Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

Fuel Hike
In the news this week is the price rise of fuel – electricity and gas. The prime minister was criticised for suggesting that consumers change energy suppliers.
This would be ineffective as all the big fuel providers will put up their prices. So switching is pointless.
So some people in the UK will be forced this winter to choose between food, or heating. While the fuel companies make dividends for their shareholders. The argument is that the market will balance this out.
Competition will allow consumers to choose between companies and find a better price. But this cannot happen if the market is closed to only a few big companies.
There is a view that the UK privatised energy market does not work.

It appears to be working fine. The shareholders are happy. The energy suppliers have a captive market of consumers who cannot go anywhere else. Like printing money.
The dogma of the free market has always been about profit. The people who follow the dogma of the free market are those who are going to profit most out of it. It was always so.
The trick was in the marketing of the free market. It will be good for the consumer. Good for the customer. More choice. Cheaper prices. Perhaps this is the real success of the free market.
It has been sold to the consumer as the only good idea.
Fuel Hike

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Home Town
Bruce Springsteen has made a career of writing songs about his home town in New Jersey. This is an attractive subject for a lot of people. Home is where the heart is.

For some where they were brought up is a place where they feel they belong. There is no other place where they feel so comfortable. Some spend their whole lives in their home town; Giving up work opportunities to be in their home town: with other family members who have made the same decision.

Look at a family and all the siblings react differently. One comes back occasionally for alumni events. One visits friends and family regularly. Another does not visit the home town at all.
Some children are brought up to move away from their home town by family expectations. Expectations fuelled by education draw children away from their hometown particularly if it is small or remote.
Others run from their home town. A bad family experience, depressed economy, or just being bored makes them move.
Perhaps your home town has disappeared. It is no longer how you remembered it. It ahs changed. Been knocked down. Built over. My City Was Gone.

Some people are considered losers when they live in the same town, street, or even house all their lives.
But are they more content?

Opinions are divided. Living in your home town creates apathy and a parochial view of life. “Are you local”? This view is brilliantly lampooned by the League of Gentlemen.

Or is it sustaining a continuity and ritual to life which transient city dwellers can only dream about. TV Soaps rely on this selling point of family living in the same place with the same people for years.
Is being connected to your home town better for your mental health? Knowing your roots. Knowing where you came from. Knowing who you are. Or disappearing into the urban sprawl to try and hide. Escaping small town life into anonymity. Home Town.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

True Romance
Romance, sex, love and fantasy are everywhere: In films, the media, books, TV, and magazines. Internet porn is regarded by some as the driving force behind the world wide web such is its popularity. But is it True Romance?
If we are to believe what is regularly beamed across the nation, romance and love are the answer to most of our problems. It is portrayed as a heightened experience. The participants are madly in love.
They are new to each other. There is a search for new love all around.

Couples up and down the UK are seeing sex therapists to try and understand what is going on with their sex lives. This selling of romance is opposite to the view of the sex therapist. The environment for sex is the opposite of what is portrayed in the media. It helps for the couple to be calm, connected, open, and emotionally responsive. The opposite of the heightened madness of couples in love in the media.

Sex can be an indication of what is going on in the rest of the relationship. The main issue is uncovering the unconscious fit of the couple. What brought them together? In many cases it is a copy or compensation of early relationships to parents. Having unavailable parents may attract an unavailable partner, or one that seems available but withdraws when demanded on. The unconscious fit is not simple, and totally unique to each couple.

So why has True Romance become so unreal from the way normal intimate relationships are conducted? Again perhaps it is the market place. Being in a heightened aroused state makes it easier for us to be sold products. Commercialism. Selling a dream. A life style. A love style.
True Romance.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Top Dog
Your child being the top of the class in an average school, is better than being in the middle of the class in a good school. (Richard Garner – Independent Education 24^th September 2013) Those children who were top of their primary school class do best at Secondary school.
Another way of putting it – as long as the child is top of the class: it does not matter what standard the class is. The emphasis is on being at the top. Being at the top of the class gives the student confidence.
There is also the other side of the message particularly in primary school that whatever the child does is done well. Everything is fantastic. Nothing is bad. Everything is good. Intelligent children come home to ask parents was what they did really well done? Or was it that they just did it? Top dog.
Sport also emphasises being no 1. The no 1 team, & the no 1 athlete. People can remember Andy Murray winning Wimbledon.
Perhaps who he played in the final. But who came 3^rd? There is the other message that sport is everyone and that anyone can take part. It is not about winning. It is about participating.

