A Situated Practice for (Re)Situating Selves: Trainee Counsellors and the Promise of Counselling

Abstract

Geographies of care and welfare have neglected to consider a group of interrelated practices including counselling, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, which are found in many different settings within modern welfare systems. In a number of influential studies, these psychological therapies have been described as self-oriented, narcissistic, and intensely individualistic. However, these commentaries fail to consider the specificity of particular practices. Counselling, for example, is a situated practice, shaped by particular contexts and values. The views of people just beginning a counselling training programme can be read as describing the practice as a relational means to individualistic ends. However, analysis of their stories about themselves suggests more complex understandings of self as shaped and reshaped in relation to others and as illustrating the feminist concept of relational autonomy. Their accounts suggest that counselling offers the promise of a practice through which both practitioners' selves and clients' selves may be reshaped and resituated.

Full text

1 Introduction
Geographical work on the provision of care and welfare has focused primarily on the
ways in which services are organised and delivered. Not surprisingly, much attention
has been paid to the spatial (re)organisation of welfare provision, including health-care
and social-care services of various kinds (see, for example, Dear and Wolch, 1987;
Milligan, 2001; Mohan, 1995), as well as to the spatial effects on carers, the cared
for, and wider populations (Brown, 1997; Gleeson and Kearns, 2001; Parr, 1997). As
numerous commentators have observed, patterns (and structures) of provision have
profound consequences for practices of caring. To take one example, Brendan Gleeson
and Robin Kearns (2001) examine the complex interconnections between the form,
location, philosophies, and practices that combine to create `landscapes of care'. They
contribute to a wider questioning of representations in which care provided in large
institutions is contrasted with `community care', and they argue for a more nuanced
consideration of the values (caring and care-less) expressed in particular settings.
Such consideration is illustrated by other studies, one example being Julia Twigg's
(2000) analysis of some of the consequences flowing from the entry of care workers
into the home spaces of care recipients, with a particular focus on the intimate spaces
and practices of bathing. However, despite the interest shown by geographers and other
social scientists in the spaces and spatialities of a range of caring practices, significant
gaps remain. In particular, remarkably little attention has been paid to the growth and
character of a group of interrelated practices that include counselling, psychotherapy,
and psychoanalysis, which can be found in numerous arenas of modern welfare,
including health-care and social-care provision within public-sector, private-sector,
and voluntary-sector (nonprofit, nonstate) settings.
Counselling, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis are often understood as psycho-
logical interventions or therapies, and in the United Kingdom the Department of
Health has recently begun to use the terms `psychological therapies' and `talking
therapies' to refer to these practices collectively. In due course I argue for consideration
A situated practice for (re)situating selves: trainee counsellors
and the promise of counselling
Liz Bondi
Department of Geography, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, Scotland;
e-mail: liz.bondi@ed.ac.uk
Received 16 May 2002; in revised form 5 November 2002
Environment and Planning A 2003, volume 35, pages 853^ 870
Abstract. Geographies of care and welfare have neglected to consider a group of interrelated practices
including counselling, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, which are found in many different settings
within modern welfare systems. In a number of influential studies, these psychological therapies have
been described as self-oriented, narcissistic, and intensely individualistic. However, these commen-
taries fail to consider the specificity of particular practices. Counselling, for example, is a situated
practice, shaped by particular contexts and values. The views of people just beginning a counselling
training programme can be read as describing the practice as a relational means to individualistic
ends. However, analysis of their stories about themselves suggests more complex understandings of
self as shaped and reshaped in relation to others and as illustrating the feminist concept of relational
autonomy. Their accounts suggest that counselling offers the promise of a practice through which
both practitioners' selves and clients' selves may be reshaped and resituated.
DOI:10.1068/a35135

of the differences between counselling, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis, but initially
I use the term `psychological therapies' as a shorthand to refer to them as a group.
The development of psychological therapies within welfare systems raises numerous
questions for geographers. From an equity perspective there are issues about the match
or mismatch between geographies of need and geographies of provision (Harvey, 1973;
Pinch, 1985; 1997). For example, a recent survey of primary health-care practices in the
United Kingdom found that approximately 50% offer counselling services to their
patients and 50% do not (Mellor-Clark et al, 2001). These variations are not easy to
interpret: in some areas, medical practitioners refer their patients to voluntary-sector
counselling services, but there is no national system through which universal access is
guaranteed, and no evidence about the sociospatial patterning of access. Diversity in
the availability and form of provision, both within and between different health-care
and social-care systems, prompts further geographical questions about the significance
of psychological therapies as forms of care within modern welfare systems. In which
places, in what contexts, and for what reasons are psychological therapy services
developed and taken up? Given that it is claimed that these practices address people's
struggles around how to make sense of their lives and themselves (see, for example,
Bollas, 1992; Rogers, 1961), they are of considerable significance in relation to debates
about the meanings of personhood and subjectivity on which welfare practices are
predicated. Moreover, the influence of psychological therapies is widely recognised
to extend well beyond dedicated services into other forms of welfare provision, as
well as into more general ways in which people think about their lives (Parker, 1997;
Rose, 1985).
Concepts of personhood and subjectivity contain within them ideas about con-
nections, or lack of connections, between people, and, therefore, about the social
environments and `landscapes of care' in which people live. For example, from the
perspective of liberal theory, persons are individual bearers of rights, who interact
with one another as independent, autonomous beings. As Lynn Staeheli and Michael
Brown point out in the introduction to this theme issue, the universality of rights
proclaimed by liberal theory is deeply problematic, and they argue instead for an
approach to analysing geographies of care and welfare that is grounded in social
relationships. Placing relationships at the core of conceptualisations of the person
generates a different imaginative landscape from one inhabited by the atomised,
bounded, autonomous actors of liberal theory, namely one in which persons are
constituted through webs of social connection and interaction. Understanding the
kinds of selves imagined and fostered through psychological therapies can therefore
illuminate important aspects of geographies of care and welfare.
I begin the task of bringing a geographical lens to bear on psychological therapies
by focusing on two levels: the geographical specificity of particular practices, and ideas
about selfhood. In section 2, I discuss some influential representations of psychological
therapies as intimately bound up with, and contributing to, trends characteristic
of Western societies
ö
in which persons are increasingly individualised, in the sense of
being (represented as) discretely bounded and highly autonomous selves capable
of acting independently of social ties and other aspects of their environments or
situations (Bauman, 2001). These representations usefully highlight the social and the
moral construction of modern individualism, but tend to be unduly sweeping in their
claims about psychological therapies. In section 2 I point to the need to differentiate
between the different practices grouped together under this heading, and to the
importance of attending more carefully to the emphasis they place on therapeutic
relationships. Taking up the first of these issues, I focus in section 3 on the practice
of counselling. I identify some key moments in its development in the United Kingdom,
854 L Bondi

