Difference and Discrimination in Psychotherapy and Counselling

Sue Marshall

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9781412901185, 9781412901178
• eBook ISBN: 9781446232347
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

?Prejudice is, for good or ill, a part of our nature. It is instilled in us from birth onwards. All we can hope to do is to combat it, and the first tool in our armoury must be that of awareness. Without this, it is very difficult, perhaps impossible, for the psychotherapist or counsellor to explore how it might be influencing the psychotherapy relationship.

Sue Marshall has, in this book, performed a valuable task in that direction, and has done in it very cogently in a most difficult area. I applaud her? - Joe Sinclair, Nurturing Potential

Difference, prejudice and discrimination are issues which all counsellors and psychotherapists need to address as part of their personal and professional development. Designed to support training on these complex issues, Difference & Discrimination in Counselling & Psychotherapy helps therapists understand the experience of discrimination, as well as explore their own - often unconscious - attitudes to others, based on gender, sexuality, race, culture or mental health.

For most therapists an attitude of acceptance and non-judgmentalism is fundamental to their view of practice. However, in seeking to be non-judgmental, therapists may run the risk of concealing their own prejudices. It is only by facing up to these attitudes and exploring them that therapists are able to fully relate to their clients and help them effectively. Synthesising sociological knowledge with her experience of a practitioner, Sue Marshall powerfully demonstrates both the importance and the practicalities of developing awareness about difference.

Difference & Discrimination in Counselling & Psychotherapy offers a straightforward approach to some of the most difficult issues relating to practice, making it an ideal text for use in training and for qualified therapists continuing their professional development.

1	Discrimination, Difference and Identity

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EACH INDIVIDUAL PERSON IS unique. Our uniqueness defines us and separates us. It may also be the source of our delight in each other and enrich our personal relationships. Over and above our uniqueness we also share characteristics with other people – some characteristics with almost everybody else, others with only a few. Common features, like unique qualities, can also form the basis of connections and relationships between people and groups. So, in varying degrees, we are like and unlike other people we encounter. Despite the fact that most people are able to tolerate, even celebrate and enjoy, the unique differences of others with whom they come into contact, in general we are most comfortable in the company of those with whom we share common features. Such features may be social class, educational background, taste in music, religious beliefs, professional interests and a whole host of other possible factors. The more we have ‘in common’ with another person, the more likely we are to feel an affinity with them. Differences, too, may be a source of interest, but they are potentially more challenging and divisive. There is a level of comfort in being able to identify with elements of another person’s being or experience.

History and observation demonstrate that our response to differentness is not universally one of acceptance. Neither is it universally one of condemnation and rejection. I would maintain, however, that it is more often a response which veers away from inclusion and tends towards withdrawal. Such withdrawal can take many forms – some relatively benign, others with a greater capacity for causing offence or damage. Prejudice and adverse discrimination exist in all social groups. The fact that there are laws against discrimination of various kinds in every western country attests to its existence. You do not need to outlaw something unless it has proved to be problematic. Such laws have helped by punishing offenders – people who have been shown to be actively practising racism or sexism or some other form of discrimination – and, presumably, by acting as deterrents. The deterrent effect would be to discourage people from engaging in overt expressions of prejudices, but would do nothing to remove the underlying beliefs, thoughts and feelings which motivate such expressions. It would be convenient to assume that the phenomena of prejudice and adverse discrimination manifest themselves in a small and reprehensible group within society and that most of us are in the clear – unbiased and prejudice-free. I do not believe this to be the case. Fortunately, it is only a small minority who choose to engage in the most extreme forms of discriminatory behaviour – violence or even murder on the basis of a person’s skin colour, religion or sexual orientation. But that does not exonerate the rest of us from harbouring prejudices. We all have preferences and we discriminate, in the sense of making choices based on our values and tastes, in all areas of our lives. Many of these choices and preferences are in response to the perceived similarities and differences of others. And it is in these responses, I believe, that the potential for prejudice is present in all of us.

The presence of our own prejudices or biases is something we prefer not to acknowledge or examine, precisely because it conflicts with that aspect of our chosen identity by which we would like to see ourselves as non-judgemental, fair-minded, accepting of all humankind. How, then, do we address it? Only by scrupulously honest and searching self-examination. This can be achieved on our own, in dialogue with others, maybe in therapy or with close friends. But, like all dimensions of self-discovery, it cannot be forced upon us by others. You can take a horse to water, or a client to therapy, but … as the saying goes. I suspect that many students of counselling or psychotherapy sit through their mandatory hours of therapy while in training without really looking too closely at some of those parts of their inner life that they are least happy about. In writing this book I am hoping, possibly vainly, to provoke in the reader the impulse to look within and own some of those uncomfortable, possibly deeply hidden, prejudices and dislikes.

