Tony White

In the newspaper today there was this article about a snake oil salesman. This story has been running for some time now and he is accused of running a cult and being this charismatic person who gets followers and abuses or uses them in various ways. Apparently one of his techniques of control is that he is said to give counselling to his followers and apparently he uses this as a way of keeping them ‘obedient’.


Obedience.



Well the journalist Colleen Egan calls for more regulation on ‘counsellors’ to make them accountable to some form of professional body. Whilst I am sure her intentions are well meaning the last thing we need is more regulation of this kind. It simply is ineffective.

All this does is stop people using the word, in this case ‘counsellor’. Counselling is not a word but is a style of relating and you simply cannot regulate that. Everyday mothers counsel children, bosses counsel employees, teachers counsel students, wives counsel husbands and so forth.

If such regulation came in then the charismatic figures would simply change the title of what they do to such things as therapy, coaching, life coaching, facilitating human development and so on. It is not going to stop this man relating to his followers in a counselling type of way which the problem is, and it can lead to exploitation.



But that is life and it goes on day in and day out. In the work place it is called office politics. That is people are setting about changing office relationship so one gains some dominance or ‘power’ over the others. In the counselling relationship that can happen as well and it can be used for good or evil.

One also needs to be careful of the corollary. If one sees regulation of the title as the solution then many will automatically assume that because a person has such a title then they are competent and ethical. Unfortunately that is not always true. I know some highly qualified and titled counsellors who I would not refer my dog to.

To get a qualification or title means you have passed an exam, it does not mean you are competent as a counsellor. It can help a little bit, but as I said counselling is about a style of relating and I am not aware of how one can examine such a thing effectively. I am yet to see an examination system for counsellors that can do such a thing and I have been involved with credentialling counsellors for the past 25 years.



It does however raise another interesting point. Can a husband and wife counsel each other? My answer to that is, “No”. What they can do is listen empathetically and compassionately and give some bits and pieces of advice perhaps. But it must be kept to a moderate level. The quickest way to destroy a marriage is for the wife to stop being a wife to her husband and become her husband’s counsellor. If that happens its, good-bye marriage.

Counselling is not only listening and passing on wise counsel but it is a way of relating as I mentioned before. The power structure in the relationship is not equal and thus if the wife counsels her husband then she is moving into the powerful, psychologically dominant position. Sooner of later that is going to incense his Child ego state and then the shit hits the fan and the relationship is on the rocks.



If the husband is struggling emotionally then there is nothing wrong with the wife helping empathetically. But it cannot go on too long or get too intense because then the marriage changes into a counselling relationship.

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