Wilson, Jim (2008) Class Prejudice, Politics and the Practitioner in Context 95 Class prejudice, politics and the

practitioner jim wilson Acknowledging ones own prejudices is an act of responsibility (Cecchin, 1-994) The rich man in his castle The poor man at his gate God made them, high and lowly And orderd their estate' [From All Things Bright and Beautiful by Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895)] a recollection of class prejudice I am sitting in the back seat of a big black car. The place and time are somewhere between Glasgow and Loch Lomond in 1972. A man in a black suit is driving the car probably ex-public school and/or officer class (You can usually tell by the well-groomed full head of hair with a distinctive quiff somewhere between Tin-Tin and Michael Heseltine). Still, he did stop to give me a lift. The driver is talking to his equally self-confident business colleague in the passenger seat. I am a student hitchhiker; wet and straggly-haired. They smile at each other and I notice they are sharing an in-joke. Their accents are refined, probably Edinburgh and possibly ex-Fettes public school. The voice tones are deep, their words hold.authority like those of Scottish lawyers in full swing in the Sheriff Court. I discover that I am the brunt of their jokes. They snigger and joke about my accent, mimicking my Glaswegian working class, sing-song style. They are having great fun and I am fair game. This exchange goes on for some time. I feel increasingly humiliated and angry but my anger eats at my insides and stops short of telling them to let me out. Instead, I endure and eventually get out some miles from my destination. I suppose, by then, the joke had worn off and they were happy to discard their quarry. They drive off and I stand at the roadside. I feel shaken as if Ive been physically abused without being struck and, at the same time, I feel ashamed. Even now when I recollect this incident my emotional reaction is difficult to articulate. I still ask myself; did I make too much of this episode? How much is embellished by the passing of time and shifting perspective? As I pause here to reconsider this encounter there are distinctions that could be drawn between the three protagonists. Such distinctions - the different accents (theirs educated middle class Edinburgh, mine educated working class Glasgow) and the power relations (me the passenger, they in charge of the direction of the journey and the conversation) mark us out. In any interaction we scan for similarities and differences. Not only can we not not communicate it seems we cannot not discriminate. It is a dance of distinctions; at once dancing to the tune of class, next to race, gender or religion and so on, depending on the unique nature of each meeting with another person. We try to negotiate these moves all the time but the question, as in the above car scenario, is who leads? That was 1972 and although time and imagination alter 'the image, the residual feeling of powerlessness, of being rendered voiceless and of physical shrinking, is evoked in the retelling. I was silenced in the presence of assumed superiority. I knew my place and it was to shut up. In the presence of toffs or the professional classes my father had also learned to stay quiet; to defer and not to ask awkward questions because it was not his place to do so. These things we learn at our fathers knees, from our family, neighbours and our communities. We have learned to get the joke in first before someone makes a joke at our expense. Self- deprecation is characteristic of the oppressed, which derives from their internalisation of the opinion of the oppressors hold of them. (Freire, 1996: 45). Multiple experiences like this one can contribute, over time, to a grinding down of hope especially when the oppression of the self is self- imposed. Class prejudice is not necessarily recognised as such until you face another from a different class and until we become involved in a process in which individuals analysing their own reality become aware of their prior, distorted perceptions and thereby come to have a new perception of that reality (Freire, 1996: 95). Class, by whatever definition, (see footnote) signifies difference. More than that, it signifies differential access to power that is socially structured and communicated through a host of linguistic and gestural signifiers (McNeill, 2005) marking ones position in the sliding scale from superiority to

