Integrating Social Activism into Therapeutic Practice - Dwight Turner in Conversation with John Wilson and Mick Cooper

What if your personal and political identities could revolutionize your approach to therapy? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dwight Turner, a renowned psychotherapist and social activist, who intricately weaves his journey from a British Caribbean upbringing, school, and military experiences to his transformative time in Berlin. Dwight shares how his exposure to therapy and political literature ignited a passion for integrating activism with his clinical work, challenging the traditional boundaries of psychotherapy.

In this episode, we discuss the need for diversity and decolonization within the therapy field. We explore Dwight's role at the University of Brighton, emphasizing the integration of feminist and political perspectives into the training of humanistic psychotherapists. We also look at the importance of therapists' ethical self-awareness to prevent bias projection, advocating for training programs that reflect historical and political contexts. This discussion underscores the collective responsibility of the psychotherapeutic profession to evolve, incorporating voices and narratives from minority communities to foster inclusive and impactful practice.

In this episode, Dwight provides invaluable insights into maintaining professional boundaries while challenging oppressive systems, emphasizing the potential for political change within clients through the therapeutic relationship. This episode is a call to action for therapists to stay engaged in political discourse and advocate for sustained social change beyond the election cycles.

This Podcast is sponsored by Onlinevents 

Transcript

John Wilson: 0:00

So a warm welcome to the From Therapy to Social Change podcast and we're very pleased to welcome Dr Dwight Turner to the podcast. Dwight, it's great to have you here with Mick and I for the next hour or so.

Dwight Turner: 0:12

So thank you for making time for us. Thank you, my pleasure much to be invited. Thank you.

John Wilson: 0:18

Well, I wanted if there is anybody that hasn't met you yet, because I think probably most people have but I want to read your bio just in case, by way of introduction, if that's all right with you, dwight. So Dr Dwight Turner is course leader on the humanistic counselling and psychotherapy course at the University of Brighton, A PhD supervisor at the Doctoral College, a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice College. A psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice. His well-received previous book, intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counseling and Psychotherapy is currently available through Routledge with other titles that have emerged since this bio, I guess.

John Wilson: 0:57

An activist, writer and public speaker on issues of race, difference and intersectionality in counselling and psychotherapy. Great to have you here, dwight. I know you've been doing a lot of work, especially authoring books as well, which has been making a real difference in the field of therapy. And, of course, here we are talking. The government has just announced the election to be happening in July it's only less than a couple of months away and here we are having a conversation about what are the contributions that therapy can make to social change, and we're going to be thinking a lot about that, I guess, over these weeks coming. But I wondered whether we might start dwight if you might say a little bit about yourself and kind of what brought you a bit about your journey that's brought you into this kind of activism and work in therapy and yeah, I suppose if we go back to the beginning then, um, to what brought me into psychotherapy.

Dwight Turner: 2:01

it was my doing my own therapy. You know I'm from. My parents are, uh, africa, african, arabian, so my father's jamaican, my mother's trinidadian. My father came across during 19 was, 1943-44, as part of the allied forces, commonwealth forces that fought in this in world war ii. My mother, though, was part of the windrush generation, so she would have come across a bit later. So I was born and raised in the UK Fairly okay life growing up in West London from an early age, and so on.

Dwight Turner: 2:33

My parents, they very much aspired to be part of British culture, or English culture, really, because, remember, they were born and raised in the time of colonialism, in the time of empire. So they were raised with an idea of you have to become part of the elite, the british elite. In some ways. I ended up going to private school, which was pretty awful for myself really. Um wasn't a great time, left at 16 with 3o levels and not much else, and um struggled to find my way, joined the military, did a bit of time there, but, and sort of had varying jobs until I fell into psychotherapy in my late 20s at the end of a relationship, so I wasn't able to, wasn't handling things at all well, and it was that journey of self-discovery that took me down the route of becoming a therapist and that led to me, you know, doing a course, getting my master's and then becoming a supervisor, trainer and so on.

Dwight Turner: 3:29

But I think one of the things that stood out for me from my time in the military was I was based in Berlin in the late 1990s.

Dwight Turner: 3:38

I was in the Air Force from 1989.

Dwight Turner: 3:41

And it was just after the Berlin Wall had come down, so the political sort of landscape had changed dramatically in the time that I was in the military and at the same time I sort of rediscovered or discovered let's say, discovered my political sort of side through the Americans who were based in Berlin.

Dwight Turner: 3:59

So I spent a lot of time in the American PX, did a lot of reading around Malcolm X and so on and stuff like that, and that started off my political journey, which ran sort of alongside my work as a therapist, my becoming a therapist, and it didn't really coincide until I did my doctorate in, I think I started in 2012, finished in 2015, 2017, I should say.