drawing attention to the influence of particular social contexts, and arguing that it
should be understood as a situated practice (or, more accurately, as numerous situated
practices). Questions about the kinds of selves which counselling envisions, promotes,
and seeks to produce are revisited in relation to this conceptualisation of the practice. In
sections 4 and 5, I approach the task by considering the perspectives of a particular set
of people who are drawn towards, but not yet fully socialised into, the practice of
counselling
ö
namely people just beginning to train as counsellors. Their liminal posi-
tion offers an opportunity to explore the ideas, values, and aspirations they bring into
the practice, before the normative qualities associated with their experience of training
come to permeate their accounts (which will be the subject of future work flowing from
subsequent interviews with the same people).This analysis demonstrates the presence of
individualistic perspectives on selfhood referred to in section 2, but these coexist with
other perspectives that emphasise connections with others (section 4). In section 5,
drawing on trainee counsellors' descriptions of their backgrounds
ö
in which they
problematise their selves in relation to others
ö
I argue that their accounts illustrate
the concept of `relational autonomy' developed in feminist literature on selfhood. In
section 6, I elaborate connections between this view of selves and the situatedness of
counselling. Drawing these arguments together, I suggest in section 7 that counselling is
an intrinsically geographical form of care.
Before proceeding further I wish to acknowledge my own stake within the particular
practice under consideration. I belong to what is sometimes described in unflattering
terms as a `growing army' of counsellors [for a range of appraisals of the development of
a `therapeutic' culture see Feltham (1999)]. In the mid-1990s I occupied the position
of those on whose accounts I draw here: I embarked on a counselling training course.
That training required experience in a placement, which I duly undertook in a volun-
tary-sector setting. Since completing my training I have continued to work as a
counsellor one or two evenings a week, on an unpaid basis. As this paper testifies,
I have also begun to research the practice in which I participate, drawing on my
capacity to move between the positions of practitioner and researcher, or participant
and observer (Bondi, 2003). I do not pretend to offer a definitive or objective reading of
the practice in which I am immersed. Rather, I offer a necessarily positioned reading
of a practice which variously captivates, fascinates, and troubles me. My experiences of
this practice have, of course, been forged through my connections with numerous
others (including trainers, colleagues, and clients).
2 The politics of psychological therapies
Existing research on psychological therapies falls into two very broad camps. On the
one hand, there are studies concerned with the efficacy of these interventions, focusing,
for example, on which interventions are most effective, for whom, and for what
conditions (see, for example, Roth and Fonagy, 1996). These studies do not question
the principles and values underlying psychological interventions in general. On the
other hand, and of more direct relevance to this paper, there are studies that focus
on the social, cultural, and political factors underlying the emergence, development,
and popularity of psychological therapies. Within this perspective psychological thera-
pies have been extensively criticised, with several commentators arguing that these
practices individualise and psychologise experiences which should be viewed as
manifestations of social malaise that merit political responses (see, for example,
Burman et al, 1996; Henriques et al, 1984; Turkle, 1979). In this section I refer briefly
to three seminal contributions of this type.
In Christopher Lasch's influential account of The Culture of Narcissism (1980) he
interpreted psychoanalysis, and its insinuation within wider culture, as a turn towards
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 855

the inner, the psychological, and the personal, and as simultaneously a turn away from
political engagement. Positioning his analysis within a Weberian view of social change,
Lasch argued that the rise of psychoanalysis is symptomatic of the success of bureau-
cratisation in transforming ``collective grievances into personal problems''. Moreover
psychoanalysis entails putting one's own needs before those of others, fostering a
particularly self-oriented version of individualism.
More recently, Foucauldian perspectives have become prominent in critical accounts
of psychological interventions, perhaps most notably in Nikolas Rose's work. Like
Lasch (1980), Rose (1989; 1996) described psychotherapy, and the other `psy' disciplines,
as deeply individualising practices. However, he construed the exercise of power rather
differently from Lasch (1980), emphasising the production of self-governing subjects
rather than the ever more pervasive encroachment of professional and bureaucratic
values into people's everyday lives. Thus, in contrast to a Weberian view of preexisting
human beings as `invaded' or `encaged' by (the needs of) the liberal state, Rose (1989)
argued that the subjective experiences of individuals, including their sense of themselves
as individual subjects, are effects of subjectification and normalisation.
As Arnar A
èrnason (2001) has noted, Rose (1989; 1996) effectively prioritised the
production of modern subjects over and above the experience of such subjects. Con-
sequently, although Rose avoided portraying people as passive victims of abstract
processes beyond their grasp, he followed Foucault in insisting that subjects are sim-
ultaneously the agents and the effects of their `experience' or their `psychic lives'. This
generates a story of inevitability: people must become subjects to be part of society,
and, as subjects, are always already constituted in terms of interiorised psyches and
subjective experience (Butler, 1999).
From another theoretical perspective Anthony Giddens (1991; 1992) has argued that
modern social life is characterised by a highly reflexive project of self in which being a
person entails continually reworking biographical narratives in the context of pervasive
and unsettling uncertainties characteristic of the social worlds in which people are
embedded. In this way, Giddens gave rather more emphasis to the subject, who is called
upon to experience and enact a highly individualised, albeit problematic, sense of agency.
As a framework within which people talk about themselves, typically about troubling
aspects of self-experience, psychological therapies would seem to epitomise the means
through which the individualised sense of agency discussed by Giddens is sustained.
Nothwithstanding their theoretical differences, these perspectives share a view of
psychological therapies as contributing to an intensification of forms of individualism
associated with advanced Western societies, in which persons are understood primarily
as bounded, self-determining, independent from one another, autonomous, and so on.
Some commentators, like Lasch (1980) and Rose (1989; 1996), have linked these trends
directly to the erosion of collective political action and welfare provision, which they
portray as potentially emancipatory. Others, notably Giddens (1998), have argued
against the idea of a binary distinction between collective and individual action, and
view the rise of psychological therapies as rather less malign, but as equally bound up
with avowedly post-socialist or post-welfare-statist approaches to care.
It is important to note that these analyses arise from studies of particular practices,
which are then treated as symptomatic of general trends. Lasch (1980) wrote from the
position of a psychoanalyst practising in the USA, and his work was informed primarily
by that experience and milieu, to which he sought to bring a more politically critical edge
(compare Kovel, 1988). Working within a Foucauldian methodological and theoretical
framework, Rose (1989; 1996) focused exclusively on the written texts of psychotherapy
(see Brownlie, 2003). Giddens (1991; 1992), too, built his analysis on the basis of textual
sources, in the form of the `self-help' literature.
856 L Bondi

