Gotta Get Yourself Connected...

I am heading off for a New Year jaunt tomorrow, staying with a lovely friend in the middle of bloody nowhere. Not only does she not have wireless connection, but I have just discovered she has no internet connection at all. How do people cope? I shall take my laptop anyway, so if anybody spots a desperate looking woman driving around the Forest of Dean with a laptop on her knee, it's just me looking for a hotspot. Any help would be much appreciated.

A happy New Year to you all xxx

Morrissey is my hero...

My Christmas celebrations will begin in earnest on Friday evening when I schlep over to Manchester to see Morrissey. (In concert, you realise. He has not invited me over for tea at his mother’s, more’s the pity.) I have loved Morrissey forever, or at least since I first heard This Charming Man and fell under the spell of the man with the gladioli in his pocket. I naively assume that everyone finds Morrissey a genius and have been surprised at people’s comments when I mention - mention? Perhaps I should say repeat ad nauseum - that I am going to see him in concert. The kinder comments include:

Morrissey? Isn’t he the miserable fucker from The Smiths?

Morrissey? I would rather stick pins in my eyes.

Morrissey? That explains a lot…

Please allow me to convince you that Morrissey is not a miserable fucker, and that his lyrics are, in fact, pure romance. Here is a selection of my favourite Morrissey lines:

Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head.
Sweetness, sweetness I was only joking when I said by rights you should be bludgeoned in your bed.
(Bigmouth Strikes Again)

Who am I that I come to be here...?

As I live and breathe
You have killed me
You have killed me
Yes I walk around, somehow
But you have killed me
You have killed me

And there is no point saying this again
Yes, there is no point saying this again
But I forgive you, I forgive you
Always I do forgive you.
(You Have Killed Me)

And my children’s favourite:

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Should kill the both of us
To die by your side
Well, the pleasure - the privilege is mine
(There Is A Light That Never Goes Out)

Really, how much more romance can you take?

On Being a Mother...

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my 11-year-old son, discussing his Christmas list which he had sourced himself on the internet due to his mother’s terrible lack of organisational skills.

“You can get all of it on Amazon,” he was telling me, “and if you go for the second-hand options I can get five PS2 games and five books. And of course a surprise” he added, with a frown.

It was then he noticed his 8-year-old stepsister, eyeing us with concern. He paused.

“The thing is,” he directed at her “when you are my age Santa only brings you a couple of small presents, because he saves the best for the little ones”.

She looked satisfied, and went back to her supper. He winked at me knowingly. I felt a surge of love for my lovely, thoughtful, kind little boy and remembered my siblings cruelly disabusing me of the Santa myth when I was only three or four. Perhaps I have not been such a bad mother, I thought to myself, to produce such a lovely son. And my eyes welled with tears.

“Mum!” he said with disdain.

“What on earth are you crying about?!”

Oh, the joys of motherhood.

Blair's cynicism: part one...

You could be forgiven for not knowing that this week the government announced wide scale closures of urban Post Offices. Perhaps this was the Bad News that they have been apparently burying all week, although given that these closures will primarily affect the frail elderly and the disabled I somehow doubt it.

Small, local post offices provide an essential community service: for many isolated, elderly people they are a social centre, an opportunity for face-to-face relationship and contact, a source of community information and a place for advice and support. My local postmistress assists a number of her frail/forgetful elderly customers with official correspondence and paying of bills and is an informal monitor of their general well-being. I have even known her to call out a GP if she is worried about their health. (In fact, she provides exactly the kind of service that social workers used to provide, before they were chained to their desks and forbidden from actually visiting their elderly clients.) The walk to the post office keeps elderly people ambulant and socially active, thus holding back both physical and psychological decline.

Thus we can see that closing these post offices is a Very Bad Thing Indeed, which will eventually cost us in terms of increased demand on health and social services.

The bit that really, really hacks me off, though, is Blair’s defence. In a marvellous example of doublethink, he argues that these post offices are closing due to lack of public demand. Because for the past five years the Department of Work and Pensions has been bullying (yes, bullying) pensioners and people on benefits to have their weekly money paid into a bank account. Bank accounts that most of these people have never had and don’t want. It may come as a surprise to most middle-class professionals that the vast majority of people who live solely on benefits prefer cash in their pocket, as it is the only way they can budget on the miserly amount that the state permits them. Honest, its true. Some people just do not want a bank account. They want to take cash from the post office, and pay their bills in cash over the counter (or put cash on their electricity meter cards, which are quaint things that only very poor people have.) But now they can’t. And Blair can happily close these post offices because the only people that use them have no political clout.