inferiority. the absence of class analysss in family therapy Although it may be a slippery concept to define there is no doubt that an analysis of class reveals it to be embedded in our Western, British culture as well as embodied in our experience. We belong to one class or another and feel the sharp edge of friction when class prejudice creates tension between two people. This article places reflection and action on class prejudice as a central theme in practice. Yet, for many therapists there is a clear distinction between political and therapeutic truths suggesting that to engage in discussion with clients about political views or their economic circumstances may contaminate the therapeutic relationship (Samuels, 2007). It is as if these are two separate domains with the apolitical consulting room partitioned off from political views and discussions that are secreted away and defined as extra-curricular activities by the therapist. The decision to separate politics, and hence class analysis, from the consulting room is in my mind similar to ideas about the nature of truth in therapy compared to political truth in life outside the therapy suite. There are two distinct ways of treating therapy in the context of truth. The first is to see the therapists activity as essentially artistic even play acting (after Masson, 1989) and close to Pinters description of dramatic truth as in the following quote; [For drama read therapy] Truth in drama is forever elusive . . . The search is clearly what drives the endeavour . . . but the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. Compare this multi-perspectivist view of truth in drama (similar to the social constructionist position about entertaining many truths) to his perspective on political truth in the same lecture. Political language is not interested in artistic truths but in power and the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power people must remain in ignorance (2005). For therapists to create a dichotomy between our artistic endeavours and the political realities that compose the social context of our practice is to restrict the critical analysis of our field. At some point we need to take account of the way political truth has served to create social conditions that we, as therapists, cannot spin into narratives that make those conditions disappear. Thirty years ago social stratification, class politics and class consciousness were central concerns of sociologists and, arguably, more directly the concern of some family therapists. More recently these topics have declined, though, they have not disappeared in importance. They have increasingly been superseded by more diverse concerns about intra-class differences and other interacting variables such as race, gender, sexuality and disability. Although, by its very nature, a social concept implying a group, increasingly class has become a term applied to individuals. Worse than this, classes are defined in the psychological literature without any reference to the exploitation of labour, alienation or oppression. Indeed class is heard of less and we now hear more about socio economic status an individualised variable (Pilgrim, 1997, p42). indicators of class prejudice in psychotherapy Social Class is still a very good predictor of outcomes for health, longevity, educational achievement and quality of life and remains important for psychotherapists to address since poverty and poor mental health are co-related. Mental health status increases with age in rich people but declines in poor people. Glass bias affects availability of psychotherapy services; those clients who can afford to pay are privileged compared with those who cannot. Class prejudice influences diagnosis. Pilgrim (1997) argues that it is not easy to isolate class as a variable alongside gender and race as interacting variables, nevertheless there is good evidence that the greater the gap of both class and culture between the labeller and the labelled, the more serious is the label likely to be given. The statistics for drug treatment of children with ADHD show a clear division in the use of medication and talking cures. Put bluntly, poorer children are more likely to be prescribed drug treatment for behavioural problems than the more well off, articulate and educated (after Newnes & Radcliffe, 2005). In addition, I would argue that there is still a lack of class analysis in family therapy models and concepts. This reveals itself where any idea is used without either taking account of, or addressing the embedded class context in which the model or concept has arisen. Concepts are created and are applied within a political and social context. They are embodied in myths and fantasies, in images, ideologies and half beliefs, in hopes and fears, in shame,

pride and vanity (Midgley, 2001). Our theories do not stand outside the social and political contexts in which they are born. Consequendy our application of concepts in psychotherapy requires this scrutiny in order to avoid conccptual reductionism and short sighted systemic vision. This lack of vision is apparent in academic papers and family therapy publications. For example, nowhere in the gargantuan research studies collated by Hubble et al. (1999) on the complexities of the relationship between therapist and client is there a specific reference to any work on how class prejudice may inform the therapeutic relationship. Daniel (1998) also found a paucity of references to a class analysis in her study of family therapy journals in the 1990s. With some notable exceptions (see Jordan, 1981; Waldegrave, 1986; 1994, Facundo, 1990; Fish, 1993; McCarthy, 1994a; 1994b & Glenn, 1999) little has been written in the family therapy literature about social class. So, how can we begin to redress the balance? To start with we can re-examine our own prejudices and the stand we choose to take or not take when the thorny matter of social class is confronted in our practice. class prejudice and the therapists background and experience: some emerging themes Once it becomes apparent that we cannot move without bumping into one prejudice or other the questions then bccome - How can we notice our own repertoire of prejudices (Wilson, 2007) and then how can we use them to help in our understanding of our interactions with the people we meet in practice? That is, to be response-able therapists (after Cecchin 1999 personal communication). In addition, how can we sideline those prejudices that threaten to limit our development as therapists? What actions and advocacy does such awareness bring to our practice? We surely cannot limit our analysis of our clients predicaments to observations generated in the therapy room as if sealed off from the social conditions that might have led the clients to us in the first place. As a start should we not look towards our own personal prejudices and consider how they affect our orientation to our work? Pilgrim (1997) proposes that one of the reasons why working class clients drop out of psychotherapy occurs when the social distance between therapist and client is too great. If this is so then a study of therapists class prejudices is a nccessary step to broaden our understanding of the interaction of prejudices in our practice . A number of themes arose when I explored therapists' background and class prejudice in practice both in informal conversations with colleagues as well as in workshops on this topic over the last six years or so. The following responses are therefore anecdotal and intended to provoke you to consider whether they ring true for you or whether there are other prejudices that arise as you read on. I centred my exploration around two main questions that preoccupied me. You might like to pause to consider these questions for yourself.
a brief exercise;

