Plenary

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Plenary given at The Pan Pacific Family Therapy Conference 2001
- Johnella Bird

Within the therapeutic relationship we are attempting to expose, negotiate and relate to the power
Our experience with the power-relations of everyday life doesn't readily follow any prescribed direction. We are confronted by ambiguity, contradictions, and opposing representations of the self and others. We witness moments of profound change where individuals find the strength to oppose institutionally supported ideas and values by setting a different life course. Moment by moment in the therapeutic conversation we engage with the ethics of the everyday. This engagement demonstrates a willingness to continually negotiate meanings, including identifying and negotiating the effects of the ethics that guide our lives. There is no longer the offer of rest within certainty. It is no longer possible to rest within the terms of reference for justice and equ"Each reforming achievement which transforms policy in the name of equality, establishes a new regime of governance. All governance works in terms of a bounded community, a community of identity and thus establishes insiders and outsiders." (Page 229)

Engaging with the power relations of the everyday requires us to acknowledge the comfort we receive from our insider position. Acknowledgement can then support us to make ourselves ethically available to the voices of those on the outside. Being available to those who are on 'the outside' provides us with both powerful moments of realization of what we have taken-for-granted together with the experience of responsibility for others' pain and exclusion.
(Bird- page 278-279)

For example
Many years ago I was a participant in a workshop facilitated by a male presenter. An integral part of this presentation was an impassioned lecture on the objectification of women (including many examples from texts and everyday cultural references - magazines, films etc). The rising discomfit I felt turned to irritation and anger. I felt patronized - a man was educating me, a woman, about the effects and implication of patriarchy.

This experience has had a huge effect on the way I teach in respect to dominant cultural ideas. However recently when I was speaking to a large gathering about the politics of therapy I used an example that deeply offended at least one person in the group. I thought I had prepared the context so that this example would be received as a challenge to Pakeha theraxt for listening to the example that took into account the membership I have in the dominant group and the membership other listeners may have to a marginalised group. The challenge was painful, however these challenges are inevitable if we sit within the contradictory environment of deconstructing the power relationship while being within the power relationship.

A number of years ago I was sitting in a lecture hall listening to a clinical presentation reflecting on the consequences for women as clients of therapists' lack of awareness of gender relations, (Note). Well known and revered Family Therapists appeared practices and ideas that I engage with would be understood in the next ten or twenty years. I considered how the relationship I have within privilege was acting to exclude the knowledges and practices that more adequately reflected people's lived experience. I explored ideas about the context that would support an ongoing engagement with ethics, and I pondered the role of therapist, counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers in maintaining the status quo for the ongoing comfort of the dominant group.
With these examples I am attempting to illustrate several things.
One - that it is impossible to know what I don't know and,
Two - in deconstructing the power relationship we don't stand outside of the power relationship but in relationship to it.

When we consider this while engaging a relational consciousness through relational externalising we move beyond the constructions of right and wrong, respectful and not, collaborative and not. Instead we engage in the present moment with a relationship where respect and collaboration is an ongoing negotiation.

Hence the interest I have in exploring and working with the politics of therapy.
It is also political when the conversation exists within multiple truth regimes. Within multiplicity it is none the less impossible to represent all the possible truth regimes or explore the mechanisms and processes that elevates one regime of truth over another. Within multiplicity there are also preferences, demonstrated and perpetuated in the emphasis on certain questions and responses. This emphasis has the inevitable consequence of relegating some parts of people's (clients') description of lived experience into the background.

Weedon (32) argues that no discursive practice is outside of power/knowledge relations.
Meaning is always political. It is located in the social networks of power/knowledactice is outside them. (Page 138).

However in therapeutic work and in lives, we need to locate ourselves somewhere and establish at least a temporary fixing on meaning. To not do this leaves us with a fluidity of non-position that renders us incapable of taking a stand to support people's (clients') suffering under the influence of oppressive and invisiblising practices and ideas. The non-position inevitably supports that which is prevalent or dominating as it offers no form of resistance.

When we consider Weedon's statement that:
" the important point is to recognise the political implications of particular ways of fixing identity and meaning (Page 173),"
Then therapy/counselling with a focus on makle to ongoing critique of the certainties we hold while finding strategies to engage enthusiastically with the relationship between knowing and not knowing. (Bird, page 34-36)

Therapeutic/counselling work which has as its focus a relational externalising enquiry process creates a climate of discovery rather than imposing meanings, i.e. we ask ourselves 'what does this mean' versus 'this means this'. This emphasis positioning us as re-searchers of lived experience which requires us to privilege what is said versus interpreting what is said and acting on that interpretation, e.g. looking behind what is said to confirm a psychological explanation or hypothesis.

When we know that particular discs. These positions are identified by two questions:
- Do I expose these ideas by presenting an alternative version? If I don't will I be supporting the ongoing oppression of these people (clients)?
- If I do expose these ideas, will people (clients) experience me as another agent of control?