Mr Blair, your cynicism appals me.

John Humphrys Spoiled My Day...

I was driving over the moors last week on my usual trip to work. It was a clear, sunny day and I was pondering how bleak could also be beautiful when I spotted it: a Red Kite, hovering about 40 feet off the ground just ahead of me. I pulled over to savour the experience. I enjoyed a few moments of sweet melancholy (of the ‘I wish I was a Red Kite – life would be so simple’ variety) which then gave way to a feeling of contentment that I live where I live (because on a Bad Day it feels like the arse-end of nowhere.) I continued to work feeling happy with life.

I was driving the same road yesterday morning. The Today Programme was reporting how the reintroduction of the Red Kite in the UK has been an unprecedented success, given that it was nearing extinction 10 years ago.

“What a tender and heart-warming story” I thought to myself.

“I wonder if I will see my Kite today?”

John Humphrys continued. Apparently, we are in danger of gravely prohibiting their breeding by feeding them with kitchen scraps, as it inhibits their natural instinct to scavenge and expand their territory.

“We are, in fact, killing them with kindness” intoned Mr Humphrys (serious voice, grave concern conveyed.)

Why does John Humphrys always have to spoil things?

LOL!!!! :))

Before I started blogging I used to get quite irritated with the annoying little icons, smiley faces, ‘LOL’ type comments , indiscriminate use of exclamation marks! and the ‘god, aren’t I funny!!!’ implication of several exclamation marks in email communication. But I think I understand now. Psychology tells us that most of our communication is non-verbal (I can’t be bothered researching the actual figure, but suffice to say it is highish.) As a therapist I know that I ‘listen’ to the non-verbals just as much as the verbal content of people’s communication. Posture, facial expression, eye-contact, tone of voice (paralanguage) and gestures all communicate a different aspect of the story I am hearing. Sometimes people tell me that they are OK, but their non-verbals tell a very different story. I listen to my own body and internal experience, which will often pick up their unconscious communications thus allowing me to make the implicit more explicit.

So if communication is so complex and richly textured, how do we express ourselves in discussions that rely entirely on the written word? (I think this is different to ‘proper’ writing, by the way, which doesn’t rely on an explicit exchange between author and reader in the way that blogs, emails, letters etc. do.) It is very easy to misunderstand and redefine the other’s intention and motivation. We unconsciously project our own paranoia and then persecute the other. (Think of all those arguments that have started from a poorly worded text message. I am thinking of starting a support group for people who compulsively misunderstand text messages and find themselves in yet another text argument.)

Necessity is the mother of invention. Hence we shoe-horn in those smiley faces, ‘LOL’ commentaries and further indiscriminate exclamation marks (!) so we can let the reader know that ‘I’m a nice person really, even though I have just left a potentially disagreeable message on your blog’. They may be a bit flat-footed in comparison to our usual complex psychological communications, but I guess they do the trick.

Postscript: Go Go Hutton...

I read a post recently on a Labour blog (I would reference it if I could remember where I read it) arguing that it is too easy to just be cynical about government policy, and we should therefore take the time to partake in a more considered and intelligent debate. Therefore, in the spirit of constructive debate I refer again to John Hutton’s move to oblige women legally to name the father of their child on its birth certificate.

Let’s not be coy here. Hutton’s targets are unmarried mothers who claim benefits and his motivation is to reduce the burden that these children place on the state.

For some time I have facilitated development groups for young, lone mothers who claim benefits and who live in socially excluded communities in inner cities. SureStart commission the work and their aim is to both build community capacity and to facilitate a more stable and secure environment for pre-school children in these communities. I work closely with these women and get to know them well. I can think of a number of reasons why they would choose not to name the father of their child on the birth certificate, none of which Hutton would consider a suitable reason for exemption. Primarily, they would not want to be forced into an economic relationship with the man who has already refused to take responsibility for his actions and has usually behaved in a humiliating and cavalier way towards them. These women don’t have much, but at least the benefits system allows them a measure of independence and freedom of choice to be or not to be in a relationship with the father of their child.

