Some brief extracts... and one longer piece

“In families, in childhood, patterns of abuse and deprivation often, of course, take the form of a secret war that goes on, hidden by masks and unsurpassed acting. But whatever the scale of it, the eternal pervasive dynamics are much the same and there are always casualties…”
Counselling News

“… If I have some surplus energy I might occupy myself with wine-making – an absorbing hobby where however much experience one has there is always the adventure that the results are never precisely predictable. It is not far fetched to say there is an analogy with the counselling process. One has a mix of ingredients, a catalyst is added (the therapist in this case), the whole starts to ferment and change and what is obscure and murky eventually, with luck and judgement, falls star-bright and balanced. Sometimes of course the wine may become ‘stuck’ and fermentation cease for no apparent reason. Then decisions have to be made and hopefully the process can be invested with new vigour”.
Therapy Today

“… We can grow up with this internal negative judge. It inhibits us and is demoralising. We try to avoid doing it wrong but aren’t sure how to do it right. We need to do well but fear doing badly. As my grandmother would have said we are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. It means escaping those constraints of the past, which means facing the fear in a positive and supportive environment and taking it step by step. This can be an adventure. We can find that the judgmental part does not now have to be scary at all, and the deep blue sea is not something we might drown in but something in which we might swim with all the freedom of self-expression”.
Communications

“… It is the remarkable power of these moments to drag and hold that make us suddenly aware of old longings, pangs of guilt… When younger, the past is less intrusive. For one thing, there is less of it. And there are many distractions. As a 21 year old in Paris the present had an intensity and excitement that helped obscure the past anyway. Later in life too, we re-enact those old devices, filling our lives with distractions so as to convince ourselves that the past has been ‘dealt with’, that we have, so to speak, ‘seen it off’. There is of course the ‘adult’ part that strives valiantly to be fully alive in the present, to live in the ‘now’. That, as they say, is the place to be. All we have is the now and the point of power lies there. The prize is the freedom to be ourselves…”
Counselling News

Problems With Normality (edited version)                         Encompassed within the world of abnormal psychology - as mainstream psychology calls it - is a whole army of labels for every human condition, from OCD to depression, social phobias, paranoia, dissociative states and many more.

Any classification relies on there being clear-cut boundaries. But in practice the dividing line is obscure. Some would see it as an extremely long sliding scale between 'normal' at one end and 'abnormal' at the other, with a vast grey area of controversy and uncertainty in-between. Others would say the whole notion of 'normal' and 'abnormal' is meaningless. The terms are so relative to the time and culture in which we happen to be born that it is impossible to arrive at an absolute reality about what it is to be 'normal'.

Definitions of abnormality are largely based on accepted social values being transgressed. But social values are like shifting sand. Only a few years ago homosexuality was widely seen as deviant and distinctly abnormal. Today the sands have shifted dramatically and, generally speaking, that is much less likely to be the view.

It has been said that "Well-adjusted people have some awareness of their own motives and feelings... normal people do not hide important feelings and motives from themselves. They have more self-awareness than individuals who are diagnosed as 'mentally ill'". But these seem particularly dangerous criteria to use and ones that would be very hard to substantiate (after all Hannibal Lecter would probably meet all these criteria).

Because the 'average' person is not a depressive, it also means the depressive deviates from the statistical norm (as of course do other 'abnormal' states). One definition of abnormality is based on this statistical frequency - so the middle band of frequent characteristics and behaviour determines what is 'normal'. However, this definition is clearly inadequate because then we would have to classify not only depressives as abnormal but also very happy people (or for that matter highly intelligent people or, come to that, people with an interest in psychotherapy), all falling outside the middle band of statistical frequency.

Could a more useful criterion be that of maladaptive behaviour - abnormality judged on the basis of its adverse effects on the individual or society? This might include someone who was so fearful of crowds, for example, that it interfered with their ability to go to work, or someone who attempted suicide, or someone prone to very aggressive instincts. Radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing however made passionate criticisms of these kinds of judgments, made on the assumption that society as a whole is 'normal' and that those who do not fit comfortably into it are somehow not normal.

Today we see huge numbers of people suffering mental health problems in a work environment of unrelenting pressure. Does this mean there is something abnormal about the individual or something wrong with a society that imposes that kind of environment?

What seems clear is that any definition often says as much about those doing the observing as those being observed. Those on the sidelines of society who do not fit accepted social norms are clearly more vulnerable to being labelled than those who conform to what is expected.

Yet in our therapeutic work with clients we strive towards some concept of health and happiness and somehow, sometimes, if all goes well, we and they seem to know when we've got close to it. At those times there is a deep sense of what feels right and 'normal' even if putting it into words remains as elusive as ever.

Summer Newsletter, National Register of Hypnotherapists and Psychotherapists