There are at least three reasons to be wary about attempts to generalise on the
basis of such specific sources. First, as I illustrate in the next section of this paper,
the practices in question have distinct histories and geographies, through which they
are shaped in particular ways in particular contexts: they are not monolithic. More-
over, counselling has been almost completely ignored in existing analyses of the politics
of psychological interventions. This omission is all the more glaring because of
evidence which suggests that much of the recent expansion of psychological therapies
can be ascribed to this particular practice. As Alan Mulhern (2001, page 28) notes, in
the United Kingdom and in other parts of the world, there has been
``a great leap in the desire to become a psychotherapist or counsellor. However,
training applications have been much higher in the counselling end of the profes-
sion. At the psychoanalytical end training applications have been getting scarcer.''
The rapid growth of counselling is also indicated by trends in the membership of
practitioner bodies. In 1977, the British Association for Counselling had approximately
1000 individual members. By 1992 this had grown to 8500, and by 2001 it exceeded
18000 (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 2001; McLeod, 1993).
(1)
Second, there is a strong emphasis on interpersonal relationships in these practices,
primarily in the form of face-to-face relationships between client and practitioner (or
at least copresence, in the case of psychoanalysis, where the spatial arrangement of
bodies does not involve one person facing another) (see, for example, Clarkson, 1995;
Kahn, 1991). This emphasis is evident in many of the texts informing Rose's (1989;
1996) work, in which it is implicitly or explicitly argued that texts cannot be used as
substitutes for persons within the practice of psychotherapy. In this context it is
important to consider the possibility that the practices at stake elude their textual
representation in important ways. Therefore, as another textual practice, the self-help
literature on which Giddens (1991; 1992) has drawn is not necessarily a useful guide to
practices in which the importance (and efficacy) of interpersonal relationships is
emphasised.
A third limitation of these accounts of psychological therapies relates to gender.
Although such accounts are not silent about gender issues, acknowledging, for example,
the predominance of women among the `consumers' of these practices and to varying
degrees among their practitioners (see, for example, Bondi and Burman, 2001; Pilgrim,
1997), they largely ignore the potential relevance of feminist theory to the trends they
analyse. This neglect is notable because the portrayal of persons as highly individuated,
bounded, atomised, and self-oriented is one that many feminist writers have linked
directly to versions of masculinity that are privileged in Western societies (Chodorow,
1978; Gilligan, 1982; Lloyd, 1984). Whether practices such as counselling, psychother-
apy, and psychoanalysis are inextricably caught up with the same processes of gender
and power is debatable (see, for example, Connell, 1987; Flax, 1990). What is clear,
however, is that the interpretations discussed in this section neglect or at least under-
play the importance that practitioners accord to relating and relationships. In so doing,
these accounts therefore also tend to divert attention away from the contribution
of psychological therapies to wider systems and practices of care, which, as several
feminist commentators have argued, always depend upon interpersonal transactions
(Bowden, 1997; Tronto, 1994). Arguably, therefore, the interpretations I have discussed
find strongly individualistic tendencies in psychological therapies at least in part
(1)
In 2000, the British Association for Counselling changed its name to the British Association for
Counselling and Psychotherapy. Although this may reflect some convergence between the practices
of counselling and psychotherapy, it was also probably a strategic move designed to counter the
risk of counselling being excluded from political debates about the regulation of psychological
therapies.
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 857

because the analytic frameworks on which they draw tend to privilege separateness and
processes through which separateness is fostered, rather than relatedness. I will return
to the relevance of feminist theory in due course. But first, I develop my claim about
the specificity of particular practices with reference to counselling.
3 Counselling: a situated practice
``Counselling, -eling
The action of the verb COUNSEL; giving or taking of counsel; advising; spec. the
giving of advice on personal, social, psychological, etc., problems as an occupation;
in Psychol., a form of psychotherapy in which the counsellor adopts a permissive
and supportive role in enabling a client to solve his or her own problems.''
Oxford English Dictionary (1989)
In the date chart presented in the 1989 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary,no
examples are listed between 1849 and 1940, with eight given for the period 1940 to 1983,
all of which refer to a practice related to psychotherapy. The first two 20th-century
examples cited, dated 1940 and 1945, hint at two key moments in the emergence of this
meaning. The first is attributed to Carl Rogers, a US psychologist and psychotherapist
whose particular use of the term `counselling' began to appear in print in 1940 (Rogers,
1940). During the 1930s, Rogers had become increasingly critical of aspects of the
practice of psychotherapy that he observed in his US environment, his criticisms
focusing particularly on the assumption that the expert knowledge held by professio-
nals was what enabled them to help their clients and patients (Kirschenbaum, 1979;
Thorne, 1992). Rogers argued that the relations of authority associated with such a
view are actually very unhelpful, and he began to develop a radically different
approach in which the clients are viewed as experts on their own lives, temporarily in
need of some assistance to engage with the problems they experience. From this
perspective the expertise of practitioners does not lie in their knowledge about people
and pathologies, but in their capacity to enter into and sustain facilitative relationships.
This approach has become known as `Rogerian', `nondirective', `client-centred', or
`person-centred' counselling, the latter being the term adopted by practitioners of the
approach today. In his writing Rogers used the terms `counselling' and `psychotherapy'
more or less interchangeably (see, for example, Rogers, 1951; 1961). Moreover, the
notion of facilitative relationships is also central to the (roughly contemporaneous)
writings of British psychoanalyst D W Winnicott (1965; see Kahn, 1991, for discussion
of this convergence). However, as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, the term
`counselling' has acquired a strong association with Rogers's emphasis on `enabling'
clients to solve their own problems.
The second 20th-century entry listed in the Oxford English Dictionary links coun-
selling to marital issues. During the interwar period, concern about the institution of
marriage emerged in several Western societies, including both the USA and the United
Kingdom. A practice called `guidance' was widely taken up in this field, with a view
to `saving' and otherwise supporting marriages (Lewis et al, 1992). In the United
Kingdom, after the Second World War, the notion of counselling also became influen-
tial, and the focus on `saving' marriages began to be called into question in favour of a
wider concern with qualities of personal relationships. Much of this work around
marriage and personal relationships was initiated by concerned individuals who
mobilised support through a wide array of networks
ö
including professional specialists
like family lawyers and the clergy
ö
taking their efforts forward through nonprofit
voluntary-sector organisations. These bodies combined lobbying and campaigning
activities with service provision, which contributed to the development of social welfare
858 L Bondi

