that a morality based around the principle of obedience to authority is just as valid as one based around principles of care or fairness. It’s an interesting and challenging argument, but I think Haidt is wrong. Care and fairness advantage multiple people, it helps to create a world in which more people can benefit more of the time (as I’ve argued in my recent book, Psychology at the heart of social change , Policy, 2023). But what does obedience to authority benefit? Perhaps it gives people a sense of security, perhaps it gives society some stability. But it has so many downsides too: inequalities, marginalisation, oppression, a lack of freedom or creativity. If obedience to authority was core to wellbeing, then why isn’t it at the heart of practices like therapy, or other wellbeing-oriented practices like social and emotional learning in schools. I can’t think of one therapeutic practices that tries to help clients be more obedient to authority as a means of fostering psychological health. I can think of hundreds that try to improve self-esteem, assertiveness, and a willingness to be ‘adult’.

Actually, having said that, there is one approach to mental wellbeing that does advocate a more hierarchical approach: positive parenting. Here, in this well-evidenced practice, you do try and encourage your children to listen to you and follow you, even if, at times, you can’t fully explain why (screams: ‘Don’t cross the road, a car is coming’). But positive parenting is what adults do with children, so it begs the question, are we children to the royals? Are we their infants and they our parents? Perhaps, psychologically, we can become so; but in a world facing climate catastrophe, war, genocide, do we need more infantalised adults? Rather, I think we need more adultified adults: who can take on responsibility, and feel that they are—and can be—the backbone for a future.

When I was a teen, I was of the ‘hang the monarchy’ persuasion. Now, I think that kind of ideology is as inhumane, destructive, and unhelpful as a pro-Royalist one. And I’m going to be having fun on Saturday: albeit at our ‘Definitely Not Celebrating the Coronation’ house party. But for all the pomp, pageantry, and ‘glamour’ of the coronation (and expense!), I really can’t see how reinforcing subservience and homaging is going to help us move in the direction of personal, social, and/or environmental wellbeing—directions we so desperately need to move in right now.

Acknowledgement

Photo by Jared Subia on Unsplash

Politics in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Is politics relevant to the work that counsellors and psychotherapists do?  Is it something, for instance, that we should be encouraged to reflect on and talk about in our training, or should we try and leave it outside of our professional field?

My personal view is that politics is—and should be—absolutely integral to the work that we do: that it is something that we, as counsellors and psychotherapists, should be talking much more about.

Of course, this is not to suggest that we should be badgering our clients to vote in a particular way, or directing them to read Marx’s Das Capital if they dare to utter politically incorrect views. Rather, it’s about counsellors and psychotherapists actively developing an understanding of political processes; and being able—and willing—to talk to each other about politics in the same way that we might talk about psychological, developmental, or practice-based issues.

Politics Impacts on Wellbeing

Why? First, because politics matter to the life of our clients. We know, from the evidence, that certain political, economic, and social factors have a profound impact on the wellbeing of the people we work with. Research shows, for instance, that socio-political factors such as financial hardship, unemployment, discrimination, war, and a lack of democratic freedom—as well as economic inequality—can all have a profound impact on people’s psychological health. That’s not to say that these are the only factors: early life experiences, biological factors, and levels of interpersonal relatedness, for instance, can have a powerful impact too.  But just as we wouldn’t say, ‘I don’t really want to think about—or learn about—the impact that adverse childhood experiences can have on my clients’; so, I believe, we shouldn’t be ignoring the impact that social and political factors can have.

An awareness of these factors can help us, and our clients, in three ways?  First, as with any theory (like conditions of worth, attachment theory, or the stages of grief), understanding how our clients have come to experience the problems they do can deepen our levels of empathic engagement.  Mei, for instance, is a client I’ve written about in my recent book Integrating counselling and psychotherapy (Sage, 2019), who had lasting scars from the racist teasing she experienced at school (details of the client have been disguised to protect anonymity).  ‘It wasn’t the worst when the kids had a go at me,’ said Mei, mid-way through our fourth session, ‘It was when the teacher joined in.’ Understanding that racism can have a devastating impact on people’s mental health allowed me to really sit with the painfulness and shame that Mei described, and to validate her in her experiencing. ‘Yes, racism is really awful’; ‘Yes, it can make you feel utterly worthless and humiliated and alone’; ‘Yes, Mei, I can really understand the rage you still feel now’. Of course, without knowing much about racism, I might have still empathised with Mei’s feelings of humiliation, isolation, or rage as she described them.  But this theoretical knowledge opened me up to—and deepened my appreciation of—what she had been going through; just as understanding the impact of early neglect, or of drug withdrawal, can help us appreciate clients’ experiences here.