Overhead 5
When knowledge is presented to people (clients) in a definitive, comprehensive logiocentric way, the following circumstances emerge:
- Knowledge, including alternative knowledges are represented as static, unified truths.
- There is - The knowledge is presented as comprehensive and people (clients) may not feel entitled or able to argue against it.
- The knowledge carriers including the alternative knowledge carriers, become the arbiters and gatekeepers of the one truth.
- To decline the other person's (therapist) particular regime of truth is to potentially lose the relationship. This has serious implications for the therapeutic relationship understanding.
- To accept the other person's (therapist) regime of truth is to potentially endanger other close relationships (partner, friendships, family members)
- The activity of accepting a particular regime of truth offered in this way threatens to capture the person as a convert.
- The activity of declining a particular regime of truth offered in this way threatens to aln in accordance with this view point.

However, when ideas and practices that oppress people (clients) remain unexposed then our silence is a compliance with these ideas and practices. Instead of either presenting people (clients) with other knowledges or remaining silent we can use a relational externalising enquiry that orients us (therapist and client) toward discovery. The relational externalising enquiry process I use can provide us with a technical skill that exposes the history, activity and power implications of particular discursive regimes. This exposure provides a climate for an exploration of the implication of other discursive regimes including those the therapist doesn't have access to. The enquiry creates a climate for discovery and re-sembark on both inside and outside of therapy. Weedon(32) comments that:

To speak is to assume a subject position within discourse and to become subjected to the power and regulation of the discourse. (page 119)

To speak using the relational externalising enquiry process represented in this discussion is to speak relationally. Speaking relationally assumes a subject position in relationship to a discourse. From this position people (clients) can view, experience, explore and re-search the regulatory function of the discourse. Speaking and engaging in relationship to and with discourse using an relational externalising other or self enquiry creates an environment where all discursive regimes are experienced as potentially temporary and serving a purpose that supports a particular community. This method of engaging protects us from the processes of conversion, where one comprehensive counselling/ therapy truth stands against others. When we hing/therapy truths, we can find ourselves arguing for the counselling/therapy truths superior status by using theoretical constructs that ignore the ethical implications of practices. We can also be tempted to engage with ethics as fixed truth positions. Once we claim a fixed truth position we can relax into privileging our ideas, for example, the ideas we hold about justice or equality. Of necessity any fixed truth position exists outside of an engagement with both the practice of inclusion of marginalised voices and the practice of ongoingly reflecting on the practice of ethics.

The practice of relational externalising engages the self in relationship to the idea, concern, ability, etc., thus supporting us to engage in a conversational process that is generative of relational consciousness. This relational consciousness then allows us to engage with ideas and practices rather than being subsumed by ideas and practices. (Bird, page 36-38)

Overhead 6
When I re- expose the strategies for implicating people in the practices and ideas that act to torment and oppress them;
- expose the ideas of the autonomous self which suggest individuals are totally responsible for the success/failure, health/illness, poverty/wealth in their life;
- expose the ideas and practices that act to marginalise one group while rewarding and supporting others;
- develop other knowledges and practices that can act to support people (clients) to ongoingly resist the prevailing knowledges and practices that oppress them;
- expose and critique the ethics that define what is legitimate and what is not.
(Bird, page 40)

Conclusion
It is noticeable from this overhead that I am very active in the therapeutic process. I contribute to the conversation and the people I work with contribute to the conversatiorapy is always political, it is never neutral.

It is my strongly held belief that relational consciousness and relational externalising creates an ethical platform for me to stand on, e.g. respect as a relationship. This platform allows me to ongoingly negotiate respect and collaboration within therapeutic conversations. It supports me to work beyond and within the margins of my lived experience. It creates the potential for momentous discoveries to be made within everyday lived experience. The ideas I've presented today represent one way of meeting these ethical obligations. I don't expect you all to take up this way. I do however hope that if respect, collaboration and trust are central tents of the therapeutic work yoWhat are the strategies that you use to ensure that you are not acting as agents of social control?
What and are the accountability structures that you use to reflect on what it is that you can't know across culture, gender, class, sexuality, age ?
and, what strategies do you use to make apparent or visible the power relationship in the therapeutic relationship, supervision/consultation relationship, teaching relationship?
and, once visible how do you negotiate the experience of this power relationship with people?

In grappling with these questions you will reflect a striving or an intention 'to do no harm'. This will not protect you from the discovery that you have unwittingly imposed ideas and practices on others. I believe that there is no definitive position on cultural relations, gender relations, class relations, however there is protection in t importantly it represents a desire to learn from our predecessors, to humble ourselves by seeing that their flaws are also ours. There is nothing admirable about the facility of hindsight. When I look to the therapists of the past - 100 years, 50 years, 20 years, 10 years ago, I see my potential future. We can do it differently, we must do it differently if the intention and striving we carry is 'to do no harm'.

- - - -

References

Bird, Johnella. 'The Heart's Narrative', Edge Press, Auckland, New Zealand 2000.
Weedon, Chris. 'Feminist Practice and Post-Structuralist Theory', Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1987.
Yeatman, Anna. 'Voice and Representation' in 'The Politics of Difference', edited by Sneja Guneward,
Anna Yeatman, Allen and Unwin Pty. Limited, 1993, page 228-245.

Note: Olga Silverstein's plenary presentation at the 1995 New Zealand and Australian Family Therapy Conference stimulated these thoughts.

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