What about the rest. Being number one means that you have a group of kids who are behind the number one child to feel that they are number one of something. The same with all the other sports persons who make up the event. The no 1 tennis player has to have 100 other tennis players in the rankings to be no 1.

Perhaps this conundrum comes from the primitive / ‘civilised’ condition of the human race in the 21^st Century.
Top dog is the primitive version of humans. We have to acknowledge the essential primeval self. Having to survive, compete. Survival of the fittest. It is where humans come from. But the modern version of humans wants to avoid wars, be fair, be social, and have equal opportunity for all. A democracy.
To fit the primitive into the civilised is a problem. It cannot go. The two have to uncomfortably live side by side. Jostling for position. Top of the class and the rest of the class. Wimbledon winner and the other players.
Which version of us is winning appears to change moment by moment. Top Dog.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Top 10 Singers
Singing is therapeutic. Singing is used for all different types of client groups. Singing relieves stress.
Like playing the piano, or speaking several languages being able to sing is one of the talents people yearn for.
So who do you wish you could sing like? Do you imagine being on stage singing a certain song? Feeling the audience move with you to the emotions you are conveying in the song? Being the centre of attention? Being seen as someone with the perfect voice missing all the human flaws?
So who would be your top 10 singers?
How would you categorise them? Crooners? Rockers? Classically trained? Male? Female? Noteriety?
Apparently most pop vocalists have no formal training but are trained to use their voice properly so they can protect their voice and have long careers.

One way of thinking about your top 10 singers is to think can they sing? Can Bono sing? Does the reputation of his band outweigh his voice? He has a style all of his own which is instantly recognisable as Bono. This is important for marketing the band! He can convey emotion through his words in the song. But does he hit notes like a classically trained singer? Perhaps this is not important. Chris Martin, Lou Reed, & Ian Brown could also fall into this category. Good tunes, emotive, yet a voice that sounds flat at times. Same as Kurt Cobain. Brilliant at conveying raw emotion. But in tune? The punk/grunge ethic was not about tunes but attitude.
Who would be in your top 10 singers?

To race through the singing styles in living memory – just!
Old school crooners hark back to a time when he voice and timing were everything. The voice was at the forefront with the music complementing it. Elvis knocked a hole in this style. Attitude, sex, rebellion and then the voice and tune was the call. Not to say he did not have a good voice. It was instantly recognisable. Mournful, and soulful.

The men in Motown delivered up tales of love, & racial oppression. The women female assertion & independence – through gospel music choirs. The 70’s singer song writers had voices to die for. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, & James Taylor to name a few. Progressive rock produced few good singers? Jon Anderson, Greg Lake, Ian Gillan, Peter Gabriel? Cock rock produced the raw power of Robert Plant. And he could sing ballads, and carry a tune like Don Henley. Mick Jagger and Paul Rodgers had a style all of their own.

Disco has singers from Donna Summer to Luther Vandross.  This was smashed by punk: Johnny Rotten being the main exponent of how not to hold a tune tunefully. Under the punk ethic he had an incredibly powerful voice. Then the pop crooning of George Michael who has had an incredible career through the 1908s, 1990s and into the 21^st Century. Out of these styles has come a repetition and amalgam of all the styles put together.
Who would be in your top 10 singers?
There are too many to mention so here are just a random few to get you started.
Terence Trent D’Arby    Pharrell Williams     Kanye West        Lenny Kravitz     Laura Mvula   Beck    JJ Cale
Sly Stone             Justin Vernon    Grace Jones       Mary Margaret O’ Hara         Bryan Ferry      Stevie Nicks
Jack White          Chrissie Hynde  Caleb Followill     Wayne Coyne    Orlando Weekes

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Wipers Times is a classic example of how the English allow subversion to maintain a status quo.
Wipers Times was a newspaper written in the WW1 trenches in Ypres. Wipers being a play on the word Ypres, the town where the soldiers were fighting. In truth it was a battlefield.
The Wipers Times was written as a mocking and satirical take on the events in the trenches. It illustrates the principle English tradition of free speech. Despite having the potential to undermine a life and death war situation it was tolerated.
At face value it is a display of democracy and tolerance almost to the point of insanity. Did the Germans read the Wiper’s Times? Might they have taken courage from it? Did they think that the English were giving up? Or just gone mad?

