Matteo Francescon Counselling and Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy and Gianni Vattimo

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 03:18:30 -0700

Gianni Vattimo passed away recently (on 19/09/23) so I'm writing this to remember him and all the things he taught me.
I remember reading his books in my late teens/early 20s and discovering a new way to look at the world. I studied History of philosophy in secondary school and at university, but Vattimo was for me an unexpected revolution. His writing felt like a rebellion to the sedimented knowledge of the past: Aristotele, Decartes and Hegel. In my young mind, Vattimo was a rebellion! His writing had profound political connotations and gave me a new lens to look at the world. It fascinated me and guided my self-development for a long time.

His concept of ‘il pensiero debole’ (the weak thought) helped me to find stillness, to focus on myself and my ‘life story’. At the end of the day, that self-narrative is all we can truly know about ourself. This also brought me to focus on the social and political narrative around me. I felt I had to be politically engaged and started to feel that I can belong to a community. This awakening made me step into adulthood. After a few years, this became an integral piece of my self-development and ultimately led me to approach psychotherapy as a profession.

Vattimo first introduced me to the concept of ‘multiple truths’. This is the idea that we cannot really know the world objectively. Objectivity is not possible. This has interesting iplications in the way he conceptualise science as a discipline. What is different in...Read More

How to Survive Capitalism

Tue, 06 Jun 2023 06:13:33 -0700

Some ideas to keep our head above the water in this late-stage capitalistic economy. I concentrated a lot of my reading on post-capitalism lately and came across several interesting writers and social media people. I recommend Tim Jackson 'Post-Growth', published in 2021.
These ideas in particular are inspired by Laura Oldaine’s work.

1. We start by recognising that the lifestyle we have has already been designed for us

Capitalism expects us to be trapped in this hamster wheel of earn-spend-repeat. We changed our social norms to think that this is acceptable and even desirable.

2. We want to learn to use our time and attention wisely

Money is not the only capital we have, there is also time and attention. Valuing and using these sensisbly can really boost our life satisfaction.
Social media corporations realised that taking advantage of our time and attention is highly profitable, so we need to pull ourselves away from this game. How can we redirect our attention and time towards something that benefits ourselves, rather than big corporations?

3. Redefine wealth

Our society has created a very distorted concept of ‘wealth’, which includes posh cars, mansions and luxury brands. However, what we really want from money is the sense of control and empowerment we have when we can choose how to spend our time.
We need to redefine what wealth means for us and start from there.

4. Engage less in the capitalistic economy

This is not about recycling, it’s about consuming less. Reducing our consume needs means we stop buying things we don’t need. Reduce our consumptions and embrace degrowth.
It can also feel empowering to meet our needs without using money. We can feel more resourced and proud of our achievements.

5. Protect our physical and mental health, as well as our creativity.

Capitalism kills initiative and freedom of expression. Capitalism is the enemy...Read More

Brexit and Degrowth in the UK

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 07:50:05 -0800

Was Brexit a mistake? Of course it was!
● One of the main points for brexiteers was that the UK could control its borders. Yet, immigration to the UK, since Brexit, has sharply increased.
● Since leaving the EU, there are a lot of industries critically under-staffed (hospitality, food production, health and social care, delivery companies, just to name a few).
● The famous 350 million pounds that the UK would have saved from its EU membership were promised to the NHS, but they never appeared.
● Truck drivers are waiting for hours on end at the ports in Kent, blocking the supply chains for both import and export.
● There is so much bureaucracy that it is no longer valuable for European countries to do business with the UK. The Brexiteeres claimed they would have replaced these by trading with Australia and New Zealand, but at the moment these are costing more money than they’re worth.
● As a consequence of the war in Ukraine, energy prices have increased all over Europe, but not as much as in the UK.

Because of all this, the UK is the only G7 economy due to shrink this year.
Could there be a way for the UK to turn this around? The UK has been a leader in changes throughout history, can it turn it around again? Can this crisis stimulate a different type of economy? The place to start feels counter-intuitive, but it’s ‘Degrowth’.

Degrowth is a concept that is gaining momentum in the economy sector; especially in the context of post-capitalism. Degrowth is based on the principles of:

Psychology & Power

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 10:43:55 -0800

[This article is adapted from an essay I wrote for the University of Roehampton]

To critically discuss epistemology and power, it is essential to start with Milgram’s experiment on obedience (1963). This is one of the most well known studies on individuals’ relationship with power. Since its publication, its results have been heavily debated and criticised.

