Adrian Scott Counsellor Supervisor MBACP Accred

With the culture of patriarchy as a counterpoint – men as discussed here before do not have an emotional fluency to keep them afloat. The frameworks of male friendship rest in accompanying, physical connection, turning up, heirarchical humour, putting down, love/affection through pretend dislike.
Scaffold Men

The idea of male vulnerability in male friendship groups is met with avoidance and silence.
With the petulant teenager/macho man holding on – to the nice weak man – a third way is demanded.
But how? Somehow men have to allow the men around them to be a ittle more vulnerable. The shame of male vulnerability is allowed upto a point by women: but not with men.

The idea of men brought up with sisters by women is seen to be a way forward. But men need to be calling out men – around for example – behaviour towards women by other men. For women to call out men hits a different place than a man called out by a man. Men call out/humiliate from physical strength or power other men as an authoritarian action is what men are used to. Men calling out men to provoke a conversation about feelings vulnerabilities, to in appropraite actions is rare.

In the therapy room it takes a while for men to not want to ask questions about questions. Eg -how are you? Reply- you mean now or which part etc …. then to – you said (about me) then to – we said (about me) then to – I said about me – then to I feel ……

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Enquiring clients often want to test out the fit they are going to have with their potential therapist.   
The question is how much of a fit? To take the two extremes: the therapist who is exactly like you, agrees with everything you say. Has the same values, politics, worldout look as you. You get on. The other extreme is that you don’t like your therapist, don’t agree with their values, they disagree and challenge you. You don’t like the house/flat area decor that you have therapy in.

Therapists work in networks and refer clients to each other: with the ‘expertise’ of knowing what the client wants – covering for a reciprocal business recommendation.

Unfortunately and like all relationships we chose to satisfy our bias. Our choice of therapist out of awareness will be in the hope that we are comforted, held and listened to. That’s good – partly. But if the fit was less comfortable this would be more in line with the difficult painful parts of ourselves that motivate us far more: and we want to keep hidden.

The fuller therapies often involve conflict, a breach, which can be explored. Sometimes as a test, or provocation the breach demands more of the relationship from both sides. Trust is built from pain & adversity.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique

Therapy pays a lot of attention to endings. At ending we are an emphasised version of our emotional selves.
Endings show how we protect ourselves from the pain of ending. Where our culture pays little attention to endings.

An ideal ending is arranged 3-6 months before the end of a full term therapy. Like a light aeroplane taking off slowly on a very long runway. A full term therapy where feelings and relationships support narrative, and silence & stillness allow a space to reflect for something to emerge.
The knots are loosened not changed.
The ending is not a resolution, but a process of grieving an ending, reviewing the therapy relationship, and coming to a separation together.

Women are generally (generally…) are more suited to therapy endings. Nurtured in relationships there is more opportunity for creating a therapy relationship of curiousity & awareness. Vulnerability is more acceptable.

Men are more motivated by status, acheivement, action & outcome. Not relationships or endings. Mastery important: vulnerability less of an option.
Men can be vulnerable, women can be motivated by status.

Fellow professionals can also feed into this. In our monetised culture other therapists are willing to take clients on without letting the client end well with previous therapy relationships. And of course therapists have their own issues with endings.

Reasons for endings are many and varied. An intellectual ending is common:
Wanting to end throughout the therapy relationship (avoid intimacy)
See what it’s like to be alone (fear of dependence)
I’ve been in therapy long enough (no outcome)
I can’t afford it (expense/investment in self)
I could be in therapy for the rest of my life (trap)
Move to another therapist with no break (avoid loss)

Endings are natural but painful. A therapy ending is an opportunity to practice ending in awareness

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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Nachträglichkeit, Apres-coup, Afterwardsness a Freudian term used to describe a repressed trauma which replays  itself in the future. A deferred action from childhood into aduthood.

The trauma gets pushed down: but bubbles away in the heat of unconscious atrophy: ready to boil over unsuspecting into a future present. Romantic Affairs A Case Study here can typically be seen in this way. The first relationship is deemed as inadequate to meeting emotional needs so another new relationship is started to meet the first relationship’s deficiences.

After the biological attraction wears off in any relationship: you might see that all our relationships are made with our wounds. Not what is healed / resolved. It is a way of the psyche trying to repair the wounds of the past: we hope to be rescued by the relationship. It’s the opposite. The relationship uses the other human to expose our wounds.

If you accept the idea that relationships are a way of healing our wounds by being attracted by them: the affair becomes less. What is the second relationship going to be able to resolve that the first one didn’t as we are the  same person?

Modern relationships challenge the notion of one important relationship. But the idea can still be applied. We are trying to resolve our wounds by relating.

Depending on your point of view therapy doesn’t heal anything. It makes us aware of our wounds: not to stop having affairs. It doesn’t avoid the mess & chaos of living. It is the mess and chaos that gives illumination to who we are & where we were hurt. It attempts to put meaning to our actions which we cannot understand.
It is a way of suffering well. To suffer authentically takes less energy: to do other things we enjoy.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality

Whenever Gene Hackman came on screen you relaxed into knowing his role or this part of the film was going to be great. And so it was. The ease and minimalism belied a complexity of presence and feeling that you wondered how he packed it all in onto a pin head of presentation. He was never movie star handsome: but such was the strength of his onscreen persona that you never thought about it. He was attractive through character.
Here he is being interviewed in The Actors Studio

He mostly played nasty male roles where you couldn’t dislike him but rather saw the complexity and humanity of the contradiction of good and bad. He had a fierce intelligence, and anger which you could easily imagine made him ‘difficult’ to work with.