Second, if we know what is causing a client’s psychological distress, we can help them think about how to address it most effectively.  Mei, for instance, felt really bad about herself a lot of the time.  If we know that that might be linked to the racism she experienced, and continues to experience, we can work with her to ask questions, like ‘Was it really my fault that I felt so shaky at school?’ and, ‘How might I challenge people who are still racist to me?’ By contrast, if we ignore social and political factors, we can end up attributing clients’ psychological distress to the wrong sources. ‘Mei, I wonder if your shakiness at school was about your difficult relationship to your mother?’ Maybe it was but, NO, maybe it wasn’t at all. And maybe working with Mei on issues about her mother will never help her address her low self-esteem because what it’s really about is the raw, brute, ugly racism that Mei experienced as a young child, and continues to experience in her world around her.

Third, if we know our clients’ psychological difficulties are linked to their socio-political contexts, then we can take steps, outside of the counselling room, to try and improve things for them—for all of us. So that means political action: for instance, campaigning against discrimination, poverty, or the looming environmental catastrophe. Surely, if we care about our clients, if we genuinely want to see the best for them, we should be involved here? Otherwise, we are a bit like a GP who stands silently by as a speeding truck comes careering towards their patient. Yes, it’s not the GP’s responsibility to shout anything out, they’re not obliged to do so, and certainly it would be directive. But, aren’t they going to do something? Are they really going to stand by and see someone they care for destroyed?

Counselling and Psychotherapy as a (Progressive) Politic

As counsellors and psychotherapists, I do not believe our role is as detached, indifferent professionals. I do not believe our work is just about ‘doing a job’, like selling cigarettes on a market stall or making profits on stocks and shares.

Let me put this a different way: for me, practising therapy is part of a wider, more encompassing ‘direction’. What is that direction? It is something about trying to help develop a more compassionate world: trying to create a society in which people are happier, more equitable, more able to get on with each other. I’ve described this as an ethos of ‘Welcoming the Other’: where we can be ourselves, but also open and responsive and caring to those around us. And, for me, counselling and psychotherapy are of value to the extent that they contribute to that. That, as a therapist, I’m extending care towards my clients; and I’m also working in a caring relatedness with them; and I’m helping my clients to develop more caring, compassionate relationships towards themselves (and, ideally, with others).

I guess, I know that my work is part of that wider direction because if you took all that away—if, for instance, I knew that my counselling work was going to make people more miserable, or contribute towards a more selfish and inequitable society—I wouldn’t want to do it. Because it wouldn’t give me what I’m really in it for. And, I suspect, the same would be true for many others in this field.

For me, there’s one political view that is very closely aligned to this wider direction—perhaps is the direction, per se—and that’s a progressive political outlook. Progressive means wanting to see society reorganised so that everyone has the chance to live better, ‘larger’ lives. It means trying to create more equality in what people have access to, challenging discrimination and oppression, celebrating diversity, and freeing people up to actualise their potential to its fullest extent. Carl Rogers’s work, for me, is a brilliant exposition of this progressive viewpoint, and that’s why I love it so much: because it’s exactly what I think can help create a more thriving, satisfying, equitable society.  And, again, I think that’s why many other people love Rogers too. Not just because of the clinical method, or the theory of change, but because it accords with their most deeply held values and directions: about supporting human freedom, relatedness, care.

The other side of this coin is to say that, for me, a conservative politic—particularly of the sort advocated by Boris Johnson or those to the right of him—is not compatible with what counselling and psychotherapy is about. Why is that? Because it is so strongly about individualism, about competition, about looking after ourselves and protecting what we have. I guess you might say that that is aligned with some forms of therapy—for instance, a very individualistic ‘me-first’ assertiveness—but that’s not the kind of therapy I’d want to be aligned with in any way. And when you move towards the xenophobia and outright racism of the further Right, I just can’t see that aligned, in any way, to the kind of caring, empathic compassion that underpins our work. Can you be avowedly racist, homophobic, or anti-Semitic and a therapist? No, I don’t think so, because non-judgemental acceptance to all clients is an essential competency for our work.

All this is a way of saying that, for me, counselling is a politic: it’s about how we can, and should, organise ourselves together as societies and as communities. And I see it as a profoundly progressive politic: aligned to a worldview that is deeply respectful of otherness, celebrates diversity, and tries to give everyone a fair chance.

Politics Determines Resources

The third reason, for me, why politics and therapy are so integrally related is one I won’t say too much about, as it’s already so widely discussed. And that’s the fact that the resourcing—and provision—of counselling and psychotherapy is so dependent on political decision-making. More money to the NHS, and more money to schools, means that more people can access more counselling and psychotherapy more of the time. Whatever party manifestos say, the bottom line for me is that progressive parties will always be more supportive of public resourcing for such services, and right wing parties more interested in relegating provision to the private sector alone.

