2021: Volume 5: Issue 2
■ Sijtze de Roos
Diversity is not a local hype, a fancy upper middle class pre-occupation or a passing fad, it is part of the human condition. Not only is it a matter of class, age, sex, gender or ethnicity, but just as well of history, lifestyle, religion, education and of political and moral convictions, traditions and value systems. And not to forget of the impact of geography, climate and the accessibility of water and food. All these factors shape our diverse social, economic and political arrangements, our family and kinship structures and our individual sense of self. All these factors permeate every aspect and every minute of our daily life. It could be said that nothing is more communal than the ever so highly revered ‘personal identity’ of the individual.
One could also argue that people are like diamonds: an impenetrable core with many outer facets. No intelligent and self-learning system, biological or artificial, understands itself completely, nor will it ever be completely understood by others. It then depends on where the light falls, if at least you are allowed to turn your manifold self to the sun. Or if the powers that be leave you free to develop your own narrative and help weaving the community you feel you belong to. Considering what people do to their own and each other’s real or imagined identity, we immediately deal with a political issue. At stake is the right to be different and to belong. At stake, too, is the concurrent moral duty to refrain from boxing people up in preconceived and prejudicial categories. People cannot - and therefore should not - be fixed to a single ‘identity’ based on just one feature like nationality, class, colour, gender or any other category that could be used to put - and keep - ‘the other’ in the readymade plugholes that ideology or the blind power of habit assigns them to.
This brings us to the topic of this issue and its significance for our trade. Supervision and coaching are narrative in nature. All personal narratives reflect individually differing social experiences. What our clients bring forward will inevitably touch on the incidence of injustice, inequality, discrimination and of the willful or unthinking exclusion of - to name but a few examples - psychiatric patients, refugees or ‘strangers’. What we as professionals are challenged to do, and which different means and methods we could employ, is discussed under the heading ‘diversity and plural identities’.
This thematic section contains six articles, interspersed and illuminated by three vignettes by, respectively, Jasmine Gill (UK), DeBorah ‘Sunni’ Smith (USA) and Isabelle Asseman (France), who eloquently share their various personal experiences and dealings with diversity. But we open with an essay by Lea Pelosi (Switzerland). She invites us to rethink the identity of self in reflection. A diverse world, she argues, doesn’t allow for unambiguous identification. Is putting our identity at stake problematic or could it be an opportunity for dynamic self-understanding differing from assimilation and self-optimization? What could supervision contribute to this?... ■