There are many facts and much information within these pages. This is intentional. By remaining ignorant it is easier to hold on to the belief that we live in a just and equitable society. Once we have learnt that things are not quite how we would like them to be, it becomes harder to deceive ourselves and also, I hope, harder to maintain the pretence that we are not part of the system. Society is made of people – you and me and him and her. If the society we have created is imperfect, unjust, pernicious or oppressive it is because we have made it so, or allowed it to be so made.

In any interview process for counselling training courses, one of the things that causes me the greatest disquiet is an attitude of ‘them’ and ‘us’; the candidate who feels that he/she would like to ‘help’ those poor afflicted souls who are troubled and need some ‘direction’ in their lives. I believe you are only of any benefit as a counsellor or therapist if you see clients’ issues in terms of being part of the human predicaments and problems which affect us all, yourself included. By the same token, the person who retreats behind the clichés of ‘Some of my best friends are black/gay’ or ‘I don’t have a problem with the disabled/lesbians’ is taking the ‘them’ and ‘us’ stance, as well as laying claim to a position of total impartiality which I suspect conceals an unwillingness to own the inner prejudices we all possess. I am not trying to suggest that there is not a distinction between overt racist violence and the moral position of most members of society. It is, however, too easy to disown our own prejudices by focusing on the more extreme manifestations of adverse discrimination. We are, by definition, part of society and the inequalities within its structure and institutions are but a reflection of the biases and values of each individual member of which society is constituted.

One of the recurring themes in this book is identity. Our individual identity is made up of a vast number of components which intersect with and interact upon one another; there is an artificiality about attempting to tease them apart, to isolate them and analyse them separately. And yet that is what I have attempted to do in order to examine the nature of the responses that are evoked by individual elements of differentness. It is important to bear in mind that each person is many other things as well as that element of his/her identity that has the potential to provoke a response of prejudice or discrimination. This has been highlighted by the lobby who urge use of the term ‘gay men’ instead of the term ‘gays’. Using the word ‘gay’ as a noun implies the identification of a group of people by their sexual preference, as though that and that alone defined them as people. Society, however, still regularly refers to ‘gays’, ‘lesbians’, ‘the disabled’, ‘the mentally ill’ – a tendency which fosters the false assumption of homogeneity in such groups as well as having the effect of defining people by a single element of who they are. Both of these processes – the assumption of homogeneity and the defining of people by one aspect of their being – are central to the process of adverse discrimination.

The subjects I have chosen to examine are all ones which attract the highest levels of social interest and concern – and of discrimination and prejudice. For those of us, like myself, who are in the majority group for most elements of social identity – white, heterosexual, able-bodied, free of a psychiatric diagnosis, middle-class, educated – it is hard to imagine the experience of those who are not. It is all too easy to deny the extent to which elements of being such as skin colour or sexual orientation (among many) incite responses from others that are experienced as alienating, exclusionary, rejecting or demeaning. In her book Mixed Feelings, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes, ‘however mixed-race couples and mixed-race children choose to live their lives, they cannot shake off historical baggage or isolate themselves from the assumptions and bigotries of the outside world’ (Alibhai-Brown, 2001: 14). You could substitute many words for the phrase ‘mixed-race couples and mixed-race children’ in that passage: ‘gay men and lesbian women’, ‘black and coloured people’, ‘disabled people’, ‘people with a mental illness’. Being in a non-normative minority group means you are rarely able to forget about that element of who you are which sets you apart from the majority, and which has the potential to provoke responses in others that include feelings of fear, dislike, repulsion, prejudice or hatred.

In recent years there has been a heightened awareness of the implications of social prejudice and discrimination. Many minority groups have formed organizations to protest against inequitable treatment and lobby for political and social reform. A commonplace response to such movements goes something like this: ‘I can’t understand why such an issue is made of being homosexual/black [or whatever the focus is]. I never make an issue of being heterosexual/white – it’s just part of who I am!’ What such a viewpoint fails to realize is that the ability to take for granted any crucial element of identity is a luxury only afforded those who belong to the dominant majority group. Outside that, the attitude of the dominant group means that however much you might want to take being black, or gay, or disabled for granted, you are not allowed to because you are constantly reminded, on a daily basis, that most people around you have difficulty, in some way, with that part of who you are – and that many never see beyond it to the rest of the person.

