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Co-counselling (spelled co-counseling in US English) is a grass-roots, low-cost method of personal change based on reciprocal peer counselling. It uses simple methods that can be seen as a refinement of “you tell me your problems and I'll tell you mine”. In particular, time is shared equally and the essential requirement of the person taking their turn in the role of counsellor is to do their best to listen and give their full attention to the other person. It is not a discussion, the aim is to support the person in the client role to work through their own issues in a mainly self directed way.
Co-counselling was originally formulated in 1957 by the American Harvey Jackins, by a combination of his personal experiences gained in counselling sessions and personal adaptations of earlier theories such as Dianetics. He founded the Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) Communities, with head quarters in Seattle, Washington USA. His son, Tim Jackins, is currently the international leader of Re-evaluation Counseling and its main affiliates.
There have been a number of parallel developments of co-counselling or breakaways from RC, principal of which is Co-Counselling International (CCI).
General description
The main activity in co-counselling involves participants arranging to meet regularly in pairs to give each other peer-to-peer counselling, in turn playing the role of counsellor and client, with equal amounts of time allocated to each. The co-counselling organisations arrange training and activities that enable co-counsellors to get in touch with each other as well as a range of other activities. The terms “client” and “counsellor” have stuck through analogy with what co-counsellors tend to refer to as “one-way counselling”. Since co-counselling is different from one-way counselling attempts have been made to use other terms that seem more appropriate such as “worker” and “listener”.
Co-counselling functions by giving people an opportunity to work on whatever issues they choose with the accepting support of another person. They do not have to please the other person and whatever they do or say is OK, indeed the other person does not even need to understand what they are working on. In fact co-counsellors sometimes work in a language that the other person does not understand, if indeed they use any language as co-counselling is often done non-verbally. The counsellor is not doing things to the client and is only using methods that both have learned.
Safety (in the sense of being very low risk) and the sense that a co-counselling session is a safe space is important to the method. There are strict rules of confidentiality, in general nothing about anyone's work in a co-counselling session may be revealed to anyone else. This is stricter than in other practices where practitioners discuss clients with supervisors, colleagues and sometime with all sorts of other people. The peer relationship makes a considerable contribution to a sense of trust.
The nature of the co-counselling session opens up the possibility for people to get in touch with emotions that they would avoid in any other circumstance. The value of working with emotions was apparent throughout the development of co-counselling and has become a core focus of the approach. Co-counselling training emphasises methods for accessing and working with emotions and co-counsellors develop considerable emotional competence.
To get involved in co-counselling it is usually first necessary to complete a 40 hour course in The Fundamentals of Co-Counselling. The training involves learning how to carry out the roles of client and counsellor. It also covers the guidelines or rules affecting co-counselling for the particular organisation. Differences in approach mean that each organisation normally requires completion of one of its own courses as a prerequisite for membership, even if someone has already completed a course with another organisation.
The original theory of co-counselling centres around the concept of distress patterns. These are patterns of behaviour, i.e. behaviour that tends to be repeated in a particular type of circumstance, that are irrational, unhelpful or compulsive. The theory is that these patterns are driven by the accumulated consequences in the mind of (not currently) conscious memories of past events in which the person was unable to express or discharge the emotion appropriate to the event. Co-counselling enables release from the patterns by allowing "emotional discharge" of the past hurt experiences. Such cathartic discharge includes crying, screaming, sweating, trembling, yawning, laughing and relaxed, non-repetitive talking. Society repeatedly tries to limit such actions "normally" through "accepted social norms" such as, for example, trying to stop people crying, which are widespread in many cultures.
Having undivided supportive attention from another person often gives rise to strong feelings apparently towards that person, typically “falling in love” with them. This is similar to the phenomenon of transference, particularly when one of the partners is felt to have more authority because, for instance, they are more experienced, are teachers of co-counselling or have authority roles within the organisation. The organisations differ in the ways that they handle this.
Therapeutic Context
Many co-counsellors take the view, often quite strongly, that co-counselling is not psychotherapy. In the beginning, this was because Re-evaluation Counseling decided not to draw on any discipline of psychotherapy for its theory and practice (Jackins H 1997, p4, 1.019), although RC did incorporate some ideas from psycho-analysis such as "unconscious promptings" which Jackins adapted and relabelled "restimulation". A similar view is taken by some non-RC co-counsellors who regard psychotherapy as involving specialist techniques used by a therapist on a client and is therefore not peer and the client has little or no control over the process.
Others consider that co-counselling is psychotherapeutic, in that it enables change or therapy to take place in the psyche, soul affect or being of an individual. As co-counselling takes a positive view of the person (i.e. we are all essentially good), considers the mind and body as an integrated whole and acknowledges the value of catharsis it is regarded as an approach within humanistic psychology, a view that would be rejected by some (but not all) within RC.
Re-evaluation Counseling
- See main article at Re-evaluation Counseling
The core organization structure of RC consists of classes and local communities set up by experienced co-counselors, which are in turn organized by regions and country. The term "re-evaluation" refers to the client's to rethink their past distress experiences after the emotional hurt in those experiences have been discharged, and thereby regain ("re-emerge" with) their natural intellectual and emotional capacities. The RC organization and literature do not accept the description of its practice as psychotherapy, maintaining instead that the process of developing distress patterns that dissolve through emotional discharge in the context of appreciative attention is simply a natural process that does not imply either psychopathology on the part of the individual or the need for professional treatment. Re-evaluation Counselling regards other forms of "mainstream counselling" and psychotherapy in general as failed attempts to bring about relief from distress using methods that do not focus on discharge and re-emergence.
