Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

Rowing has always been seen as an elitist sport. The main events of the Henley Regatta and the Oxford & Cambridge boat race reinforce this impression. But the history of the sport is different particularly in London where the watermen looked after the rivers. Competitive rowing was started by the watermen for wagers and pilot boats racing to guide ships into part. Like the fire engine crews in America in the 1850’s racing to claim their wages by reaching the fire first.
Rowing Class Struggle

It is the story of a class struggle between amateur and professional rowing which lasted a 100 years. In 1919 the amateurs were not allowed to race at Henley at the last minute. There was a plea to the Palace but not in time. King George V reportedly refused to attend Henley after this. The Eton Mission Rowing Club on the River Lea played a big part in training up excellent amateur rowers. It was only in 1936 that Henley dropped its discrimination against amateurs.
Rowing Class Struggle

Rowing competitively was beyond the reach of a few so that the amateurs’ equipment let them down.  In the 1950’s the elite banned the amatuers entering the sport so that the working class watermen could not earn their living rowing. The elite had other sources of income so tried to force the sport to remain amateur. By the early 1950’s  the Thames Amateur Rowing Association, was the Thames branch of the National Amateur Rowing Association. It was the governing body which looked looked after the manual workers who were not allowed to join the ARA as they didn’t recognise their Amateur status. This changed when the TARA threatened to organise and run their own events.

In the 1950s these two organisations merged to become the Amateur Rowing Association of Great Britain. But in 1982 racing at Nottingham the Radley crew sabotaged the Springhill crew by running into them. Eton went onto to claim the race. In 1998 British rowing finally dropped the amateur status from its rulebook.

Rowing clubs were many and small on the River Thames and up and down the River Lea. These have now mostly disappeared and joined together to form bigger clubs like the Lea Rowing Club at Springhill. Ironically still seen as elitist the Lea Rowing club has an open recruitment policy attracting all rowers to the club.
A few books have been written but this class struggle is submerged under the elitism of the sport.
Rowing Class Struggle

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

There is a lot of confusion about Hillary Clinton. There always has been. She polarises people.           
From money making careerist to well meaning public health reformist.
Her biggest problems is her association with her husband. Bill being her husband makes her life difficult. Lets hope she has some private compensations with him.

She had to play second fiddle to him so that he could become electable to the office of President. She had to play the woman in the relationship. She wanted to keep her maiden name when she married. Naive? Modern? Stubborn? Feminist? Bill the extrovert and Hillary the introvert?

Hillary has always had to endure sexism. Is this just patriarchy again expecting her to act like the little woman? She wasn’t going to change. But she had to adapt and change the hair do and ditch the geeky glasses.
Hillary Clinton

A part of her feels that she is being got at. So the more she feels attacked the more she private she becomes. This privacy has been her undoing. If she had just come out with the fiscal evidence supposedly against her: then she would have had an easier time with the press.

The Press. Another one of Hillary Clinton’s devils. She is not the type of person to like someone when she doesn’t –  to further her own ends. Life would be easier for her if she were to be more expedient. She seems ill suited to public life. A bookish person forced into the limelight of public office. But there is something pushing her on into the heady heights of the public exposure that the presidency will bring.

Is this the stuff of humanity? We find ourselves in situations or jobs that do not suit our skill set. But for want of not knowing what else to do. Or feeling that we cannot do anything else? Perhaps Hillary is spurred on by her burning ambition to be equal to men – her husband – but wants to do it in her own way.
Hillary Clinton

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

It is still acceptable for men to be alone and isolated. A male loner is seen as a strong characteristic that a man should have. History contains many examples of male loners from Robinson Crusoe, Captain Cooke, Columbus. Through Nelson up to the more modern day dictators such as Mussolini and Hitler.

Perhaps an exaggeration but men are still expected to cope alone. To deal with their own problems, and be strong. Hearing that people don’t like to see men cry is common.
It is not manly. It is not manly to have feelings.

Centuries ago men in nature had rites of passage to go through alone. To prove themselves worthy of the status of a man older boys have to perform initiation rituals alone. Thankfully the modern version of male rituals includes self awareness and having feelings. Now men use sport, travel, or risky activities to be men.

Into the Wild describes the true story of a young man Christopher McCandless  trying to escape a violent past. He dropped out, scrubbed away his identity, and went on a kind of pilgrimage to find out who he was. Not who his family wanted him to be. He travelled across America into the Alaskan wilderness to be alone with nature.

The idea of the rogue male is out dated. But still holds meaning today. The private school system where a ‘survival of the fittest’ culture.It turns out young men cut off from themselves to compete and win at all costs. How many explorers today are a product of the private school system?
Male Loner

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Trauma and trauma counselling is tricky. Usually counselling asks people to recount their past or the situation that bothers them so that they can speak out a narrative and put words to feelings. Not so with trauma. Not so with trauma counselling.

Reliving the trauma narrative re-traumatises the person as they cannot get into a safe zone to explore the trauma. Disassociation is a powerful state used to protect the psyche from more damage. It cuts off the trauma from the rest of the psyche so that the person can function. Clever.

