The Shadow and the Counsellor

Working with the Darker Aspects of the Person, the Role and the Profession

Steve Page

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134789566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

The Shadow and the Counsellor introduces the concept of shadow, the darker side to ourselves that we do not wish to acknowledge, or do not even recognise. It examines how it comes into being and explores its impact within counselling. The Shadow and the Counsellor is structured around a six stage model which is designed to help the counsellor recognise, confront and deal with their 'shadow' side. This can then be a framework for reflection and practical action.
With case studies including short clinical examples to longer examples running through the book, this will give counsellors a new way of approaching their practice.

1 Counsellor: person, shadow and mask

As counsellors we are a curious collection, no two the same and yet possessing identifiable characteristics that are common among the majority if not all. Each of us brings the unique emotional, physical, psychological, social and spiritual aspects of who we are and takes on the set of purposes, qualities and attributes that go to make up the role that is described as counselling. We might think of this as each person who becomes a counsellor donning the suit of clothes that form the role. The person will be affected by the clothes they are wearing and similarly the attire will appear differently on each individual. To add to the diversity there are a range of outfits available, from the collared worsted wool of the formal practitioner through to the comfortable track suits favoured by those with a more casual style.

It is inevitable that who we are as people will be a highly significant influence upon our work with clients, in some cases the pivotal factor. To illustrate this let us consider the example of Ruth, a client who is struggling to decide how to move forward in a marriage that she experiences as quite oppressive and restrictive although still rich in many ways. Now let us imagine two counsellors Ruth might encounter. The first counsellor has herself come through a great struggle to find her sense of freedom and autonomy as a woman, ending her marriage during this process. The other counsellor has worked very hard to sustain and nurture her own long-term relationship which is now stable and fulfilling. It would be very surprising if there was no nuance of difference between how these two counsellors would interact with Ruth. Indeed it is a fairly absurd proposition: the counsellors’ personal experience will inevitably have some impact. That is not to say that each would necessarily espouse the path they have themselves chosen, it is rather more complex than that. There may be illicit encouragement in that direction, but there might equally be compensatory discouragement. There may be no clear influence towards one course of action or another, but it is not possible for the counsellors’ own experience not to play some part in the relationship with Ruth. While every effort may be genuinely made to remain dispassionate and facilitative, in the final analysis the fate of Ruth’s marriage may hinge on counsellor selection.

Ruth is highly unlikely to have any direct knowledge of her counsellor’s own experiences in relationships, and self-disclosure on the part of the counsellor is certainly not a satisfactory solution in such a situation (Segal 1993; Weiner 1978). If either counsellor did describe her own experience it would almost certainly undermine the effectiveness of the counselling work from the outset. This influencing component cannot be removed or neutralised but remains a function of the relational nature of the counselling process. It is integral to the wealth of human experience that each counsellor brings to the therapeutic relationship that is vital to the maturity and, it is to be hoped, wisdom that the counsellor possesses. As therapeutic work takes place within the context of a human relationship the personhood of the counsellor will remain a highly significant factor. Its impact is variable and to some extent unpredictable, although each of us may come to recognise the profile of our own influence as we gain in experience. We might start this process by considering what brought us into counselling in the first place.

MOTIVATION FOR BECOMING A COUNSELLOR

Choosing any career is inevitably a result of a number of factors and the decision, if deliberate decision it is, to become a counsellor or therapist is no different in this regard. One strongly influential component is that emulsion of genetic makeup and formative life experiences that results in the constitution of the individual personality. Out of this will develop a psychological nature that predisposes some to this work while others will be better prepared for other fields. Attempts have been made to study the variables that prepare the person for the possibility of being a counsellor, with Guy (1987) offering a particularly systematic view. He includes motivators such as inquisitiveness, introspection, capacity (and perhaps desire) for self-denial, desire for intimate contact, loneliness, desire for power and love and innate rebelliousness. He places these and other motivators in conjunction with the influence of the family of origin (Racusin et al. 1981) to provide a thorough examination. These issues are particularly important to those considering this work or involved in the assessment and selection of candidates suitable for the profession. Guy also emphasises that not all who are drawn to the profession are in fact suited to the work, citing the sobering study by Walfish et al (1985) which found that among a sample of clinical psychologists close to half of those who had been in practice for more than ten years stated that they would not select this work if making the choice again. For those of us who are already in the field it can be illuminating to reflect in some detail on our own personal history and how this may have inclined us to this work, as illustrated by Heppner (1989). Such reflection, when undertaken honestly, is likely to be a revealing process and one that we can usefully undertake at various stages during our career as different aspects are likely to catch our attention each time.