Dwight Turner: 4:21

And then everything that's happened since then has been on the back of the combination of the two the realisation that actually I had to leave a lot of myself to one side to become a therapist that I wanted to include in my work as a therapist and that some of those injunctions were not overt ones, they were actually unspoken, just learnt ones that I picked up from my colonised parents on one level and from two just being a minority in the United Kingdom, so that that sort of political part was always there. But it took, like the last, say, 10-15 years that I've actually come to the surface and find its way into my sort of my, my clinical work and my writing as well.

Mick Cooper: 4:59

So, dwight um, tell us a bit about what was that political journey. Did it start at a really early age?

Dwight Turner: 5:06

Well, I was always interested, I think, in the political, I think, growing up, going to a difficult secondary school and yet it was still one that encouraged a certain amount of reflectivity around the political. But it sort of came into its own sort of right for myself when I was about 19, 20, 21. Well, there's a lot of reading around what it is to be a man of colour in the world today. I was watching lots of films but I liked the likes of Spike Lee and so on. I listened to a lot of political sort of music around that time early hip hop stuff and so on. That really stayed with me and has actually formed a lot of my listening and watching to this day. So that part, I think, really started to grow back then and has always continued, as well as other explorations. I've never really been one for staying within the mainstream. I've always sort of reached out and looked at other ways of seeing the world around myself, even from that stage around myself even from that.

John Wilson: 6:09

That's that stage. I appreciate getting a sense of that journey, that early journey twice. And, um, I find myself thinking about, I guess, our field as therapists and we're often thinking about what we can do in the world. But like, how have you found your political journey in the therapy world? Because we've had such a history of saying we don't do politics, we just do whatever's going on in the room and wondering how that's been for you.

Dwight Turner: 6:36

Well, I think in the early part of my career I've been a therapist for 20 years in the early part of my career I probably bought into that split, if you like. We leave the physical outside of psychotherapy, much like many other people would have done, but I think it's always sort of bothered me. So I think, taking on the doctorate and looking at creative ways of understanding otherness, privilege and so on, that was my attempt to actually start to realign or to reconnect that that split within myself, within people around myself as well, but also for psychotherapy. That was, that was going to be my offering.

Dwight Turner: 7:13

I think what's also happened as well, especially in the last, let's say, six, seven years or so, and particularly during lockdowns in covid, was there was such a critical uprising around Black Lives Matter for myself that it became impossible to leave the political outside of psychotherapy for myself. The two you know my client base often talked about it beforehand, but we talked about it even more so during that whole period. So I think a few things came together in a roundabout way, no-transcript, that lived experience is going to be as much political as it is psychological, and the two you can't separate the two You've got to be able to work with both in the therapeutic sort of space.

John Wilson: 8:18

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I even noticed my question to you, dwight, and how is that for you? It's such a therapist question, isn't it? And I think what I'm also partly asking is like what would you like, what would your critique be about the field as it is just now, you know, if you were to really talk frankly to us about, like, as you've been reflecting, and also being in the field too, and of the field, fields like, what's the gaps that we need to close, or the chasms, even if they're I think chasms is a good way of putting it.

Dwight Turner: 8:52

I think we if we're not, if I think we do need to spend a lot more time, especially on our training courses, from the early stages of our courses, encouraging clients, encouraging students to bring their political sort of narratives to the courses and creating spaces where that can actually be seen and heard and acknowledged. You know, one of the things that I'm lucky enough to do at the University of Brighton is I don't really care if somebody comes in who's a feminist beforehand. Don't leave that outside. That forms a part of who they become as humanistic psychotherapists further down the line. Um, to actually try and split that part off, in my experience it actually causes as much psychological harm as anything else. It's from the part of who they are coming into the course. It's going to be a part of who they are as they go through it and therefore it will inform the profession further on. That's one layer of it.

Dwight Turner: 9:45

I do think that as well you know the obvious things our profession is still so white, middle class, female for some inexplicable reason, that that people don't like to speak to enough in my experience, and that you know that can come come with a sense of marginalisation for many other groups, and part of that's going to be down.

Dwight Turner: 10:10

It's going to include the prejudices of those who are in power and who hold the majority within the profession, and unless those are worked with not so much like worked through, because I don't think you're ever going to end that, but the recognition of that and how we can work with that, I think then will hopefully make our profession a bit more inclusive as we go down the line. I think one of the other areas I'll give you a third one as well is how we hold and be with critical differences in our profession. We have an awful lot to say, which is why the organisation that you yourself have set up here which is why I think it's quite useful. We have an awful lot to say about how to hold polarities. When it comes to the political, we tend to shy away from some bizarre, strange, inexplicable reason as opposed to actually let's get our hands dirty, let's stay in that and work with them, and then we can offer something back to the wider population well, what would that mean?

Mick Cooper: 11:10

because I guess a lot of people in the coming into therapy might say well, our job isn't to change the politics of our clients. When working in a person-centered way, then it's about providing them with a space to share, explore, develop their own ideas. What role does my politics have in that, and is there a danger that I can end up biasing the client in a way that is kind of counter-therapeutic?