The devil is in the detail. Hutton will have no idea of the difficulties women on benefits face when their ex-partners cease their CSA payments because of a change in circumstances (and these men are often very chaotic which means their payments stop and start like a game of musical statues.) In addition, enforcing a relationship with the father of their child, however tangential that relationship, will only serve to foster further acrimony and hostility and that is VERY BAD for the child. (Particularly if he has insisted on a paternity test, which no doubt most of these absent fathers will do.)

There are many, many reasons why women choose not to name the father on the birth certificate but it is never because she just couldn’t be arsed to include him.

I agree, by the way, that men should be encouraged to take responsibility for the offspring that they randomly sire. I agree that young women should be far more discriminating about whom they choose to have children with, and should not see having children at 16 as a career choice. I agree that children (and parents, for that matter) are better off in families with 2 parents and that all parents should take their job very seriously indeed. I agree that the welfare of the child should come first. I hate the fact that these young women feel so abandoned by wider society that they have children in order to raise their own self-esteem, and then have absolutely no idea how to parent them successfully. I agree that we as a society have a problem here, and I know it is not a popular thing to say in liberal company.

However, attempting a solution through legislation is oppressive and divisive, and, trust me, these women don’t need reminding that they are on the margins of society. We need good, old-fashioned, empowering and respectful community work such as that provided by SureStart. So why is the government reducing its funding?

Go Go Hutton...

John Hutton has apparently won a ‘Whitehall battle to require the law to be changed to require both parents to be named on a child's birth certificate.’ This means women will be required to name their baby’s father with exemptions for only the most exceptional of circumstances.

I think our leaders have come up with another simply marvelous idea here. May I humbly offer some further suggestions?

• Unmarried, pregnant women could be encouraged to give birth in special mother and baby homes – I’m sure many religious groups would be willing to run them – and the babies could be handed over to nice, middle-class, childless couples after birth. This would reduce the burden on the state.
  

• We could actively discourage unmarried women from getting pregnant by ensuring that it is a shaming and humiliating experience resulting in social isolation, abandonment by one’s family and a lifetime of poverty.
  

• We could invent a time machine which would spirit us all back to 1953.
  

Any other suggestions warmly welcomed. Please send to John Hutton c/o ‘Regressive Social Policy ‘r’ Us’.

Naked Rowers Get Therapy...

Charles and Tom are best friends who found themselves with a couple of months to kill in between graduating from Bristol University and starting Sandhurst Military Academy. So they decided to row across the Atlantic. Naked. Like you do.

In preparation for their Herculean task, Charles and Tom have had some couples therapy. God love ‘em. Couples therapy is not an easy undertaking, and is only ever marginally less stressful for the therapist. Given that it involves parading your finest moments in front of a third party, for most couples it is usually something of a last resort balanced precariously between calling the divorce lawyer and buying the strychnine. Couples either argue so violently you need the skills of a boxing referee or refuse to speak until it feels like pulling teeth. (This is not a criticism, by the way. I have great admiration for couples who are willing to involve a therapist in their most private moments.) But boy oh boy, I wish I wish I wish I had gotten that gig. Picture the scene: two marvellous specimens of our finest public school system, eager and willing to go.

Therapist: Charles, what would you like Tom to know about you before you start on your journey?

Charles: Well, I’m a frightfully decent chap, but nanny used to beat me every night with a wooden spoon and I’m afraid it’s become rather a custom.

Therapist: How do you feel about that, Tom?

Tom: Oh thank goodness for that, Charles. I was worried you might have some strange habits.

Charles and Tom are thus well prepared to spend several naked weeks together in a space the size of a public toilet cubicle. They apparently, and I quote: ‘plan to have small diversions to relieve the possible tensions and boredom.’ Sometimes you just don't need to make it up.

Therapist's Sex Shame...

Ok, now I’ve got your attention.

