Queering Psychotherapy

In this event, #TherapistsConnect co-leads meet with some of the authors from the Queering Psychotherapy book discuss the motivations for the book, and delve into some of the book chapters. 

J. Chance Czyzselska (they/them) - relational integrative psychotherapist in private practice, editor and writer. Member of The Relational School organising team. 

Ellis J. Johnson (he/him) is a psychodynamic psychotherapeutic counsellor and trainer who specialises in working alongside clients who are transgender, non-binary, queer and/or questioning.

Amanda Middleton (she/her) is a white, queer, femme antipodean who thinks a lot about gender. For the last 20 years, she has fought passionately to put queer lives at the centre of knowledge-making.

Neil Young (he/they) is an integrative arts psychotherapist working in private practice online and face-to-face as well as an experienced facilitator, researcher and author who teaches a number of therapy and counselling training courses. 

Caz Binstead is the founder of our first project #TraineeTalk and project lead for #TherapistsCreate. Caz is an experienced therapist and supervisor, working in private practice. Through her extensive work on creating ethical and thriving practices, she has helped hundreds of therapists set up their private practice. 

Dr Peter Blundell (he/him/his) is an academic, researcher, lecturer, trainer, and consultant.  He is a counsellor/psychotherapist, a social worker, and a senior lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University.

#TherapistsConnect is a platform for connecting therapists.
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Transcript

Peter Blundell: 0:00

Hello and welcome to another episode of the therapist connects podcast. Today's episode is a shortened version of a discussion that was hosted by therapists connect earlier this year. Caz and I as co leads, the therapist connect hosted a debate with some of the authors from a new book called queering psychotherapy. This podcast is a shortened version of that discussion. If you'd like to hear the full debate, please go to our YouTube channel and search for queering psychotherapy. Thanks for listening to the Therapist Connect podcast. If you'd like to support us, then please go to your favorite podcast platform and leave us a review. Okay, cause would you like to start us off with the introductions?

Caz Binstead: 0:38

Ellis J. Johnson, who is a psychodynamic psychotherapeutic counsellor and trainer specializing in working alongside clients who are transgender, non binary, queer, and or questioning.

Peter Blundell: 0:57

We also have Jane Chance Czyzselska pronouns they/them who is a relational, integrative psychotherapist in private practice, editor and writer as well as a member of the Relational School organizing team.

Caz Binstead: 1:12

And then we have Amanda Middleton, pronouns she/her, who is a white, queer, femme, and antipodean who thinks a lot about gender. For the last 20 years, she's fought passionately to put queer lives at the center of knowledge making obsessively immersing herself in queer theory as a survival skill. She wonders how we as queer people can reshape our relationship to power and resist oppressive forces to take up more space. Initially, she qualified as a psychologist in Australia, and then as a family and systemic practice. As family and systemic psychotherapist in the UK, a UKCP registered psychotherapist in independent practice. Amanda works primarily with relationships, gender, sex, and sexuality, specializing within the LGBT IQ communities. She has extensive experience in the NHS and social care, and has previously worked as a specialist in the areas of sex and sexuality, dual diagnosis, HIV and sexual health, drug and alcohol use and domestic violence. Her practice is the pink practice and she is also an Associate Lecturer at the Tavistock and Portman trust and supervisor at Gendered Intelligence.

Peter Blundell: 2:35

And last but not least, we have Neil Young, who's an integrative art psychotherapist, working in private practice with a diverse group of people especially in terms of gender, race, age, class, sexuality, and neuro diversity. He teaches on various therapy trainings, including the Institute for Art, Dance Therapy and Education. He offers workshops, training, lectures, and embodied performances specializing in gender and sexuality broader intersectional difference, including an anti racist class aware position, and dance movement as a means of connecting to self and others. Neil also work as a consultant trainer for organizations such as Kusum, the sunflower network, enjoys creating open safe spaces that encourage curious exploration and increase understanding. And in 2022, Neil co wrote a chapter on queer children, Don't Panic Queering the Child as part of the ground based, groundbreaking queering psychotherapy book, Welcome everyone. It might be a good place to start. And maybe if we could just maybe have a little bit of a discussion or exploration around the motivation behind the book, what kind of what kind of pushed you all to kind of come together and bring this book out?