In addition to our personal predisposition there will be an element of chance involved in the process. This serendipitous aspect of becoming a counsellor might involve a chance meeting, the right mentor, an influential book, a needy friend or a timely course. Each of these can be thought of as an activator:¹ triggering into action the potential that has thus far lain dormant. It is the combination of these two factors—the personal predisposition and the right activator—that results in someone choosing the counselling profession. There are many who have characteristics that make them appropriate for this work who will simply never be attracted to it; Guy terms such people the ‘Suited but Not Interested’ (1987:25). They will be found moving off in some different direction, perhaps touched by an activator for some other line of work. Those who do gravitate towards the role of counsellor will bring with them a range of motivating factors, some of which will be known to that individual, while others remain unconscious.

It is possible, as Bugental (1964) has done, to split these factors into two groups: those that are appropriate in as much as they work in the interests of both practitioner and client and those that are inappropriate by virtue of using the client to gratify the needs of the counsellor. However, there are dangers in creating lists that define some characteristics as inherently ‘good’ and others as inherently ‘bad’. It is not difficult to identify a number of motivational factors that sound laudable. Examples include: the desire to do work that feels worthwhile; curiosity about what makes people tick; a fascination with finding solutions; a sense of compassion towards the suffering of others; the wish to be a positive influence in the lives of others; a desire to use one’s power and experience in the service of others and so on. However, I suspect that any one of these, or any other reason for choosing this type of work, can be double-edged; can be of either benefit or detriment to the client.

I am, with the wisdom of hindsight, well aware that one of the factors that drew me into this field is the opportunity it provides for well-contained intimate contact with others. This attraction has been fuelled by my ambivalence about being intimate and open in my relationships. I have a strong desire to be close and can easily be frustrated and then bored when I find contact with the other person to be superficial or distant. In contrast I am also afraid that I will be engulfed, lose a sense of my separate self in my relationships. Thus, the intimacy of the counselling situation where I can have intense empathic contact with another person within predetermined boundaries of time and space while disclosing little about myself beyond my experience in the moment is a very attractive solution to my intimacy dilemma. I do not believe this need, which is being met daily in my counselling work, is inherently good or bad. For some clients my need dovetails well with what they are seeking from our counselling relationship. My desire for contact can draw clients deeper into the relationship despite, for example, their fear of trusting others. Alongside this I can utilise my low tolerance threshold for superficiality in order to cut through the smoke screening and rationalising distraction that some individuals create because of their trepidation about engaging with the more emotional aspects of their experience. However, there are times when these same desires of mine can overwhelm the other person if allowed to go unchecked. I am well aware that my clients may find me to be intrusive or emotionally demanding in my approach. This can lead to defences being further fortified and the client becoming increasingly inaccessible. There is then no inherent absolute judgement about the therapeutic impact of this particular need. Rather there are some for whom my need is a benefit, others for whom it is a potential liability.

Some time ago I saw a client who was strongly denying the distress he felt about the death of his mother. I could feel his pain and I wanted to reach out through his defences, to bridge the gap between us. However, I held back because I felt uncomfortable about this course of action: I was cautioned by the client’s wariness of me. Exploring this in supervision it was apparent that this client was highly vulnerable and his defences brittle. It seemed imperative that the client was invited to explore beyond his defences, but having proffered this invitation it was my task to then wait patiently upon his decision. At times this was intensely frustrating for me but nevertheless remained, in my view and that of my supervisor, what he needed from me. For this particular client my personal needs inclined me to act in a way that was inappropriate to his therapeutic process. Had I not been aware of this tendency in me it is probable that I would have acted accordingly and frightened the client. This is but one example of the manner in which the motivations that drive each counsellor to be in this work can be either compatible or not to the work with a specific client.

