The silent bystander within therapeutic practice

Introduction: A heuristic approach

The piece you are about to read is an attempt to explore considerations about human encounters among those who belong to racial groups defined as ‘Black’ and ‘White’. These considerations focus on examples from my own lived experience. This article aims to deepen further conversations by lending my voice to explore racial inequity with transparency. This inequity refers to the two-tiered system in the United Kingdom. A system that results in two people of similar gender, age, background, education and skills experiencing two completely different sets of opportunity, based upon one group belonging to the Black racial group and the other belonging to the White racial group. Alongside the explorations of human encounters with both of these groups, I shall also examine how these issues impact mental health practitioners, with a focus upon dramatherapy, as this is the modality I practise within and, therefore, have the most experience of in the context of the field of mental health.

I have chosen to use a heuristic approach for this testimonial piece, as it can create circumstances that ignite the possibility for change in the writer. It observes how the internal change that occurs in the exploration can be a catalyst for deeper appreciation of the question under investigation, and how this personal transformation can be relevant for practice and research.

Naming racism: Claiming my reality and my truth

In the early stages of writing this article, I sought guidance from an old friend and accomplished author, who happens to be a Black male. He suggested that I abstain from using the word ‘Racism’ for the purposes of communicating my point of view in this article, as it was likely to alienate and pull down the shutters for those who do not walk in our shoes. As a Black British Woman of African descent, having the opportunity to speak on this subject feels like finally claiming my reality and my truth. However, I too feared on some level that the weight of my truth may be too excessive for White people to bear. I could lose a wide and necessary audience.

As Akala (2018) states, ‘There would have been no political, moral, technological, medical, material or mental progress ever in the fragile history of our species if people hadn’t decided to confront difficult problems with dialogue then action’ (p. 24). Thus, I have chosen to respectively decline my trusted friend’s advice and forge forward with this prickly term, by facing this issue head on. Instinctively, I knew without having to ask why my friend thought the word ‘Racism’ might be unwise to use in this piece. It is because of the exhausting experience we, as Black people often go through in the United Kingdom; of daring to name the behaviours projected at us, and then inevitably having to either be obstructed by the White wall of denial and defensiveness, or end up having to take care of or somehow comfort and console the White person in case they feel shamed or uncomfortable by the mere resonance of the term ‘Racism’.

The bystander role: ‘Silent and apparently unaware’

The exploration specifically looks at the UK bystander role. This is due to my observation of the trait of ‘silence’ enacted when the bystander role is activated. Throughout my experiences of travel to various countries around the world as a Black woman, I have yet to come into contact with such an acute ability to utilise the silence within the bystander role, on a nationwide scale as much as in the United Kingdom. Racism in the United Kingdom presents itself in a brand that is unique to the British sensibility. It is delivered to its Black population in the form of a ‘Silent and apparently unaware’ approach.

The United Kingdom currently plays the ‘Bystander role’ in the world’s history of racism, while covertly exercising and maintaining the disparity between White and Black. Therefore, on a structural level, there is continued benefit from racism’s privilege, upholding a two-tiered legal, educational and overall life chances system: ‘One for white and one for black’. This approach enforces one of the most effective forms of oppression. To only reveal and teach the parts of a nation’s history that glorify the dominant racial and conceal the parts of the narrative, which inform us of our roots and our true selves.

Addressing the silent bystander

Dramatherapy places significant emphasis on the concept of ‘Witnessing’ to validate the extent of psychic distress in the individual. How then can dramatherapy effectively function when serving its Black population or work alongside Black colleagues, when the majority of the field’s practitioners in the United Kingdom display unawareness of their Whiteness and power? How can we break the cycle of silence, whereby Black people repress their voice on the topic, while White people silently side-step around it? This article seeks to explore the following themes when examining how we can address the role of the silent bystander within the therapeutic practice: ‘Healing’, ‘Acknowledgement’, ‘Racism’, ‘Silent bystander’, ‘Witnessing’, ‘Privilege’, ‘Awareness’ and ‘Whiteness’ through the lens of dramatherapeutic practice. These themes are illustrated in the analysis of lived experience of racism.

Therapeutic witnessing

Dramatherapy offers both clients and therapists the opportunity and permission to see and experience ourselves in our most authentic state. It is from this ‘Self-exploration’, ‘meeting ourselves’, ‘seeing ourselves’ and ‘hearing ourselves’ that we strive to delve into the pool from which we stare at our own reflection, and set in motion the momentous enquiry of ‘self’.

As a newly qualified dramatherapist I find myself brimming with passion and relief for a modality which applies a strong focus on the power of acknowledging and to validate an individual’s resolution of inner-conflict, or transformation towards the realisation of a desired future-self.