J. Chance Czyzselska: 3:55

Thanks, Peter, and Caz. Yeah, I just just before I answer that, I wanted to thank you for hosting us. Some of us from creating psychotherapy feels really good to be held that virtually by you and by the Therapist Connect community. I also, as always want to thank my co contributors and coconspirators here today. Ellis, Amanda and Neil. I've said it before, I'll say again, what you all put out into the world continues to teach and inspire me so thank you. I'm Chance Czyzselska - psychotherapist, and they/then pronouns. So you asked about the motivation for why we co created queering psychotherapy and I was looking at some research a couple of years ago and found out that LGBTIQ plus people are more likely than cisgender and heterosexual people to suffer with mental health issues yet, often in therapy we have poor outcomes. So I knew that this research, in tandem with the anecdotal experiences and examples that I'd had I'd heard about meant that, you know, I felt something had to be done. Because when I was learning in my training, you know, about a million years ago, it wasn't even that long ago was about 10 years ago, in Eurocentric psychotherapeutic theories, which were developed largely by heterosexual cisgender and white theorists was that queer individuals are often seen as a singular group, through an othered lens. And so my experience in my own training, and also in some of the therapy relationships I've had, was one of discomforts, in, you know, many kinds of situations, but in amongst that, you know, I also was, was sick, you know, receiving profound learning and healing. So, despite, you know, the value that comes from these many of these theories that we've learned in our primary trainings, and also CPDs. Subsequently, we, you know, can often end up pathologizing and marginalizing and diminishing queer and trans lives. Even if we're queer and trans ourselves, you know, we can we all internalize this stuff. You know, it's not just the trainings, but the trainings that come from, you know, the, you know, the socio political context. That's an example of the kind of history of this you know, in Britain, psychoanalytical organizations only apologize for labeling homosexuality as an illness around 10 years ago. And in America, it was just a few years ago, in 2019. In fact, I was looking into some of the kind of harm that has happened within our profession, and I saw a paper that was written on them and admittedly was 1979. But still, there's a psychoanalyst. It's called [name], who was at the time of president, the president of the British Psychoanalytic Society. And he wrote that homosexuality should be understood as a defensive solution to a variety of neurotic and psychotic problems. So you know, what you were talking about earlier Caz, the homophobia, you know, has, has long roots and back into society, in history, and culturally and, you know, obviously, within our profession, and it's a problematic legacy. Obviously, there's been feminist and queer and lesbian and gay and trans practitioners who have critiqued these theories and continue to do so and you know, many are in the book or are referenced in the book, but our profession and you know, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have tended to locate the problem in the individual or their family and rarely acknowledge or understand how factors such as sexuality and gender and race and class, have impact on clients lived experiences. In fact, were often considered, you know, our difference or otherness, you know, is often considered to be the source of our problems, rather than the fact that we live in a world that devalues and denigrate certain embodiments while avoiding others and expecting everyone to be white and cis and heterosexual. I mean, I've heard countless times from people who've been in therapy who said they've been misgendered or shamed about their sexuality, or when they talk about racism with a white therapist, or, you know, they've been pathologized or problematized, and othered by therapists, which is, you know, no place any client wants to be. Queering psychotherapy is an antidote to that. And what we're doing throughout the chapters is is attempting to make visible there's the structural inequalities that that impact clients lives and, you know, who are queer or trans or ... or any clients who have identities or aspects that fall outside of what's normatively expected? Or of what Jake Yearsley in, in his chapter calls the heteronormative trance, which is a phrase I really love. So it's in this context that we and our clients find ourselves in a mental health crisis, particularly among trans and ... clients who are bombarded with hate day in and day out. And I was shocked to discover recently when I was reading something, I think it was, I can't remember which publication it was, but apparently in the last 10 years hate crimes against LGBTIQ plus people in UK has risen by 349%, 349%!!!. And, you know, yes, all sorts of things have happened, you know, we've become more visible and maybe that's part of why, you know, there's such a backlash, you know, that's often the way isn't there is a kind of liberation movement that happens and there's more visibility and, and the backlash, but it's, it's a horrendous kind of context and to be living in. So whether you're a therapist or in therapy or just interested in therapy queering psychotherapy is an accessible, radical, joyful healing collection of conversations, and they are conversation, some are, some are written, but some part of the whole kind of queering and decolonizing practice of the book was to write in a more accessible way, so to have a conversation between different practitioners about, you know, certain issues arising in, you know, the course of our lives and clients lives. And I think that's what what has made the book so popular, it's, uh, you know, it's very accessible. And yeah, really kind of reflects some of the dynamism of the, of the therapeutic dyad.