provision within the nongovernmental or third sector. The experience of one British
organisation in this field
ö
the National Marriage Guidance Council (which has since
changed its name to Relate)
ö
has been documented in detail by Jane Lewis, David Clark,
and David Morgan (1992). The National Marriage Guidance Council recruited volun-
teers
ö
primarily middle-class women
ö
who were trained to deliver `marriage counselling'
(and later `relationship counselling') on an unpaid basis. Counselling thus acquired a
particular association with the voluntary sector and with voluntary work, as well as
becoming a lay practice
ö
both in the sense of being practised by nonprofessionals, and
in the sense of being a nonmedical version of such practices as psychotherapy.
(2)
Another lasting legacy of the way the National Marriage Guidance Council (and its
`sister' organisation the Scottish Marriage Guidance Council) took up the practice of
counselling arose from its incorporation of a range of theoretical and practical
approaches within its training. Although Rogers's ideas had a major impact on
marriage counselling from the 1940s onwards, this did not displace the influence of
either psychoanalytic ideas or behavioural ideas (Lewis et al, 1992). In this way,
marriage counselling was informed by a theoretical eclecticism and diversity, which
has continued to this day. Thus, notwithstanding a historical association between
counselling and the Rogerian approach, in the United Kingdom at least, practitioners
of counselling today describe their practice as grounded in one or more of several other
theoretical orientations, and the main bodies representing practitioner interests
explicitly acknowledge this theoretical diversity.
Two points about this brief account need to be emphasised. First, although coun-
selling in the United Kingdom can now be found in many different settings within the
public and private sectors, its origins and initial development were closely bound up
with social welfare provision within the voluntary sector. This was quite different from
other psychological therapies, which originated primarily in private-sector settings and
were subsequently taken up by the public sector, where they were situated mainly
within psychiatric services (Pilgrim, 1997). The emphasis on volunteering has also
been much more marked in, if not unique to, counselling. This is linked to a distinctive
philosophy, indebted in part to Rogers's (1951; 1961) emphasis on qualities of relating
rather than on bodies of expert knowledge, and his understanding that the capacities
required for effective therapeutic work are grounded in everyday skills and experiences.
Many ordinary people, therefore, are capable of training to work as counsellors, not
through extensive `book learning' but through the practice-based development and
refinement of existing relational skills. The voluntary-sector origins of counselling,
together with this philosophy linking the practice to everyday life, suggest that
ö
at
least in some contexts
ö
counselling might be rooted in, or strongly influenced by,
different value systems from those associated with psychoanalysis and psychotherapy.
It is, surely, worth considering the possibility that the practice of counselling, at least in
part, expresses a commitment to defend everyday life from the incursion of bureau-
cratic, professional, and market values (Lasch, 1980), to resist dominant regimes of
(self)discipline (Rose,1996), or to recuperate rather than sequester `personal experience'
(Giddens, 1991).
Second, the term `counselling' has been used in particular ways in particular places.
What the practice entails and what it means are, necessarily, forged by the particular
contexts in which it is practised. That confusion abounds today about what counselling
is arises in part because it varies by context. Indeed, because of the relative lack of
(2)
Counselling as a nonmedical version of psychotherapy was also associated with a distinctively
European tradition in psychoanalysis, where, from the early decades of the 20th century, it has
been possible to train as a (lay) psychoanalyst without prior medical training, in contrast to the
USA where medical training has always been a prerequisite (see Schwartz, 1999).
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 859

theoretical orthodoxy in this field, counselling has been rather more amenable than
some other practices to being reshaped for a variety of purposes. Rogers's influential
ideas were directly informed by what he witnessed in the USA in the 1930s (especially
in New York City and in Rochester, upstate New York). In traveling across the
Atlantic, his ideas (and other ideas) were reshaped by local practices, just as psycho-
analytic ideas have been differently received, and psychoanalytic institutions have
taken different forms, in different places (Timms and Segal, 1988). As I have argued,
in the United Kingdom counselling has its origins in social welfare provision within the
voluntary sector, which shaped it in particular ways. But its subsequent development
also bears the impression of more complex geographies. One point of relevance to this
paper concerns geographical variations in the degree to which the voluntary sector has
retained its prominence within the field of counselling. In the mid-1970s, the British
Association for Counselling came into being and was open to individual and organisa-
tional members throughout the United Kingdom. In 1990 a Scottish organisation
called COSCA (the Confederation of Scottish Counselling Agencies) was formed. Its
creation reflected the fact that, at that time, counselling in Scotland existed primarily
within organisations, most of which were voluntary-sector bodies. Its formation, there-
fore, expressed not only a strong impulse for the expression of regional autonomy
(linked to a protracted movement for Scottish devolution, which was finally realised
in the late 1990s), but also a distinctive organisational basis for service provision in
Scotland. Although COSCA admits individual members as well as organisational
members, it has continued to be strongly oriented towards voluntary-sector agencies,
whereas the British Association for Counselling is dominated by individual members.
Neither service providers nor practitioners are currently subject to any form of stat-
utory regulation, and consequently information about the volume of counselling
delivered in different places and different sectors is highly fragmented. However,
anecdotal evidence suggests that the proportion of counselling that takes place in
voluntary-sector agencies is markedly higher in Scotland than in other parts of the
United Kingdom, where proportionately more is available in the private sector and/or
public sector.
As Gleeson and Kearns (2001) elaborate in relation to care for those with diagnosed
mental health problems and those with mental disabilities, the organisation of provision
and the values informing it necessarily influence practices and experiences of care. My
argument so far has pointed to a mismatch between representations of psychological
therapies as uniformly and coherently fostering individualising trends within Western
societies and evidence of the specificity and situatedness of counselling. The issue this
prompts concerns the influence of this situatedness on the versions of selfhood propa-
gated by particular practices. To address this issue, I now turn to the perspectives
offered by people as they begin to train as counsellors.
4 Trainee counsellors' views of counselling: a relational means to self-oriented ends?
People who are drawn to train in counselling occupy a position between the general public
and experienced practitioners. They might reasonably be expected to have an interest in
reflecting in depth on what counselling means to them. Moreover, although they may be,
or have been, `consumers' of counselling, unlike others in this category, they are oriented
towards more than their own particular experience as clients. At the same time, their
liminal position in relation to counselling means that they have not yet been fully
socialised into the practice. For these reasons they are likely to articulate understandings
of selfhood that are relatively unfettered by norms, values, and expectations established
within the body of practitioners but that nevertheless reflect serious consideration of what
counselling means.
860 L Bondi

