Transcript for
Invitational and ethical practice with fathers who use violence (part one)

Alan Jenkins (00:00): How do we privilege connection with the man and forming some sense of connected attunement with accountability for his actions? How do we hold that kind of balance there?

 

Narrator (00:16): Welcome to the Emerging Minds Podcast.

 

Dan Moss (00:21): Hi everybody. My name is Dan Moss and welcome to this Emerging Minds podcast. Emerging Minds would like to pay respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which this podcast is recorded, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains. We also pay respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, their ancestors and elders past, present and emerging from the different First Nations across Australia.

 

(00:47): And welcome to the first in a two episode Emerging Minds podcast, working with Fathers who use violence. And it is my absolute pleasure to welcome psychologist and author Alan Jenkins to this podcast. It’s an undeniable privilege to be talking with Alan today. Like many of you, Alan’s teaching and theory has played a critical supportive role in my own work with men and fathers who hurt others.

 

(01:12): His two books, Invitations to Responsibility and Becoming Ethical, have provided practitioners all around the world with a way to have respectful and ethical conversations with fathers. As you’ll hear, Alan’s work is much about our own ethical positioning as practitioners in this work as it is about the men and fathers with whom we work.

 

(01:36): Alan, I want to start by asking you, given all of the recent tragic statistics about women being murdered by male partners or ex-partners, why it is that so many men in our society are still captured by this idea of hurting, coercing, or controlling the women and children in their lives?

 

Alan Jenkins (01:56): It’s an intriguing question because I think with the incidents that have come to light of women being murdered, it brings this right into our face to think, well, what is it that enables? What is it that has this happen? And I think a lot of people think, well, it’s this lovely world. Why are men abusive in this way? Why does that happen?

 

(02:20): I suppose my thinking has always been, look, I’m just not surprised that there’s this level of male violence. I guess I’m not surprised, like I’m shocked by it still, but I’m not surprised by it given the way that we have structured our cultural institutions and practises, where I think violence, coercion, acquisition control are just ubiquitous at just about every level. We live in a culture that is a hierarchical, or cultures, that are hierarchical and ordering, that order people into places.

 

(03:04): Our culture’s of winners and losers basically. And I observe that violence and coercion is often admired in some parts of the society and business practises, the way politicians behave, sport, international relations. Yet, certain forms of violence are frowned upon, particularly domestic abuse.

 

(03:28): And I think there’s huge contradictions, where we’ve got official saying in a sense, “Don’t do as I do, do as I say.” And I guess I’m tended to spend a lot of my working life working with men who generally felt on the loser end. Like in a world where success is by competition, acquisition, being bigger than somebody else, I tend to be working with men who were… They were not on the winner end of the hierarchy.

 

(04:06): Most of the men that I tended to work with were you could see them stuck in affective sites in our society. One is around the area of belonging, do I fit in here? Do I belong? And the other one is around the area of worth and value, status. Do I matter? And I think most of the men that I tended to work with were struggling at those sites, feeling a lack of belonging, so a sense of panic in how they fit in the world.

 

(04:40): And you see that in desperate behaviour with men who are abusive and who are stalking or harassing partners and the sense of shame, the sense of from, “Do I matter? I’m not really important here in the grand scheme of things,” just a level of shame that is so endemic and most violence that I see comes from men struggling with belonging and shame, belonging and worth. So, I guess I’m seeing that as a pretty dominant part of the cultures that we live in, and it hardly surprises me that domestic abuse is quite prevalent.

 

Dan Moss (05:24): So this has been a really strong theme in your work throughout your career, really, hasn’t it, Alan? This idea that as a therapist we need to make sure that we’re maintaining a fairness and an openness to a man’s story, to what’s worrying a man. Not disqualifying his story or not disqualifying the concerns that he might come to us with.

 

Alan Jenkins (05:47): He is not wanting to come from a moral position of telling men how they should behave or prescribing ways of relating and being for them but of understanding something about, well, what is it that’s driving? What is it that’s animating this behaviour?