Peter Blundell: 11:29

One of the phrases that's used in the, in the acknowledgement section is that it's a fusion. And I just really, really liked that word, because I just thought it really represents kind of all these different approaches and ways of understanding things all coming together. And, yeah, I really appreciate that about the book.

J. Chance Czyzselska: 11:50

It is a fusion and it's infused with, you know, all sorts of, you know, really enlivening, you know, sort of aspects of lived experience. So it feels Yeah, it feels very live and dynamic and not dry. And as a lot of academic theory can. I'll read you a little bit from the opening chapter, if you like my introduction. In spring 2020, the COVID 19 pandemic and national lockdown I think I'll leave it there for now. I'd love to see what many started to change lives as we have lived them. workplaces and meeting spaces emptied like caves, days and weeks slowed down. Roads cleared of traffic, first quiet and birdsong. Space opened up for collaborative psychotherapeutic cross fertilization. Following a conversation with Dr. Gail Lewis, in which she notes some of the ways that black lesbian poet and author Audrey Lourdes ideas seem to echo the work of white heterosexual male psychoanalyst and Wilfred Bion. I reread Lourdes poetry is not a luxury, and was struck by the therapeutic message in her description of poetry. Reflecting on the form as a revelatory distillation of experience that makes it possible to give name to the nameless so it can be thought Lourdes words sound not dissimilar to what white psychoanalyst Christopher Bolus conceived with his unsought known for the exploration of what we unconsciously learn of the object world as infants, and how we can harness it in the service of our psyches. It wasn't the first time I'd felt Lourdes words convey something vitally important about how we can examine and regulate our emotions. So it's not only poetry that is a vital place for self reflection, and understanding, as I believe therapy can also be, but also decolonial, black, lesbian, feminist, queer and trans perspectives that can bring richness to our profession. A richness that often goes unacknowledged, or is even rejected as too political, as if the therapy encounter is a politics free space. It is because of the politics inherent in our lives, the inequalities that are endemic to it. That therapy, however, can often be a luxury and also a privilege, especially for those in the LGBTIQA plus and ... communities. Therapeutic outcomes for these client groups also varied perhaps sometimes because of this unwillingness to accept that all of our identities are politicized out under white, cis hetero patriarchy. Indeed Crawford et al., in 2018 found that people from sexual and ethnic minorities are more likely to report experiencing lasting bad effects in therapy. Rhymes et al., in 2019 also found that compared to heterosexual women, lesbian and bisexual women had higher final session a severity for depression, anxiety and functional impairment. An increased risk of not attaining reliable recovery in depression, anxiety or functioning. Similar results were found among bisexual men. In research by Stonewall, in 2018. One in 20 LGBT people and one in five trans people reported that they had been pressured to access services or change to change or suppress their sexual orientation, and or gender identity. Therapists already have an ethical obligation not to practice so called Conversion Therapy. But these harmful practices do take place. Further, as this book goes to press many therapists are expressing their opposition to the government decision to exclude trans people from the ban on so called Conversion Therapy practices, despite the fact that more recent study, statistics indicate that trans people are twice as likely as cisgender LGB people to be offered or subjected to conversion practices. And that of my colleagues would like to say, feel moved to say. was from research in 2022.

Caz Binstead: 16:14

Thank you Chance, I mean, inviting anyone else to jump in. It might be useful if you do jump in and just say what the name of your chapter and chapter you're involved in is, is called. I mean, I agree with Chance about the accessibility of this book. And I know a couple of you here took part in kind of interview style. Well, an interview style in the chapters. How how do people find that? Was that your choice? Or Chances? Or?