How would you describe your upbringing Working Class, Middle Class, Upper Middle Class? What demarcates this categorisation for you? Now, in the light of this self description: What prejudices do you hold, for good or ill, that may stem from your class background? And in what ways may they find expression in your professional practice?

All participants were either colleagues who are family therapists, colleagues in workshops on family therapy or workshop participants who were practitioners from related disciplines. Here are the main themes that arose from my explorations: Theme one: Deep affections can hardly go along with callous palms and scant means (from Silas Marner, by George Elliot). This prejudice stems from a belief that those who lack verbal dexterity through material and educational limitations will somehow fail to benefit from attempts by a therapist to explore the expression of complex emotions or ideas. This prejudice also implies that impoverished language reflects an equally impoverished capacity to feel the same depth of emotion as the more articulate. Thankfully this prejudice was expressed by only a small minority of therapists but the fact that it was expressed at all is alarming.

Theme two: Perceived class membership may influence the focus of therapy.

I presented a scenario in a workshop where I described two rather caricatured couples coming for marital therapy. One was a middle-class couple and the other a working-class couple. I provided a little biographical detail and asked groups of practitioners and therapists to consider how they viewed each couple through the lens of class as if they were preparing to see them for the first time a " sort of hypothesising session focusing on the practitioners assumptions about class prejudices. What responses and biases might emerge? Some participants owned up to feeling that perhaps they would be more focused on material problems in the lives of the working class couple and considered that therapy might be largely irrelevant if material difficulties were so central. This is moving into either/or thinking rather than contemplating the idea that whilst material problems can be most significant they should not exclude people from the opportunity to discuss concerns of the heart. On the other hand some therapists felt there was a possibility that the middle class couple might make too much of lifes difficulties and tend to make problems where there might not be much to complain about. The difficulty here is that the prejudice could lead therapists to become critical or to minimise the individuals troubled experience despite their apparendy comfortable life-style. Theme three: Social distance as a means of emotionally distancing middle class professionals from the psychological pain of working class clients. One medical colleague described how certain patients from middle class backgrounds were afforded more time and attention from medical doctors in her hospital. Consequentfy she was deeply concerned that her fellow consultants often talked disparagingly about working class patients, as if their conditions were less significant. Theme four: Therapist class background has a bearing on sensitivity to perceived power differences between client and therapist. As a workshop exercise I asked participants to divide into groups according to their perceived ideas of middle-class and working-class upbringing. This often creates in itself some interesting categories and good humoured debate of the, I am more working class than you variety. I then asked participants to discuss the impact of their class prejudices on practice. Some therapists from working-class backgrounds felt they were especially sensitive to the status difference between themselves and their clients. Their socialisation had led them to look up not down and as a result they went to some lengths to try to put people at ease and avoid patronising them. Conversely, others felt their upbringing led them to feel, at times, that the working-class clients were not trying hard enough and needed to pull themselves up just as they had done! There was also a noticeable theme of being especially conscious of status and a feeling that the middle-class clients would scrutinise their practice. It kept some therapists on their mettle. Others became very conscious of their own different accents and, in one example, a colleague described how his working-class accent somehow became even more pronounced when facirfg middle-class clients. Other colleagues talked of occasionally feeling smaller beside middle-class clients, as if the distinction had a shrinking efFect (as in my encounter described above). These visceral reactions were remarked upon by a number of colleagues whose origins were defined by themselves as working-class. Colleagues from a middle-class background talked of feeling equally self-conscious about their accent when meeting with working class clients. They felt this was a hindrance; that their clients would think there was too big a social distance between them. Theme five: sensitivity to social class as a significant feature in the therapeutic alliance can be related to the therapists background. Some workshop participants from a middle-class background did not find the specific focus on class to be so relevant as those from a working class background. They were more inclined to emphasise culture and gender as prominent features in their reflections and argued the need to focus on educational opportunity instead. Interestingly, Minuchin makes a similar point (1996) in claiming that middle class students of family therapy face challenges in engaging working class clients because their relatively privileged upbringing makes understanding the experiences of working class clients very difficult. He

