More in sadness
Sir: As an admirer of both P.D. James and your magazine, I was sorry to see her join- ing in the 'Spectator-spore of counsellor- bashing (Diary, 15 August).
Lady James identifies two important fac- tors in the recent boom in counselling — a decline in religious affiliation (and there- fore of turning to priests or ministers) and also the greater isolation in which we live. As a counsellor, I should be very happy to see a society which made me red ndant.
However, I should like to poi t out that counsellors have been trained to work with Aids not because it is fashi nable but because it brings specific pr blems of untimely death and the danger of infection. l' As a medical social worker, I ave coun- selled people receiving hip and knee replacements, but have not had to face some of the issues confronting Aids coun- sellors, such as the person who is so angry about having the disease that he wants to infect as many people as possible before he dies. How many of us are pl.epared to involve ourselves with such problems?
As a bereavement counsellor for Cruse, I should also like to note that this is not 'a support group for widows' (though we do have such groups) but provides rained vol- untary counsellors to work with ny kind of bereavement — spouse, chit , parent, friend etc. Apart from the problems involved in being expected to lie through all possible bereavements before becoming a bereavement counsellor, a person who has suffered the same loss is not, despite what P.D. James says, always the most helpful. The pain of being with someone whose problem is too close can be over- whelming, whereas what the bereaved per- son often needs is a place where the pain can be expressed without fear of damaging the other. Certainly we should be providing this as friends and neighbours, but the sin- gle most common problem I come across in bereavement counselling is that friends and neighbours very quickly lose interest.
Finally, I absolutely agree with her clos- ing remarks about unhappiness being inseparable from being human. Counsellors are not in the business of providing quick
cures or changing the unchangeable. The best we can offer our clients is help in com- ing to terms with the inevitable and learn- ing to make the most of the possible.
Jessica Rose
10 Kingston Road, Oxford
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