The tactics of mistake – on being


pushed and pulled David Steare


One of the fi rst science fi ction novels I read was Gordon Dickson’s Tactics of Mistake (Dickson, 1971). It concerns a military scenario where one leader uses provocation to pull in another leader’s forces in an invasion that is lost because of the unrecognised superior abilities of the defenders.


For many systemic practitioners, the


experience of meeting and engaging someone therapeutically is like peering ‘through a glass darkly’. Not that this experience is much different to when we meet any stranger. Prior to any interaction, we do not know them at all; if we did then they would not be strangers. ‘Not knowing’ then becomes not a position to take, but a fairly accurate description of our situation and context. Then as our relationship develops, we suspect or believe that we are getting to know and understand this person more and more, even when we may adopt a ‘curious’ (‘neutral’) approach. However, our knowledge and understanding (map) of this person is not the person or even our accurate description of them. Whenever our map of a person is confused with the person then, according to some, a semantic interruption or breakdown of the therapeutic process becomes inevitable unless and until we recognise the limits of our map. So joining and conjoining may be more of a complex process than we may be assuming, suggesting we pace ourselves where angels fear to tread. When Mary Catherine Bateson was


describing her relationship with her father Gregory Bateson in Angels Fear she wrote, “Over a period of nearly forty years,


Gregory used a form of dialogue he had developed between ‘Father’ and ‘Daughter’, putting comments and questions into the mouth of a fictionalized ‘Daughter,’ asking the perennial question, ‘Daddy, why…’ to allow himself to articulate his own thinking. Over a period of about twenty years, we actually worked together, sometimes on written texts, sometimes in public dialogue or dialogue within the framework of a larger conference… The fictional character he had created, who initially incorporated


Context 169, June 2020


only fragmentary elements of our relationship, grew older, becoming less fictional in two ways: ‘Daughter’ came to resemble me more fully, and at the same time I modelled my own style of interaction with Gregory on hers.” This insightful narrative shows up the


way our interaction with others influences them to change: Gregory pushes Mary Catherine and she pulls her father in, creating not just a change in their relationship but also a change for Mary Catherine. So, alongside the complexity of map and territory, we may need also to consider the complexity of a ‘moving target’ of intervention. The person we met last week or a few weeks ago is unlikely to be the same person we meet today, so what may be the implications? Much has been written about the


influence of therapist on client, but not so much the influence of client on therapist. Even the psychoanalytic concept of ‘countertransference’ has been considered as a problem of his or her own making for the therapist . Although later analysts suggested that countertransference could potentially act as a rich source of information about the client, there still seemed to be a sense that therapists remain unaffected by their client. What if the therapist who met the client last week or a few weeks ago is unlikely to be the same therapist who meets their client again today? Perhaps an extreme example of how


clients can affect us is the concept of ‘secondary trauma’, especially relevant when working with clients who have experienced traumatic violations either as a child or as an adult: Hilary was serving the child and young


person equivalent of a life sentence whilst I was working as a psychiatric nurse with her in a secure treatment setting. She seemed to single me out for therapeutic


conversations even though I was not her designated clinician. During the course of our first few sessions together, I started experiencing sexual feelings for her that I immediately recognised as countertransference reactions. Prior to this, I had hardly noticed her, given my involvement with other youngsters. My ‘mistake’ then was not to share this experience with my colleagues, especially as talking about myself as a careworker experiencing sexual feelings with young people was without precedent then (mid 80s) let alone now. I was curious to see where our conversation led, especially as no one could understand why she had killed her younger victim. By ‘just listening’ (for example, see Gans & Redler, 2001) for a few more sessions she disclosed a hitherto unknown incident of gang rape she had experienced a few weeks before her own offence. As this narrative took more than an hour for her to go through in great detail, I sensed that this was an actual (rather than fantasy) event in her life. I reported the conversation to colleagues and soon our sessions ceased, as did my sexual feelings for her. However, new feelings arose and I found myself turned off sex per se, recalling and reimagining what had happened to her. This was particularly tragic for my then marriage and, within two years, my ex-wife had left me, just after I started re-training as a children’s social worker determined to do something about the way children suffered harm. Whilst the saying ‘we can learn from our


mistakes’ seems obvious to most people, for some managers working in risk-averse environments like the NHS and social care, such an idea cannot be tolerated in practice, begging a question about how we join with clients in agency settings: Nearly 30 years later and I was in the


twilight of my career working part-time in CAMHS. I have learned how to help


13


The tactics of mistake – on being pushed and pulled


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