 

(06:09): Coming to an understanding and I need to listen to me and I need to not just listen to what they say. What they say might sound contemptuous or I didn’t do it or I lost it, or she’s on her high horse or whatever it might be. Or my kids just, I need to discipline them, not just tuning into those words, but tuning into effectively what’s underneath this, what’s happening with this man that’s animating this behaviour? That if I can understand that and I can be with him in a space that is safe, a space where he’s not feeling social threat, that he feels out in the world generally, if it’s a space where he doesn’t feel judged, where perhaps he feels listened to, then I often discover that there’s a lot more to him than that behaviour.

 

(07:00): I often discover there’s something that he may really wish he had with his family or a relationship with his kids that he may be longing for in some ways, but got no idea of how to get there in a sense. I often discover there’s something ethical, because I don’t need him then to tell him to stop violence.

 

(07:27): He knows that that’s not helping him, and he knows that’s doing harm. He knows that’s morally wrong. It’s helping to discover something about what else he might be striving for, what ethically might be important for him, what’s being in a sense, obscured by his affective reactions and by the demands of the outside world that he face up and take responsibility for his actions?

 

(07:54): I guess I want to hold him to account to be accountable to his own ethical strivings, not to some moral rule that says, “This is right and wrong, that exists out there,” which he might be even reacting to, but to the things that he actually may come to put some value on.

 

(08:12): I want to discover if there are some ethical strivings. It’s often hard to know when you first meet a guy in this situation. And then if there are, as I help him to bring those forward or express them, there’ll be some dissonance. He’ll recognise that, “Hey, look, what I’m saying. I want a relationship.”

 

(08:34): For example, guy says, “I’m really wanting my son to feel cherished, to feel loved.” And his backstory might be that, “I didn’t have that as a kid. I know what it’s like to see the kids and mum beaten up, and I want something different here.” Then he holds a view of the behaviour that he’s been engaging in, which is abusive, and puts those together and there’s a dissonance.

 

(09:03): There’s shame, a sense of disgrace that comes, in which he tried to run away from, tried to hide, tried to stamp out, tried to punch walls when he feels it to try and get it out of your system rather than recognise, hey, this is something really ethically important to actually realise that, to start thinking about that what I’m saying is not matching what I’m doing and to start seeing the people that are being hurt.

 

(09:32): That is a profoundly ethical thing to do, and it says something about… It’s an ethical marker, if you like, or a marker of integrity. If I asked the question, “What would it mean if you could see your son frightened of you and you didn’t feel ashamed, if you could see fear in his eyes and you didn’t feel ashamed, what would that say about you?”

 

(09:55): There’s something profoundly ethical in shame. There’s one that I don’t reproduce violence. I don’t come in there telling him what to do and pushing him round and shaming him. Shame can be a power play to try and get a person to do something. I want this experience to be one where he doesn’t feel judged.

 

(10:19): I want to refuse judgement in a sense, and I want it to be somewhere where he can access the panic he feels about losing what’s important to him or the shame he feels about his own actions and what he’s done and harmed people in his life. I want it to be a safe space where he can engage, where together, we can engage with it, where it can attune to these effects and open up an area where it’s possible for him, instead of feeling ashamed and losing agency, where he can recognise, “Hey, I can do something. I can be the kind of dad that I want to be or the partner I want to be.”

 

Dan Moss (11:01): And you mentioned before, Alan, that violence can be a manifestation of over-conformity for men. So in the context of being a father, what might be some of the ideas that are accessible to fathers that have them engaging in collusion or control with children or partners?

 

Alan Jenkins (11:18): I think it’s this whole idea that goes through every relation knew. Beyond parenting, somebody does something that we don’t like and we need to attack them or we need to coerce them or we need to tell them how wrong they are. Or we need to shame them or we need to the capacity to be able to… How often do you see in a parenting situation where a parent, a child, is a bit out of control in their behaviour and the parent steps in and starts raising their voice and more and more affectively big and escalating the whole situation?

 

(12:02): The paradigms for intervention, paradigms for men around discipline, and it’s interesting, I don’t know how often I’ve had conversations with men who they’re really wanting, some will use words like, “I want to be mates,” “To have my son as a mate,” so ethically they’re striving for something that has closeness and admiring one another and loving being with one another. That’s all there.

 

(12:32): But the paradigm for dealing with a problem behaviour is punitive or is controlling in some ways, and often having a child frightened is almost seen as respect. To respect a parent, you’ve got to be afraid of them or something like that. I think these are sort of paradigms around control that are just so… Our culture is so fraught with them.

 

(13:08): I enjoy this kind of work of looking at how you might subvert that in a way, and it’s subverted from the perspective of what is this guy really wanting with it? How’s he wanting his son to see him? How’s he wanting his son to feel about him years to come when you’re an old man? How do you visage that relationship being?

 

(13:32): And then contrasting it with, well, did you grow up in a family like that? Where did you feel cherished? Did you and your mum feel safe in the family you grew up in? Becoming really interested in what it is that maybe he would like to see different, and then how that might be forwarded through this idea of listening and connection and becoming attuned to your son rather than picking on him when something goes wrong.

 

Dan Moss (14:06): Alan, I suppose for many of the practitioners listening to us today, they will have experiences of fathers coming in and being and presenting as quite intense, regarding the sense of injustice about what their partner is not doing or what their ex-partner should be doing, how their children should be behaving and how this provides perhaps a minimization of their own responsibility or even some blame shifting. This can be quite an intense early conversation for practitioners.

 

(14:38): For those who are looking for some advice about working with men in those early stages of conversation, what’s been helpful for you in having conversations with fathers in the beginning stages of your process with them, and in particular having more ethical conversations with them?

 

Alan Jenkins (14:56): Well, partly it’s in our expectations, I think. If I’m working in training with counsellors, I’m really looking at how you attune right at the beginning, how you expect that, of course, there’s going to be possibly a level of distrust or a level even a level of contempt that man might come in with. But if he’s got there usually because there’s been some sort of complaint about his behaviour, maybe if he’s had police involvement, there’s been judgement .

 

(15:31): And he comes into our room, he knows what he’s doing is not okay. I haven’t hardly met anybody who doesn’t really know that, look, some of their behaviour is shameful, but that he’s expecting that we are going to judge him. He’s expecting that probably we’re going to rub his nose in it in some ways or make him face up to something. And not surprisingly, he’ll be defensive in that situation.

 

(15:59): Sometimes we respond to the words rather than what is animating that feeling. I think this fits something that came up just the other day, whereas a guy comes into a men’s group, and he makes this big grumble about the government’s $5,000 payment for women fleeing violence to get shelter and stuff like that. He comes in, he says, “These effing women, they get everything. Everyone’s on the woman’s…”

 

(16:37): And there’s this contemptuous thing. And of course the temptation is, like it’s shocking to hear that, when we know how important it is to have those resources for women and how life-saving they might be. It’s shocking for us to hear that. It hits us. We have a jolt of panic that we experience in a situation like that.

 

(17:04): Then there’s often an attempt to try and explain to him why this is an important thing or to correct to respond at a logical rational level. And of course, that behaviour is not logical, rational. There can be violence that’s logical and rational, which is terrifying, but most violence is not.

 

(17:27): Most of those, I call them affective refrains, statements being made like, “I didn’t hurt her, she’s blah, blah, blah,” “These women shouldn’t get $5,000,” whatever. They’re more affectively driven, and we probably need to tune in on the affectives. We need to expect them, we need to not see them as some sign of great deviance, but to look at what’s driving that.

