Relational Depth is Political: Connection in its Context

For many counsellors and psychotherapists, a profound relational connection is at the heart of our work. At those moments of relational depth, clients can come to encounter, and accept, their own, most vulnerable aspects of self; experiencing a deep relational healing that only another can bring.

This depth of encounter can seem a world away from politics. Economic policy, housing law, international relations… Such global, system-wide concerns can seem at the very opposite end of a micro–macro scale: generalised, impersonal, detached. Where is the person, the individual, the other? And when, from a therapeutic standpoint, we listen to political rhetoric, it can seem even further away from therapy. All too often, it is a discourse of blame, shaming, and dogma; attack and defend. Political posturing that smacks of inauthenticity and incongruence. Expression of emotions, experiencing, and vulnerability—our therapeutic touchstones—are rare. As therapists, we can feel like strangers in this political domain: disoriented, detached, and disinterested. There is also the issue of whether political views can or should play a role in therapy if we are focusing on the client’s ownmost experiences. What role, here, should the therapist’s own politics have? Surely they need ‘bracketing’, so that they do not interfere with the client’s own self-understanding. ‘Anti-woke therapy’ campaigning groups, like Antidote, argue that psychotherapy needs to return to its original focus on the individual psyche, free from politics: ‘How dare you tell clients who to vote for’. Their byline: ‘protecting the healing ethos of traditional therapies’.

Imagine though, for a moment, you are looking at a painting, say a Rembrandt. And you focus in on one of the faces: like the soldier looking straight at you. You are drawn into the face’s details: the fine lines, the life-like expression, the play of shadow and light… mesmerising. But to focus exclusively on that one face, or any face, or even the picture as a collection of isolated faces, misses the-painting-as-a-whole. Zoom out; there is a wider context; a series of connections, dynamics, and inter-relationships.

Relational depth always, inevitably sits in a context: of life histories, of cultures, of socioeconomic classes. Moments of relational depth are in the here-and-now, but into that present each person brings the total Gestalt of their lives, communities, and histories—personal and transgenerational. When I meet another at relational depth, it is not just ‘me’ as a flickering of immediate being. It is Mick who lives in Global North Brighton, who was brought up in middle-class North London, whose mother escaped the Nazis by the skin of her teeth; and further back to the struggling and persecuted Jewish ghettos of Ukraine and Poland. All those contexts and roots are there with me at those moments of full presence to another; just as the other brings their fullness of context, depth, and history too. And we can focus on that spark of immediate connection; but if we zoom out, take a wider view, we see the true exquisiteness of those moments of connection: of two complex, individual-sociohistorical worlds coming together in unique configuration. Relational depth is not just the touching of two trees’ branches, but the interconnectedness and inter-tanglement of their roots, in an earth of common humanity.

A relationship at depth, then, involves an openness to—and recognition of—the socio-economic-cultural whole of the other: a whole that is inevitably situated in, and buffeted by, political forces. What happens at this next election is not outside of the other, but integral to their very being: and to relate deeply to them means being open to this quality of their existence. A government that rescues our national health service will impact and embed in the being of our clients, just as a government that provokes its final demise will too. ‘Everything’, as Martin Buber, philosopher author of I and Thou, writes, ‘is indivisibly united in the event [of encounter]…. [all] are present in a single whole.’

It is not only width of gaze, however, that is intrinsic to an encounter at depth; but also an ethic, a stance. To truly encounter the other, as both Buber and fellow relational philosopher Emmanuel Levinas have written, is to meet them from a stance of radical acceptance: to confirm the other in their uniqueness, difference, and unknowability. This is to be open to, and prize, the other as a being who exists beyond our preconceived schema: as Levinas puts it, ‘the stranger, the widow, the orphan, to whom I am obligated.’ The stranger, the widow, the orphan, to whom I am obligated…. And then we have the right-wing rhetoric of Reform UK, the Conservative party, or the Tory press: immigrants, en masse, in boats, uncontrolled, threatening to invade our country. It is not difficult to play ‘Buber or Braverman’. ‘A hurricane of migrants’ is coming? (Braverman, indeed). ‘To love means to affirm the worth of our neighbor’ (Yup, Buber). In other words, the stance of the political Right seems diametrically opposed to the ethic of welcome, care, and humanisation that is at the heart of in-depth encounter. Compare that with the Plaid Cymru leader, Rhun ap Iorwerth, on the topic of immigration: ‘Let’s talk about people as humans’. Political progressives, not always but more often, show an ethic towards the stranger, the widow, the orphan that is much more compatible with the grounds for relational depth.