In case you can’t be bothered reading this story, it’s a sad and sorry tale of a sexual relationship between therapist and client which, inevitably, turned sour. I do not raise this issue in order to heap yet more shame on the beleaguered Ms Bouwman. She has, after all, lost her reputation and her livelihood, not to mention her erstwhile lover. And to be fair to her, she did demonstrate that she is at least on nodding terms with the ethics of her profession by ending the therapeutic relationship before commencing the sexual one. So why do I feel compelled to comment? Because it is so wrong. So very, very wrong.

The purpose of psychotherapy, as far as I can make out anyway, is *to understand how we form and maintain attachments and to learn to regulate our internal experience – including past and present unmet needs – so we can engage with the external world in a reasonably functional way. (Please note that there is no mention there of ‘how to get my needs met’, a phrase which sends me into a spiral of despair and is banned from my therapy room.) This (*to understand….etc etc) is rather more difficult than it might sound. It is much easier to fall in love with your therapist in the hope that this love will soothe away all of your internal conflicts. (I suspect we all have an unconscious desire to merge blissfully with an idealised other; think baby suckling at mother’s breast and you are on the right lines.) It is your therapist’s job (yes, job as in responsibility) to take this transference and use it therapeutically, thus enabling you *to understand…etc etc.

This, in a rather rambling way, brings me to the point of this post. Of course it is flattering, and sometimes, dare I say, exciting, when a client says they fancy you/love you/want to shag you on the couch. We are only human, after all. But in order to use this material therapeutically - in service of the client (rather than in actually servicing the client as in Ms Bouwman’s case) – the therapist must be able to monitor, regulate and then use their subjective experience. This means having personal therapy. And very good, frequent, therapeutic supervision. And more therapy. And an intensive, experiential training which requires them to undertake their own personal therapy. And did I mention the importance of owning your own stuff through personal therapy?

The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy requires all members to undertake personal therapy throughout the duration of their training, which is usually 4 or 5 years and therefore approximates 250 hours of personal therapy.

Counsellors, as far as I am aware (and I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong) are required to undertake around 20 hours of personal therapy.

Clinical Psychologists and CBT practitioners are neither required nor encouraged to undertake personal therapy. Ms Bouwman is a Clinical Psychologist. I do wonder if there might be a link.

You may have gathered that I feel quite strongly about this. I confess that I am very suspicious of anyone who wants to be a therapist but is unwilling to trawl through their own internal world; it just smacks of wanting to tell people what to do, and that is no fun for anyone.

PS If you find yourself tempted, read David Mann’s Erotic Transference and Countertransference: Clinical Practice in Psychotherapy. It’s fab.

Come on, keep up.....

I have my ear to the ground, my finger on the pulse and a close eye on popular culture so let me be the first to tell you that Dave Hill has a new book out. What do you mean you already know? Oh well, buy it anyway, it looks fab.

And a Merry Christmas to you too....

In a fantastically ignorant misunderstanding of multiculturalism, up to 70% of UK businesses have advised their staff against indulging in ‘Merry Christmas’ type conversations with their customers. (By the way, have you noticed how the term ‘customer’ is now used to describe anybody from the person at the pick ‘n’ mix counter at Woollies to the person with schizophrenia at the end of the housing list? But that’s another post for another day…) As I was saying....how do supposedly intelligent people have such a monumental capacity for missing the point and, in the process, handing on a huge silver platter the opportunity for small-minded Middle England to go “ooh, look how oppressed we white middle classes are. Why, we can’t even wish each other a merry Christmas anymore”?

Apparently this advice is based on the misguided notion that ‘people of other faiths’ may find it offensive and even sue - for what? You hurt my feelings? - by which they transparently mean that ‘people of Muslim faith’ may find it offensive. I am not Muslim, but if I were, I would be deeply offended at the thought that someone might possibly imagine that wishing me a Merry Christmas would offend me. So well done to the Christian-Muslim forum for politely pointing this out.

In a previous incarnation I worked for a provincial Local Authority and got mightily hacked off with this annual piece of lip-service to anti-oppressive practice, which seemed to allow the powers that be to ignore the year round parade of discriminatory practice towards any number of minority groups. So listen up there, you stupid corporate people: there really is plenty of institutionalised discrimination out there for you to get your teeth into, should you really want to, without getting all sensitive about a bit of seasonal good cheer. God knows, we all need it.

On Weddings...

