Working with Embodiment in Supervision

A systemic approach

Jo Bownas, Glenda Fredman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317648345
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Working with Embodiment in Supervision: A Systemic Approach offers a number of approaches to working with the body in therapy and counselling supervision. The authors are all experienced supervisors of clinical practice.

The book is divided into two parts. Part One addresses how power and difference are embodied, exploring implications for the supervisory process. Part Two offers supervisees and supervisors practices for using our bodies with intention in supervision, working with physical sensation, emotion and bodily movement and expression. The book introduces a repertoire of innovative practices for supervisors to reflect on, talk about and work with embodiment in supervisory practice and includes exercises and detailed guides to assist readers in using the practices in their own work.

Working with Embodiment in Supervision will be of use for practitioners (both supervisors and supervisees) involved in supervision of clinical practice, as well as trainers and trainees engaged in supervision training. It should also be of interest to those who want to address embodiment in mental health, psychology, psychotherapy and counselling practice.

Part I

Power and difference embodied in the supervision process

2 The construction of racial identity

Implications for clinical supervision

Nick Pendry

Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.¹

(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah, 2013: 46)

I am a Black Indian man who was adopted by White British parents as an infant. I grew up, was educated and now live and work in a White-dominated British society. In my professional life I am a social worker, a systemic psychotherapist and supervisor, working in a local government children’s services department in London. For me, “race” has always existed, in the way that I think about myself, my relationships, where I can go out to eat and drink, where I holiday, where I live. For those with whom I come to be in relationship, in whatever context, my “race” constructs for them ideas about who I am, and what characteristics I might have, which profoundly influences the way in which they relate to me. “Race” is an inescapable reality.

In this chapter, I aim to articulate what I mean by this reality of “race” in the field of therapy and supervision, in large part from my experiences as a practitioner and supervisor of clinical practice in a British context. In this British social and political context, as in most of what might be termed the Western world, the idea of “race” is as significant as ever. I take the position that “race” is a major organising principle in everyday life (Hardy, 2008), and that the social reality of racism has a huge influence in the lives and relationships of us all (Pendry, 2012). Skin colour is usually at the centre of constructions of “race”. Increasingly religion, culture and language, as well as what we choose to wear or how we adorn our bodies to express our cultures and religions, are seen as indicators of racial difference, although these indicators are most often confirmed by a difference in skin tone. In this way our bodies point to our “race”, and this fact is then used by others to form ideas about who we are, what political affiliation we might hold, the religion we might practise and the way in which we might relate to family and friends.

In the theory and practice of psychotherapy the idea of “race”, and the reality of racism have received increasing, although still limited, attention in relation to practice and supervision. I see this relative lack of attention to “race” and racism as a political issue. By virtue of the power they hold, in relation to individual clients and families, clinicians can practise in a way that perpetuates or challenges inequality, such as the inequality between White and Black people. Similarly, supervisors in their positions of power, in relation to supervisees, can supervise in the interests of promoting racial equality, rather than, through inattention to this, inadvertently reinforcing the inequitable status quo. I take the position that clinical supervisors need to challenge inequality to enable ethical and useful working relationships; and that they hold the responsibility for drawing attention to embodied social difference and initiating conversations about “race” and racism.

Talking about “race” and racism with clients or supervisees may involve a level of anxiety and fear given the emotive subject matter. I will, therefore, discuss how the supervisor can establish a supervisory context that opens space for taking relational risks (Mason, 2005), to explore how “race” might be influencing relationships between themselves and supervisees, and between the supervisee and their clients. I offer self-reflexive exercises that I use to facilitate these sorts of conversations. I will offer a practice framework for talking about “race” and addressing racism within clinical supervision for the supervisor to introduce as an ongoing part of the supervision relationship.

I will begin by addressing the construction of “race”, before considering how “race” and racism have been addressed within the field of therapy and the supervision of clinical practice. While I draw on examples from my practice, as a family and systemic psychotherapist, the ideas and practices I have developed have wider applicability across the psychotherapy field.

The construction of “race”

The use of “race” as a construct with which to categorise people emerged in a European context in the nineteenth century, with the acceptance of two key beliefs: firstly, that there are intrinsic psychological differences between the different “races” and secondly, that only people of one “blood”, can share the same cultural and intellectual heritage (Miller et al., 1987). The seemingly biological foundation of this categorisation of people into “races” with different genetic characteristics, including intelligence, persisted into the twentieth century, and can be seen to remain influential in politics, the media, and the education system. In the United Kingdom, for instance, this can be seen in the political commentary about the apparent failing educational achievements of young Black boys (REACH report, 2007; Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2010) and in the media debate about whether Black sportsmen can be seen to be ethnically British (BBC, Newsbeat, 30.09.09).

In the late twentieth and into the twenty-first century, an understanding of “race” as a social construct has gained ascendancy, although the influence of a pseudo-biological discourse of “race” remains in evidence. In genetic terms the biological differences between groups defined as “races” have been shown to be trivial, leaving the idea of “race” without empirical substance (Dalal, 2002). Smedley and Smedley (2005) outline that the consensus among most scholars in fields, such as evolutionary biology, anthropology and other disciplines, is that racial distinctions fail on all three counts; that is, they are not genetically discrete, are not reliably measured, and are not scientifically meaningful. Thus, all that remains is a social construction, which leads people and institutions to act as if the idea of “race” is a fixed objective category (Solomos, 2003). “Race”, then, is best understood as a political and social construct; that is, an organising discursive category around which has been established a system of socio-economic power, exploitation and exclusion (Gunaratnam, 2003).