The therapeutic function of the witness is largely similar across many therapeutic modalities. There are unique approaches to utilising these functions in drama therapy, including integration with other core drama therapy processes such as embodiment, dramatic projection and role, as well as a focus on mutual transformation. From my perspective the most prominent functions of the witness in dramatherapy are to build a client’s capacity for insight, as well as for the therapist to truly embrace the potency and benefits of the therapeutic relationship. One of the most crucial ‘Aha Moments’ for me in the role of therapist/Witness is the visceral and empathic understanding and attunement formed, on a deeply human level to contain and hold the clients suffering. Understanding intellectually yes, but understanding empathically is my personal goal to build the therapeutic relationship, and therefore to ‘Witness’ for my client.

It is essential that White practitioners develop an awareness of Whiteness and the power inherent if dramatherapy is to effectively, compassionately function as a discipline to include Black clients and colleagues. I feel that we need to examine how the concept of ‘Witnessing’ is occurring within our field of practice, in our consulting rooms, schools, hospitals, prisons and various dramatherapy training arenas.

From the observations which I have made thus far while training, during placement assignments and most recently in the professional field of work, there appears to be a uniformed and symmetrical alignment of ‘Silent Bystander’ role-playing. This is an everyday experience in society. One which myself, fellow Black colleagues and Black clients are being met with across the board.

The silence: A lived experience vignette

During my second year of training as a dramatherapist, I worked at a renowned psychiatric hospital as part of my placement requirement. I remember running a dramatherapy group session there with a client who was diagnosed with dementia. The group consisted of five inpatients, all Male and relatively high functioning. On this particular day I invited my clients to engage in a projective exercise whereby I provided a range of small plastic toy animals.

I asked the group to select one or two of the toys that they were most drawn to, without putting too much thought into it, as a first step in the exercise. I then invited each person to reflect upon their chosen animal and verbally reflect upon why they had chosen it and any possible associations and so on. One of the clients selected a monkey. When we began exploring his chosen animal and feelings around it, he became visibly uncomfortable and began stuttering. The following conversation took place. (Please note ‘Thomas’ is the client’s pseudonym. The ‘Therapist’ and ‘Myself’ lines represent my spoken words and responses.)

I eventually chose to let the patient sit with what he was clearly struggling with, and progressed with the session. Internally, I felt an amalgamation of familiar sensations, including a feeling resembling a burning furnace of fire exploding in my heart centre, a sinking and churning in my stomach and gut, a dull headache erupting, a heaviness in my limbs and a sudden intense fatigue from out of nowhere. Regardless of this, I was determined to maintain focus upon my role as therapist and continue to facilitate for the purpose intended; to ‘hold’, to ‘Contain’, to be ‘Projected onto’ in order for my clients to process their own material along their journey of healing and self-exploration. After the session had ended I could not wait to ‘De-role’ within the safety and true transparency of the therapy team office. The anchor on which to grab onto to regain my breath, after spending the final 20 minutes of the session only partially breathing. The following conversation took place:

Silence filled the therapy office as I experienced a resurgence of all the same internal sensations that had consumed me earlier in the latter stages of the session. The room was filled with suffocating silence and expressionless faces from both therapists, I was conscious of following suit and mirroring these actions. This is a lifelong behaviour of mine adopted in many previous such circumstances, probably to not allow my pain or shock to cause any further discomfort for those around me, who seemed oblivious to what was occurring in this moment.

I continued to do what I have spent a lifetime doing. I realised that I was adrift on a boat alone and without any anchor and chose to simply accept this and put it on the pile of similar situations in the backlog of my memory bank. Too excruciatingly painful to stay conscious of. ‘Move along, move along, nothing to see here’ was the expression I communicated with my face and body, as the inner burning sensation gnawed away at my soul.

Following this experience, I have been drawn to the serious notion of ‘the oppressed’, be they a patient or anyone else, being witnessed by a silent bystander. I wonder how a therapeutically trained individual can ethically and humanely rationalise their unawareness of someone in pain, or choose not to acknowledge that painful reality of an ‘other’. The ‘how’ in this query is important; however, the ‘why?’ is even more pertinent here.

Pathways to healing

Casement opines that ‘trial identification’ (Fliess, 1942) can be thought of as related to empathy in understanding a patient. Reik (1937) suggested that we develop empathy as a capacity to share in the experience of others, not just like our own but as our own. Casement points out the benefit in the therapist ‘Allowing himself this freedom to enter a state of listening reverie, alongside the patient, he can monitor what it may feel like to be the patient (in whichever context)’ (Casement, 2014: 30).

I feel that it is vital when seeking to dissect this silent bystander role enacted by therapists, that we recognise and address the absence of empathy (in the vignette described earlier) if we are to claim that dramatherapy is rooted in ‘Acknowledgment’ and ‘Witnessing’.