The French and the Germans would have banned the Wipers Times. It would not have been tolerated. The English High Command back at base hated it. They wanted it to banned. But the Wipers Times never was.
This is one of the reasons the UK has never had a revolution. The ruling classes have a canny knack of allowing freedom of speech, and expression. This is advertised as a gift of democracy. They look good. They have given something up. They have compromised.
This is the difference between between being recognised and being censored.
Psychologically it is well recognised that recognising and listening to feelings gives them perspective. Recognition and acknowledgement takes the heat out of feelings.
Not recognising feelings builds resentment. Angry energy that collects to burst out. The energy of revolution.

Banning the paper might have heightened and increased the feelings. Possibly to the point that soldiers would not fight? Allowing a satirical paper to express the futility and stupidity of war recognises the feelings. The feelings are lessened. The war continues.
The programme makers and writers in the tradition of Private Eye think that they are exposing a subversive true story. In one way it is. In another way it isn’t. To create a safety valve for strong feelings lets the show continue. Status quo is resumed. Soldiers keep fighting. Soldiers keep dying in one of the most senseless wars in modern history. A clever trick.
The Wipers Times subverts the Wipers Times.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Key 5
Imagine you want to buy a laptop. You do your research and read the reviews. You make your choice. You pay your hard earned cash, and wait for it to arrive. You were not in. It went to a neighbour. The neighbour is not in. You wait until the neighbour is in to collect it. You open it up. You are pleased. You want to read your emails. Access your documents on cloud. But you cannot access your accounts. You check your user id. You check your passwords. Still no access. You go to another computer. You are able to access your accounts. You go back to your new computer and still it doesn’t work. You change your passwords. Still nothing. Eventually you notice that when you ever you hit the key 5 the black dots in the password box do not advance. Key 5 does not work.
A Key 5 moment.
The world now divides into two types of reactions. Both are frustrated and annoyed. But the first type of reaction is pragmatic. These things happen. Spend the angry energy in returning the computer. The second type reaction is take it as a personal customer service affront. How could this company do this to me? I will never buy one of their products again. Why can’t they organise themselves properly? Now I waste my time returning the item. I have to wait for my money to be refunded? Why? The product did not work. This is not my responsibility.

Highly intelligent and reasonable people become angry and aggressive to call centre personnel. They vent their frustration in a way that they would never do face to face or in their workplace.

Customer service is customer care. If the product does not work – the assumption is that there is no care. We are not cared for.
Being cared for is a highly unique and individual experience. Some people feel that their parents, families, spouses, partners, or children do not care for them in the way they want.

Customer care can be used as a displacement activity to vent old wounds of not being cared for. Another way to think of it is as a parent child relationship. The parents have not produced the goods. The goods are faulty – like the care. If this lack of care wound has not been attended to, repeated vents of frustration and anger are sought out. Customer care is a good channel for venting. A Key 5 moment.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Emancipation or oppression?
Do high heels represent a freedom for women to wear what they want?  To feel more confident? To dress up? To intimidate and compete with men? A rite of passage from girl to woman? To make the statement that they can have it all like men?
To feel taller and sexier? Height (ism) still being an unrecognised prejudice?

Shoes are attractive objects in themselves. Works of art. Shoes do not become old.
Is this something to do with feet being part of the female body which does not fluctuate in size?
Ginger Roger’s said something about oppression. Her comment about Fred Astaire. Fred didn’t have to dance backwards with high heels on. She had to make the point that dancing in flats was different.
To dance in high heels must be more difficult and painful?
Chinese foot binding  began as men found it attractive. It was a way for women to be beautiful and worthy of a husband. Is wearing high heels based on class or culture?Do the middle classes prefer women more demure and in flats? Do the working classes prefer more overt expression of female sexiness? Do African and Mediterranean cultures like more bling? High Heels are bling?