Dwight Turner: 11:36

Sure, I'm not sure. My view is this I think we have an ethical responsibility to know where we sit politically. That makes sense. That's the start point, because it's not just two people in a room. If you were thinking about things psychodynamically, you've got at least the unconscious material of the client in the space as well. So as well as me knowing what's going on for myself politically and being able to hold that and put that to one side, then I need to be able to ask the question okay, why is this client, who may hold different views to myself why have they come to work with me?

Dwight Turner: 12:06

Why now, what is it that they are seeing within even myself or projecting onto myself? That actually is a part of who they are. What are they struggling with around the political? And it's not that I have to change that person, it's more that actually, through sitting with that part of themselves, the client works with and changes within themselves. Hopefully that's making more sense. But I think the first stage of it is if I know where I sit on the critical sort of scale. It doesn't mean I have to have this down 100%. I think this alters and changes as we go through life as well. But the more that I know where I am, the less likely it is that I'm going to use my client to reflect back my own views. That's the other side to it. I think that then becomes quite problematic and speaks to your question in a way. This is why I believe that we need to be create spaces whereby therapists, students, whoever they are, are able to actually explore their own political narratives for themselves, in a way.

John Wilson: 13:12

Yeah, well, this is what you're saying about training, dwight, and that's also. It's a real tension, because as courses become more and more squeezed and there's more to teach, if you like, or more knowledge transfer, there's more demands around that. The circle thinking about who we are can get squeezed. I mean, the three of us are trainers. I guess we feel that pressure, like all of us. Yeah, yeah, and you see that in your two dwight.

Dwight Turner: 13:45

Yeah yeah, yeah, there are all sorts of pressures on on our courses, sure, I totally agree. Um, I don't think it's insurmountable, though I think it does involve like a sort of a redesign of how we teach our courses across the board. You know, are we just going to stay within the traditional sort of paradigms or actually a way of it? I'm looking at this. I've written about this in a future book which we'll talk about, I'm sure, later on.

Dwight Turner: 14:13

There is something about acknowledging that some of our earliest theorists they weren't apolitical, they had political leanings, the likes of Sigmund Freud. Their work was very much informed by the environment in which they were writing. You know, freud was, you know, his movement to the UK during a time of Nazism in Germany and Austria, and so on, informed his work and his writings. It's all in there. I think what we've chosen to do and it's not just our profession, I think it happens a lot in teaching areas across the board is that we shave things down, we lose the human aspect, the human story behind some of the ideas, and just come up with core concepts. It came across quite reductionist. I think placing some of that back actually gives permission for students to actually explore where they are and and where and why they are writing about what they're writing about from their own sort of narratives what do you think twice of?

Mick Cooper: 15:10

in the united states there's been a real development in kind of multicultural counseling. Would you say that the kind of views that you've been developing and kind of advocating for and that you're sharing now. Do you see that as being along those lines? Or do you think that there's more that needs to be added to that kind of multicultural social justice perspective that's coming out of the States?

Dwight Turner: 15:32

I think there's been more. I think our perspective over here in the UK has been added, more, added to it, but also it's slightly different. I think America needs to be more. I think our perspective over here in the UK needs to be added more, added to it, but also it's slightly different. I think America and the experience of minorities, that's the presence of colour in the States, the movement from slavery to freedom and so on, that's one angle. But the movement from sort of colonialism to a decolonised sort of position here in the UK or across Europe, that's a very different journey towards freedom, emancipation and decolonising oneself. So the decolonising narratives, I think they're different things in a way.

Dwight Turner: 16:04

I think, you know, I've thought about this. It's an interesting one in a way. I think both parts could speak to each other and learn a lot from each other, but they're not the same sort of journeys. That makes that makes sense. I think there are. There is something that that you know it's a generation I'm the first generation born in this country who's looking at intersectionality and decolonization and so on in a way, because I'm building on my, my parents, experience of being colonized in a way, so that that's a very different thing.

Mick Cooper: 16:40

Do you think practices, then, like those coming out of the States, like broaching, advocacy bridging do you see those as relevant to the UK, or are you saying that we in the UK need to develop a kind of different and specific perspective based on our own cultural history of difference?

Dwight Turner: 16:59

I wouldn't say perhaps as black and white as it could be interpreted. I think we could learn from them, but it's about adjusting. You know what that means for a more British-centric, post-colonial sort of angle. I don't know what form that takes as yet, and it's up for us to discuss as theorists of difference, not just of colour, of difference as to what that might actually mean. But these are, I think in fact we're even talking about these things. These are important discussions that we're having now that I don't think we had about 10, 15 years ago at all. So what we've been talking about suggests there's something moving if we can stay with it as well as if we can deal with the resistance towards it as well, because there's going to be that kickback anyway.

Mick Cooper: 17:53

So you feel that there's something moving in the UK. You feel that there's some increased awareness. Can you say a bit about that, Dwight, and where you're getting that sense from?