 

(17:54): Same where your guy says about this $5,000. I might ask him, “Well, tell me about where you heard that,” and he describes the radio programme and it was a woman announcing this on the radio, what did she say. Then I might ask something like, “Well, how did that grab you? What did you feel when she said that?” Or I might even ask, “Do you think she was saying something almost to you? What did you take from that?”

 

(18:22): I gradually learn that this man, he took that personally. He didn’t take it as in a public announcement. And if I look at what he took personally, it was something like, “You’re a violent man. You’re only a violent man and your partner should leave you.” That’s what he heard when he heard that.

 

(18:40): So, his reaction is nothing to do with the actual logical thing. And if we can attune to what’s going on for him, that he probably feels no one’s going to listen to him in this thing. Everyone’s going to point the finger at him, “You’re just a violent man.”

 

(18:58): If we can start attuning to his panic and then his shame that he feels, then we can start to have a conversation about what it’s really about, and we could start to hear his story a little bit about he doesn’t feel listened to. There are things that probably feels underestimated about, and I want to listen. I want his experience to be one where he’s listened to.

 

(19:27): I don’t have to agree with any of these contemptuous things he might say, but I’m not going to jump on them and correct him and things like that. Because what I know is that if there’s something more to him than violence, then he will be able to challenge that stuff himself. He will be able to put it next to his own values, and we can move into something that’s more helpful.

 

(19:56): So with counsellors, I’m really inviting them not to get into… There are some things to decline a conversation about, and there are some things that this man, there’s either a desperation in there or there’s a shame in there, or there’s a fear that, “I’m losing everything. My family’s going.” And if we can hear that, we can understand how important family feels to him and how he feels like he’s losing everything.

 

(20:24): Or how he feels like his child is just going to run amok and he’s going to lose his kid as well and his kid’s going to go off the run… If we can understand the panic in there, we can start to help him work with that and we can then discover a bit more about who he is and what he wants.

 

Dan Moss (20:45): Some practitioners are acutely aware that the father that they speak to in a room will later that evening be going home to meet with his partner and his children, and those children might be living in a climate of fear or coercion, and those partners and children might even be under real immediate threat. For those practitioners wanting to make a change, like an immediate change in the father’s thinking or behaviour, what would you say to them?

 

Alan Jenkins (21:17): This is the challenge of this work because we have an urgency, a sense of urgency, about this that often takes us in a direction that can increase risk. I think it’s so important for people working with men to really have some sort of knowledge to have looked deeply into the effects of violence on the children, on the woman, whoever it is.

 

(21:47): I know when I worked at Children’s Hospital some years back in a project that we are looking at babies who were brought in to hospital with what they called non-accidental injuries. And I’d make a point of going and visiting each baby and spending time, and I would see babies at times that had had, well, in some instances a lighted cigarette had been pushed into that. So, I saw shocking things that you think, how could somebody do that?

 

(22:20): We’ve got to hold this experience as we are working with… My job was to work with parents and see if there was a way of being able to set up something that might allow some kind of reconnection. And like you said, that in the example of the man is going home and we see risk there. And there’s always these kind of points of looking at when we take action to involve authorities and when we look at a process of engagement with that man and to think that if we just allow urgency or having to confront him or something like that, if we allow that to be the dominant way of processing, I think often we do more harm.

 

(23:12): Often there is more danger of having somebody, an escalating relation where the person goes off, “Here’s another person that thinks I’m this or underestimates me or is judging me.” That’s a dangerous space for somebody to leave in a counselling situation. And in a way, we sit with this, we hold this, how do we privilege connection with the man and forming some sense of connected attunement with accountability for his actions? How do we hold that kind of balance there?

 

(23:54): I’m not going to pretend that’s an easy thing to do or that it’s not fraught at times. It’s why I always like to work with a team, where we shared this and look what action might we take and what action might be problematic and how might we act in a way that safeguards the safety of people who are vulnerable or at risk of being hurt here?

