Many of us love Christmas but those who work in the counselling and psychotherapy field know it can be a difficult time for even the most cheerful. Take yourself. There is all the pressure of celebration which begins with the school carol service ( notice it’s always the same night as a long standing professional commitment), proceeds seamlessly through Christmas get togethers and thank you’s with colleagues, the staff celebration and finally our own family and friends gatherings. That doesn’t take into account the task of Christmas shopping, which is fun but have you noticed that some people end up with multiple gifts while others seem impossible to buy for? No wonder we come to Christmas Day, ready for a break from all responsibility including our professions. we just want a holiday!

We know that we are the lucky ones for Christmas can be lonely and difficult time for many of our clients. Families who have been estranged all year will yearn for reconciliation and the fantasy Christmas celebration, only to be dissappointed when the reality is experienced. Others will be experiencing the pain of family separation and seeing children for only half their usual celebration. For some, Christmas will be spent alone at a time when EVERYONE else is with loving family. No wonder this is a time when life can become too painful to bear. So, at a time when we as helpers most need a rest, our clients need support.

It is this reality that has made us reconsider our services over the Christmas, New Year break. We have decided to remain open and to offer appointments to our own clients and also to others whose usual practitioner may be unavailble. For the latter we will meet their immediate request and then redirect them back to their previous practitioner when they are again available with the offer of liason to ensure continuity of care. We may not be able to fill everyone’s stocking but even a little may help.  

Bower Place is Opening Hours during the Holidays

Paul, Michael and Wayne; three violent men whose histories are relayed by Carol Boland in her paper “Can Violent Men Change?” The stories of Paul and Wayne make chilling reading as two men from vastly different backgrounds that end up at the same psychological place where they attempt to murder their wives and children who have left them. Carol uses personality theory and in particular the theory of narcissism to explain how this could be. Paul grew up in a world where he could ‘do no wrong’ with a childhood that taught him no strategies to deal with what he perceived to be the ‘outrageous and unwarranted rejection’ of his abused wife’s decision to leave. By contrast Wayne’s childhood was dominated by abuse and humiliation and a powerful sense of shameful inadequacy with the result that he was hypersensitive to criticism and reacted violently. The humiliation implicit in his partners decision to leave him resulted in the same behavior as Paul.  

By contrast she presents the case of Michael, a man who has been equally violent yet is able to engage with the therapist and not only acknowledge his violence but act to change it.

Carol makes a cogent point. Violent men can change but ‘we need to be more skilled at recognizing who they are’. Central to this is understanding the quality of their own parenting  ‘particularly any information that helps us to understand what they internalized about personal responsibility and remorse’ For those who are steeped in defensive shame like Michael and Wayne it is impossible to predict whether they can respond. However initial screening to distinguish the still-reachable from the too-defended which both appeals to the man’s self-interest and rewards vulnerability and responsibility to change is crucial. In addition it is crucial that we warn the partners of violent men how they leave and be aware that a history of physical violence is no predictor. Never humiliate them, she warns, ‘if possible, simply leave when he is not around. ’She concludes by saying that anti-violence programs must be thoroughly and reliably assessed and that therapist should be unafraid to state that some men are unable or unwilling to change and that services must be provided to properly protect woman and children.
 

Boland, C. (2008) Can violent men change? Context: The Magazine for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice in the UK. 97: 6-9.

When people think about therapists working with abused children, they usually imagine child-friendly rooms with therapists gently encouraging the development of therapeutic alliances from which the children can begin to repair their psychological harm. The image relies on a number of assumptions and implies a number of possibilities: the child is able to access the therapist regularly and indefinitely, the therapeutic goal(s) are clear and achievable, and the children are eventually able to pour out their hearts with the conviction that the therapist can make it all better. Eventually, the image implies, the child will emerge from the therapeutic process either healed or with sufficient resilience to withstand whatever depredations or deprivations remain to be faced.

Sadly, therapy with these clients is rarely so straightforward. In this sometimes confronting but always-realistic presentation Carol will address many of the dilemmas therapists face in attempting to help their child clients. She will be starting from the following positions
1. The second most powerless person after the child client is the therapist

2. Before the therapist can hope to achieve any therapeutic change, he / she must negotiate a potential mine field of services and individuals with often competing or contradictory policies and agendas

Two ‘new’ phrases have entered the lexicon of mental health in recent years – “Recovery Orientation/Based Practice” and “Lived Experience”.  What does this rhetoric really mean and are the terms useful?