Dwight Turner: 18:03

Well, my sense is that there's. I was talking to a colleague about something, mira Khan, who you both know fairly well, and we were talking about the sheer number of writers of colour, therapists of colour, who are writing right now and how important it is for their voices to be heard and seen in this current sort of era. And I think one of the things I was saying to Tamira, to talk to Tamira about, was you know, this is a time for writers of colour to actually have their work seen and heard and acknowledged in a way that, again, wasn't there. When I was in training, you had the likes of Lennox Thomas and Dr Aisha McKenzie, who were just the ones and twos, and yet you've got a lot more people who are doing this same sort of work now. So I do think there is a building of momentum which hopefully we can we can maintain to some degree an important shift in the field, really important shift, and you were saying earlier about that.

John Wilson: 19:09

The field is still very kind of white, middle class and like maybe this is one of the ways that it shifts and, um, yeah, yeah, it's.

Dwight Turner: 19:21

You know the profession. There are many different things need to fall into place around that. You know. It's the fees for courses.

Dwight Turner: 19:27

You know we all we all trade, so we know how expensive it is to become a counselor or psychotherapist, which just prices out a whole range of people, certain minority groups and so on, who just can't afford it. The more we can do to advocate for bursaries or for low-cost spaces on our courses, the better for our profession as a whole. So people have an awful lot to offer who perhaps maybe won't be able to afford to trade, but are perfectly intelligent and are able to do so. Um, so I think there's there's more that needs to come with that and, yeah, I could talk about, yeah, other ways of looking at. That involves it's more engagement with charities, local charities. You know we've done a lot of work down here in brighton engaging with local charities in order to bring in minorities who want to trade, who are able to and want to trade, and if that's something which can be rolled out across the country, then you do change the demographic considerably.

John Wilson: 20:29

Could you say a little bit about those kind of conversations that maybe in other parts of the country training organisations might kind of create relationships that could be helpful.

Dwight Turner: 20:40

Well, I think, remember, we all send out students to go and do placement or clinical practice work and so on, and often what can happen is we end up with the traditional white, middle class female counsellor or therapist, who's perfectly capable of doing the work. Then, working in some, say, inner city or or minority groups, um, and I'm sure they do. They often do very, very good work. Nothing wrong with that. The problem with it, though, though, is it it creates us. There's a strange power dynamic involved in that, and it's as if you know that whole sort of the saviorism complex that we talk about in the psychology of supremacy. That part's not addressed. The person they come in, they get their hours, they move on their way. The service they get a service from somebody, but they don't actually get there's not that community and cultural engagement, and also, something probably gets missed you know a person who's say you know white, middle class male or female working with somebody who's a minority and is black. They're not necessarily going to see or experience the client in the same way as somebody who may be of colour, might do Not always, but might do so if there are groups, charity groups that people can engage with, who are willing to actually put people forward, to actually train, then it creates a bit of a loop back into the charity of people who are better able to empathise with or connect with the minority experience within those sorts of environments, within those sort of groupings, within that sort of community, within those sorts of environments, within those sort of groupings, within that sort of community.

Dwight Turner: 22:19

I remember once working a long time ago slightly different, but there's a reason why I'm making this sort of statement.

Dwight Turner: 22:23

I remember once working for it was called the Aylesbury Centre for Therapy and it's now since shut down, but they were based in and around the Aylesbury Estate in South East London, which is one of the biggest estates in Europe, or was back then. It's reduced down in size considerably since then, but it was a community-based counselling service which had a number of different counsellors who were on low costs, whatever else, and volunteers from within that sort of community area White, black, muslim, all sorts of people were working there and the uptake within that community was great, was huge, because in part, I would suggest they felt met by similar faces, stories, narratives and so on. So it worked in a way. Sadly, their funding was cut so it ended up shutting down, so all sorts of other things happened which didn't help it, but it met, met the the the cultural need of a community, which I think is something that could have been replicated around the country but there's a model there that could emerge, I guess, maybe with some multiple funding streams.

John Wilson: 23:31

And yeah, yeah, there's maybe some creative ways for us as training organizations to think about how we do training too. So, yeah, it's a lot to a lot to think about and some new models to emerge. I guess.

Dwight Turner: 23:45

Yes, yeah, I think I think you're right about the new models to emerge from that. Yeah, doing bits of research, um, from within the communities then helps to broaden out just what you know not. It could, it could be okay. What are our more traditional models saying about the ways that we work from, uh, within certain communities? That could be one way of looking at it, so not always about throwing out a whole model of its own. Alternatively, if you want to go down that sort of route, okay, what new ways of working, creative ways of working, could work with different, different communities, different groups that we haven't considered yet? You know indigenous methodologies. How could that um way of doing research within a set community sort of sort of space, then help us develop the ways of working which will work with I don't know, minorities, for example?

Mick Cooper: 24:36

yeah, well, do you think, if we develop our work in that way, we need to? Is it about applying the kind of theoretical models we have, or do you think we need to? You know, like Rogers, psychodynamic TA. Is it a question of just extending them, or is it about more fundamentally revisiting, revisioning them?