The concept of identity raises questions such as: Who am I? Where do I belong? How do I fit in to this or that group of people? One of the basic human quests is that of trying to make sense of the world around us. We are constantly searching for meaning in the experiences we encounter. We also seek to organize our world into structure and routine in order to make ourselves feel more comfortable. Disruption of routine or an experience which shakes our sense of structure can induce anxiety, a sense of being undermined, lost and alone. One of the elements which contribute to our sense of structure and meaning is that of identity. Much has been written on the development of human identity: how and at what stage it develops, the critical elements that contribute to or detract from its secure formation, and so on. In western psychology it is generally accepted that knowing who you are, in the sense of where you come from and how you fit into a given social group or family, is crucial for psychological health. Research in the field of adoption would seem to support this notion (Verrier, 1993). But as well as wanting to know who you are in the sense of where you came from genealogically, the question ‘Who am I?’ seems to refer to something internal and personal – something unique to you alone. However, the two seem to be intimately linked.

To begin with ‘external’ identity: if you ask someone to list the elements by which they define their identity it is likely they will enumerate a variety of things – gender, age, marital status, nationality, occupation, perhaps religion, sexual orientation or social class. Many of these elements exist in polarities – man/woman, straight/gay, black/white and so on. They also indicate not only individual identity but membership of a group. I am a woman, but my understanding of that concept can only make sense in the context of recognizing that there are other beings whose characteristics (those that indicate femaleness) I share. Furthermore, the concept of femaleness has no meaning in isolation. It only carries meaning in contrast with another group of beings who share characteristics that indicate maleness. Thus a central part of the formation of our individual identity consists of identifying those groups to which we belong and those to which we do not belong. In other words, we confirm who we are by comparison with others – by differentiating elements of sameness and elements of difference. This appears to be a process that goes on all our lives and is a vital part of the development of an inner sense of ourselves as a unique and valuable individual.

The comparisons we make encompass more than external characteristics. They extend to tastes and preferences, aptitudes and abilities, emotional and psychological elements – the whole complex web of personality and being that constitutes who we are. External identity, however, as the first element by which we perceive another person, has a particular impact. All too often we draw inferences about a person’s internal being from our perception of their external appearance or their way of presenting themselves. It would seem, therefore, that we form an internal sense of identity as a direct result of observations we make of other people and of ourselves in relation to them. As I said at the outset, we are all unique, but that uniqueness can only emerge in the context of elements of sameness and difference – in relation to the world around us and our response to it.

Differentiation and comparison of self with other are part of human interactions from the earliest moments of life. The early stages of infancy include the process of individual differentiation of the baby from the mother. Response to difference, too, is observable very early – small children are fearful of someone unfamiliar and schoolchildren are quick to tease anyone who looks different: the redhead, the fat child, the boy with glasses. There seems to be a need to feel that we are the same as others, the need to identify with other people in a group. Is this perhaps part of a need to reinforce our own sense of identity? It seems as though we need to see ourselves mirrored in another person as a way of validating who we are – almost an affirmation of our existence. It is significant that a baby’s first interactions with his/her mother take the form of a mirroring process – an endless reflection back and forth of gestures, movements and facial expressions. As teenagers most of us go through a phase where similarity to our peer group is vitally important. Adolescents go to extraordinary lengths to adopt the same manner of dress, hairstyle, body shape, tastes and vocabulary as those around them. It would seem to be an essential part of the process of establishing our own unique identity to begin with a sense of group identity – to first be the same as everyone else. Most people develop beyond this phase as part of the process of gaining maturity. They become able to claim their own uniqueness, which allows them to feel comfortable about being different from others in some ways, and also to feel relatively at ease in the presence of others whom they perceive as different.

However, I believe we never completely lose that deep need to be among those who are like us and who therefore reinforce our security in who we are. Most people’s closest friendships are with those who would fall into that group. This is not to say that people do not often form deep and lasting friendships and relationships with someone who is, in some sense, ‘other’ – but in such situations we will, if possible, maintain a pool of friends whose similarities to ourselves provide that sense of validation which we seem to need. Being with people whom we perceive to be the same or similar has the effect of affirming our own identity – of reinforcing our perhaps fragile sense that who and what we are is basically acceptable. By the same token, being in the presence of those who in some significant way we perceive to be different, can undermine that sense of basic acceptability. For this reason I believe we all have difficulty, to varying degrees, in fully accepting the presence in our midst of someone who is noticeably different in some way – their existence has the power, fundamentally, to threaten our own. I am not mirrored in this person, so do I exist at all?