I have never been a wedding kind of person. I grew up with the firm belief that marriage was a way for blokes to get a very cheap housekeeper and nanny (for them, not the children) and was determined from a young age that fate would hold more for me than that. Clearly I was not a romantic child: no dream of a knight in shining armour for me. (It came as something of a disappointment to discover that ‘living in sin’ - as The Mother calls it - is not the radical anti-marriage stance I youthfully envisaged but entails broadly the same domestic arrangements for most people.) And then I met the man who persuaded me to actually marry him, and I have to confess that our wedding day was a hoot. Since then I have been hooked. I am the perfect wedding guest: I cry at the ceremony, I can bore the pants off strangers at my table, I laugh like a drain at the Best Man’s jokes and dance like a deranged child at the crappy 70’s disco. I can even be persuaded, with enough champagne, to have a blazing row with the groom’s sexist mates and be sick in the toilet. I think my superior talents as a wedding guest must be well known, as this weekend I am going to the wedding of someone whom I have met only twice before. The fact that I will not know a single soul should, I think, give me permission to make an even bigger fool of myself than usual. I really can’t wait.

In Praise of Radio 4...

For someone with a penchant for melancholy, Start the Week yesterday was a lovely, erm, well, start to the week, featuring as it did both Patti Smith on poetry and Nicholas Cleobury on Mozart’s Requiem. Mozart’s Requiem happens to be one of my favourite pieces of music, ranking right up there with Devo’s Whip It and Dead Kennedys’ California Über Alles. (For anyone who is yet to discover the deliciousness of melancholia, listen to the Lacrimosa whilst sitting alone at the top of a very big hill. Bliss.)

Following yesterday’s programme I feel I can finally make a confession, however. I never listen to it all the way through. I cry at the Lacrimosa but by the time we get to the Sanctus I am flicking through my playlists already. I have ascribed this variously to: a) the fact that I have ADHD when it comes to things of high culture; b) I have an aversion to seeing things through to the end; c) I have yet to resolve my class issues. All of which, you will note, focus on my own inadequacies.

So imagine how bloody smug I felt yesterday on discovering that Mozart wrote the Lacrimosa and then promptly pegged it. The Requiem was finished by one of Mozart’s pupils, and Constanza’s third choice composer at that, the first two having caffled at the enormity of the task. Cleobury agrees with me that the ending is rubbish. (Well, his actual words were ‘not very good’, and he then promptly withdrew the remark, so I suppose I had best not libel him or he may do a Gina Ford and start threatening to sue anonymous bloggers for making defamatory comments. Missed that story? See it here – it’s truly hilarious. Über nanny gets sensitive.)

So anyway, a collective of modern composers have written a new ending to be debuted at Canterbury Cathedral some time in December. I live a very long way from Canterbury Cathedral so I shan’t be there, but if anyone happens to go could you let me know if you get bored?

PS. This was followed by Woman’s Hour, and I usually do love it’s rather Home Counties brand of feminism. Today Martha Kearney was interviewing a psychotherapist who has written a book - ‘The Anxious Gardener’ - about the anxiety, loss and disappointment provoked by, yes, you guessed right – gardening. I have only one thing to say: stop it lady, its people like you give the rest of us a bad name. (And if you happen to be suffering from any gardening-related neurosis, can I suggest that you just get out more?)

The BBC – public service broadcasting at it’s best.

Cameron and Relative Poverty...

So David ‘Diddy’ Cameron tentatively acknowledges the significance of relative poverty. Mmmm. I suppose we should be pleased, but for some reason all it does for me is trigger a residual bitterness from the Thatcher years.

The Black Report, published in 1980, was a monumental piece of research that proved - in as much as a piece of research ever proves anything - the link between social inequality and ill health. I am no expert on this (and I trust that there will be someone out there who will correct me if I am wrong), but my understanding of this research is that it showed conclusively that it is the gap between rich and poor that is the most significant indicator of ill health, not the absolute conditions in which poor people live (ie poor diet, poor housing etc). As the gap increases in modern capitalist societies, the health of the poor correspondingly decreases. The Black report argued that once a basic standard of living is achieved by a society, the health of the nation will only be improved by reducing inequalities.