To put it another way think of the brain in two parts: back and front. The back brain is the primitive survival brain. The front brain is the more rational sophisticated brain. The traumatised person lives in the back brain. Always under threat, and constantly scanning for danger. Jumpy, over sensitised, alert, and reactive.
The front brain is calmer, problem solving, looking for reasons and explanations.

So somebody approaches the traumatised person in the street. The traumatised person relies on the back brain and sees the approach as a threat. Are they hostile? Is the person going to harm me? Their intent is malicious. So the traumatised person reacts violently. Screams, submits, runs away, or attacks.

The front brain sizes up the approach. What is the expression on the person’s face? What is their body language? What is their intention? If the person can find a balance between back and front brain then they can work out the situation in a more considered manner.

How can this be done? Basically and to oversimplify it is all in the NOTICING.

Generally we are taught to notice externally with no emphasis on the internal. Our feelings, our thoughts, the way our bodies to react to stress and trauma goes unnoticed. When we do notice we make a judgement.
So to notice without judgement is the key. Easier said than done. Trauma counselling can enable non judgemental noticing.

Mindfulness is the latest method of non judgemental noticing. To notice how we are and how we react to the world leads us to learn more about who we are.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Time Passes No Wiser
It is a popular idea that in the passing of time human creatures become older and wiser.        

Of course becoming older is obvious. But wiser?
People coming into counselling often ask “won’t I just get better in time?”.
It is true that the passing of time and gathering of experiences deepens us. We start to recognise things that have happened before. We start do things for the second or third or fourth time: each time we do it better.

Perhaps if we look at our behaviour more closely. The clue is in the previous sentence. We are born to repeat.
We underestimate how predicted and rigidly determined our lives are. If we are so flexible why do we see siblings, parents and partners repeat and repeat? Sure – they do the repeat better and better.
But it is still a repeat.

When Aaron Green an American psychoanalyst was asked by Janet Malcolm how he knew the difference between the passing of time, and being in analysis. He replied:
“I’m old enough now have to have a sense of how my life would have gone if I hadn’t had analysis”
“What would have been different about your life?”
“It would have been extremely constricted, full of bitterness and depression. To some extent, I know that because it still is” Aaron said with a rueful smile. “You see, I haven’t changed that radically. I don’t think basic character structure ever changes. We are not that malleable.” (Malcolm 1997:56)
Is this being wise?
It is the difference between ignoring and denying who we are, and making some small attempt at knowing, and being friends with who we are. Rather that being caught out by the repeat and at the end of the repeat feeling “there we have gone again.”
Rather knowing at the beginning, middle and end of the repeat that we are in it!
And maybe just maybe thinking do I have to keep repeating this?
Time Passes No Wiser

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

So this time Ziggy Stardust is really dead.

When Bowie killed him off on 3rd July 1973, there was the feeling that this was the end of something; that everyone wanted to continue. Ziggy Stardust was a new type of freak. Ziggy not only played guitar and had a screwed down hairdo. He/she was part male, part female, part reptile. Bowie described Ziggy as “Nijinsky meets Woolworths”. Ziggy introduced the world to glam, to a confusing sexuality that was mind blowing to watch on the BBC at that time. Nothing quite like this had ever been seen before.

But of course it had. Bowie was the ultimate magpie. Stealing bits from where ever he wanted. Part vaudeville, part camp – Ziggy Stardust updated an androgyny that pushed Bowie into the role of chameleon giving few interviews and never explaining.

It seems mundane now to see artists create characters and roles for themselves, but this was just the start for Bowie. The US soul of Young Americans, The Berlin period, and the international pop of Lets Dance were more versions of Bowie lying ahead.

He always had great musicians around him, but most notable was Mick Ronson. Guitarist and henchman in the Ziggy years Ronson gave Bowie that T Rex guitar sound that would characterise Bowie’s music in the 1970s. A Northerner from Sheffield he trained as a classical musician able to create and hold music in his head. He was no-plussed by the Ziggy period and was just a guitarist playing in a band.

This ordinariness characterised Bowie. Perhaps with all the glamour and fame he never really escaped the ordinariness of Bromley and the lack of expectations his parents had of him. To be noticed and get out of Bromley maybe he had to become a freak. Freaks are always trying to escape something.

Commentators are say his death was a work of art. Is this true? Maybe. But until the end he never really wanted to be David Jones: it seemed he never wanted to be himself to the rest of the world.
Did he think he would never be enough for us?

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Common Unhappiness
Sigmund Freud talked about the aim of psychoanalysis being a method of “transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.”
If Freud was here today in 2016 he might wonder if he should have played down the benefits of his new approach. He might wonder at our need to have the answers to ourselves revealed immediately like swallowing a magic pill. We get what we pay for. If we pay we expect results.
Joseph Breuer one of Freud’s colleagues saw a patient called Anna O. She coined the term “talking cure”.
In this day and age a very unhelpful but easy to recognise (and false) aim of the talking therapies is the phrase “talking cure”.