Phil Jones (2007) discusses the therapeutic engagement with clients conducted by therapist Jan Stirling Twist (p. 104). He states the following:

Her ideas show how witnessing can enable particular kinds of empathic relationships between group members and that ‘witnessing’ skills and qualities can be developed within the process of group work. These aspects of the process have an emotional and a psychological impact. Her research vignette also shows the ways in which the process of being an active witness can create relationship across difference-In this incidence across the divide of age and culture. In addition, she illuminates how witnessing within a facilitated environment can offer healing properties relating to the situation of people who cannot have, or have not had, their experiences witnessed in life outside the opportunities offered within the creative space.

I believe that the empathic possibilities of therapists truly witnessing and actively listening to an ‘other’ by imagining being in their shoes or skin can offer an enhancement of qualities such as sensing, listening, seeing, identifying and differentiating, generally heightening of awareness of multiple levels internally.

Jennings (1994) states,

The centrality of drama as the healing process, the safe space for the individual or group to meet, the developmental model of embodiment, projection and enactment, the symbolic processes inherent in drama, are all aspects of drama for healing. (p. 138)

Jones (2007) similarly delineates the modality of dramatherapy:

Dramatherapy is the involvement in drama with healing intention. Dramatherapy facilitates change through drama processes. It uses the potential of drama to reflect and transform life experiences to enable clients to express and work through problems they are encountering or to maintain a client’s well-being and health. (p. 8)

I am aware that those reading this may be considering the fact that the vignette I have referenced, which pulls focus on the emotional injury to myself, describes interactions with myself in the therapist role, and therefore, I am not a patient in this instance. However, the vital investigation I feel we must all take on in the field at this time, is how we can function effectively and competently as the healers in this world, and simultaneously be so potentially harmful to so many in the real world or outside of the therapeutic space while in apparent, absolute, and might I say, a dangerous obliviousness.

Blindness through Whiteness

If we accept and embrace the healing aspect of our role as therapist, then we can also see how the silent bystander role within this occupation begins to grow ever more complex.

My observations and discussions with others on this topic have led me to question the Silence alongside the Whiteness within this very conversation.

Since the explosion of the various emotive themes and opinions onto our TV screens, in our newspapers and on our radio, stations erupted in connection with the murder of George Floyd in 2020, myself like so many other Black people across the globe have had the opportunity to encounter the effects upon individuals who are witnessing our daily emotional suffocation with regard to race. Those effects seem to range from: ‘Rage’ and ‘Shock’ at the reality and experience of so many (which was unknown and unseen prior to the public murder of George Floyd), to a curious guilt-infused irritability by the sheer scale of awareness and light being shone on this hidden experience by so many. Some with this new awareness have either decided to educate themselves, or explore and delve into their own understanding of their own Whiteness to discover who they are in the context of the experience for those who may be: Black friends, colleagues, family members and so on. Turner (2021) presents the metaphorical link that hate and shame are the horsemen of superiority (p. 64). He states:

Both emotions serve to drive the other away to a safe distance, whereby they might echo said subject’s privilege, the constant dance between these two emotions for the other being akin to living in a heightened state of alert as the other is constantly alert to which emotion it will be subjected to next. For the subject, the fear and cowering of the other enhances its own sense of superiority and grandiosity.

Returning to the earlier example of the therapy session, followed by the reinforcement of my own internal trauma through the retelling of my experience to fellow White therapists, and it being met with silent oblivion, strikes an alarming resemblance to Turner’s metaphorical link. As it also does to the public murder of George Floyd. The memory of my internal pain, shock, splitting, anger, shame, resentment and hate, glazed over with external politeness and a ramped up heightened professional conduct returned once more with overwhelming resonance, as we all watched George Floyd politely pleading ‘Please Sir’ to his murderer in uniform, as he was slowly suffocated to death.

Turner (2021) goes on to suggest:

This process of internalisation of hatred and shame by the other is an extremely useful tool for the subject, as it then becomes an emotion they no longer have to acknowledge within themselves. The enforced projective identification within the other therefore leaves the subject with a sense of its own superiority. (pp. 64–65)

Throughout this season of resurgence of discussions about race in the United Kingdom, I have been puzzled by the comments and questions from my White friends and associates such as ‘I can’t imagine how you must feel’ (after seeing the murder of George Floyd on TV). ‘When do you think this racism will end?’. ‘Thank God we’re not in America’ and the British ‘Silence’.

I have often wondered if we all as a nation watched a kitten being suffocated to death by a policeman on Channel 4 news if anyone would say ‘I cannot imagine how that kitten must feel’. I suspect that we might have an unprecedented implosion of calls to Channel 4 with traumatised viewers, possibly complaining about the broadcasting of such an inhumane and tragic crime against an innocent living creature. I was baffled as to why it was considered that

I might feel more than they would. Were we all not burning inside? If not why not? Is my concern.