Thatcher, unsurprisingly, sought to repress the report. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine – that well known hot-bed of socialist radicalism – suggests that ‘the 1980 Black Report on inequalities in health has attained almost iconic status as the textbook example of a Government 'cover up'.’ Heady stuff indeed.

So I suppose I should be grateful, Mr Cameron, that you are bringing a long awaited touch of humanity to the Tory party. But somehow, I’m not.

Inspired by Angela Sinfield...

I heard Angela’s story on the radio today It might have been just one more story of a working class young person going off the rails and a mother at her wits' end. But it isn’t.

Angela is the mother of a young woman/girl (which?) who, at the tender age of 12, became involved with a group of older boys and men who plied her, along with several of her friends, with gifts, money and finally drugs in exchange for sexual favours amongst the group. Hers is, sadly, a common and unremarkable tale of social exclusion, poverty of opportunity and hierarchy of exploitation. Angela involved Social Services and Barnardo’s in an attempt to rein her daughter back in. She discovered there was a name for what was happening to her daughter – grooming – and that it was happening to young women and girls up and down the country. Between the ages of 12 and 15 Angela lost her daughter to this culture of exploitation, powerless to prosecute her abusers without her daughter’s co-operation.

The story does have a happy ending – Angela’s daughter eventually went to college to make up for the missing years and mother and daughter are now reunited. But this is not necessarily the remarkable part.

Angela anonymously took part in a Channel 4 documentary to raise awareness of the issue: several months later, the BNP used Angela’s (anonymous) evidence to stir up racial hatred in the run-up to the local elections in Keighley, West Yorkshire. Why? Because some of the men involved in her daughter’s exploitation were Asian.

Angela could have kept her anonymity and refused to comment. She was incensed, however, at the far right using her daughter’s experience as a convenient peg on which to hang some knee-jerk racism. Angela took the incredibly brave step of stepping out of the shadow of anonymity and decided to stand in the local elections in opposition to the incumbent BNP councillor. Angela is not an educated, middle class woman. She is a very ordinary, working-class, single parent who simply knew that stirring up racial hatred was wrong. The issue, she argued, was one of criminality and not race. Angela whupped their ass in the election – a swing to labour of 11.4% in an election where the national trend suggested a protest vote against Blair’s war in Iraq. Voter turnout was 58.8% - one of the highest in the country in an area where political apathy is high. And since her incredible victory she has, along with local MP Ann Cryer, affected a change in the law so that ‘hearsay’ evidence can be used to prosecute men who groom and abuse young women.

I don’t know Keighley, but I know the culture. It could just as well be the place where I grew up: a small, industrial town, decimated by the decline of the manufacturing industries; a working-class culture marked by poverty of opportunity and a melee of cultural tensions. I was lucky. I got myself an education. But for all her lack of qualifications and formal political philosophy, Angela is the one who has really made a difference in the world.

I applaud Angela Sinfield for her courage and integrity. I applaud the people of Keighley for having the good sense to vote for her.

How to Become a Psychotherapist

• Ensure that you come from a dysfunctional family with at least one parent who expects you to parent them (even when you are three.)
  

• Have an existential crisis that begins at puberty and goes on until your late 20’s, marked by a series of intense and ultimately doomed relationships.
  

• Develop an unnatural interest in all things melancholic, (unless CBT is your thing, in which case develop an irritating habit of telling people how to think and feel.)
  

• Make sure you are a middle child/eldest child/youngest child/only child and develop the appropriate neurosis. It’s important to be able to empathise with your clients.
  

• Develop a capacity for introspection that borders on just the right side of narcissism.
  

• Have therapy. Lots of it. And when you think you’ve had enough, have some more just to be on the safe side.
  

• Do not develop clinical depression, a life-long eating disorder or a psychotic illness. Clients need empathy. They do not need a therapist who is more fucked up than they are.
  

• Have children. It helps you to empathise with all the crappy parents you meet in the consulting room.
  

• Have a trust fund/find a very rich partner or resign yourself to funding yourself through 5 years of training and spending the next 10 years paying it off.
  

• Learn to be yourself. (And not by reading self help books.)

On Yummy Mummies...

What a monster we have created.