The concept of recovery has recently been ‘discovered’ and used to guide service delivery and mental health policy direction.  However it is used inconsistently, and carries with it a number of potential pitfalls.  There is no consistent definition of ‘recovery’ as it is said to have a personal meaning to each individual.  It is not synonymous with ‘cure’.  What it implies is developing greater self efficacy and the pursuit of personal goals and functional capacity, despite ongoing symptoms.  Lived experience is part of this, and the person with mental health problems is the ‘expert’ by virtue of their ‘lived experience’.

Recovery in terms of hope, autonomy and personal growth is very individual and much harder to ‘measure’ than formal assessment procedures.  Control of the recovery process sits with the individual rather than the service or service provider and hence runs the risk of leaving people to their own devices, with consequent neglect under the guise of ‘recovery’.  There is also incongruity between the recovery approach and the use of coercion for those whose illness puts themselves and/or others at significant risk.

The recovery approach could also become a modern day anti psychiatry movement, with the focus on individual recovery and self determination leading to failure to access mental health services.  This leads to another potential problem – where the individual is responsible for their own recovery (a process), and to not ‘recover’ (an outcome) is a great disappointment and perpetuates the sense of personal failure.  Another significant risk is that the concept of recovery may lead to a focus on the personal and the narrative, with exclusion of the systemic, which this may limit the extent of recovery.

It is a grave error to assume that there are two mutually exclusive groups, those with ‘learned experience’ and those with ‘lived experience’.  Many who are professionals in the field of mental health care, have BOTH lived experience and learned experience, though usually do not declare the former.  It may however be used to powerfully influence their work and produce deep understanding and empathy. 

Certainly, hopes, dreams, goals and autonomy are crucial to all of us, but the catch cry of ‘Recovery’ has the potential to do more harm than good.  The exclusive focus on ‘Lived Experience’ has the potential to increase marginalization and stigma, and could be the antithesis of ‘recovery’ - with a focus on difference rather than on universal issues of life.

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The debate over Bill Henson’s photographs has been sidetracked by notions of artistic merit, artistic licence, the obscenity laws, censorship and the issue of paedophilia. Bill Henson’s photographic installation, which includes photographs of naked girls as young as twelve, is the straightforward exploitation of those girls. A twelve or thirteen year-old is not mature enough to give her (or his) fully formed consent, and as such informed consent, to be photographed in this way. No amount of hindsight by her (or him) or anyone else that has been photographed in this way can remedy the consent problem and the consequent problem of exploitation.

This is not an artistic problem and it is clear that the arts community fails to grasp the issue. This is a developmental issue that cannot be resolved by resorting to other moral, artistic or ethical arguments. These girls are simply not old enough to say ‘yes’ to Bill Henson, no matter how innocent or beautiful or artistic they, the photographs or the proposition may be. No parent or guardian is in a position to say ‘yes’ either. Bill Henson is or was misguided and this is simply an error of judgment on his part.

Bill Henson’s intentions cannot help us either. The developmental problem can only be resolved when each girl becomes an adult. When they do become adults, they are no longer twelve or thirteen, and can no longer be photographed naked as twelve or thirteen year-olds.

Exploitation is exploitation be it by an artist or anyone else. Exploitation is exploitation, be it by good intentions or evil.

I take the most benign perspective in this matter and make no claims about Bill Henson. Whilst I do not know Bill Henson I am sure he is a fine man and a fine artist. It is unlikely that he is a paedophile, a supporter of paedophilia, or a supporter of any other form of child abuse or exploitation. In fact I imagine it is highly likely that Bill Henson would find such matters abhorrent.

In short, most of this debate is not about Bill Henson. It is about a blindsided arts community for whom the times have shifted without them noticing. We are no longer in the pre-1980 period when children’s rights barely existed.

I have no knowledge of Bill Henson’s intentions except to note that no one else, apart from Bill Henson, knows about his intentions either. Again, I assume, without any other knowledge, that Bill Henson’s intentions in this matter were entirely noble.

The difficulty is not with what we know but with what we don’t know. We don’t know what the relationship was between Bill Henson and these girls when these photographs were taken. We don’t know what really occurred when these photographs were taken. We don’t know how these girls came to be naked for Bill Henson to photograph them. We don’t know who else was involved in the taking of these photographs or any of the other circumstances in relation to these photographic sessions. We don’t know what other images were taken of these girls and in what form these were taken. We don’t know whether any other people were present and what other images were taken of these girls and in what form.