poses the question, What kind of human skills, flexibility and endurance does it take to overcome a childhood of blight?, and challenges therapists to help people whose experiences of life have been filled with helplessness and hopelessness and a notion that the future will be more of the same. To assume that choice, autonomy, self-sufficiency and hopeful futures are shared values and achievable possibilities could well be naive and insulting. It may also be too optimistic a starting point and one that therapists can explore by re-examining their values and experiences about closed and open horizons. If you do not experience class prejudice in your life you do not register this as significant. After all, the middle class have always occupied the professional positions so it is not a shift in social mobility to become a therapist. But for the therapist with a working class upbringing this can be a major transition. You can become a borderliner - neither a full member of your original community nor so much at home with your status as a middle class professional. These can become restricting prejudices - a kind of guilt about moving out of ones tribe to join another. a call for class conscious practice What became apparent in these conversational studies and wrorkshops is that an awareness of ones class prejudices is an important dimension in our experience of ourselves as therapists, and in our lives outside our professional role. Yet it is one that is largely unexplored in our training. No-one could identify a specific focus on class and personal class prejudice in their prior professional training, or indeed in most family therapy training they had subsequendy undertaken. In addressing and redressing prejudices we need to begin by attending to our capacity to explore our own classist assumptions and also to examine our capacity to decentre that is, our capacity to place ourselves imaginatively from the perspective of the other (after Donaldson, 1978). However, sometimes even in our attempts at self-reflexivity we do not sense these prejudices. We just dont know that we are getting it wrong. This is when we need to talk with others who can observe and critique our prejudices. It is a constant process of critical self-reflection that needs others to keep the process alive. creating an alternative conversation If I could travel back to that car journey in 1972 I could have understood the drivers scorn and derisory laughter as also an expression of the self-oppression in the oppressor - he was acquisitive rather than inquisitive, he was certain rather than curious, he was patronising rather than co-operative, he was concernecl with maintaining an I - It relation to me rather than an I - you relation. In this sense the driver and his friend were also trapped by their prejudices but it really needed me to take the steps to realise this instead of playing according to their rules. Maybe at another time another conversation could have taken place. To do so requires courage from both parties to explore how class prejudice can restrict other more creative connections between people. An awareness of the cybernetics of prejudices will not in itself create sufficient change but when critical self-reflection leads to informed action we become more human. If we become more classconscious about our work, we can reach towards what Freire referred to as ca process of humanisation that takes account of the creative potential of every human being. Part of that work is to expand our horizon of practice to attempt to heal and transform those social circumstanccs that interrupt the process of humanisation (Kenneth Hardy, March 2007 personal communication). Our job is to embrace both dramatic and political truths. These are scales to be balanced not polar opposites estranged from one another. It is possible to embrace curiosity and advocacy; to entertain the idea of therapeutic neutrality and still stand against classist practice; to consider reflection and action on behalf of clients. These are crucial considerations to help us to keep our eyes wide open to those so called extra therapeutic factors that profoundly influence our work. Whilst reflection on action is crucial to an exploration of prejudice, action must also follow critical reflection otherwise the particular focus on classism becomes another ism not really embraced in our practice or on family therapy training courses. Class has for too long slipped ofT the family therapy table of contents. It is time to pick it up again. References Cecchin, G., Lane, G. & Ray, W.A. (1994) The Cybernetics of Prejudices in The Practice of Psychotherapy. Karnac, London. Daniel, G. (1998) Broadening the Gap or Narrowing the Vision. Journal of Family Therapy 20, 211-218.