Hillman (1979) offers a useful distinction between a need, which while seeking fulfilment can be recognised and contained, and a demand that requires satisfaction. A need that the counsellor has recognised and is able to contain does not necessarily threaten the efficacy of the therapeutic work. A demand that remains outside conscious awareness and will not let up until satisfied will affect the therapeutic process and may lead to the client being exploited or harmed. The capacity of the counsellor to recognise the need is a matter of self-awareness, for without awareness it may well continue to operate as an unconscious demand. Being able to recognise the need is in turn influenced by its potency: the degree of psychic energy fuelling it. The more potent or intense the need the more intra-personal defensive strategies are likely to be employed in order to maintain its unconscious status. Neither of these two factors is necessarily fixed. As we gain insight and self-understanding through our own therapeutic and developmental work so the hitherto unconscious demands become increasingly visible and decreasingly intense. Let us not then delude ourselves that the recognition and management of a need is a simple process or indeed one that is assured of success. Some of these needs have considerable power, driven as they are by the potent emotional charge of many years of frustration and repression. Indeed some individuals are drawn to the role of counsellor, but their level of neediness is such that it is almost certain that they will fail in this endeavour.

It has been suggested by Gilbert et al. that those who are ‘compulsively self-reliant, emotionally defended, or with severe narcissistic difficulties’ (1989:6) are not suited for the profession of psychotherapy and these exclusions also have relevance to counselling. These are each descriptions of people who are not going to be able to engage in or sustain effective therapeutic relationships. Someone who is compulsively self-reliant is not willing to engage in a mutual relationship, lacking the trust this requires, usually as a result of early developmental difficulties of their own (Erikson 1977). As for emotional defences, we all require these, indeed anyone whose defences are inadequate will pay an immense cost if working as a counsellor. However, as counsellors there are many times when we have to be able to reach across our own emotional defences in order to make the relational contact that counselling requires. An individual unable to do this will struggle in relationships generally, tending to seek to control interactive situations rather than allowing the natural movement to take its own course. Some who are seeking such control may feel somewhat trapped within their own internal prison and consequently be drawn to work as a therapist because ‘they believe, quite wrongly, that its practice will dispel the mists of their unperceptiveness’ (Storr 1990:183).

The third type of person, who has severe narcissistic tendencies, will also be unable to effectively engage in relationships in the manner required in therapeutic work. Narcissism takes its name from the Greek myth of Narcissus (Graves 1960) who became hopelessly lost in the reverie induced as he gazed at his own reflection. The term ‘narcissistic’ is used in somewhat confusing ways in psychotherapeutic literature (Pulver 1970). I am using the term to describe the person who exhibits particularly impenetrable defences that are constructed to protect a weak sense of personal identity and poor self-esteem (Schwartz-Salant 1982). In addition I would expect the narcissistic person to have a marked tendency to self-reference: to process experience with themselves, rather than others, as the principal if not the only reference point (Jacoby 1990).

We could add a fourth grouping of those who have personal mental health difficulties that they are not able to identify and contain. It is quite possible for people with recurring or chronic mental health difficulties, such as depression, anxiety states, eating disorders, addictions or the milder psychotic disorders to function as counsellors. In order to do so they must know when they are being affected by their condition and what the impact may be upon their work with clients. They must also be able to contain this impact effectively; not an easy undertaking. Those with mental health difficulties not able to meet these criteria are unlikely to be able to sustain themselves as effective counsellors.

When present to a substantial degree each of these forms of difficulty would inevitably restrict the ability of the counsellor to relate with sufficient empathy and warmth to instigate a working therapeutic relationship. In part it is the degree and depth of compulsion of the characteristics that determines whether or not the individual is capable of being an effective counsellor. Any who do have such difficulties to a prohibitive degree will probably lack an understanding that this is so, caught themselves within their internal defensive web. Thus it is important for the counselling profession to act responsibly in this regard: taking steps to identify and exclude those wishing to be counsellors who are not suited to the role. It is also important to recognise that working as a counsellor can exacerbate some of these tendencies and make the symptoms more profound. I shall return to this later in this chapter when I consider the counselling mask.