Our discomfort with difference thus has the potential to undermine our own sense of identity. One way of decreasing the tension inherent in this situation is to make the different person into the ‘Other’ – to retreat psychologically into group identity and stigmatize those outside the group. Reinforcing our own sense of belonging in a group is obtained by the exclusion of others. My sense of being part of the ‘in’ group is strengthened by identifying who is in the ‘out’ group. Indeed, there is no ‘in’ group without an ‘out’ group, just as the concept of ‘woman’ makes no sense without the existence of men. This process of exclusion by comparison is one that has occurred throughout history to all groups identified as outside the social mainstream for whatever reason. That the establishment of group identity is psychologically reassuring is further demonstrated by the social movements which arose in the 1960s. Identity politics created the notion of claiming one’s identity as a member of an oppressed or marginalized group as a political point of departure. Such politics involve the celebration of a group’s uniqueness as well as protest against its particular oppression. Thus the source of your exclusion from the mainstream – your difference and ‘outcast’ status – becomes your passport to inclusion in a new group. On a different level the proliferation and success of self-help groups demonstrates the same process at work.

It is no longer socially sanctioned to engage in openly hostile or discriminatory behaviour towards people whose appearance, life-style or beliefs are different from our own – which is not to say that such behaviour does not occur. Most people have no difficulty with an intellectual acceptance of someone with a different skin colour, gender, religion or sexual preference from their own. But is there something deeper than such an intellectual stance – some deep aversion to difference within us all? In other words, is adverse discrimination a human universal? It would certainly seem to be the case that we all need to feel we belong, and we all struggle with acceptance of difference in others. As we have seen, these two are inextricably linked – our identities are forged by the marking of difference. Identity depends on difference, and therefore on discrimination.

The subject of differences between people immediately raises questions about the source of such differences and about the relative merits of the various elements of discrepancy. The nature/nurture debate is another theme which runs through all the topics examined in this book. Are differences innate or are they the result of environmental influences? This seems to be intimately connected to another question: does equality of treatment have to rest on notions of sameness? As we shall see, the confusion between these two questions has led to much (unnecessary) debate and muddled thinking.

Historically, biological theories have been invoked to justify the worst excesses of adverse discrimination. Black people and Jews have been seen as biologically different, defective and inferior; women have been viewed as by nature less intelligent, capable and rational than men; homosexuals have been characterized as inherently mentally ill or suffering from warped or incomplete development. Such justifications have led to a variety of inequitable and inhumane forms of treatment, ranging from social exclusion and oppression to eugenics. By viewing the different ‘other’ as an inferior form of human life, or even as less than human, we can argue for the differential treatment of groups of people based on assumed immutable differences. We can even argue that differential treatment is for their own good. Their lack of civilization, or intelligence, or psychological development, rooted as it is in their genes or their biology represents an inequality which demands a different response. Clearly this is an argument that can have the effect of making us more comfortable about social inequity. In its extreme forms, biological determinism has been used as the basis for racist and sexist ideologies which today incite moral repugnance. As we have reacted against such extreme forms of discriminatory behaviour, so too have we reacted against their underlying ideologies. In order to argue for equal treatment for different social groups, it has seemed vital to argue for equal potential – the concept of ‘the blank slate’ (Pinker, 2002), which asserts that everyone starts life with the same possibilities and there are no innate biological differences. This has led to the doctrine of social constructionism or social determinism – the view that any perceived differences between individuals or groups of individuals are the product of environment, upbringing, diet, education and so forth, and nothing to do with biology or genetic inheritance. But this was, in effect, throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Acknowledging innate biological differences does not have to involve an evaluation of their respective worth.

Difference does not have to mean better or worse, but it is very often taken to mean so. If we assume that a judgement of something as different has to involve an evaluation of better or worse, then to achieve equality we have to argue for sameness. When sameness is manifestly not apparent, the differences are explained by lack of opportunity, environmental factors, and so on – the social constructionist stance. This can be seen within the arguments surrounding the relative positions of men and women within our society. To say that men and women have innate differences (apart from their obviou...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• General Introduction to The SPC Series
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Discrimination, Difference and Identity
• 2 Race and Culture
• 3 Gender
• 4 Sexuality
• 5 Mental Illness
• 6 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index