In Scotland, counselling training courses are available in a number of different
settings, mainly on a part-time basis. These include courses run by voluntary-sector
organisations, by private businesses, by colleges of further education, and by univer-
sities (which have become increasingly important in recent years, either as direct
providers or by providing academic validation for externally run courses). The organ-
isation of training also encourages links between these various sectors. For example,
some trainers or tutors work on a freelance basis and may be hired by providers in
different sectors, and arrangements for training placements draw training providers
into relationships with service providers, often across sectors. Some courses offer a
generic training in counselling; others offer specialist training (the main specialisms
being alcohol counselling, bereavement counselling, and relationship counselling).
Some courses offer a training within a particular theoretical orientation (such as
person-centred counselling or psychodynamic counselling); others make some choice
available, within a framework that either integrates different perspectives or offers a
dialogue between particular approaches. The qualifications offered and the pathways
through programmes also vary considerably. The material on which I draw arises from
interviews with people partway through the first module of a part-time postgraduate
programme offered by a university. If they choose to proceed through all stages of
training, they will continue their studies for a minimum of two and a half years. The
course was selected primarily for pragmatic reasons
ö
the course tutors were suppor-
tive of the research
ö
but also because the programme has strong links with a wide
range of voluntary-sector agencies where most trainees undertake placements.
Twenty-six people enrolled for the first module of the programme, which began in
October 2000. Three weeks after the module began letters were sent to all participants,
inviting them to opt into the study. Collectively they expressed a high level of interest
in the study, and in due course interviews were conducted with twelve students. In
order to protect the anonymity of participants, some limitations must be placed on the
use of the interview evidence. For those familiar with counselling training in Scotland,
the identity of the particular programme can be deduced from the details already given.
Given the preponderance of women in counselling there are particular problems about
preserving the anonymity of men. Consequently, in this paper I keep references to
personal characteristics to a minimum, referring to individuals by code number rather
than using pseudonyms. However, some general characteristics of the group as a whole
merit comment, but these exclude reference to gender composition.
Respondents vary widely in age, ranging from those in their twenties to those in
their sixties. All are white but not all are Scottish or British. Some have children, some
do not. Some describe themselves as heterosexual, others as gay or lesbian. Some live
with partners, others live alone. All have studied at university before, their subjects
ranging across the humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Their current and previous
paid work is mainly in the public and voluntary sectors in occupations such as social
work, teaching, and administration. Some have experience as clients of counselling or
psychotherapy, others do not. One has some previous experience of counselling training.
The respondents provide rich and highly personalised accounts of what led them to
undertake the training course for which they were enrolled, about their own back-
grounds, and about what counselling means to them. Although some refer to written
texts about counselling, or to bodies of theory, their accounts invariably articulate
deeply personal meanings of a largely unrehearsed kind. Several respondents used
the experience of the interview to help them reflect on issues about which they would
soon be writing a course assignment. Two asked for copies of tape recordings, which
were supplied within a week of the interview. Transcripts were sent to each interviewee a
few weeks later, in the context of which their permission to use the material was sought.
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 861

Some of the respondents are very positive about, and very committed to,
counselling, as the following quotation indicates:
``I think it's such a valuable gift to give another human being ... .I don't know, I just
see it as an enormously valuable gift to give anyone, something to release in them,
so that motivates me very strongly, partly because I've been [there] myself''
(trainee 4).
Others, however, are much more sceptical. For example, trainee 3 expresses concern
about exclusionary characteristics of training:
``I think it's quite an elitist area. The cost [of training] does seem prohibitive, and the
language [laughing]
ö
it just made me go, `och I don't even want to read that'
ö
at
first glance it just looked like psychobabble.''
Another expresses considerable ambivalence about counselling, which is quite difficult
to articulate, but which conveys a sense of counselling as self-indulgent, echoing
Lasch's (1980) concern about the cultivation and propagation of narcissism:
Trainee 5: ``I'm not sure about the emphasis that's put on counselling. ... [S]o
counselling ... at times it's a bit misguided in my way of thinking ... I would say at
the moment ... in many areas I think it's a fashion, which has always been there for
people who can afford it, and why not, it's their money, that's the route they want
to go down too, but there are people who can't afford it, and yet may feel that
they're being institutionalised... which would put them right off it as well, would be
no good either.''
Liz Bondi: ``Mm. So sometimes counselling is kind of self-indulgent, and you don't
like that?''
Trainee 5: ``Yes. ... I think that there are many areas where it's getting a bit out of
control.''
Whether strongly committed to counselling, or more questioning of it, all of
the respondents use descriptions that accord with the notion that it is a practice that
fosters a self-oriented individualism. This emerges in different ways in different
accounts. Some respondents emphasise the value of counselling in terms of giving
people ``time and space to make sense of things'' (trainee 3), for the purpose of
self-reflection:
``Counselling is providing focused time and attention to an individual, in order to
help them look at an issue or a problem or a dilemma or a feeling or an aspect of
their life or whatever; to help them feel better about this, or work better with this,
or understand themselves more'' (trainee 10).
The theme of understanding oneself figures prominently in a number of accounts.
For example, for trainee 12, ``counselling is about
ö
just by talking through things,
helping to, I don't know, see things more clearly, feel a little better, understand a bit
more why you think certain ways.'' Self-awareness is the overriding purpose in the
case of trainee 1, who says counselling is ``centrally [about] helping [people] to
become more conscious and more self aware.'' In other accounts, the emphasis is
more on being in charge of one's life than on self-awareness, the aims of counselling
being defined primarily in terms of helping people ``to get back in control''
(trainee 9), indicating the importance attached to self-determination. For some, the
capacity for individuals to take ``control of their lives'' (trainee 2) is conceptualised in
terms of empowerment:
``[Counselling is] ... definitely about letting people help themselves and letting them
have their power bases either back or found or ...it's all about empowering, about
them, them getting stronger'' (trainee 8).
862 L Bondi

