‘Empathy’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life, Page 5

The issue of self-harm is gaining a higher profile, in the UK at least, but it still remains to some extent a hidden and misunderstood problem, as evidenced by the stereotype of a teenage girl cutting her arms in a dark bedroom.

There are always people worse off and better off than ourselves and as I see it, we are all interconnected and we can only start with ourselves, both for our own good and the good of the world. Of course I genuinely believe this. But once every few months I get a bulletin from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, and it shakes me from head to toe.

How actively useful are boundaries in the therapeutic relationship? They are obviously a part of the ‘real world’ in which both client and therapists live, organising and managing their money and time. But in some humanistic, relationship-based schools of therapy, they seem to bring out a certain contradiction…

As we swam in the covered pool, I looked through the windows at people walking to the shops wearing coats, hats and scarves. Outside, at four o’clock in the afternoon, it was dark, and freezing. Inside, just on the other side of a thin pane of glass, it was bright and steamy, and we moved around in the water freely. It made me wonder about the different worlds we all live in.

The lesson that it is facilitative not to press others to disclose, and to communicate that lack of pressure explicitly, is a useful one in all kinds of relationships; mothers persistently asking their children to tell them what happened at school springs to mind, as does the situation in which the stereotypical wife ‘asks the husband to talk about his feelings’.