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It is not easy to know what to say on the occasion of the graduation of psychotherapy students. What might I say that would be of general value or interest to people at this point of transition? So I offer one or two thoughts about psychotherapy and its importance, and then describe a few recollections about my own journey as a psychotherapist.
My starting point is provided, perhaps surprisingly, by John Major. He memorably advised, in relation, I believe, to crime and punishment, that we needed to understand less and condemn more. That seems to sum up precisely the opposite of what we are all about as psychotherapists. Our job, I suggest, is to understand more and condemn less, and, in a sense, our role in society is to bring to it our understanding of the human condition.
My second point of reference is R. D. Laing's observation that psychotherapy remains the stubborn attempt by two people to discover the wholeness of being human through the relationship between them (Laing, 1967, p. 45). So, we are bearers of the idea that wholeness might be discovered through relationship.
These two themes are particularly important in our present times, in which we experience an increasing decline in what might be called civilized values, and growing levels of alienation and dehumanization.
As one of my colleagues in the human rights field said only last week, ‘We live in interesting times.’ Specifically, he was talking about the grim prospects faced by asylum seekers in the current social and political climate, and addressing particularly those who are awaiting the outcome of asylum applications and, thereby, live in the shadow of the threat of deportation back to whatever fate might await them in the countries from which they have fled.