Dwight Turner: 24:56

I think it's both. Mick, to be honest, I think you know the relationship which sits at the core of, say, a Rogerian sort of model. Relationship is core across the board. But what does that look like within, say, an Afro-Caribbean context or a Muslim context, those sorts of things? How can a Rogerian model evolve to actually work with a different community?

Dwight Turner: 25:20

Alongside that, I think developing newer ways of working actually helps our profession to evolve and grow beyond its sort of colonial sort of roots. So I think both work, both together then adds to the evolution of what it is to be a psychotherapist, because it should never stand still who we? You know, even in my brief career of 20 years I'm nowhere near the same therapist I was when I finished my training. If you brought that out as a profession and we developed in you a bit like you've done with pluralism, in a way, the profession has to evolve and has to grow and change in order to remain relevant. It's just another layer of that and perhaps now I'm thinking about it as we're talking about it right now perhaps the constant reverting back to core, quite old texts, sort of hamstrings us to some degree to be able to do that, to evolve the profession and I think things like the political things like working with different communities, things like being indigenous, things like working with feminist theorists, that's the evolution of therapy that we're talking about.

Mick Cooper: 26:28

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the hallmarks of our discipline is that often the texts are kind of rooted in classical approaches, are kind of rooted in classical approaches and that maybe, as you say, does hamstring us from evolving new adaptations, new ways of thinking about it, taking on board kind of cultural values and factors. The truths have been if the truth has been written about 40, 50 years ago, it makes it difficult to know how you evolve. About 40, 50 years ago, it makes it difficult to know how you evolve. But it sounds like you feel that. It sounds like Dwight, you feel quite optimistic that there's a. Do you feel there's an open door for people like yourself and Myra bringing in this kind of new perspective and new knowledges, or do you feel a kind of pushback against you personally, kind of as a writer?

Dwight Turner: 27:16

I think there's a pushback as well. I wouldn't be as naive in myself to say that the doors open, the world's my oyster. It's not as simple as that, and I do think there's a pushback. A colleague of mine, judeen Kinawani, talks about the whitelash, the backlash against sort of, I guess, in non-white ideas, and I think she's on to something in a way and in a way this was going to happen. Is my view there needed to be some sort of pushback against.

Dwight Turner: 27:50

You know, I hear this an awful lot from people who say, well, we don't want the principle in psychotherapy. It's going to be a pushback against that. We're not going to have politics in this sort of world. That was always going to happen.

Dwight Turner: 28:02

To be honest with you, I think that needs to happen as well, because it avoids the polarity of either or it's either one way or it's the other and actually helps to maintain attention of opposite positions through which growth can come, like attention of opposite positions through which growth can come, because I don't know if I have the truth, the absolute answers. In fact I'd actually, you know, it'd be arrogant for me to say I know what's happening, what's going to happen next, but I do have a right to say what I feel is right for me to say, so to be able to actually hold my position and be with somebody else who has a different position to myself. That's where growth comes, in my view, and that's very difficult to a political sphere which is very left and right and binary at the moment and populist and is not able to hold different narratives.

Mick Cooper: 28:52

Is there not a risk there, though, that if you, you know there's organizations like Antidote, for instance, that are pushing back and saying you know it's all got too woke and it's all about equal opportunities and you know it's time for that, and end up in kind of dialogues and trying to convince that maybe small vocal minority, rather than keeping one's attention on the kind of much larger kind of issue field of people of color, where there is difference, where actually maybe that's where the work needs to be done?

Dwight Turner: 29:33

I think you're right. I think there is a danger that one can get sidetracked or be drawn in. I think that's what then silences the narrative. I'm still going to keep producing my material, and it's not so much in a single-minded way, it's just that that's what I feel called to do. In a way, you could turn that around slightly.

Dwight Turner: 29:55

If things have gotten too woke after a couple of years of wokeness because we even used the phrase now four or five years ago then somebody else's vision has been co-opted by what people of colour and difference are doing. So I could turn that one around slightly and pass that back to them over there and say well, you just need to be writing your own stuff, don't worry about what we're doing, I'm just going to say what I'm going to say. That, then, is about shutting down the voices of difference in a way. So I agree with you. I think there is a danger of getting drawn into paying too much attention to that, maybe also being slightly fearful of it, as opposed to realising that actually this is what we need to be doing right now. Organisations like this one and people of colour, different minorities, speak up.

John Wilson: 30:46

Yeah Well, with so much that the therapy field, like we as a field, need to do, we've still got a lot to sort out our own house in a way, um, like we're talking about chasms that need to be crossed and um like, how would you see if any like our contribution to the wider culture, like to nudge it, social change? What should we be doing over the these weeks that are, if anything, you know, as we kind of make of make that journey up to the UK general election, and that's a big question, right? Sorry.

Dwight Turner: 31:24

It's a big question, but you know it's relevant. We started off with the podcast talking about, you know, july the 4th. We've got a major election coming up where, after 14 years of Tory rule hopefully touching wood we get a significant change. I think that's the whole podcast in itself. I know I'm going to be writing in this next few weeks and blogging about what it's been like the past 14 years in this next few weeks.