Who decided that we should professionalise motherhood? Now don’t get me wrong, I object to the double shift that most women work as much as the next card carrying feminist. And I have always believed that raising our children should go down as our best achievement as we prepare to shuffle off this mortal coil. But when our sisters in the 60's, 70’s and 80’s fought for the private sphere to be made political – for women’s work in the home to be recognised as, indeed, work - did they realise they were tilling the ground for the emergence of a new form of child abuse in the form of the career-mother? I suspect not.

Everybody knows one. The stay-at-home mother who feeds her pre-school child on a diet of Tumble Tots, Monkey Music and Play Group For The Gifted Child, followed by an hour of Mozart, a soupçon of French for toddlers, and some basic pre-verbal algebra. They relax by making pictures with macaroni or baking organic, wholemeal fairy cakes and the day hasn’t ended successfully until daddy has read a chapter from ‘Homer: the Picture Book’. The poor child ends another day wondering whether it has made the grade.

Do they realise that, as mother subjects them to yet another round of work toddler stylee, she is doing this out of love? I suspect not. Do they somehow recognise that mother is doing this out of a desire to offset her own fears of inadequacy? That their own emotional needs are secondary? Eventually, I suspect, they do.

Just for the record, children (in particular very small children) require relationship above all else. Over-structuring their time leaves little room for the spontaneous development of attachment that will provide the blue print for all of their later relationships. That is not to say that intellectual stimulation and structure are not important. But they must take second place to the child’s capacity to experience itself in relation to a loving and accepting other. Sitting with your child in front of CBeebies, chatting and taking pleasure in their pleasure, is, ironically, probably far better for their emotional development than any number of outings to Professional Toddler Stimulation plc.

You know who you are. Just stop it.

PS. I know of a friend of a friend of a friend who is über Yummy Mummy. Her husband is an entrepreneur who earns decent money by working 60-hour weeks. She refuses to do his washing or ironing (she does her own and the children’s) and hires a cleaner (probably an African psychotherapist, but that’s another story) on the grounds that ‘[her] job is motherhood’. I must admit – child development issues aside - I can’t help but admire her chutzpah.

On Mothers and Daughters...

I awake filled with the milk of human kindness. I briefly wonder why, but, working on the premise that only misery responds well to analysis, I let it be. This seems like a good opportunity to visit The Mother, requiring as it does reserves of good will and tolerance.

I have been seated at her kitchen table for approximately 3 minutes and already I am aware that the local park is once again home to a flasher (and the Pope, is he still Catholic?); she is devastated as a very distant relative has prostate cancer (I wasn’t aware of his existence until this moment), and The Father is a lazy, selfish shit (which I have known since I was able to understand the words ‘lazy’ and ‘selfish’. The ‘shit’ part she added when I reached the age of consent to swearing).

The Mother has elevated the one-sided conversation to an art form. Her expertise is so widely recognised that the local college has approached her to teach an NVQ in ‘Lack of Social Skills'. The Father has availed himself of the opportunity for respite and is recumbent in front of the television. Before long I have adopted a familiar, defeated pose. My eyes glaze over and my energy saps. I begin to muse on my options:

Option 1. Elbow my way into the conversation until I force her to acknowledge that I too am in the room. Benefits: sometimes this actually works. Cost: it takes a lot of energy and leaves me feeling irritated.

Option 2. Give in, and let her bombard me with her unique version of white noise until she gets tired. Benefits: It’s familiar and we all know our role. Cost: it takes a lot of energy and leaves me feeling irritated.

Option 3. Find a genuine interest in her deliverances and accept who she is with love and compassion, even if that person is critical, carping and self-obsessed and even if I am, more often than not, on the wrong end of it. Benefits: she may find some compassion back. Cost: it still takes energy, which in itself leaves me feeling irritated.

It seems I am destined, at least for today, to leave feeling irritated. So I opt for the path of least resistance and succumb to a crushingly boring collection of stories about people I can’t remember, people I never knew, and people she insists that I would know if I ever showed an interest in her life. I make no murmur of dissent, which is about the nearest I can get to showing compassion for her lot. After about 3 hours, which in fact only lasts for 30 minutes, she says indignantly ‘So, there you go!’ and folds her arms triumphantly, as if I have demanded that she inform me of every thought that has gone through her head in the past week, and she, martyr that she is, has stood up to the task. I feel bewildered, and, of course, tired and irritated. She still hasn’t asked me how I am. I make my excuses and leave.