Ellis Johnson: 16:54

Happy to jump in? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Caz. Thank you Chance also for getting us kicked off and, and reminding us about the context of the book. Because it was it was quite a long time ago. Now. Actually, I think we all we started to pull all this together. And so yeah, my chapter is on working with trans and gender expansive clients. And I really find it really generative to be in conversation with chance. And when we had, you know, a couple of broad questions to kind of, did you want to sit with, and but what came out of the conversation was, was much deeper, much richer than anything I could have just kind of come up with on my, on my own. So I think that was a really Yeah, really. Yeah, enjoyable way of kind of coming together. And I think you'll hear me speak about this Chance. A couple of words, I'm sitting with the main word I'm sitting with is centering, or re centering or decentering. What we understand as sort of the parameters of, of normal, human behavior, human behavior. And with this book, what we're trying to do, is, is, is recenter, queer, trans, intersex experiences is not being on the margins of humanity, we're not on the margins of human experience. But actually, we're right in the middle. And we represent something that is, is what everybody, actually and that's why I'm also interested in using you know, the acronym GSRD instead of LGBTQIA plus, so GSRDS is, gender, sex and relationship diversity. And that acronym sort of demonstrates, I suppose that everybody has a gender everybody has a sexuality or relationships and sexuality. Everyone has a relationship to their relationship style. So this work is not just for us, but in centering the most marginalized people. It shifts the whole conversation for everyone. We shift this whole the whole lens. And, you know, as queer trans people, it kind of comes naturally to us, I think, to do that. We're used to

Amanda Middleton: 19:21

And I also had the I think, advantage of being doing that. So you know, it's such a, it's such a privilege to be involved with this. And I think the feedback we're getting already is is really exciting. Yeah, Amanda, Neil, I dont know if you want to jump in. in conversation with Chance, in order to create the chapter. And for me, there was something really kind of alive and quick about it, in terms of it being a conversation, and I think in terms of the book feels, from I know, books take forever. And I know Chance you labored hard on this. But there is still something quite fast about this book. And I appreciate that, because from conversation to publishing was a couple of years. But if we think about the academic publishing cycle, which is like five to seven years, it means that really important conversations that are happening right now can be in people's hands, and extended. And I think the format also worked for me, because I'm dyslexic. So if I had to write it, it would take forever, and maybe not happen. And there's something about valuing an oral tradition, you know, therapy is such an oral tradition. And yet, our knowledge is often held when I trained therapists because, well, I haven't read enough or I haven't done this. And our relationship to reading is a huge part of our relationship to being therapists, I think, and how we feel sort of competent and up to date, yet it is an oral tradition, based on the oral traditions of healing and storytelling and being with people in conversation and connecting. And so that's where it feels like the book does mirror the practice, the form and function thing, which I really appreciate about it as well. Neil, I can't remember whether you were interviewed or whether you wrote.

Neil Young: 21:22

Well, it was kind of we found out as we went, so I guess, chapter I co wrote, and I should say that Paul Harrison, and Benjamin, were my co authors. And it really was the three of us with Chance's support really, in terms of talking to chance, and then sort of it developed, it was more like, we ended up talking the three of us every month for six months, we were a bit like, how do we hold on to what can become very slippery knowledge in a culture that, I don't know, I quite liked this phrase, I was thinking, I think I heard it by some sort of drag program. But this idea that we're all groomed to be kind of cisgender and straight. And so then, when you're up against that, there's something about how do we hold on to kind of queer knowledge. And I remember first, when I was just kind of Googling and started looking for research around queer children, it's like, can we even use that language, somehow, like, dare we even say that, but it's not like queer people are born. I don't know at the age of consent or some sort of fairly arbitrary thing or 16 or something. So and it was really helpful to have kind of coparents really in the writing and reflecting and Chance's role that was really important. And for us to be able to integrate different different bits that we brought, you know, in terms of Anthea, brilliant kind of experience with children, teenagers, as well as an anti racist perspective. Paul brought his experience in terms of working as a supervisor and with a lot of experience of working with queer children, and I guess have a history in youth work. So we're sort of like we were thinking developmentally even developmentally, even within the idea of child and it sort of feels now like, it's just the beginning. You know, like through the specific work and curiosities that are out there in the world and hoping that that sparked by the thinking and the sharing, I guess.

Peter Blundell: 23:17

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you'd like to hear a full version of this discussion, please go to our YouTube channel and search for queering psychotherapy.

J. Chance Czyzselska: 23:27

Okay. Thanks for having us.

Ellis Johnson: 23:30

Thank you.

Neil Young: 23:31

Thanks.