Dwight Turner: 31:57

And blogging about what it's been like the past 14 years Because I think telling that sort of story then motivates people around. In some ways it's been terrifying, but in other ways I'd actually argue it's been one of the most liberating things that could have happened on an intra-psychic level Because, you know, 2010, even up to the Olympics in 2012, there's that real sense, the sense inverted commas that we were living in this sort of post-racial society, that things weren't as bad as we'd been led and that the previous sort of Labour government had led us to believe or led me to believe at least that actually things were getting better. And then you get the reality, the backlash, if you like, of how things have been with Brexit, with George Floyd and Sarah Everard and other things that have gone on in this period of time and with the Tory government and austerity and so on. It's been quite horrific, but it's also taught me an awful lot about activism and my voice and power and so on, which I think we need to remember and harness and avoid having shut down when the next government comes in, because of the danger of going back to sleep. I don't think you can, but there's a danger of going back to sleep. I don't really think you can, but there's a danger of going back to sleep if we're not careful. And remembering this is how life is. Life is not all fluffy and flowers and whatever else. Life is full of anxiety and fear and chaos and it's scary out there, and I think these are sorts of things that sort of got lost beforehand in a way. So I think that's one of the things we need to talk to.

Dwight Turner: 33:45

I think, hmm, yeah, there's a lot to say around how to approach this election. I'm finding myself it's not even such about being more vocal, because I'm vocal and out there as it is, but I think it is about standing up and being seen across the board and reminding people that this is who we are as therapists, as practitioners, and holding our clients as they go through this next stage as well. That's another part of this. It's going to be quite difficult for them as well, irrespective of which side of the people divide they are or are not. So this is going to be a challenging few weeks. I don't know how you both feel about it. It's not an easy one when you say holding Dwight.

Mick Cooper: 34:41

What would that look like and how do you hold if a client's got different views from you? If I'm working with a client who tells me they're going to vote for the Reform UK party, how?

Dwight Turner: 34:51

do I hold that. It's their. Ultimately for me, that's their choice. I'm wondering why they're telling me about it. Let's say they're working with me and I'm a man of colour, I'm with somebody who's white and they're going to vote for Nigel Farage and Reform UK and so on. I'm wondering why they've chosen to tell me about that. I might explore it with them. I'm not there to convince them to vote. You know, to come back to the conservative sort of middle ground really anymore is it or to the Lib Dems or to Labour or whoever else. It's for them to work that through in relationship to how they perceive me to be and to sit with whatever judgments they suspect I might have towards them, even if I just don't care.

Dwight Turner: 35:38

Ultimately and actually a lot of times that's happened I'm not actually that bothered what somebody else's voting pattern is. It's more, it's a choice for them. Does it challenge who I am in some sort of way? That's why therapy and supervision are quite useful, because of course, there are going to be times when I get you know what I'm an angel. I'm kind of pissed off that I've just sat with. I don't know somebody who wants to vote for Reform UK. Never had it happen. By the way, it's a nice thought in some ways, and that's for me to work out in my own space. Does that make sense? But it's for them to work out where they sit and to be with that whilst holding myself, as difficult as that might be where does the politics come into it then, though?

Mick Cooper: 36:27

dwight, because in a sense you could say, well, that's just me being there as a therapist, bracketing my assumptions and my biases and making sure those don't come in. But then say I'm working with this client who's just telling me about how he's voting for the Reform UK, Maybe telling me about there's too many immigrants in the country, and you know that he thinks that's the priority and he's frustrated. Or Labour's going to win, and don't people understand? How do I work with that politically? Because if I'm just going to, you know, I know you've talked about kind of recognising my politics and my biases and I can do that, but is there also a place for my politics in that at all? I mean beyond. And you know I might say you know why are you telling me this? But if that might be a bit less relevant, perhaps if I'm white, Maybe not, maybe not.

Dwight Turner: 37:23

I'd be interested in why they? You know what is it if they're going to say? Let's say, a client comes in and says, okay, I don't like immigrants, and so on. And as a son of an immigrant, okay, I don't like immigrants and so on. And as a son of an immigrant, I might well explore. You're sitting with the son of what did?

Dwight Turner: 37:37

I say son of an immigrant. Well, maybe I would do, because I'm obviously an immigrant, put it that way, or at least the son of one. So what is it like to sit with the son of an immigrant and actually say that to that person and maybe they'll come up with something? I don't see the same sort of word, um, which is a sort of an othering sort of statement, or maybe there's something about they haven't really considered what it's like to have that reflected back at them from an immigrant and then something else comes in, and then I think that's where the physical sort of lies, in that tension between um, their position, and the person that they've chosen to work with, be it consciously or unconsciously. That's where I think I think there's been more research done around this the potential for political change within the client. There's some room for that if that's what the client wants to do or is driven to do in some way.