Later that evening I speak to Sister # 2.

“I went to see mother today,” I tell her.

“I know” replies sister. "She thinks you must be crap at your job. She says you don't listen."

We both laugh.

On Shopping....

I was shopping today. Food shopping. Not my favourite part of the week, and God knows that Saturday morning at Sainsbury's is actually the first circle of Hell. But today was going to be OK because a dear friend had given me some wonderful Latin stuff and this was to be my first hearing. I took a deep breath, plugged in my iPod and started to semi-salsa through the fruit and veg. All was well in the world.

(BTW, the iPod is a fantastic invention for therapists. Plug it in and block out the world, so even if those clients see you in Sainsbury's, you sure as hell don't see them because you are in a club in Havana dancing with a gorgeous Cuban who is only interested in your sexy moves...)

I get to the check out. All is still well with the world. And then the check-out woman starts to talk to me. I smile inanely, but give out very clear signals that I don't want idle chatter. I am good at body language - I am a therapist after all. She ignores what her unconscious mind must definitely be telling her, and continues to chat to me. I tell her I can't hear properly, what with the fact that I have ear-plugs in and all, which usually do pump out loud music in the normal scheme of things. And so she starts to shout. 'OK' I think to myself, 'she really does need to tell me something important' and so I reluctantly, and quite petulantly, probably, remove said ear piece.

"It's busy today, isn't it?"

'Is that it?' I think. I have removed myself from my moment of bliss in Havana so she can state the bleeding obvious and, irritatingly, she appears to expect me to respond.

" It is" I say without further comment, and plug back in. But Havana has gone and I find myself pondering whether she is contractually obliged to make conversation, or whether she just has a compulsion to be friendly to people who don't give a shit.

I return home in a fury which far exceeds the provocation. I tell The Husband, who semi-listens in bemusement.

" It sounds like she was just being friendly" he offers.

My rage turns on him ( though only in my head, of course.) He looks like he knows. "Perhaps you need to go to therapy" he says .......

10 things your therapist will never tell you.....

1. They almost certainly come from a family that is only mildly less dysfunctional than your own. It is a well-known fact that we train to be therapists in order to heal our dysfunctional parents, and that we usually fail in this task. Those who do not have dysfunctional parents realise quickly that this is not a job for the fainthearted and that there are much easier ways of earning a living (cf #2)
   

2. You probably earn more than they do.
   

3. They will row with their partner about who last did the washing up, whose turn it is to cook dinner and why they have to spend christmas with his/her parents again. Do not be perturbed by this fact. The post-row analysis definitely has therapy-speak written all over it.
   

4. They fantasise about stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s.
   

5. They almost certainly watch crap TV and read beach novels. Personally I draw the line at soap operas and most reality TV (note the crucial use of the word ‘most’ in that sentence), but I do not spend my evenings listening to Mahler and reading Russian novels. And nor does any other therapist I know.
   

6. They go to conferences for the opportunity to flirt and consume large amounts of alcohol, just like everybody else.
   

7. They are not cured. Nobody ever is, so abandon all such lofty ambitions now. The best we can hope for is the capacity to regulate our internal world in a marginally better way than that taught to us by our parents. Hopefully your therapist can do this.
   

8. They don’t like it when you get angry with them. They will most likely know that is an important part of the relational dynamic, the transference is useful therapeutic information, the process itself will become transformative etc etc. But they still don’t like it.
   

9. They actually do care about you.
   

10. They don’t do it for the money (cf # 2 again)

What do Belle de Jour and I have in common?

1. We both get paid for services that in an ideal world would be provided by a loved one.
2. Most of our clients wouldn't willingly admit in public that they actually are one of our clients.
3. Confidentiality is everything. Without it we are damned.
4. Occasionally I bump into a client whilst out being a normal person. It would only be more awkward if I actually had had sex with them.
5. Most of the time I am the person whom my clients need me to be. Not consciously. Certainly not manipulatively. And that person changes from moment to moment. But there are aspects of me that clients will never knowingly see. (The unthought known is an entirely different matter...) Hence this blog. You might call it self-indulgent. I call it just more therapy.