Wednesday 31 January 2018

#430 Twenty-two bodies

Besides writing about stuff, another area of work that took my fancy was psychotherapy. I reckoned I could do a fair job of listening to people talk about their problems. It seemed to be mostly what I did in social situations anyway.

Of course, I'd produce vast quantities of notes while I listened to people too. Any job that I took would have to involve writing. What interested me in particular about psychotherapy though was the depth and tone of the one-to-one discussions. It was a very measured and thoughtful way of interacting. How many people could boast that about their work life?

I'd spent the past couple of days researching the UK's 22 professional bodies, membership of which qualified a counselor or therapist to list themselves on a prominent counselling directory. Most of them were too specific to consider. The Association for Christian Counselors or the Association for Dance Movement Psychotherapy. The most recognised body for therapists looked to be the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

Completing a BACP-accredited course was no doddle. It involved a minimum of one year full-time or two years part-time study. Ok, so I had no idea how easy or difficult the courses were but they still took a year or two. That's before a student had any idea whether they'd actually enjoy or be any good as a therapist or whether they'd be able to make a living from it. Those were my main concerns. To address them, I'd need to do more than sit around Googling things.

4 comments

Fizzfan said...

It’s a huge and fascinating arena I’m sure.
One or two years sounds quite reasonable.
If you’re genuinely interested, that’s time well spent.

Been listening to some Jordan Peterson ideas on YouTube lately. I like a lot of his thoughts.
The whole pronoun fuss was mind boggling. Are we really all getting that sensitive or is it just liberalism gone mad?
The people shutting him down sounded far more aggressive, muddled and unreasonable than him.
I’m all for equality but it sounded to me as if they were asking for special treatment.

Profound Familiarity said...

I would say I'm interested in psychology. I want to find out the absolute easiest way that someone could start to break into an area of work like that, e.g. by doing something that isn't actually counselling but has enough similarities to get the ball rolling (like being a life coach for example although I have no intention of doing that, it's just an example).

When I saw your comment I went and took a look at JP's Wikipedia page to get clear on what it is he became famous for opposing and it's a Canadian government bill which amends the human rights act, making gender identity a prohibited type of discrimination... which actually seems fine on the face of it - why would anyone oppose that?

Except that either the details of the bill, or the university's interpretation of it, is that you must therefore use whatever pronouns a person desires when talking to them... and he's like well that's just rubbish... never before in Canadian legal history has the government started making specific words compulsory for people to use to describe the world around them... or something like that.

Yes that's exactly right, it's special treatment. I mean say you thought I was boring for example... I might not like it but you have every right to call me boring without fear of legal prosecution. And I wouldn't want to take that right away from you, even though I might be frustrated because using that word is your way of expressing a genuine opinion or feeling that you hold and if you can't do that, you're likely to become frustrated yourself.

Fizzfan said...

Also in my interpretation I think he was objecting on the principle that if EVERYONE took that attitude, where would it stop. ie I might consider myself to be a very feminine she, or conversely, a butch one. I might not want to be lumped in the general SHE and feel a I’d be better described as SHESHE, or a HESHE.
What if I’m super intelligent and think I should be addressed as SMARTSHE, or really kind and want to be an AWWWWSHE.
His point seemed to be that we all have differing aspects of our genders but it’s impossible and ridiculous that those particular people with gender identity issues should expect to be addressed differently to the other enormous mass of us.
He also rightly said that some of them decide almost on a daily basis which gender they fancy being. Would you have to ask them every time you spoke to them what they could be addressed as?
It’s just too much to ask of everyone and just a little bit precious!
I’m all for them being treated equally (although he staunchly ridicules that notion anyway, and I have to agree, because we all treat everyone a bit differently) but this kind of stuff doesn’t help their cause.

Profound Familiarity said...

Ah yes good point and yeah he does also say that even if he did use their pronouns he's not convinced it would do them any good, doesn't he? Mm.