Ethics counselling, a commitment to the difficult path of discovery

Suzi Ross

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 84 winter 2011

The art of ethics counselling, in one sense, is the totality of its associated history, disciplines, skill, methods, philosophy and ethos. But it is also its symbols. This morning, I stopped to open the door to our Centre and saw, with somewhat fresh eyes, the [former] St James Ethics Centre logo. The logo is made up of four alchemical signs. It is said that within a good symbol lie many hidden meanings. Stimulated by writing for a Community Arts Network and my perceived licence to enjoy the freedom of exploration, I wanted to discover some of these hidden meanings in the light of the Ethics Counselling Service and ethics in general.

Unlike many indigenous cultures and Eastern philosophies, which are more wholistic and inclusive by nature, the Western tradition is more dualistic. Alchemy, it has been said, is the nearest thing in the Western tradition to bringing spirit and matter together¹. Patrick Harpur says of alchemy:

In a sense the secret of alchemy is to image a world in which it is possible to transmute base metal into gold².

Or perhaps to turn base humanity into self-realised beings who act in accordance with the living universe. Alchemy therefore can be seen as a metaphor of the search for self-knowledge or wisdom. This relates to a person’s life being more about ‘a work in progress’, where the journey is at least as important as the destination.

Alchemy, like ethics counselling, is not a ‘quick fix’; it is a commitment to the more difficult path of discovery. In the film Postcards from the Edge Shirley MacLaine says to Meryl Streep, “The trouble with you is that you want instant gratification.” To which Streep replies, “I do not, it takes too long!”

The bulk of today’s society wants instant answers, knowledge rather than wisdom and the immediate alleviation of the slightest discomfort or disturbance – and all this should come with little or no work on our part! To return to our logo, the alchemical symbol to solve directly relates to this.

To solve

Solving is often used synonymously with ‘to get a solution’. The Macquarie Dictionary definition is closer to alchemy and our counselling approach. It is the action of doing something, that is ‘thrashing it out’, ‘puzzling with it’, ‘struggling’. This initial act of struggling throws out such questions as:

• What is the story? Who is involved in it?
• What are the ethical issues in this case and why is it bothering me?
• What are the facts and what are the assumptions?
• Is it even my problem?
• What are the principles, values and beliefs of all those involved?
• What are the alternative courses of action, and how do they fit with the espoused beliefs and values?
• What considerations have been made with regards to consequences, obligations, people’s character, caring for those involved, and justice?
• What is the decision? Am I being true to myself?

This process is a joint exploration, with the counsellor listening to the story as it is told and opening it further. This process requires the virtue of patience to spend time in the struggle for discovery. Creativity is awakened if both counsellor and client can remain in the exploration and not collude through one of them offering premature solutions. The client has the answers within, the counsellor is merely the midwife.

Looking at the symbol to solve it appears not unlike the old monetary symbol of the pound. The financial bottom line often surfaces as we puzzle over identifying the client’s goals. A small number of individuals and organisations talk of the triple bottom line, that is the financial, the social and the environmental. From the environmental perspective, a person presented a dilemma about blowing the whistle on their company whose pollution was damaging marine plant life. I asked him, “At what point could you no longer live with this pollution?’ He answered, “The death of one dolphin.” What is your bottom line? What is your one dolphin?

After a counselling session one of our clients from the health profession said:

The counselling process helped me better understand these forces (and of course the other players caught up in them). It also helped me, most importantly, to identify my bottom line and my personal ethical stance. On this bottom line I was able to stand and say, ‘This and no further, whatever happens.’ This finding of the basic moral person in myself was a crucial part of understanding the situation, surviving it and even moving on.

Patience is not the only virtue that this process requires; courage is equally important. Aristotle saw virtues as midpoints between extremes – the golden mean. Courage, for example, is the midpoint between cowardice and recklessness. It would be reckless to act impulsively without thought to consequences, duties, and one’s character. However it would be cowardly to avoid commitment by continuously hiding behind the faςade of ‘let’s explore it further’.