The second determinant of an individual’s ability to contain emotional and psychological vulnerabilities sufficiently to be an effective counsellor is their degree of conscious awareness. In an interesting study Wosket (1990) used a factor analysis procedure upon responses to a questionnaire on counsellor motivation which was distributed to a number of trained counsellors or those with substantial experience. Although only a relatively small sample, twenty-four counsellors, responded, some of the differences are worthy of note. Topping the table of what counsellors considered to be their primary motivators were ‘client growth’ (mentioned sixteen times) and ‘personal development of the counsellor’ (fourteen). Halfway down the list came ‘curiosity’, ‘calling’, and ‘influence of significant others’ (eight) with ‘stress’ and ‘need to be needed or succour others’ (three) the least frequently found themes. This is a study of what this sample of counsellors believe to be their motivation for being in this work. We see that the personal development of the counsellor is recognised as a motivating factor almost as frequently as client growth. This is quite encouraging as it suggests a high degree of conscious awareness that counselling is a process in which both participants are looking for gain. This implies a healthy balance in recognising both altruistic and self-interest motivations. However, personal development is a somewhat benign general description and does not give a great deal of information as to how far down the road of self-awareness these practitioners have in fact travelled.

Such a study of conscious motivations sheds little light on the unconscious factors also present. In an intriguingly paradoxical proposition Street (1989) has suggested that one of the fascinations available to counsellors is the ever unfolding process of realising the different layers of motivation that bring us into this field. In the early years of being a counsellor a recognition of such factors as the desire to emulate those who have been helpful to us, the wish to help others, or a sense of calling may suffice. Gradually other, perhaps less palatable, factors start to be uncovered: the need to be needed, a perhaps slightly macabre curiosity that borders on voyeurism, an enjoyment of the sense of being important for our clients. It is as if we are ever identifying different significant factors and as each is recognised so it loses some of its potency, becomes less of a need or even demand, and we move on to a new layer of understanding ourselves. This is the process of exploring and coming to know aspects of our own shadow.

FORMING THE SHADOW

The foundations for the personal shadow are laid at an early age, although the manifestations often do not come to light until adulthood. As a child grows and develops the favourable aspects of their personality, the behaviours, qualities, skills, feelings and desires that are valued, are encouraged and will tend to be integrated into the consciously experienced sense of self. Usually a personal identity or sense of self forms, which is dominated by those aspects of the young person that are favoured by those with influence over them and by the social and cultural context within which they find themselves. Meanwhile the child also develops a shadow side into which they place and thereby repress those aspects of themselves that they learn are disliked or unacceptable to those who have influence upon them.

This process of splitting off aspects of personality may take place in an unobtrusive manner, but in some instances is born out of explicit, and at times dramatic, struggle. You may have witnessed scenes in these dramas that can take many weeks, months or even years to run their course. I recall observing the conflict between a two-year-old and his parents that seemed destined to result in shadow material being generated. The boy in question was quite slow in his speech development and on occasions his frustration erupted and he switched from looking somewhat bewildered into a rage of kicking and punching. His parents would intervene both to protect those on the receiving end of his attack and also to try to curb behaviour that manifestly caused them considerable discomfort and embarrassment. As a bystander with little emotional involvement in what was occurring it was easy to see that the child’s violence was a result of his frustration in not being able to make himself understood. It is then but a short step to criticising the parents for focusing their attention on trying to control his behaviour rather than endeavouring to understand what the child was attempting to communicate prior to becoming so angry. However, when fists and feet are flying and the child is singularly unavailable to reasoning, the attempts of the parents to exert their authority upon the situation are easy to understand. While not having certain knowledge of what will result from this situation, it is an example of the type of interaction that can lead, over time, to the frustrated angry side to that child being suppressed and residing in his shadow. Then a seemingly satisfactory resolution occurs: the parents are greatly relieved that their little boy no longer has these tantrums and the child is rewarded by increased positive attention and reward. However, there is a psychological cost to such a split: it takes a cer...