Physical appearance in terms of skin colour, in particular, is largely the foundation upon which this construction of “race” is based (Renn, 2012), with an apparently popular shared understanding. This can be seen in the use of the reductionist terms ‘black’ and ‘white’ to classify people into racial groupings. It is this reductionist process that has given rise to the political understanding of the term ‘black’ as referring to those who share similar experiences of oppression as a result of belonging to visible ethnic minority groups (Dalal, 2002).

The ideologies and actions that discriminate against others on the basis of their putatively different racial membership is the process of racism (Solomos, 2003). The idea of “race” leads to the different treatment of people according to differences in skin colour, with Black people mostly suffering the negative consequences of racism. This marks a distinct paradox in that, despite evidence that “race” is not a biological reality, the social meanings given to embodied difference, to “racial” categories and the people who belong to them, are as powerful as ever (Renn, 2012). At both individual and collective levels, “race” and its product, racism, matter. The different treatment of people on the basis of their “race” is produced and reproduced through political discourse, the media and the education system, serving to perpetuate racist understandings of particular social issues (Pendry, 2012). In the case of street crime in the United Kingdom, for instance, it has long been acknowledged that more young Black men are stopped and searched by the police, on suspicion of criminal activity, than any other racial grouping (Ministry of Justice, 2008; Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2013), serving the racist belief that Black men are more likely to be involved in criminal activity as a direct result of their skin colour.

“Race”, racism and clinical practice

In understanding racism as a system of advantage, which involves discriminatory institutional policies and practices together with the discriminatory actions of individuals (Tatum, 1997), the field of psychological therapy can be seen as a further site for the perpetuation of racism. This field has, for example, been involved in the disproportionate diagnosis of young Black men with serious mental health difficulties, leading to their higher admission rates to psychiatric hospitals in the United Kingdom (Count Me In, 2010), and has conceptualised the family as an intact, middle-class, heterosexual, white unit, with the man located as the head of the household and the woman as the primary caretaker of family relationships (McGoldrick and Hardy, 2008).

The influence of multiple levels of oppression upon lives and relationships is often not taken into account in clinical practice when considering explanations for mental health or family problems. Ignoring the relevance of oppression and unearned privilege in clinical practice risks leaving societal systems of domination unchallenged. In the systemic psychotherapy field the influence of unequal gender relations in the difficulties presented in therapy began to be recognised in the writings particularly of Hare-Mustin (1978), James and McIntyre (1983) and Goldner (1988), although the influence of the idea of “race” has remained largely hidden until relatively recently. The writings of Boyd-Franklin (1989), McGoldrick (1998), Hardy and Laszloffy (2000) and Erskine (2002) began to address the way in which the impact of “race” and racism might be thought about in a therapeutic context, although this is still a marginalised area. As Singh (2009: 378) comments, in clinical terms in large part, ‘“the family” is still defined in Eurocentric terms by clinicians who are predominantly American and European’.

The fields of therapy and counselling need to take account of the idea of “race” as a major organising principle in everyday life. The reality of racism cannot be ignored, for this leaves every White person with access to white privilege, with its unearned benefits of options, opinions and opportunities, whilst leaving Black people disproportionately and intractably overrepresented in targeted groups of inequity (Hardy, 2008; Almeida et al., 2011). In order for these fields to shift towards challenging a pro-racist ideology in clinical practice, we need to talk about “race” and the process of racism. This can be difficult given the emotionally charged nature of the subject, the history of unequal race relationships including the legacy of slavery and colonialism, and the tendency in a cross-racial context to retreat into polarised positions (Erskine, 2002; Hardy, 2008). However, I take the position that, both collectively and individually, all therapists have a moral and ethical duty to challenge the inequality of racism.

Creating a context for addressing “race” and racism: exercises in self-reflexivity

We can begin to talk about “race” and racism within a clinical supervision context, by inviting supervisees in individual or group supervision, or as a private exercise, to take the time to reflect upon their own racial identity and the influence that they think this might have on the supervisory relationship and their work with client families.

Reflecting on our racial identities in supervision

Drawing upon the work of Hardy (2008), I have used the following questions (Exercise 2.1) in various supervision and training contexts to engage clinicians in this process. Each time I use these questions I am struck by the way in which the simple asking of them can lead to the generation of new information for clinicians about how they locate themselves in relation to “race” and racism. I invite you, the reader, to take some time to consider these questions for yourself.

Exercise 2.1 Reflecting on our racial identities in supervision

• How do I define myself racially?

• What meaning(s) do I attach to who I am racially?

• What ideas and beliefs do I have that are informed by “race”?

• How does “race” inform my intimate relationships?

• How does my “race” facilitate interactions with members of another “race”?

• How is my “race” a detriment or obstacle to my interactions with members of another “race”?

Within supervision, I invite supervisees to consider how their responses to these questions might directly be influencing their practice. When we, as supervisors, address the influence of our own racial identity on our practice with supervisees in a reciprocal process throughout the supervisory relationship, we are able to model to the practitioner how to work with clients in a parallel process.

Using literature and film to raise consciousness of the influence of “race” and racism

I have also invited supervisees to view a particular film or read a particular novel to raise consciousness of the influence of “race” in their professional relationships and clinical practice, and to introduce social context and social location as departure points for later conversations (Hernández and McDowel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures, exercises and guides
• List of contributors
• Foreword: Openings
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Power and difference embodied in the supervision process
• Part II Using our bodies with intention in supervision
• Index