He had something to prove. Constantly told that he would never make an actor: he used these rejections to fuel an intensity that lit up the screen. This feeling of himself against the world never left him.

In The Firm 1:19 he played the seducer managing to turn sleazy into something vulnerable and honourable: then sleazy. He played the cop roles (The French Connection) with a gusto to relieve his primitive rage at the world. He was always yelling and rampaging through protocol intense on the mission at hand. His ease and simplicity in front of the camera was the culmination of hard worn skills worked through & discarded to gain a mastery of his craft.

A mixture of guile, rage, intelligence, and sensitivity – he created a new genre of Hollywood Man: deep, multi dimensional, in an age of macho action heroes.
Gene Hackman 1930-2025

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
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Ever feel something is not quite right? Or perhaps you feel something is wrong but nobody else notices?
You’re right. It’s not you.

Hypernormalisation is the idea that something is going on while everyone around you is either unaware or ignoring it. The classic example is the Soviet Union where everyone knew the system was failing but nobody could admit it or imagine an alternative. In the UK for example it might be the NHS. But no politician will fully admit it. The running down of institutions as a precursor to privatisation. Without recognising the running down.

Watch the Adam Curtis Documentary Hypernormalisation here

It is not surprising that Hypernormalisation appears in societies: as it also works within humans. We want to think that all is well & normal. We are doing ok. We are coping. We want to be so ok.  We will go to extraordinary inner lengths to deny, distract, defend ourselves against an unpleasant truth, characteristic, or simply something we have said, not done so well.

When people come in – they want reassurance that all is well. Though we both feel the latent feeling: that we are struggling to understand or process what has happened. It is not going so well. We are holding both perspectives, yet the latent is dangerous & painful.
We need someone to accompany us through.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality

The 45 day Maha Kumbh Mela, aka Great Pitcher Festival will attract over 400 million people.
For many it is a once in a lifetime event happening every 12 years. The aim is to bathe in the sacred waters to be spiritually cleansed.

Another demonstration as if we needed one illustrating the enormous power of living a human life under the dominion of a higher power. An attachment to a God can help bereavement outcomes.

There are a few interpretations of religion. Freud would say it was a defense against the meaningless of death. Then conversely he thought that the Unconscious doesn’t recognise death or an end – forcing us to live each day of our lives as though there is no end.

Marx’s interpretation of death was that it was a perspective on society. “Religion is an Opiate of the Masses” is mis-understood. A heart in a heartless world. A way of trying to keep our human dignity where subjugation, poverty and now capitalism is trying to erode. It allows us to have an idea of ourselves escaping the reality of our lives. So we become weak and apolitical.
Rid yourself of idealism and then you can really see society and how it is treating you.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality

John began by telling me that he didn’t want to marry his fiancee. “I love my girlfriend, we’ve been together for three years. Some days getting married seems like the best. Other days I cannot bear to think about it.” I asked him what the feelings were around these two contradictory positions.
He struggled – stuck to the narrative and said he didn’t understand it – he loved his girlfriend.

Over the weeks months he revealed scenarios that demonstrated his ambivalent attachment to his girlfriend. He wanted to be loved but at other times couldn’t tolerate it. His recollection of the first five years of his early life were patchy. He dismissed them as irrelevant.

After going to a school friend’s wedding in his hometown – he came to the session distraught. Not about the wedding. He had had a rare conversation with his mother about his elder brother. She had had an elder son who died at a year old. And John was born a year after his death. He was a Replacement Child

John lay helpless in his mother, in the womb liquid, then came out into an atmosphere of death & life. The young psyche only able to contemplate a black and white binary was confronted by death and life. His mother the rescuer who gave him life, and the symbol of creating a previous death: which he might also experience. A Replacement that might fail.

Men can idealise women their mothers for giving them life. And hate them for it. Depending on how this is emotionally negotiated. But wih the spectre of a previous death – this creates an unbearable tension. Again being associative the baby’s psyche interprets the mother as life and death. Rescuer and Killer.

Naturally John took his birth scenario and associatively recreated it in his adult romantic relationships.
Love and Fear towards women. Go to … Get away

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
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This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality

Sybil Phoenix fostered many children in Lewisham. Against the racism in the UK she managed to survive the odds and rescue children who had no families to go to. The infinte visceral hatred she had to endure from the community and the National Front.

The establishment was so horrified that she might refuse an MBE that she managed to negotiate a new premises for her work. The association of Empire to colonalism was very close.

What gives some the huge amount of fortitude and strength against the odds to succeed, to be torn down, and succeed again. The narrative motivation is straight forward. In this case helping children.

But the emotional motivation is more complex and more powerful. We like to think we are motiivated by circumstance, situation, & sometimes admit to luck. But the deeper wounds that we want to resolve through our stories, are too painful for us to contemplate.

So we parallel. We help others to help ourselves, so not to connect with ourselves that need the help! The psyche is not altruistic. It is self serving. From this perspective so are we – however grand the narrative.

Copyright Adrian Scott North London Counsellor Blog 2025
All rights reserved Disclaimer:
This weblog is the view of the writer and for general information only.
This article is designed to provoke argument and critique
Details changed for confidentiality