I was equally perplexed by my White friends asking me when I thought racism would end. I questioned how an individual who benefits from a system of inequality, enquires that I provide them with a forecast of when I might be considered equal to them.

Probably the most worrying statement is that referring to the relief of not living in America, whereby their most newly appointed president ‘John Biden’ stated in March 2021,

‘One of the core values and beliefs that should bring us together as Americans is standing against hate and racism, even as we acknowledge that systemic racism and white supremacy are ugly poisons that have long plagued the United States’, he said. ‘We must change the laws that enable discrimination in our country, and we must change our hearts’.

While our prime minister Boris Johnson refers to Black people as ‘Flag waving Piccannies with watermelon smiles’.

The healing which I believe Black people are urgently in need of can only begin when those who benefit from an imbalanced society see fit to take responsibility for the devastating ramifications of systemic racism upon Black people, as they battle to redress that balance. Unless this approach is taken, then we can only surmise that the ‘shame’ and ‘denial’ displayed at the mention of the word ‘racism’ is a performance which covers complicity to the societal imbalance, and concurrence to the continuance of White privilege.

Radical empathy

Terrie E. Givens explores the concept of ‘Radical Empathy’. She defines this term as encompassing both ‘emotional empathy’ and ‘cognitive empathy’. Givens denotes:

Understanding how a person feels also provides insight into how that person understands the world. The other key components of radical empathy are the importance of both practicing empathy and taking actions that focus on what can be done to change society.

Givens (2021) states that ‘Empathy is a practice, not a state of being’ (p. 28).

Givens goes on to define the six distinct steps to be taken to practise radical empathy; they are as follows:

It seems that if we are to truly embrace and explore the concept of empathy, then we also need to look closely at where it is lacking and examine what may be obstructing its transmission, from one human being to another. I would concur with Given’s steps towards practising radical empathy, with particular focus on two areas of high importance. ‘Becoming grounded in who you are’ is a crucial and outstanding piece of work that creates a block to empathy in this instance.

By Whiteness not being explored by White people, accepted by White people and understood by White people, there is a danger that real empathetic engagement between White and Black, both in the therapeutic alliance and outside of it, may never materialise. The second area of high importance in my view to the obstruction of empathy is the making of effort to ‘open yourself up to the experience of others’. If this action was activated by either senior therapist or occupational therapist in the vignette referred to earlier, it is feasible to imagine that both practitioners’ responses might have resulted in them providing validation, care and possibly anger on behalf of their colleague, who just happened to be me on this occasion.

I feel that if we sincerely, as a community of practitioners within the United Kingdom, want to have this conversation about the inequalities and privilege in the therapy space, working life and the world at large, we will need to begin addressing the silent white elephant in the room. The inner-observer so hailed as a vital component to our effectiveness as authentic clinicians may need to be re-evaluated and explored within our training of therapists. We may have to avert our attention from Blackness and all the toxicity associated with that, and instead begin an ongoing discovery of Whiteness and all that which it holds, and possibly may need to release. As previously referenced with regard to ‘Radical Empathy’, it seems that open and honest discussions alone may not be enough to begin the shifting of imbalance that race brings up in the therapeutic practice.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I feel that the silent bystander and therapist although possibly not feeling any sense of power, privilege or superiority in the context of working alongside Black colleagues or treating Black patients, is able to inflict, if not outwardly addressed and challenged in some fashion, prolonged and reinforced systemic oppression. My hope is that by offering up these thoughts, ideas and feelings based upon my life and career experiences, that I might be able to contribute some inspiration for breaking open the silence of privilege and inequality within the United Kingdom’s field of therapeutic practice.

During the process of compiling this discussion, I have felt the following bodily sensations of: intense fatigue, mental resistance and thought, writers block, depression and have wanted to give up on the task continually. The internal battle that raged from within me ever since I agreed to write this article has felt at times like trying to sprint through quick sand with a weak heart. I felt a lifetime of ‘humble and dignified Negro’ performance fatigue raging inside of me with a desperation to expel the authenticity of the experience of being in my skin. This inner process seemed to reflect the rhythms, ebbs and flows of what it feels like to have lived in this skin thus far; excruciatingly painful, weak, strong, visible, invisible, euphoric, weathering, empowering, vexing, boring, enlightening, grounding, beautiful, deep, isolated, frightened, brave, Mighty . . . Black.

I have now arrived at the realisation that these sensory responses are symptomatic of a lifetime of existing in a nation that silently denies or turns a blind eye to the harsh reality of the consequences of White supremacy and inequality. My belief is that two of the most healing forces within the realm of therapeutic practice are ‘Acknowledgment and Empathy’. I believe that the seeds for growth and change for humanity can be sown by those who are invested in transparency and surrendering some power to gain understanding and wisdom, with a desire to embrace change and growth.