To filter

The filtering process can be used to separate mixtures, for example solids from liquids. Once we have separated the elements we can choose to retain or discard them. In straining tea we throw away the solid, in gold panning we keep it! As a metaphor in counselling, the process relates to filtering the aspects of the dilemma. Some of these we should keep, some we should discard and others may be attributed to other people. Parts we need to own ourselves may be nice or nasty; in Jungian terms it’s about ‘facing our shadow’. Ethics counselling asks us to honestly look in the mirror, to face up to the realities of our situation. The counsellors need to suspend their own value judgements and passions in order to hold up a faithful mirror.

Melanie Klein writes of our human tendency to split the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’ in ourselves and others. Filtering therefore is about taking back our projections and releasing our introjections. The healthy position, according to Klein, is that we and those around us are both good and bad. At the deepest levels, the attainment of this state has been called things like ‘enlightenment’ or ‘nirvana’; she calls it the depressive position. I guess it is both healthy and depressing to discover that not all the good resides in me, with all the bad in others. Alternatively by retaining and discarding the elements from filtering, we can choose to hold both in harmony or even combine them in new and transformative ways.

In the solving stage we explore ourselves as part of the solution, and in the filtering stage we experience ourselves as part of the problem. Klein argues that it is only from the depressive position that reparation can occur and even, perhaps, the capacity to say “sorry”. From this position we now have brought the raw materials to the surface of experience, but we need to go deeper.

To purify

The temptation for both parties is to start evaluating options, but deepening is required to open up the reflective space where we can find options that we have never dreamed of. In the training of counsellors I try to impart the skills that allow this to happen, from the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, and socio-analysis, along with the insights gained through spirituality. It is perhaps well summed up by Davis, in his 1991 poem Listen to the Spaces from Heart Gone Walkabout:

Spaces have their own lives
Let them speak.
Listen to them with your eyes
In the quiet of your mind.
Give them the time they need
To tell their stories
And they will take you
Deep into the naked heart of your reality
And there gift you with new sight.

During ethics counselling we attempt to remain in a state of being and perceiving without evaluating. By doing this we enter into a non-judgemental space and allow the entrance of the unconscious and archetypal imagery related to the presenting dilemma. As Abraham suggests:

The creative act is to let down the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended and then to attempt to bring out of it ideas³.

From this wellspring of inspiration new options come forth. We are ready to bring practical wisdom to work upon this more complete set of options: those we came in with, those that emerge through solving and filtering, and those drawn from the imagery of the unconscious and spiritual insight.

Essence

Through practical wisdom one is able to work with our wealth of options and uncover the most favourable solutions. This helps us to bring forth a concentrated extract, exhibiting those important features that identify the intrinsic nature of the dilemma.

The degree to which we achieve this will always relate to the major players: the presenting dilemma, the client, the counsellor and the dance they do together. Depending on the day, the alchemical journey will range from a quick, grounded, practical solution to touching the essence with the eyes of the soul, or perhaps both. This can happen through entering into dialogue with yourself, your friends, family, respected figureheads or ethics counsellors here at St James Ethics Centre. Regardless of the decision-making model or method of inquiry, it is the value of bringing to bear the virtues of patience, courage, honesty and practical wisdom which transforms the inquiry from mere problem solving into the area of true growth.

When we’ve made our choice, distilled from the variety of options, then how can we know that we’ve made the right decision? Making ethical decisions is never easy and never simple, but light can be shed by asking some questions. For example:

• Was the benefit of the result worth the cost of achieving it? Was there another option to achieve this end which would have provided more good and less bad?
• If we were on prime time television interviewed by a highly skilled interviewer about our most recent decisions, with the colleagues we most respect and friends and family that we hold most dear watching, would we feel proud of ourselves?
• What if everyone made that decision, would the world be a better place?
• Or, as Kerrie Henderson, Professional Associate of the St James Ethics Centre, simply asks: “How would I feel if my daughter were on the receiving end of this?”

Or finally, the broader question of Socrates: “What makes a worthwhile life?”