Originally, I was thinking of titling this paper, ‘Can you reach relational depth if you’re a Tory… or if you vote Reform UK?’ And, actually, I was really shocked to see on Twitter/X recently a vocal advocate against SCoPEd (the framework for counselling and psychotherapy training) saying that they were planning to vote Reform. I guess I just couldn’t put it together: a radical therapy stance with right-wing politics, because the ethics seems so fundamentally different. But, of course, it’s much more nuanced and complex. Yes, I’m sure you can experience relational depth with clients if you’re a Tory-voting counsellor, because you can focus on that one individual person in front of you and extend openness and empathy towards them. I’m sure Rishi Sunak experiences relational depth with his wife or his friends. But what if that client is the stranger, the foreigner, the asylum-seeker—or some part of them is strange, foreign, and different. If you’re an advocate for Reform UK, can you really open yourself up with acceptance and care to their being? And, to me, to relate deeply one-to-one while distrusting and fearing large swathes of humanity seems to undermine the very essence of relational depth—let alone bringing into collision two fundamentally different understandings of human beings. Surely, as therapists, our work is not just about healing the individual in front of us, but of creating the conditions in which wellbeing and thriving are possible for all. Relational depth, for me, is not, first and foremost, an individual clinical technique—it is a way of relating and viewing the other that holds promise for society as a whole. If we can create a world in which people can relate in humanising, respectful, authentic ways—I-Thou rather than I-It—then we can make a profound, enduring, and far-reaching contribution to the amelioration of mental distress. As therapists, we often say that the point of our jobs is to put ourselves out of a job. I can see no better way of doing that than by disseminating, from therapeutic theory and practice outwards, the promise of in-depth encounter.

In that way, it is not just that politics infuses relational depth in therapy; it is also that relational depth—as we have articulated, experienced, and evolved it in therapy—has a contribution to make to the wider political field. Politics asks the question, ‘How can we create a better world?’ If, as therapists, we know the power of relational depth on human lives—and the pain and suffering that comes with its absence—then we have something of profound importance to speak to politics. Political agencies need to understand, for instance, that a thriving National Health Service is essential for a thriving citizenry: providing people with the physical safety and care that allows them to actualise higher-level, ‘belonging and love’ needs (as per Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’); it means prioritising the development of close, connected, and supportive communities; it means creating a culture in which cooperation and collaborative working are prized over cut-throat competition and neoliberal winner-takes-all. And recognising the power of relational depth means taking loneliness seriously as a major health concern; it means supporting befriending, compassion-focused, and counselling initiatives that ensure everyone has someone to open up to. And, perhaps, most important of all for long-term transformation, it means putting social and emotional learning right at the heart of our education system: not just a few ad hoc lessons in PHSE (Personal, Social, Health, and Economic), as I know my children experienced, but a dedicated, fully-developed curriculum. Our children learn English, they learn about history but, still today, they learn hardly anything about the subject that has the greatest potential to contribute to their thriving: themselves, and their fellow human beings. If we can teach our children how to listen and talk, how to regulate themselves emotionally, how to understand themselves and others, then we lay the foundations for their capacities to relate: constructively, rewardingly, deeply. We can—and, perhaps, must—say to politicians, ‘Help our children learn how to relate: so that they can get the most out of life, give the most to others, cooperate, and create the most healthy and healing world.’

Politics does not take us away from relational depth. It is the domain in and through which it can be most fully realised. When we encounter the other in their political life-world we meet them most fully; and it is in a spirit of openness to all others—of welcome and compassion to the stranger and the foreigner—that the foundations for deeper relatedness are laid. But let us also dream of the contribution that relational thinking and practices can make to the wider political and societal domain. Envision a world in which people, all people, experience close and rewarding relationships; where, instead of shame and fear of judgment, people feel able to show themselves authentically to others and be met. Imagine a world in where people move between moments of deep relational connection—with partners, with friends, with family, with members of their communities—alongside much-needed moments of space and solitude. In the therapeutic world, we have seen how people can move—and have moved—from isolated, shut-down lives to lives of intimacy and connection. We know this movement is possible. If individuals can do it, there is hope for, possibility of, and a unique potential to contribute to societal change and betterment.

[Talk presented at TaSC’s Mind the Vote Summit, 30/6/2024]