As Janet Malcolm describes that one gift that Freud gave to humanity is the phenomenon of transference. Basically transference reinforces the idea that we do not see people around us truthfully or clearly. We see what we want to see.  We have our own reality. Or to quote Luis De Silva “The thought one thinks and the words one speaks to one’s self, is what creates our reality.”
We look on the world through the eyes of our experience. What we have experienced in the past forms the way we look at other people and situations.

For example: a colleague tells you the boss wants to see you in his office. There are many reactions you can have to this information. This reaction will be predetermined by experiences around authority and power in childhood. If you had a kind experience of authority you might react with wondering what the boss might want.
A harsher experience might evoke fear, fight or flight.

To notice our own transference is to set up a view of ourselves that is non- judgemental, curious, and revealing. This changes our perspective. No longer do people do things to us: but they become players in a scenario that is familiar and comfortable to us which we repeat. Familiar and comfortable is not necesarily good for us.
In fact it can prevent us from leading our best lives.
We repeat and resist, repeat and resist, repeat and resist. To the end of our lives unless we can see the transference. Age and the passing of time is seen as a cure. But we underestimate the resistance to change and the comfort of old patterns started early in our lives.

In this time of hopes and promises perhaps the internal noticing of transference might change our view of our lives in a way that piecemeal external changes never could.
Happy New Year 2016!

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2016
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Peter Jenkins critiques the New! BACP Ethical Framework.
His supposition is that the organisation like people has gone through a series of experiences that have impacted on the way the New! BACP Ethical Framework has been created.

The strange tale of Bernard Manning an offensive comedian able to join the BACP register kicked the organisation in “to a rule-based and performance-driven modern entity.” The fiasco of the BACP leading the government who abandoned the regulation of counsellors added to the trauma.

One reaction to trauma is fear and control. The Francis Report into the maladministration and poor medical practice in the Staffordshire NHS is cited as something the BACP wants to avoid. The BACP has fallen back on the powerful world of safety and ethics in the medical model which might not suit the ethics of counselling and psychotherapy. The resort is to fall back onto the legality of a medical model template.
How well will the BACP serve its members in a climate of fear and control?

Like organisations we all react to trauma in different ways. To want to order and control in the face of trauma is normal. It is a way to survive the pain and shock. Yet in the long term this control can work against what we want to gain for ourselves and others in our lives. We can become closed and shut off to new experiences that would make our lives more fulfilling and richer.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Kids Co BBC
Alan Yentob has been asked to step down from the BBC due to his involvement in Kids Co.
Is this a case of events gone out of control: or taking on too much seduced by power and influence?

Was this a case of a charismatic CEO managing to seduce the Chair of Trustees into thinking all was well?
Or the collusion of two powerful people trying to steer an organisation out of the swamp?

One of the puzzles of working in organisations and charities is that even in a position of power the CEO, or the Chair of Trustees sometimes don’t know or don’t even see events conspiring against them. It is well known but less practised that the person at the top of the organisation is responsible for everything that goes on in the organisation. If the person at the top is ignorant, or unable to control the situation they are still responsible.
And their position is at risk.

They say organisations are made up of people. Yet like in couples and families there is more to organisations than the sum of the parts. Organisations have a life of their own. A reputation built up over years by the people in them but bigger and growing at its own pace. A culture once started by a group of people but now takes on its own life and direction.

Being in a staff meeting presided over by the manager or CEO expectations are high. Managers are seen like parents to be omnipotent. They can solve anything. Yet things remain the same however unhelpful, and detrimental to the organisation.

Organisations like ocean tankers are slow to turn. To change a culture takes years after the launch, and after policies and procedures have been implemented. People in organisations are attracted to their own: doing things in the way established a long time ago. Nobody quite knows who the organisation is. Sometimes the CEO can steer and other times not.
CEOs and trustees take credit when none is due: and have to take the wrap when none is due.
Kids Co BBC

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
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Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Oscar Pistorius was made and unmade in his childhood. In a race the 12 year old Oscar was carried like a relay baton by his friends along the course. One carrying him and another carrying his prosthetic legs. A charismatic boy Oscar was often the centre of attention.

From a young age he was addicted to speed: going fast that is. A risk taker – nothing would deter him from going fast either on land or water. He was encouraged by his family to take no notice of his disability. No-one in his family was allowed to say “I can’t”.

His mother was a big influence and an inspiration. “He was different but equal”.
Three events then shaped the Pistorius boy’s development: his parent’s divorce, his mother’s death, and a knee injury. He has a tattoo of the dates of his mother’s birth and death on the inside of his right arm.

Death of a parent at any age can be traumatic. But for a 16 year old boy who has been inspired in adversity by a woman so influential in his life must have been something indescribable here. A human parental force that pushes pistorius boy along and becomes a part of him. The pushing energy is normal for him, and internalised.

So when the source is lost: it must be like a train keeping its speed and momentum but losing its tracks. But the tracks have to be found or some direction gained to avert a train heading for a train wreck. The wealthy background of pistorius boy’s life was a constant: there seems to be a wildness and brutality to his environment which remained & became normalised, unchecked.

Is this what happened? Who knows? To understand a life is to only understand a part of it:
and then much remains hidden.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2015
All rights reserved
Disclaimer: This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique