Guilt & the Consultative Stance

Guilt and its Relation to the Consultative Stance

During an Exploring Whiteness seminar organised by the Tavistock D10 Course, a ‘fishbowl’ exercise unfolded. The arrangement involved two concentric circles of chairs, with students moving from the outer circle to the inner circle to reflect on whiteness. What transpired was a number of white participants expressing feelings of guilt and urging fellow white individuals to do the same. Despite the self-condemnation from white students, the specific reasons for feeling guilty remained unclear. This ambiguity was underscored by a black participant who, expressing disappointment in the contributions, posed the unaddressed question, "What is it like to be white?" The query went unanswered, leaving a sense of dissatisfaction.

Leaving the event, I felt a sense of anger because I believed the teaching implied that guilt is a reparative emotion, and the event seemed to endorse such proclamations, further unsettling students of colour present. Additionally, numerous black participants expressed feeling attacked, and I experienced guilt for being unable to prevent this.

One way to interpret the events in this session is through the lens of shame, which, as Mollon (2002) notes, is 'often to do with failures to do what is expected.' This shame was possibly experienced by white participants who encountered difficulties in sincerely delving into the exploration of whiteness. In this context, guilt may function as a defence mechanism against the discomfort and shame they felt (Mollon, 2002). However, to fully comprehend the range of feelings in the room, we need to distinguish between persecutory and reparative guilt (Klein, 1935).

Persecutory guilt is ‘self-indulgent in its self-mortification’ (Mitchell, 2000) and sits in the paranoid-schizoid mode constantly shifting from blaming oneself to blaming the other where the ‘ego’s capacity to know itself, is attacked’ (Sodre, 2015) and ‘the guilt is unbearable, which necessitates the primitive internal racist defence’ (Davids, 2011), in the case of white guilt. Reparative guilt is part of depressive functioning characterised by sorrow, remorse, concern and responsibility (Grinberg, 1964) and leads to change ‘since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge’ (Lorde, 1981). Without this distinction many of the white students felt encouraged to share their persecutory feelings of guilt with little real attempt to face their black colleagues and work towards reparation.

I walked away from this event indignant that reparation was required and urged many of the staff members to act, which ended in a fiery debate and lengthy email exchange with one the faculty members. As Director of a campaign organisation I regularly sit in the basic assumption position of fight-flight dynamics (Bion, 1961), which encourages suspicion and the identification of enemies. Despite my focus on reparation, I was mobilising paranoid anxiety only to realise that the guilt I felt was reparative but not depressive. In Kleinian theory this is described as manic reparation, which ‘is a defence in that its aim is to repair the object in such a way that guilt and loss are never experienced.’ (Segal, 1973). My problem when facing my internal racist (Davids, 2011) is that I am too eager to move to reparation to justify to myself and onlookers that I am an exceptional anti-racist white man (Caflisch, 2020), creating an omnipotent attachment to the issue. In my workplace, I've twice elevated junior staff members of colour to roles with excessive responsibilities, leading them to ultimately struggle and not succeed. This action involved idealising these staff members in a somewhat manic attempt at reparation for the harms done by colonialism, rather than carefully considering and addressing their actual and immediate needs.

Caflisch (2020) recommends that practitioners, when confronted with white guilt and the inclination for reparation, adopt a 'stance of accepting the ordinariness of our efforts to repay our debts' and strive to 'remain engaged without shutting down our reflective capacities.' This, in my opinion, aligns with what I would characterise as embodying a third position when grappling with guilt.

I do not regret mobilising paranoid anxiety to challenge what I see as an injustice, possibly demonstrating some of the positive capabilities of leadership (Simpson, French, Harvey, 2002). However, it is not characteristic of the consultative stance. To act in this way, I had to suspend some of my reflective capacity and remain part of the bi-polar system (Foster, 1993) between students and teachers. If I was to consult to this group or any other group, I would likely receive projections that are both useful to interpret and that try to pull me into one of the established roles of the organisation. The work of the consultant ultimately has something to do with repair and racism shapes our society and the institutions I will consult to. It feels important to highlight how guilt will impede the third position and how I recognise my role as a white person in that system.

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