Donaldson, M. (1978) Children's Minds. Fontana. Elliot, G. (1957) Silas Marner. University of London Press, London. Facundo, A. (1990) Social Class Issues in Family Therapy. Journal of Strategic and Systemic Therapies, 14, 34. Freire, P. (1996) Pedagogy Of The Oppressed. Penguin Books Fish, V. (1993) Poststructuralism in Family Therapy - Interrogating the Narrative/Conversational Mode. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 19,221-232. Glenn, C. (1999) In a class of our own? Context, 45. Hall, J.R. (Ed) (1997) Reworking Class. Cornell University Press. Hardy. K. (2007) Address; Psychotherapy Networker Conference, Washington, USA. Hubble, D., Duncan, B.L. & Miller, S.D. (1999) The Heart and Soul of Change: What Works in Therapy. American Psychological Association. Joyce, P. (Ed) (1995) Class; An Oxford Reader. Oxford University Press Jordan, W. (1981) Family Therapy - An Outsiders View. Journal of Family Therapy, 3, 269-280. Masson, J. (1989) Against Therapy. London Harper Collins McCarthy, I.C. (1994a) Poverty: An Invitation to Colonial Practice? Feedback, 5,17-20. McCarthy, I.C. (1994b) Abusing Norms: Welfare Families and a Fifth Provence Stance. Human Systems, 5, 229-239. McNeill, D. (2005) Gesture and Thought. University of Chicago Press. Midgley, M. (2001) Science and Poetry. Routledge. Minuchin, S., Lee.Wai-Yung & Simon,G.M., (1996) Mastering Family Therapy. New York, Wiley. Newnes, C. & Radoliffe.N. (Eds) (2005) Making and Breaking Children's Lives, PCCS Books. Pilgrim, D. (1S97) Psychotherapy and Society. Sage, London. Pinter, H. (2005) Art, Truth and Politics. The Nobel Lecture. Samuels, A. (2007) Therapy and'the Political Psyche. The Psychotherapist, 34. 4-5. Waldegrave, C.T. (1986) Mono-cultural, Mono-class and So-called Non-political Family Therapy. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 6, 197-200. Waldegrave, C.T. & Tamasese, K. (1994) Some central ideas In the 'Just Therapy Approach. Human Systems, 5, 191-208. Wilson, J. (2007) The Performance of Practice; Enhancing the Repertoire of Therapy with Children and Families. Karnac,
London.

Jim Wilson is Consultant Psychotherapist with Foster Care Associates. He is Consultant Family Therapist with Gwent Health Care Trust (sessionally) and co-director of Partners for Collaborative Solutions, an international training and consultation organisation. Contact: j.wilson66@nf.lworld.com, www.partners4change.net
footnote

Pilgrim argues that there has been a move away from a class analysis of Western society with its emphasis on differential access to wealth and power and a concern for themes of domination/subjugation by one class over another ... instead of the singular concern of the Marxian tradition. A more anodyne definition of class is reflected in the Oxford English Reference Dictionary (1998) as noun - any set of persons or things grouped together or graded or differentiated from others, especially by quality ... a division or order of society, upper class, professional class. Alain Touraine, quoted in Joyce (1995), takes a postmodernist position, arguing that the working class cannot be defined objectively and therefore the concept governing the analysis is no longer one of class position but of social movement. The idea of class is problematic for some postmodernist perspectives because it suggests a single external referant.

In addition, argues Joyce, the rise of the right and of neo-liberalism over the past decade have brought with them ideologies in which the solidarities of class with its communitarian sentiments have retreated before the rhetoric of privacy, choice, freedom and the individual. The debate between structural and post structural approaches seems to continue in contemporary sociology [see, for example, Reworking Class (Hall, 1997)] Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labour. Oscar Wilde