Mick Cooper: 38:37

Yeah, that's really interesting, Dwight. So there's something about using that relationship and who they've chosen to work with as kind of leverage to explore that. But just to explore that a bit further if I say I was working with someone who was telling me about reform UK, I mean, they wouldn't know that I was a son of immigrants as well. I think that'd be a bit of a strange question to them. Well, maybe, why are you telling me this?

Dwight Turner: 39:07

ReformUK. Well, how might you approach it, given all your different identities? It's not just as a therapist, as aish man. How would they? What would be your, your approach to working with somebody who wants to work with the former uk, given what they say about minorities?

Mick Cooper: 39:23

it's not just about persons of color and so I think that's where I struggle, because I think the question for me is at what point, as a therapist, do I and I think this, this comes up in training a lot with students as well, you know like, at what point do I say this is not okay If somebody's talking about they're scared of immigrants?

Mick Cooper: 39:45

I don't know If somebody's saying you know, because I think there's the balancing factors. On the one hand, our role is to support the client in their own worldview and help them find their own way forward, forward. And it's really interesting what you're saying about maybe using that choice to see us as a kind of the kind of cutting edge of, maybe, where they're going. But, um, yeah, it's kind of balancing that out against, I don't know, some wider responsibility. I remember an so spinelli one saying, one saying that we're not just responsible for our client, we're responsible for the wider society. Students will often say to me, for instance, how do I work with a client who's being racist? I think at that point I'm pretty clear that I would interject.

Dwight Turner: 40:28

Yeah and same here. I wouldn't put up with racial slurs in the therapy or whatever and so on. And there are times when I've that's not good, I'm a student and there is a cost to that, because then we're talking about something abusive at that point, coming towards a therapist, another human being, and I think that's a different thing to somebody trying to understand their own sort of political sort of narrative. There's a power dynamic that gets played out at that sort of level. So if somebody uses a racial slur towards myself, it's not just about why using that towards myself it's like, actually, you know what? I don't have to sit and listen to that.

Dwight Turner: 41:10

There are lines there and that line it's not just a cultural one, that's also an internal one for myself. I know I don't even use certain words, whatever else, because I've drawn that line for me. But that's also something that one has to work out for themselves and everyone's going to be different. There's no, I don't think there's a right or wrong way of dealing with it. If there's a woman who's working with somebody who's really quite sexist and so on, and comes out with certain sort of phrases and stuff, every right to say no, not having that and so on. Every right to Somebody else might well say let's explore it, but you are aware that's just not. You know I'm going to put a boundary around, that you don't get the right to say it, to call me that Everyone's going to have a different take on it. But it's doing that piece of work on ourselves to understand where that line is and also to be aware that actually that line will change from client to client and also from where we are in life.

John Wilson: 42:13

And I like the danger of the kind of humanistic approach which is can be a real reflection of where we are in the world politically, is that the, the therapeutic room is in, can become an echo chamber. Yeah, and I think is, as you're, dwight, when you then would say something about, well, I'm the son of an immigrant. Suddenly the echo chamber is then broken. It's not just someone getting to listen to themselves, and I think that's such a danger of therapy. And also, as you're saying, you're going to be blogging, you're going to be telling the stories of the last 14 years. You're interrupting the echo chamber, I guess, like in terms, be telling the stories of the last 14 years, you're interrupting the echo chamber, I guess, like in terms of telling those stories, and yeah, I know, I think I think they sort of picked up on it.

Dwight Turner: 43:02

It's the rehumanizing of the therapist in those sorts of moments, so that actually you then have to hear the story of the immigrants in the room who sat opposite you, even just the simple words. You know, I'm sort of an immigrant as well. It brings something more human back into play and that for me feels very important. It comes out to something we talked about earlier on, about the writing of different stories and narratives. In the past those stories weren't present, so therefore, people, it's difficult to empathize with somebody when you don't see them. And in a way you're right. What we're sort of advocating for is not that sort of echoistic, reflective position. But I'm going to come back to who I am and show you who I am according. I know who I am beyond this space, but let me just show you a bit of who I am right now yeah, well, and I think this is so what has been.

John Wilson: 43:52

Well, there's so many ideas about what roger's work was like for me. The way I read it is like the way we find their way is through some reflection and bumping into the other yeah and I think that's also true. Well, in the world of politics. Well, okay, here we are operating in the world, but how does that? How do we bump into each other?

Dwight Turner: 44:16

Yeah, yeah, and stay in relationship as well. I think in the political sphere, we've avoided bumping into each other for too long. Yeah and yeah. I think you summarised it very well. That ability to bump up to each other and to challenge is something which we need to, yeah, um, remember and re-institute what we constitute within our work a bit more and I guess, like you have and we have here, all the colleagues who are working with clients have an experience.

John Wilson: 44:51

We have all our clients experience in us of the last 14 years or of the political climate, and we can not tell the individual stories necessarily, but I guess that's part of your plan over these next weeks is to kind of tell those stories.