All we know is what Bill Henson has shown us. Did Bill Henson take other photographs that have less artistic merit than these? Where are the other photographs? Who else has had access to these images? Who else has copies of these photographs? How are these images managed and secured? Who consented to these girls being photographed? Did one or both parents of each girl consent to them being photographed? If only one parent consented, has the other parent ever been informed? What process did Bill Henson go through to obtain such consent? Is that consent in any visible, enduring, form? Who holds that enduring consent? Can that consent be withdrawn by any one of the girls at any time? Does artistic merit override consent? What happens if the consent was obtained under a form of duress not visible to Bill Henson at the time?

A less benign view would lead to a set of more difficult questions for Bill Henson to address. The artistic merit argument assumes a benign relationship between artist and model. This is not always the case.

We do know that, developmentally most twelve and thirteen year-old girls (and boys) in this society are somewhat reluctant to undress and appear naked in front of other people, particularly adults. It is, in developmental terms, certainly odd that these twelve and thirteen year-old girls would undress for Bill Henson and his camera. This immediately raises concerns for many people about this matter and process.

The voices of the arts world avoid addressing the central question and denigrate, as Philistines, those who have legitimate concerns about this matter. The arguments and comparisons put by Denise Ferris, Patrick McCaughey and others are specious. The more legitimate comparison is with Nabokov and Lolita, not with Lawrence and Joyce.

The argument that trawls art history for examples of child and adolescent images to bolster the case for the primacy of artistic merit over child exploitation is also specious. Time does not stand still. We no longer condemn children to the coal mines or the workhouse. The orphanages have been torn down; the walls of the asylum are long gone. The systematic legal and state sanctioned protection of children is, historically, very new in this society. When Nabokov wrote Lolita this society had a different view about children and sexuality. That is true of many of the images referred to by the arts community.

It is time for the arts community, and those who claim to be the voice of that community, to ferret their intellectual and emotional way into the shoes of those who are deeply, and reasonably, concerned about this matter. Many come to this debate with hard won experience about children and adolescents and the issue of their exploitation and abuse. Many practitioners working with children and adolescents who have been gratuitously exploited have dealt with the photographs of naked children and adolescents in a very different context, long before Bill Henson hung his. If any of these photographs, taken out of context, had artistic merit, would they also stand some chance of being hung and getting past the Censor’s cut.

The point is that artistic merit is not, and can never be the first or only point of reference in this matter; that considerations about the protection of children from exploitation and abuse take precedence over artistic merit; that this is not a debate about the obscenity laws and that casting this as an ‘obscenity’ matter does no justice to the issue at all.

Whilst this may be a matter for the ‘Censorship Board’ to examine whether Australia’s ‘obscenity laws’ have been violated, it remains a ‘Child Protection’ matter, that should now be pursued by the responsible State authorities. Child Protection laws are there to protect children, including those photographed by Bill Henson, from exploitation.

In short this is a developmental and jurisdictional issue not settled by the Censor and clearly beyond the intellectual and experiential grasp of those speaking for arts community in this country.

I know that my disquiet over this matter is shared by many of my colleagues who, like me, believe the State should act on the child exploitation issue and not consign this to a fringe ‘obscenity’ question.

Malcolm Robinson

Director

Bower Place

Psychology, Psychiatry and Family Therapy

Adelaide SA

In relationships and families, difference is both a source of strife and our emotional lifeblood.

Sometimes it is important to resolve difference and sometimes it is important to accept difference as a fact of life that cannot be resolved.

The resolution of difference may not be everything it is made out to be.

Negotiation and acceptance may be as significant as resolution. Maybe the secret to resolution is in the acceptance of difference.

Certainly the acceptance of difference and the acceptance of dispute is one of the keys parents use in managing some of the difficulties ordinarily associated with adolescence.

In relationships and families, dispute is preferable to indifference. That is, if the dispute is not violent.

In many instances, the� dispute over difference actually connects the people concerned. It doesn’t always disconnect in the way many people fear.� The� dispute doesn’t always divide people.

Perhaps difference needs to be more celebrated.

Indifference may in fact be the problem. Indifference is associated with disconnection and alienation.

The last thing most parents want is for their adolescent son or daughter to become indifferent to them and the family. Perhaps parents need to learn how to dispute more carefully, cunningly and� intelligently so that they can use difference and disputation as a form of genuine connection and to ward of the threat of indifference.

There are predators in this world who can ’smell’ the aroma of indifference on a young person. Indifference is the void into which these predators� can sing a new, more attractive and dangerous song of life and death.