Others make a link between self-awareness and making decisions:
``It's not about curing, or, you know, fixing, or getting things out of the way. It's
about looking at it and saying `well how do I deal with this? How do I live with
it?''' (trainee 11).
Although different respondents emphasise self-reflection, self-awareness, and self-
determination to differing degrees, the accounts share a view of counselling as
being a `technology of self' (Foucault, 1988) that in one way or another aims to
strengthen the capacity of people to consider and act on their own needs and
wants, and to experience `being a self' both in and for `one's self'. This would appear
to fit unambiguously with interpretations of psychological therapies discussed in
section 2, especially Foucauldian versions, notwithstanding the distinctiveness of
counselling outlined in section 3. However, my interviewees would, I think, feel
sorely misrepresented if these were the only aspects of their accounts of counselling
to be presented.
Within all the accounts in which counselling is portrayed as fostering a self-
oriented individualism, there are also descriptions that emphasise the relationship
between counsellor and client. I illustrate this by reproducing in italics some of
the quotations cited above, within their more extended contexts, and with relational
elements in bold.
In some accounts the idea of bearing witness is linked to the process of self-
understanding:
``Counselling is providing focused time and attention to an individual, in order to help
them look at an issue or a problem or a dilemma or a feeling or an aspect of their life or
whatever; to help them feel better about this, or work better with this, or understand
themselves more . ... I think it's a way to allow people to express things that are often
not easy to express, or even unknown to themselves, for them to express this and
to be accepted with this, so that they can be heard but also hear themselves''
(trainee 10).
Others describe counselling in terms of providing companionship for a journey of
self-discovery:
``Counselling ... has to be going to where someone is, not with the intention of staying
there with them, but with the intention of ... helping them to find ways forward,
helping them to see things another way, helping them to come to terms with past
traumas, but centrally [about] helping [people] to become more conscious and more
self aware'' (trainee 1).
Others echo this sense of companionship but with more explicit emphasis on the
counsellor or being present for, and in a relationship with, the client:
Trainee 2: ``Counselling means, basically, being there for the person, listening, being
in a relationship with a person, ... it would be exploratitive ... . Counselling would be
a place to come where things could be worked out for that person, thought out and
thought through ... .''
Liz Bondi: ``And with what intent, like where would you want to get
ö
where would
you see counselling aiming to kind of get?''
Trainee 2: ``It would make life better
ö
to make their life happier you know or more
in control of their lives.''
The ideas of bearing witness, providing companionship, and ``being there for'' all
suggest that what is important for the client is the counsellor's capacity to be present in
an enabling, facilitative way. For trainee 8, this quality of the counsellor ``being there''
is linked to the provision of a particular kind of environment in the form of a ``safe
space'' for self-discovery and self-empowerment:
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 863

``I think to me it [counselling] means being there, and being able to listen, and being
able to give somebody a safe place, so that they can work things out for themselves
and so that they can actually be allowed to let things come that are buried ... , but
it's definitely about letting people help themselves and letting them have their power
bases either back or found or ... it's all about empowering, about them, them getting
stronger.''
In various ways, these formulations present counselling as a process in which the
relationship between client and counsellor is the vehicle through which its goals can be
achieved. Thus one interpretation of these respondents' views would be that they
regard counselling as a relational process towards broadly individualistic ends, and
that, ultimately, the ends are much more significant than the means. However, for the
trainee counsellors interviewed there was little, if any, sense of tension between
the means and the ends, as the quotations above illustrate. This suggests that other
interpretations might be more relevant, most notably those emerging from feminist
writings on the self, to which I now turn.
5 Relational autonomy in trainee counsellors' accounts of self
In this section I draw on feminist discussions of `relational autonomy' to offer another
reading of the views articulated by trainee counsellors. As the term suggests, relational
autonomy offers a way of theorising the self in which relationality and self-governance
are understood as inextricable from each other, rather than as existing in conflict.
According to this perspective, selves are shaped and reshaped in the context of
relationships with others. I begin with a brief overview of the emergence of the notion
of relational autonomy before returning to trainee counsellors' accounts.
The self-oriented elements within trainee counsellors'descriptions of the purpose of
counselling are broadly consistent with portrayals characteristic of liberal theory, in
which persons are represented as self-governing, self-aware, and exercising rational
judgment. Feminist writers have argued that such accounts present versions of self-
hood that are culturally white, Western, masculine, and middle class as universal
norms. Those who do not conform to this model risk effacement, caught between an
alienating and self-negating image of what a person should be and an exclusionary
`othering' in relation to that image (see, for example, Spivak, 1987; Trinh, 1989).
Feminists have therefore sought to `rethink the self' (Meyers, 1997).
In her account of the psychological consequences of women's responsibility for
child rearing, Nancy Chodorow (1978) argued that preoccupation with separation
from the mother and with the achievement of independence are characteristic of the
development of masculinity, at least in Western cultural contexts. In contrast, in these
contexts, femininity is characterised more by concern with connections and relation-
ships with others. An orientation towards the needs of dependent others is central to
child care and so the association with femininity supports the `reproduction of mother-
ing'. Chodorow's analysis has been taken up widely, informing, for example, Carol
Gilligan's (1982) highly influential analysis in which she links connectedness (and
femininity) with an ethic of care, and abstract individualism (and masculinity) with
an ethic of justice.
In questioning the centrality accorded to separation and independence in `main-
stream' accounts of human development, Chodorow (1978), Gilligan (1982), and
others have argued for a positive reevaluation of characteristics culturally designated
and denigrated as feminine. Building on these ideas, a number of feminist writers
have propounded alternative concepts of self that do not privilege discretely
bounded, individualistic versions of personhood (see, for example, Benhabib, 1992;
Friedman, 1997; Meyers, 1997; Taylor, 1989; Tronto, 1994). Central to these accounts
864 L Bondi

is a critique of the notion that selves are either autonomous from others or forged
through relationships with them. In place of this opposition, selves are theorised as
necessarily incorporating capacities for both autonomy and relationality, for both inde-
pendence and dependence, and for both resisting and seeking the influence of others.
Indeed, according to this view, the capacity for autonomy is itself fostered
ö
or
shaped
ö
through relationships, hence the notion of relational autonomy (Mackenzie
and Stoljar, 2000).
The quotations discussed in section 4 point as much towards the relevance of
relational autonomy as to individualistic conceptualisations of the self. Arguably,
they express attempts to work within a duality that is present in the everyday lives of
the respondents
ö
a duality between the valorisation of self-determination, self-control,
and so on, and their awareness of the emphasis accorded to the counsellor ^ client
relationship within the field of counselling (compare Hollan, 1992; Mehta and Bondi,
1999). To take the analysis further, I therefore leave aside their accounts of counselling
and turn instead to the conceptualisations of self evident in their accounts of their own
lives.
In their accounts of their backgrounds, most of the interviewees spoke of experi-
ences that had troubled them in one way or another. These include experiences such as
bereavement, relationship breakdown, exposure to violence, residential relocations,
intense stress at work, and chronic illness. The interviewees often link these experiences
directly or indirectly to their subsequent interest in counselling or in counselling
training. For example, trainee 6 describes childhood exposure to violence, together
with the silence surrounding it:
``It was just accepted that my father was violent [and] we mustn't tell anybody... .There's
a monster in the room and nobody else says there's a monster in the room... .That's
exactly what my childhood was like, there's this huge great monster and me peering
under it and nobody was saying anything.''
This respondent goes on to explain how adult life choices, including the decision to
begin counselling training, have been strongly influenced by a desire to be available
to people suffering abuse of some kind in order to affirm them, to hear their stories,
and to name and acknowledge that `huge great monster' in the room.
This account points to a view of the self as constructed and reconstructed through
relationships with others within particular contexts. First, the child's sense of self
is understood as taking shape within the peopled environment in which he or she is
brought up: in this case the child is represented as inhabiting a space dominated by a
``monster'' that cannot be acknowledged directly, so that the child is left ``peering
under it''. Second, the possibility of relieving suffering by bearing witness to the abusive
experience suggests that a person's sense of themselves can be reshaped within other
relationships.
Similar accounts are to be found in many of the interviews, with respondents
describing the shaping and reshaping of themselves through a multitude of personal
and professional relationships, spanning childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. For
example, the breakdown of a marriage may challenge and reshape a person's sense of
themselves, and for trainee 2 this was a moment at which he or she sought help within
a professional relationship:
``I just couldn't live in our marriage anymore... , and with that change I went into
counselling myself. ... I went to counselling for a year just to help myself
ö
to help
me through a process of separation, and I really needed help for that.''
In this account reference to relationships coexists with an unambiguous `I' voice,
through which the interviewee articulates agency and personal autonomy. Trainee 2 is
not unchanged by the decision to leave the marriage; rather, separation, although
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 865

actively chosen, is a difficult process for which help is needed, in the form of another
kind of relationship. The notion of relational autonomy acknowledges this coexistence,
and provides a reading of these accounts that resonates with the duality in which
everyday lives are lived. Put another way, self-orientation is not antithetical to relation-
ships if selves are intrinsically relational. I would therefore argue that relational
autonomy accurately characterises these counsellors' ways of talking about themselves
and about the practice of counselling: in both they represent selves as intrinsically
relational as well as capable of autonomy with no sense of tension or contradiction
between these facets of selfhood.
6 A situated practice for (re)situating selves?
I have argued that the trainee counsellors I interviewed mobilise understandings of
selfhood that might be read as highly individualistic and narcissistic, but which, on
closer inspection, turn out to be richer, more complex, and illustrative of the concept
of relational autonomy. In this section, I build on this interpretation to argue that my
interviewees elaborate a view of counselling as a practice that offers the promise of
resituating troubled selves, complementing the idea of counselling as a situated practice
propounded in section 3.
In a paper entitled ``Outliving oneself: trauma, memory and personal identity'',
feminist philosopher Susan Brison (1997) draws on autobiographical and third-person
testimony of trauma and its aftermath to argue for a relationally autonomous
understanding of self. Traumatic events
ö
such as war, genocide, life-threatening
violence
ö
overwhelm a person's sense of self and in so doing lay bare some taken-
for-granted qualities of being `a self', including the way ``the self exists fundamentally in
relation to others'' (page 14). Brison argues that those who survive traumatic events
experience a shattering of the stories that constitute their lives. Reconstructing them-
selves
ö
their selves
ö
is slow, painful, and fraught with difficulties. She insists that it is
an inherently relational process: ``we need not only the words with which to tell our
stories but also an audience able and willing to hear us and to understand our words as
we intend them'' (page 21).
Experiences are traumatic if they cannot be integrated into a preexisting sense of
being `a self'. This is not an abstract, context-independent idea of `a self'; rather, it is a
self in relation to a peopled environment that has, in some fundamental sense, ceased
to be trustworthy (compare Baier, 1997; Davidson, 2000a; 2000b; 2001; Einagel, 2002).
The troubling experiences which trainee counsellors recount often convey unease or
discomfort at this interface between self and environment. Sometimes this unease
or discomfort is attributed to geographical uprooting
ö
for example, in trainee 1's
description of growing up with ``a sense of belonging somewhere else [which] was
underlined periodically because other children were very quick to pick up the ... accent
[type of accent deleted for confidentiality].'' For similar reasons trainee 2 oscillates
between thinking ``I belong nowhere or everywhere. I play with these words all the
time because, depending on the day
ö
when I feel good I belong everywhere, when I
feel sad I belong nowhere.'' Others articulate a poignant sense of rupture resulting from
life and death events:
``The brother who was nearest to me [in age], that was really tragic, he died when he
was 15... .This is all quite crazy but at the same time... my youngest brother was
born ...so it was really crazy... a death and a birth within a week, so that was a
crazy time'' (trainee 3).
Trainee 3's repetition of the word `crazy', together with nonverbal clues such as
faltering speech and protracted breaks in eye contact, suggest a continuing struggle
to make sense of, and to communicate, events of enormous magnitude which
866 L Bondi