A study conducted by psychologists at Portsmouth University, UK concluded wearing high heels is about gait. The way women walk. Womens’ gait in high heels is more emphasised and attractive. The study adds. “One, conscious or unconscious, motivation for women to wear high heels might therefore be to increase their attractiveness.”
And there it is again. The Unconscious! The argument becomes more complex when hidden motivations are at work. The whole of the natural world is set up – hard wired to attract the best mate possible. To have the strongest off-spring. To survive. Has the 21^st Century civilised us to the point to that we can eradicate the primitive survival instincts? Is the choice of wearing high heels a free choice made consciously by women?

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Privacy UK
Privacy in the UK is contradictory. The UK is one of the largest surveillance societies in the world intruding on its citizens privacy. There is so much concern about it that laws have been created to restrict it.
A fascination with intruding on others’ privacy in the tabloid press is seen as ok.
A reputation for being reserved and private in personal lives. Not wanting to be intruded upon contradicts the intrusion of surveillance and interest in celebrity sex lives.
Privacy UK
For a country to monitor its population implies an element of mistrust, and wanting to control. A hierarchy and class system encourages mistrust. The feeling of us and them is hinted at during exchanges between politicians and commentators. Our press is divided by the class of its readers. It is not a popular view today to say class exists. Many think it does not.
Privacy UK
Privacy means different things to different cultures.
A fascination with sex is part of the stereotypical English reserve. The French do not care. The French do not believe that anyone else is interested. They believe that personal love is a matter of private business. There’s a very French willingness to accept that a relationship might not come to anything. There is no closure, or marriage. It is just a basic human experience of love.
So what makes the UK so interested in sex? Is it a compensation for being repressed about it? Two opposites ends of the same idea? If the UK was more sexually liberated: would the population want to read about it as much in the press?
Privacy UK
Being reserved, not being open cannot resolve mistrust. Nothing is clear. The English language is not meant to be. The language with its supportive culture of manners does not want to offend. Better to say words that have ambiguous meaning than to insult the listener.
Surveillance, sex, and reserve are linked by the English character.The English character is ultimately undefinable. But then looking at privacy in the future might give an indication of how the English character might change in the future. Privacy UK.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.

Funereal Racket
The average cost of a funeral in 2013 in the UK is over £3,000. The price of a family holiday, a swiss watch, or a reasonable second hand car. What a funeral racket. It is expensive to die. GPs still charge for a death certificate.  Funeral Directors charge a couple of bags of sand with cars and coffin thrown in. The Crematorium charges a monkey for a burn up. Then there’s the charge for the grave plot, and internment.
Death is a funereal racket.

Death in the 21^st Century industrial nations is hidden. People die in hospitals, care homes, and hospices. The most seen way of dying is on the roads? What happened yesterday with the deliberate deaths on the streets of Cairo is unimaginable in Western Europe.
So when it comes to a funeral there is a problem. The issue of death has to be faced head on.  We are in the main unpractised at the feelings that arise. Our own mortality, reminders of others we have lost. Pain and hurt are all feelings that we want to avoid. Enter the ritual.
Rituals are familiar in that they have a recognised format. This format traditionally might take the form of a church or crematorium service followed by a gathering or not. The family organises this in line with what the deceased has requested in their will. Hymns, readings, music and prayers. Unless requested to deviate from this format is unacceptable. Religion plays a part. But the UK is a secular country. Yet still at a death the deceased resorts to a ritual informed by religion.

This ritual is expensive. It is also seen as a one off experience where you cannot be cheap. This might be interpreted by the congregation as a slight on the deceased. A lack of value to the occasion is seen as devaluing the person.

The feelings around death do not allow for a more imaginative or personal way of commemorating the death of a loved one.  The majority of funerals do not deviate from the ritual. If they did then there would have to be a discussion bringing up all those nasty feelings, we are trying to avoid.
Feelings about what the deceased would want would have to take place because the funeral deviates from the ritual. Careful consideration is needed to host a one off funeral.
Is there a link between not being able to deal with difficult feelings around death and wanting a traditional funeral? No professional mourners at the service Chinese style where crying is performed on cue at particular points in the service!
Yet there are many alternatives. Pagan, and humanist funerals are becoming more popular. A brief crematorium service-  then down to a pub with a free drinks bar. A meal for the mourners in an expensive restaurant.

In the future perhaps we will have more people being comfortable with feelings around death. Then be able to discuss and have the funeral of their choice outside the traditional ritual.
Funereal Racket

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2013
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.