The experiment focuses on the conflict between obedience of authority and personal conscience. The aim of the experiment was to see how far people would go obeying orders, even when this involved harming other people. I don’t want to explore the procedures of the experiment. It is important to mention that all participants continued to 300 volts, and 65% of them (two thirds) went up to the maximum of 450. Milgram carried out 18 variations on this study and it was replicated several times in different conditions with similar conclusions.

To start investigating the implications of the experiment, it is essential to contextualise it in its historical frame. The study took place in 1960s America, at the time when the world was trying to make sense of the holocaust. The experiment started in 1961, a year after Adolf Eichmann’s trial. It was published the same year as Hannah Arendt’s work on the ‘banality of evil’ (1963), just after Eichmann’s execution in 1962. Recent literature on the subject, still supports the juxtaposition of Milgram’s study to the historic understanding of the Holocaust (Mastroianni, 2002; Bridgman & Cummings, 2022). It seems that this combination is inextricable. Therefore, any investigation on the significance of Milgram’s experiment must begin with the historical context where the study took place.

Milgram’s study has been explained in different ways. The following paragraphs will critically evaluate the most commonly discussed theories. The first of those is Milgram’s own explanation, also called ‘agentic shift’ (1974). The second is the social identity...Read More

Psychology's WEIRD History

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 08:12:02 -0800

[This is part of an essay I wrote for a master degree in Psychology at the University of Roehampton]

The acronym WEIRD (Henrich et al., 2010) refers to Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic societies or individuals. The term is used here to highlight biases in psychology research.

From a historical perspective, psychology has its roots in philosophy and social science, and it established itself as a separate discipline in Germany in the late 19th century. This means that the discipline was founded by white, educated European men.

My task here is to give voice to a non-WEIRD researcher and to look at their contribution to the wider field of psychology. This includes all members of under-represented communities and minorities.

It is interesting to notice that the first example of a non-WEIRD psychological research that came to my mind was Mary Answorth (1913-1999) and her work on attachment patterns in Uganda (1967). Although Answorth’s work is significant for the inclusion of women in research, I would prefer to focus on someone who was even less represented. Inspired by a lecture on intelligence testing, I came across the work of Herman George Canady (1901-1970).

Canady was an African-American clinical and social psychologist who examined the role of the examiner in intelligence testing. He investigated unconscious biases in intelligence testing regarding race and gender.

His most influential work focuses on the effect of ‘rapport’ between the examiner and the child examined (1936). This research investigates white researchers testing black children. Due to the historical and social context of America in the 1930s, this research was innovative and avant-garde. Canady highlights his discontent with the lack of psychological research focused on black experience. He also explores the obstacles and discrimination that the black youth faced at the time (Canady, 1942). His work opened the...Read More

Humanistic Psychotherapy A Brief Introduction

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 03:49:58 -0700

The Humanistic approach is rooted in the so-called ‘third force’ of psychotherapy. After psychoanalysis and behaviourism, in our post-industrial culture, therapists started to think about human nature in a different way. This psychological perspective emphasises the individual’s ability to self-actualise. This is the inherited ability to express and potentially realise one’s own capabilities and creativity.

Humanistic philosophy is a holistic approach which pays attention to human existence and pays particular attention to creativity, free will, self-expression and human potential. The first main difference from the psychoanalytic approach and the behaviourism is that the humanistic approach is experiential; which means that it encourages self-exploration, as opposed to creating a study of the person’s psyche and behaviours. This means that the main goal of humanistic psychotherapy is self-awareness, which is seen as an essential prerequisite to a free choice and therapeutic change. Humanistic psychotherapy looks at the whole person, which includes: thoughts, behaviours, emotions and spirit. In humanistic terms, we all have a spiritual existence, but this means different things for different people. Transpersonal psychotherapy is a side branch of Humanistic therapy that looks at how we live our spiritual life (faith, religions, meditation, mindfulness…). In political terms, Humanistic-Existential therapy is the approach that models democracy more than any other. This is a truly relational approach, where the setting encourages an egalitarian power dynamic between the therapeutic dyad.

We can trace the humanistic philosophical roots all the way to Eraclitus. What we now call Humanistic Psychotherapy has its roots in the integration of three different modalities: Gestalt (Perls, Hefferline & Goodman, 1951),...Read More

Post-Capitalism

Mon, 15 Aug 2022 04:55:05 -0700

What is really stopping us from rethinking our economic system? We are currently experiencing the malfunctioning of capitalism. There are two main issues: first, the problem with infinite growth is that the resources of this planet are not infinite. And second, capitalism does not make us happy.