radically transformed the family environment. The bald facts of the story are
inescapably familiar, but what these facts mean continue to elude, at least partially,
trainee 3's attempts to put them into words
ö
to relate (to) them. A similar struggle
to make sense is evident in other accounts of less tangible but deeply felt experiences
of a troubled relation between self and context:
``I always [felt] different... just slightly out of synch somewhere and always desperate
to please and to fit in ... . I was feeling always a bit out of synch ... or out of touch''
(trainee 5).
The experiences described by these interviewees may be less dramatic than those to
which Brison (1997) refers, and, with some exceptions, they may not merit the descrip-
tion `traumatic'. However, these accounts certainly convey a sense of the work required
to construct meaningful life stories in contexts where trust in the relation between self
and context has been eroded, or brought into question, generating such ordinary
experiences as feeling `out of place' or of one's world being `turned upside down'
(compare Cresswell, 1996; Kirby, 1996). These interviewees thus suggest that recon-
structing one's self necessarily entails resituating one's self: the shaping and reshaping
of selves in relation to others is equally a process of resituating selves in relation to
people environments.
Although Brison (1997) emphasises the need for listeners capable of bearing witness
to trauma-survivors' attempts to represent their experiences and, through this, to
reconstruct their selves, she provides no insights about what might make such people
available. On the contrary she stresses only that bearing witness in this way is very
demanding and often impossible. However, perhaps she underestimates both the extent
to which people's lives are marked by such `ordinary' traumas as violence, bereavement,
and other losses, and the extent to which the experience of struggling to make sense
of lives marked in such ways draws `ordinary' people
ö
like the trainee counsellors
I interviewed
ö
to the apparently `impossible' task of listening and bearing witness to
others.
If selves are understood as simultaneously relational and autonomous, the person
who asks for help and the person who offers help are connected within a process that
holds the potential to reshape and resituate both of them. Such a view was articulated
by trainee 10:
``I've always been drawn to working with children, and I always thought it was
because I wanted to help children and young people have a better life for them-
selves, but I've also recognised over recent years it was partly about giving
myself... ; it was partly about going back to that age and stage and focusing on it,
and through... giving, through giving and supporting and being there emotionally
for children and young people I was doing that for myself, you know, I was actually
kind of dealing with my own issues.''
7 Conclusion
In a limited way I have begun the task of examining the geographies of care asso-
ciated with counselling, which, at least in the United Kingdom, is a rapidly growing
strand among a number of interrelated practices that also include psychotherapy and
psychoanalysis. The analysis I have presented challenges dominant representations
of psychological therapies as necessarily contributing to an intensification of
individualism through the propagation of highly individualistic concepts of self.
Although I make no claims about other practices, I have outlined several reasons
for questioning this notion in relation to counselling. One strand of my argument
emphasises the differentiated character of psychological therapies in terms of their
histories and geographies, and I have elaborated an interpretation of counselling as a
A situated practice for (re)situating selves 867

situated practice that is always shaped by the particular contexts within which it is
taken up and developed. In the United Kingdom this shaping occurred initially
within the voluntary sector, where counselling evolved as a practice that draws on
everyday relational skills which can be developed through practice-based training.
By the last decade of the 20th century the persistence of the association between
counselling and the voluntary sector was more marked in Scotland than in other
parts of the United Kingdom. Echoing geographical analyses of other kinds of
welfare provision, the institutional and organisational context of counselling thus
shapes important qualities of the care that is offered and delivered.
My argument also points to the importance of another dimension of the geography
of care, one concerned with the imaginative interpersonal landscapes within which care
is delivered. As a practice that engages with subjective forms of distress, the meanings
of self fostered or put into circulation by counselling are of considerable importance.
As I have demonstrated, people drawn to train as counsellors arrive with under-
standings of selfhood as shaped and reshaped through relational practices, of which
counselling is one. These understandings accord with theorisations of the self as
relationally autonomous. Trainee counsellors' accounts of troubling experiences within
their own lives indicate that the shaping and reshaping of selves in relation to others is
equally a process of (re)situating selves in relation to peopled environments. Moreover,
their accounts indicate clear links between their own experiences and their desire to
respond to others' needs, endorsing the view that counselling is closely connected to the
`ordinary' lives and capacities of `ordinary' people. As well as being a situated practice,
counselling might usefully be thought of as a practice holding the promise of reshaping
and resituating troubled selves.
In relation to mental-health issues, Joyce Davidson (2000a; 2000b; 2001) has
argued that agoraphobia can be understood as a profoundly spatial disorder in which
taken-for-granted boundaries between self and environment break down. Although
trainee counsellors do not report serious disruption at the interface between their
selves and their environments, they do convey a sense of the work required to sustain
or recover stability at this interface, work to which counselling is oriented. In this sense
counselling is an intrinsically geographical form of care (also see Bondi with Fewell,
2003). Given the wider influence of psychological therapies, further research is needed
to investigate whether similar ideas circulate in other caring practices.
Acknowledgements. Responsibility for this paper lies solely with the author but its existence has
been made possible by numerous others, especially the twelve people who participated so generously
in interviews. My thanks also to Arnar A
èrnason, Michael Brown, Erica Burman, Jo Burns, Siobhan
Canavan, Joyce Davidson, Wendy Faulkner, Judith Fewell, Stephen Goss, Colin Kirkwood, Andrea
Nightingale, Gillian Rose, Mick Smith, and Lynn Staeheli for advice, conversations, and feedback.
Thanks are also due to the Economic and Social Research Council (R000239059) for financial
support for the wider project from which this paper draws.
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