Dr Dione Mifsud, Head of the Department of Counselling at the Faculty for Social Wellbeing (University of Malta) has recently delivered a deferential Oration during the conferment of the Master Degree and PhD students of the said faculty. 

His Oration is all about a fundamental need and truth that surrounds our communities, namely that of connecting together, of living communally and of engaging with each other’s triumphs and mishaps.

As the world becomes more connected through the use of social media, travel and transcultural experiences, we are experiencing meeting the ‘other’ and reacting differently to ‘otherness’. Meeting the other and communicating using language is an experience that we, as human beings take as a given, almost an automatic action or reaction.

Dr Mifsud goes on to link the value of communicarions as that which sets communities free;

However, talking is not always accompanied with trust. The act of trusting a person is a deliberate choice and also a risky one, given that trust in itself creates vulnerability as power is transferred to the trusted person...talking therapists, use one of the most basic skills that we have as human beings: language. How can talking heal in today’s world?

To ground his argument, Dr Mifsud shares a narrative and story of someone he worked with and the voyage she went through;

The first time she knocked on my door I was shocked at what I saw. She was a young woman with a cruel scar on her face disfiguring it and drawing all the attention to it and away from the person. She seemed used to this type of reaction as she just said… “I guess you realise what I want to talk about”. At the time she was a student, a straight ‘A’ student actually. She remarked that this was how she compensated to take the heat off the fact that she was a scar. “People do not see me, they see ‘IT’. They talk to it, they stare at it, and they talk about it. They do not see me”.  She looked at me: Do you see me? Can you see me? Can you see me behind this screen…? At this point I felt truly ashamed. As much as I tried to focus on her I found my eyes migrating towards it. .... So I mumbled a few words and asked what she wanted of me.

“Help me to accept this. Help me to look at the mirror every morning, help me to put on make-up. Help me feel like a person”. We began a journey that lasted two years. The counselling focused on integration, but she also wanted to work on accepting that she would not form a family and would not have any kids. “I do not want children who are afraid to look at their mother”.

Two years later close to her graduation she was radiant. “I think I can have my graduation photo and love it”, she said.

We terminated [our professional relationship] just before she graduated. But her journey was not over yet. She came back a year later with a brochure in her hand. The brochure spoke of a new technique that could minimise the scar. It was time to trust science. She had already journeyed to the UK and was told that she could go through the six sessions of therapy without any guarantee of success. She started undergoing treatment every three months and the worst time was when she came back to Malta as the laser treatment burst the capillaries. During this time she focused less on having a relationship with ‘it’ and more on starting to have a relationship with herself. When she terminated [our professional relationship] for the second time the scar was very faint and could be camouflaged by make-up. When I last met her, some years ago, she was married and the proud mother of two children.

Dr Mifsud strongly emphasises the relevance  of the ‘talking professions’ but also underlined the need to reflect and engage thoroughly on what is happening in the practitioner’s life;

This was a journey which took five years for me. It, however, consumed this person’s adolescence and young adulthood for her. Like Dante’s metaphoric ‘selva oscura’ she truly went into a dark wood and risked staying there. Being free of ‘IT’ and what ‘IT’ stood for was the focus of her counselling journey. I learnt a lot from her. I learnt about my own ‘ITS’, my own metaphorical warts and scars, and how they limit my life, relationships and communication. I have met hundreds of clients in my twenty-five years as a counsellor, and I have been struck by human fortitude, resilience and yearning. Every person has a dream and every person tries to get as close as possible to it.        ...

What we have here is a meeting between two people, one seeking illumination and one who helps towards illumination. It is a timeless phenomenon, an issue that transcends cultures and continents.

Dr Mifsud, drawing from the seminal work Decolonising Methodologies of Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2004), writes that:

In each narrative there is a ‘princess’ who has been abused, abducted and incarcerated. There is also an opponent who abuses, abducts, devastates, and this is sometimes portrayed by the dragon, the colonialist, the manipulator, the abuser. There is also a ‘subject’ or ‘hero’ who undertakes to help the princess to escape, to redeem herself. There is also the object, the raison d’être of the intervention by the subject, and many times the object is the liberation of the princess.  The subject may also be aided by an assistant, in some narratives a trusted friend or animal, but sometimes abstractions like faith or virtues. We may ask who, in our life, is the metaphorical ‘princess’ , ‘dragon’ or  ‘hero’....this liberation narrative as one which is very close to the reality we live every day as talking helpers.         

The fact that one is a good person and trusted figure does not just mean that one is law-abiding, and in our case, adheres to professional, organisational and national codes of ethics. It also means that one transmits trust and is able to communicate trustworthiness to the people who meet him. If we apply this concept to the figure of the professional helper, this means that the helper needs to be seen as a person of integrity and fidelity.

Apart from identifying the central virtues of the caring professions as care, concern and compassion, Canadian philosopher Robert Nash (2002) asserts that professions need to be populated by virtuous professionals. Nash identifies virtuous professionals as those who strive to create a balance between noble intentions and just actions. These professionals aspire to be good and to act virtuously as they are committed persons with a solid moral grounding and who try to achieve excellence in their personal, professional and social life.

In counselling we refer to this as the principle of fidelity. In a study I undertook a few years ago in Malta, fidelity rather than autonomy, was identified as the most fundamental principle in counselling by both clients and counsellors. The same research suggests that, in a small country like Malta, which thrives on the networks of acquaintances and friendships which sometimes can be referred to as multiple and enmeshed relationships, principle ethics alone do not allow us to construct good services of care.

Dr Mifsud reflects on this profession with passion and fortitude.  However, what strikes me most in Dr Mifsud’s description is the way he describes ‘Counselling’ as being more of a lifestyle, an attitude and a means of connecting together – because we can cope with most ailments in life but disengagement from self and others cannot get any worse.

Whatever the background, the nation, the socio-historical context, counselling has remained throughout the centuries, an intimate meeting between 2 people. It starts with a very special moment of illumination, of epiphany, of psychological liberation. It is many times a supreme moment when persons realise that they need to change limiting behavioural patterns or anything that is not letting them live their life to the full as  human beings and as  valued members of society.

His appeal is that it all should start and end with the person;

However, if all this is not based on the fact that our job requires us to work with all those who like my client are in pain because they have been marked or are wounded and suffering through abuse, displacement, lack of facilities, communication and education, then we are not working in our own small way to help heal the wounds of the world, but we would be working for our own glory.

On the other hand if we have received the privilege to help others through our art, skills or scientific knowledge, that allow us to intervene to either better lives or to be allowed to nurse the wounds of challenged people and to act as guides in life’s journey, then we can celebrate the fact that, in more ways than one we are helping people to live better lives. In so doing, we ourselves live better lives.

An Oration that draws out what really matters in the human person; serenity, peacefulness and quietude.