The myth of eternal progress was built to feed the wars in Europe and possibly only produced wealth for the post-war generation, who were able to buy goods without thinking about the consequences on the planet. We now no longer have that luxury. Besides, accumulating material stuff doesn’t necessarily make us happy.

Capitalism is not fit for our wellbeing. What we want is an economical system that provides health and wellbeing for all. Capitalistic economy only seems to increase stress, anxiety and produce more difficulties in our lives.

One of the problems is that capitalism fits our human brains too well: this idea that we want more and we’re not satisfied is very human. This ‘perfectionistic trap’ of feeling not good enough is a constant struggle. We need to make an effort to change, and push ourselves beyond our nature.

It is interesting to remember that we don’t have to compete with others, we can also cooperate. And there are plenty of examples in nature. If competing fits the dogma of capitalism better, then we need to come up with a new way to operate based on cooperation.

It is reductive that the only way we have to measure our economies is the GDP. That only measures economic growth, but economic growth doesn’t tell us anything about how happy we are. There is no way around a growth-based economy: no such thing as ‘green growth’, in my opinion. We need to rethink the concept of growth altogether. We cannot afford to grow forever. This is causing the climate crisis and the destruction of biodiversity on our planet.

I like Jackson’s (2020) definition of ‘Post-Growth’, we don’t know what that is yet, and the term...Read More

Rebellion and Freedom

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 05:53:59 -0700

Sometimes we can think we made the wrong decisions in the past, and that it is too late to change. Saying that it is never too late to change feels somehow reductive. It is more complex than that: there are often boundaries and restrictions that can make change feel impossible. We need to go through a lot of internal processes before we are ready to change.

Safety and Restrictions

Limitations are often imposed by our societies as well as by ourselves. I’m thinking about all the boundaries and restrictions we have in relation to others. They are usually created with the aim to keep us safe. However, like the high walls erected to defend a city, during a siege they become a prison and a trap. The citizens want to escape, but they are trapped by the same structure they built for protection.

So we have this internal conflict where a part of us wants to break away from conventions and self-imposed restrictions. This is fuelled by the need to explore and experiment. A creative energy that pushes towards the unknown. This is the dichotomy between the compliant-self and the rebellious-self.

The Rebellion

The internal conflict feels impossible to resolve. Sometimes it feels impossible even to address. So we end up leaving it, or worse, suppressing it. The turmoil rages, creating frustration and angst. Those powerful feelings are often expressed in art and politics, projected onto others because it is too hard to own them. This switch between polarities feeds the sense of uncertainty. How much safety do we need, and how much uncertainty can we tolerate? The rebellion starts when we dismantle internal restrictions. It explodes when it can no longer be contained. The act of rebellion is powerful, strong and liberatory. There is something appealing and even charming in the rebellion, and yet rebellion is destructive. Sometimes things need to be destroyed before they are rebuilt....Read More

'Thinking, Fast and Slow' Daniel Kahneman (2011)

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:36:25 -0700

Reading this book 11 years after its initial publication I realised how much of it has been integrated into everyday use.
The concept of System 1 and 2 are of common use amongst professionals. The concepts on heuristics and cognitive biases are also explored in extensive details. However the amount of details and precision is, in my opinion, somehow excessive. The minutios explanation of very simple concepts felt quite tedious and unnecessarily laborious. Sometimes I felt Kahneman was over-complicating something that, at its core, would be quite intuitive.

Maybe though, this book had to be written: someone had to summarise and explain all these heuristics and tell us we jump to conclusions and think in black-and-white.

I’m glad I persevered with this book, but I probably wouldn’t feel the need to read it again or reference it.

'Bad Science' Ben Goldacre (2008)

Mon, 18 Jul 2022 02:33:05 -0700

I was recommended to read ‘Bad Science’ by Ben Goldacre, in preparation for further studies, especially because the degree I’m about to start involves research. The author is quite witty and engaging, so it’s an enjoyable read.

Because this book was published in 2008, social media was not in the picture, unfortunately. I wonder how it would have been if it was written today, considering Twitter and online content. The author would have probably considered clickbaiting as an important factor in spreading bad science. However, this book is far from being ‘of its time’, because methodology in research still needs to be rigorous, and the same sort of terrible news articles are still written today (especially on social media!).

One of my favourite parts was the case of Matthias Rath and his ‘cure’ for HIV and AIDS. I admire Goldacre’s courage to speak up.

The author’s passion for ethicacy and transparency is inspiring. It helped me to feel hopeful going back to university and research.