In RC client and counsellor are expected to work co-operatively, participants are expected to provide non-judgmental active listening and to "contradict" the misinformation or other conditions thought to be associated with distress patterns.
RC approaches the issue of feelings between co-counsellors by having a strict “no-socialising” rule. RC co-counsellors are expected not to socialise or have social or sexual relationships with other co-counsellors (unless these relationships pre-dated their becoming co-counsellors). RC specifically rejects the label "transference" for this phenomenon, as this is seen as part of a "symptomatic" method typical in psychology; the original theory of co-counselling (from RC) teaches that the best thing to do in these circumstances is repeatedly counsel on, and "discharge" about, such feelings. In addition, methods of "getting attention out of distress" are available which help with the difficulty of "switching roles" between counselor and client. When taught correctly, counselors are soon able to grasp the difference between counselling relationships and those from outside life. However, sometimes there is a marked pull to "socialise" or confuse the boundaries of the co-counselling relationship with other types of relationship; this is one reason why many consider a well organised community of co-counsellors with clear rules to be essential in the successful practise of co-counselling.
Re-evaluation Counseling places a high importance on the need to understand and adhere to a comprehensive theory about the nature of the universe and of human beings (known in general as the 'Benign Reality'), the best ways of assisting the discharge process and of pro-liberation attitudes in co-counseling. RC'ers believe that taken together, these enable the counselor to keep a clear picture of the client's "re-emergence" and are therefore very effective. People disagreeing with the theoretical perspective are asked to think and discharge on the points at issue before actively challenging such perspectives. The main aim is to provide a safe, stable and supportive atmosphere within which people can client skillfully and also lead "re-emergent lives" where they are not dependant in a therapuetic sense, but instead become more energetic and effective. (a state known as "zestfulness" in RC).
Co-Counselling International
- See main article at Co-Counselling International
In practice, in CCI co-counselling the client is wholly in charge of the session. In other words, client and counsellor do not work co-operatively, the counsellor only intervenes in accordance with one of three levels of “contract” - free attention, normal and intensive – which are defined in CCI's principles. The only requirement of the counsellor is that they give “free attention” - that is full supportive attention – to the client. The other two contracts constitute invitations to the counsellor to make interventions from within those permitted if they feel it is appropriate. The intensive contract can be similar to the RC way of working although the counsellor is still not permitted to intervene as flexibly as in RC.
The original theory of co-counselling is taught in the CCI fundamentals training courses and participants learn techniques for releasing, or “discharging” emotions. However, the theory is not seen as a constraint within CCI and co-counsellors draw on the whole range of psychotherapeutic theory and methods including analytical, cognitive-behavioural and transpersonal as well as humanistic approaches. The principal constraint is that the client must be able to work self-directedly.
Organisationally, CCI is a peer network with no core structure. Local and national networks have a variety of organisation. Classes and activities are organised by individuals or groups acting self-directedly. John Heron's status within the network has always been as an equal member, although inevitably as a founder member, activist for some 15 years and the person who developed much of the thinking behind CCI there was a certain amount of transference on to him. Heron now lives in New Zealand and has an involvement with the CCI network there.
CCI approaches the issue of personal relationships between co-counsellors as a matter for raising awareness. CCI co-counsellors may and do have the whole range of personal relationships with other co-counsellors. However, new co-counsellors are encouraged not to develop new non-co-counselling relationships with other co-counsellors until they have more experience and experienced co-counsellors will often have people with whom they only have a co-counselling relationship. Teachers of co-counselling are strongly discouraged from having sexual relationships with people they have taught.
Other co-counselling initiatives
- In 1976 John Southgate and Rosemary Randall published their book The Barefoot Psychoanalyst. Published by what was then the Association of Karen Horney Psychoanalytic Counsellors, this book combined the practice of co-counselling with the theoretical perspective of Karen Horney.
- Dror Co-Counseling in Israel, founded in 1998.
- Peer Listeners: an organisation set up following the resignation of Belgian Daniel Le Bon from RC in 1989.
External links
References
- Jackins, Harvey (1965) The human side of human beings; Rational Island, Seattle.
- Jackins, Harvey (1970) Fundamentals of co-counselling manual; Rational Island, Seattle.
- Jackins, Harvey (1973) The human situation; Rational Island, Seattle.
- Jackins, Harvey (1997) The list; Rational Island, Seattle.
- Heron, John (1974) Reciprocal counselling Human Potential Research Project; University of Surrey, Guildford.
- Ernst, Sheila & Dickeson, Lucy (1981) In Our Own Hands; The Women's Press, London
- Evison, Rose & Horobin, Richard (1985) How to Change Yourself and Your world; Co-Counselling Phoenix, Pitlochrie.
- Evison, Rose & Horobin, Richard (1988) Co-counselling in J Rowan & W Dryden (eds) Innovative therapy in Britain; Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
- Southgate, John & Randall, Rosemary (1989) The Barefoot Psychoanalyst (3rd ed); Gale Centre Publications, Loughton.
- Caroline New, Katie Kauffman (July 2004) Co-Counselling: The Theory and Practice of Re-Evaluation Counselling ; Brunner-Routledge; ISBN 158391210X;
"Co-counselling"