What Therapists Offer

Finally, there’s the other side of the coin: what counsellors and psychotherapists can contribute to the political realm. We are experts in relating, in developing compassionate, empathic ways of being with others. We are trained in how to listen, how to understand people, and also how to help them bring out their best. And there is so much we could contribute to the political realm by helping others develop their practices in these areas.

Last night I watched the brilliant and heart-wrenching Ulysses’ Gaze, by the Greek filmmaker Theodoros Angelopoulos. It’s about the fragmentation of the Balkans, the wars and the killing, the devastation of communities and of people’s lives. And so, so much of it seems to come down to the inability of people to talk to each other, to listen and to understand. To see the suffering of others and to work together, across communities, for the betterment of all.

People need to be able to talk together. And, as counsellors and psychotherapists, we have learnt so much about how to do that. So are we just going to keep that locked away in our consulting rooms, or can we find ways of spreading that learning around? Joining a school’s governing board, for instance, or becoming a local councillor, are ways that we can take this learning we all so passionately love and believe in and contribute it to our wider worlds.

Vote to Keep the Tories Out

In a recent Facebook post, I appealed, ‘to all counsellors and psychotherapists at this election time to vote for progressive parties (Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Scottish and Welsh nationalists), and to keep the Conservatives out of power.’ Maybe it’s directive to say that, but I just feel so incredibly passionate about the importance of making political choices at the present time. As counsellors and psychotherapists, we can’t just stand by the sidelines and pretend none of this matters to us: trying to be ‘neutral’ just means endorsing the status quo. It’s our clients’ lives, let alone our own, that will be massively impacted upon by what happens at this general election. Five more years of Tories will almost certainly mean cuts to the NHS; a more unequal society; and, worst of all, a failure to address the most critical issue of our time, the climate emergency. I believe we need to act and that, as counsellors and psychotherapists, we need to be involved: to work with other progressive forces to create a society that is fairer, safer, and better for all.

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Resources

If you are interested in the links between politics and counselling and psychotherapy, you may be interested in joining the group Psychotherapists & Counsellors for Social Responsibility, which aims ‘to locate counselling and psychotherapy in a social, political, ecological, and economic context.’ For books, Nick Totton’s Psychotherapy and Politics provides a good overview of the involvement of therapists in the political field. My latest book, Integrating counselling and psychotherapy: Directionality, synergy, and social change strives to develop a framework for therapists that can integrate social and political factors as well as psychological ones.

What we've learnt from therapy that can help make a better world

Counsellors and psychotherapists don't know everything--there's a lot we need to learn ourselves. Like about the role of social and political factors in shaping people's wellbeing.  But we've had the privilege, as a profession, of over 100 years now of sitting with people and listening really deeply to them, and getting a sense of what genuinely helps them change. So what have we learnt that might help to create a better world?

1. All you need is love. There's loads of theories about what people need: pleasure, power, meaning. But when you work with people day in and day out, what you see is that the need to feel loved is such an incredibly powerful force; and one that can really distort or damage how people have become in the world in an attempt to get to it (or to protect themselves from the pain of not having it). So a better world needs to create systems in which people, right from the very start, can feel loved, valued and cared for. That means making sure our schools are caring places and not harsh, intimidating, bullying ones. It means training parents and carers in how to show love for their kids--and how to not let other things get in the way. And it means ensuring that people have warm and supportive communities to be part of right until their very last days.

2. It's good to talk. It isn't always easy, and there's time when we all want to lock ourselves in our bedroom, but generally talking about stuff is a pretty brilliant way of dealing with things.  Why? Because you don't feel so alone, because someone can help you work out how to deal with things, and because you generally feel less ashamed or awful about whatever's bothering you. So what we need is a world and a culture that can help people open up rather than bottle down. We need professionals like nurses and youth workers who are trained in helping people to talk; and we need media of all forms to pass on the message that there's no shame in being open about who and what we are.

3. The banality of evil. Therapy clients make mistakes. Just like we all do. And you can see how it ends up hurting other people, and often most of all themselves. But what comes really clear when you see people struggling with their lives is that most of the time, maybe all of it, the things that end up hurting others don't come from a place of maliciousness or viciousness or even greed. Mostly, it's people trying to protect themselves and do what they think is right that ends up really hurting others. It's a hard one to accept, because if someone really hurts us it's hard not to think they're 'bad' or it was on purpose, but most of time it just isn't. So a world that is focused on retaliation and punishment and blame isn't going to get very far. If we want to change people, and stop them doing hurtful things to others, we need to start trying to understand them. Of course, that doesn't mean that society should't sometimes lock people away to protect others--change isn't going to come overnight. But, ultimately, if society wants people to do the right thing, it needs to help them understand what's going on and what they're up to. And what they should do differently and why.

4. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Probably the best evidenced of all the therapy techniques is something called 'exposure', for treating anxiety. Essentially, what you do is to encourage people, in a safe and controlled way, to face the things they're afraid of: social situations, snakes, clowns, etc. It breaks the vicious cycle whereby people get scared of something, avoid it, and then get even more afraid because they don't learn that the thing is actually not that bad. What that means, socially and politically, is that we need a world that is supporting people to try out new things, and not get too bogged down in the old and the familiar. Routine, of course, can be great; but if political systems get too conservative and try and push away everything new and different (worst case scenarios being xenophobia, prejudice and discrimination), there's a good chance it will only fuel anxiety and fear. So we need political systems and cultures that can celebrate diversity and difference and creativity -- that encourage us to stay on our toes and be open to what's fresh and new.

5. People are amazing.  One thing you discover when your work closely with people--really, really closely--is just how amazingly resilient and resourceful people are.  You see people who have had their lives crashing around them and who stick at it and express themselves and slowly by slowly, maybe over years, pull themselves back together. And you watch and you cry and you witness the incredible power of the human 'spirit' to fight on and not give up. People are amazing, you just can't put it clearer than that, and we need to live in a world that really recognises that and gives everyone the respect that they deserve. Whether they're homeless, or marginalised, or third world.... if you can see the world through different people's eyes and see what they're doing and they're struggling with you'd never want to treat people casually or with disrespect.  Each and everyone of us is so unique, so special. Social and economic policies need to start with that, more than anything else: A deep care, compassion and respect for each of us here in the world.

Approach trumps avoidance

Just back from PRIDE in Brighton with our kids. So great to see so much celebration: of diversity, of partying, of doing things differently and having fun. Creativity and pleasure and colour and experimentation; and people doing it and other people watching it and everyone enjoying everyone else doing things they love.

It's such a million miles away from so much of what's going on in the world today: walls, fear, wars, people fighting other people and getting scared of things that are different and new. Brexit.  Retreating back into our homeland island out of fear of foreigners coming over and destroying what 'ours'.

In recent years, some psychologists have talked about their being two basic forces, two things that we strive for: 'approach' and 'avoidance'.  Approach is about going out in the world. About learning and growing and diversity and fun. It's about moving towards things--things that we might not fully know--and embracing them in all their otherness. And then there's avoidance, which is about keeping away from things. Pushing things back. Trying to protect what's out. Pride and Brexit. Love and fear. Expansion and contraction.

Of course, we need both. We need to learn to love and grow; but if a rabid lion is coming at us, it doesnt do much good to embrace it with a welcoming grin. We need to protect ourselves and the ones we love. We need to have the ability to shut down.  But there's reasons, psychologically, why taking an avoidance stance towards life tends to cause more problems than an approach one; and that's well supported by the psychological evidence. For instance, people who are more avoidant tend to have poorer mental health, and also tend to do less well in therapy.

So why does avoidance get trumped by approach? First, if you're focused on avoiding things, there's no real way of knowing when you've got to an endpoint.  A person striving for more friends, for instance, can know when they've achieved that goal.  But a person trying to avoid loneliness can never fully know if they've achieved that, as there's always the possibility that it'll return.  Second, closely linked to this, we're less likely to be successful in achieving avoidance goals because the warded off state, in most instances, simply can't be eradicated.  So you can try and 'get rid of foreigners', but you're never going to fully manage it: there's always that lurking feeling that it's never fully done. Third, the means towards avoiding something is often less clear than the means towards approaching something.  How do I avoid loneliness, for instance, when there are so many different ways in which it might be evoked?  It's like trying to hold back the tide.  By contrast, if I'm trying to achieve something, I can create plans and goals and work out a way of doing it.  Fourth, if I'm trying to get TO somewhere, there's likely to be a boost to my self esteem when I get there. But successful avoidance is unlikely to leave me with a sense of achievement.  Finally, trying to avoid things is inherently problematic because it requires us to call to mind the thing we want to avoid, hence making it more salient.  If I want to get rid of foreigners, for instance, I have to think of them, and then that gets me more fixated on what I'm afraid of. 

So while we all get scared of things, and all want to be avoidant at times; it's a philosophy of approach that is generally better for us--and almost certainly for the people and the world that we're engaging with. And I do believe, perhaps naively, that over time our world will move in the direction of approach.  I think it's a natural thing because, at the end of the day, avoidance so often just doesn't get us anywhere. Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, there's no way that the police would have had a float at the PRIDE parade. But who does that benefit? Who gets something out of it? By contrast, today, seeing the lorries full of gay and lesbian police officers: they're having a great time, the crowds are having a great time watching them. They're off to a party. Is there really, any, sense at all in winding the clock back?

I guess, ultimately, what I'm trying to say here is that there's a good, strong, logical argument for why things like PRIDE and celebrating diversity make so much more sense than things like Trump's wall and ethnophobia. It's not just about being nice and sweet to people and rainbow flags, it's about a rigorous philosophy and ethic of what makes this place a better place for us all.