Dwight Turner: 45:08

That's part of to tell some of the stories personal and so on. I'll probably stick with those for the blogs, but to tell some of those sort of stories that so that people you know. So there is again I'm not that sort of echoistic position that I'm not going to hold that just so people can reflect on onto myself. It's more about okay, I'm going to tell these sorts of stories so that people can empathize and start to reflect on their stories. Yeah, uh, along the way, because that's that's the important part, it's not just telling them for way, because that's the important part, it's not just telling them for telling them's sake. What's the story like for yourself in this way, especially as we come to the end of this 14 years? I'm saying it because it's a foregone conclusion, but it's that okay. What has it been like for you during the past 14 years or so, given how difficult things have been in varying ways?

Mick Cooper: 45:57

and do you think councillors have any role in kind of advocating for change, advocating for kind of different governments, maybe a more progressive?

Dwight Turner: 46:11

yes, yeah, I do. Yes, yeah, I do changing political systems, how we even approach democracy. I think we have an awful lot to offer theoretically, philosophically, practically, around how we might approach some of this material, and I do think there are more of us yourselves, you know, you've all done your own sort of work around this. The more that we all write about the political from the psychological and combine the two, the more likely it is that that will filter into the mainstream. So I think we have a huge role to play going forward and I think I've written about this before that earlier divorce that John mentioned earlier on between psychotherapy and the political. I think that's like an abdication of our responsibility to actually provide something of the psychological back to the physical sort of world that they could learn from and develop, in a way.

Mick Cooper: 47:22

What do you think are the key things we could teach them?

Dwight Turner: 47:26

How to relate is the first one, as obvious as it sounds it's. I think in this sort of post-truth era, the value of morality and ethics is something else we can help them to recover. So I think that's become something which has just become co-opted by a political elite and that true sense of morality is something which sits really deep within each one of us, or on an individual and collective sort of level, and that's what we can provide them back with as well. Um, I think there are other philosophical things we should and could be doing around helping the political sphere to remember, to remember that actually nothing is constant, things do progress and actually these are things that need to be reinvented and reviewed on a regular basis, because I think we're very prone to parking back two times in the past or wants to fix things in in place right now and saying this is what it is and actually that's. There's a massive trap in that.

Dwight Turner: 48:32

Um, in a way, I think there's that. There's that. Um, how many more do you do you want? Like that's? Uh, I can talk about this one all day, I think really is this your writing's going to be putting more out on this?

Dwight Turner: 48:47

yeah, well, I'm the next book's on decolonization, so that's, that's that's thing. The book after that's on racism and a phenomenological look at racism. But both books will involve the political. I can't avoid talking about the structures that actually informed, for example, racism and racist ideas and thoughts and things which have become normal within the culture. So any form of decolonisation has to be able to look at and strip back some of those laws and narratives that make up who we are, make up that sort of racial construct, if that makes sense.

Mick Cooper: 49:25

So is that why you want to? How many books have you done? I think you've done more than me now, haven't you? No, I don't know.

Dwight Turner: 49:31

I wish I'm sure you just retired. You just live off the proceeds from all your books. Academic writing that's one of the curses of all this. I've written two. The third one I'm going to submit, actually not long after the election, number four will be submitted early next year. There is another one I'm co-editing with the wonderful, brilliant Helen George, some of you may well know, and that will hopefully come out next year as well. So I think 2025 will be an interesting and important year for myself, writing-wise, and hopefully for the profession as well.

Mick Cooper: 50:10

We'll see how things go, and what do you think your main message will be in that For 2025, what is it for the profession as well? We'll see how things go and what do you think your main message will be in that right In for next year? What is that? And for 2025, what is it that you want to really communicate?

Dwight Turner: 50:22

Oh, one thing I wanted to well, I've spoken to all of them, hasn't I? You know, you know what it is. Something I put at the very end of book number three on decolonization is that this is one large brick in a very big wall, and it's down to other practitioners to keep putting their parts in as well. I'm just one author. Ultimately, I've got certain things I need to say and I'll step away and I'll sit on the beach here in Eastbourne and watch the world go by, but at some point other authors need to come along and continue this narrative. I'll be long gone by the time much of this settles, and that's not a bad thing.

Dwight Turner: 51:01

That says that I've done my bit, and I think the one thing I have to say is keep up the dialogue. Keep up the conversations around these socially constructed structures which oppress so many and are the dialogue. Keep up the conversations around these socially constructed structures which oppress so many and are fuelled by the political laws and narratives of today. Keep chipping away at them and informing the political that actually, that can't run as it is. That's the message, a long-winded one. That's the message.

John Wilson: 51:36

We've all got to keep putting our bricks in that wall, dwight, like that in the next few weeks, and once that's done so we hope you'll come back and talk to us about how not to fall back asleep after the election is done, like how to stay on. That. That would be great. Yes, thank you so much for this hour together, really appreciate it. It's kind of fortuitous in terms of the timing where we are right now in the politics in the UK, so really appreciate you coming bringing your experience and your wisdom, dwight, thank you, absolute pleasure.

Dwight Turner: 52:09

Thank you to both of you. Thanks, always a pleasure to work with you both Good.