 

Dan Moss (24:21): Alan, you’ve spoken a little bit today about shame, and I’m really interested in this concept because a lot of what you’ve spoken about is working with men who come into your room with already a great sense of shame about what they’ve done, how they’ve been, the damage they’ve inflicted on partners or children. How do you strike a balance in your work regarding hearing about a man’s shame without imposing shame on him?

 

Alan Jenkins (24:50): I mean, shame gets a bum rap. Shame was seen, you went through the 60s and 70s, shame was a problem. It got in the way of having a good time, throw it away. It’s a useless emotion, but shame, it’s an ethical marker. Shame is a boundary setting emotion or affect, I call it.

 

(25:11): Shame is something that helps us recognise the impact of our behaviour on others. Shame is something we need to set boundaries. It’s as important as love in forming relations. It’s a sort of, what’s the term if you think of an ethical compass? Shame is absolutely critical in that in terms of how we form discretion, about how we look at the impact of ourselves upon the other.

 

(25:40): So, I guess I’m working a lot with men initially before they face disgrace of their actions. They’re able to throw off a little bit of the mistaken shame that they’ve been carrying. So, if they’ve had lives where, if say a guy has grown up with a dad that’s been really abusive or has not had a dad, or people who’ve grown up living on the streets with all sorts of challenges and abuses and things, it’s really important that I understand their experience of injustice or of disadvantage or whatever it might be, that I have some understanding of that. If I’m expecting them to develop an understanding of the people they’ve heard, I see it as a matter of fairness and justice.

 

(26:36): It’s like if we don’t listen to the stories of the people we work with, but we expect them to listen to the stories of those they’ve heard, there’s a profound injustice in that, and so I’m not doing it. Some people say, “Oh, well, you might be giving an excuse for abusive behaviour by talking about their terrible life.” But no, it’s about, I’m wanting to listen, I’m wanting to hear, I’m wanting to model what I expect that this guy’s next steps of his journey might be.

 

(27:08): And you hear people’s stories of disadvantage and oppression and you discover resistance. There’s always little… I don’t know how many guys I’ve worked with that as little kids, they felt powerless and stuff, but they tried to stick up for their moms. They did all sorts of things. I’m hearing there’s this oppression, but there’s this resistance there and we’re looking at that.

 

(27:36): There’s capacity in here. And of course as the guy then starts to describe, or as I inquire about what’s important for him, what sort of relationship he wants with his kids or his pet, what kind of man he’s wanting to be, and he brings forth some ethical things, “I want my son to feel cherished.” Then he’ll start to feel some of that disgrace. Disgrace is close to the surface there, and you’ll see it.

 

(28:05): You’ll see it come forward, like it’ll come forward either at some point. He’d be talking about wanting to be this kind of dad and then his eyes will lower and I ask, “What are you seeing? What’s happening?” He said, “I haven’t always been able to put this into action.”

 

(28:20): He starts to acknowledge shame, and then I want to open a space for that because I might ask, “Have you told anyone that? Who would know that, that you feel some regrets or that you feel bad about some of this stuff? How important is it to look at this?” So we start to open up a space for shame to be seen as an important thing to embrace.

 

Dan Moss (28:51): So that’s all we have time for today, unfortunately folks, thank you so much for joining me in listening to the wisdom and experience of psychologist and author Alan Jenkins. In the second and final episode with Alan next fortnight, he will discuss shame in the ethical journey of men and fathers. He might even provide us with a case study from a father who has been referred to him from the family court.

 

(29:16): Alan will discuss the evolution of his practise and theory over the past decades and provide some further advice for those of you working with fathers who use violence. I’m Dan Moss and it’s been a privilege to join you today and look forward to joining you next fortnight. Thank you.

 

Narrator (29:33): Visit our website at www.emergingminds.com.au to access a range of resources to assist your practise. Brought to you by the National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health, led by Emerging Minds. The National Workforce Centre for Child Mental Health is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health under the National Support for Child or Youth Mental Health Program.