Talk:Co-Counselling International
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[edit] RC and CCI
Mark, this is not a place for playing tit for tat. In any case, as far as I can see the person or people who have been making changes to the RC page are nothing to do with CCI. CCI does not have an agenda of attacking RC. At the CCI European gathering this summer there was a discussion about our relationship with RC, prompted by an RC breakaway group wanting to join CCI, in which RC was spoken of in very positive terms.
I have removed your alterations. Some of the information comparing CCI and RC approaches might, perhaps, be appropriate on the Co-Counselling page. Of the criticisms you quote, "attempting in some cases to semi-professionalise what RC intended to be a basically free form of mutual assistance" is unfounded and "reports of sexual misconduct amongst CCI practitioners and several of these were reported to the British Association of Counselling in past years" is as far as I know, untrue and in any event you admit your sources are anecdotal and hence unsubstantiated. John Talbut 07:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
This is your POV John; I have met many CCI people over the years and quite a few have a lot of bile over RC - more importantly, CCI was a breakaway from RC and the article should reflect that. It was not added in response to the link on the RC page, just overdue as we need more clarity in these pages. CCI is attacked within RC and vica-versa; this needs saying. I won't re-insert the BAC allegations stuff even though I personally know them to be true as it will be impossible to get source material due to confidentiality rules, but please stop auto-reverting the rest for specious reasons. Thanks. MarkThomas 07:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
As far as CCI's attitude to RC is concerned, this is not just my POV but that of most of the people I know in CCI, and I suspect that I know many more of them than you do, Mark. CCI, of course, does not have a POV since it is not that sort of organisation and does not have a mechanism for deciding such things.
This page is not about RC or RC's attitudes to CCI. If there is anything useful to say about the relationship between RC and CCI then it should be, I suggest, on the Co-Counselling page.
With regards to the alterations you made:
- (RC - founded by US trade union activist Harvey Jackins) is about RC and is not relevant here.
- a British academic - it is clear from the next phrase what John Heron was, I presume you are trying to make some point about the backgrounds of John and Harvey which I do not think is relevant here.
- Within RC, CCI is often seen as an "attack organisation" etc. - this is about RC and is not relevant here. You might want to add something relating to this to the Co-Counselling page.
- There are about 2,500 active CCI "members" internationally, compared to about 15,000 in RC - I do not think either figure is at all accurate or can be substantiated. The paragraph is quite clear about the limited extent of CCI.
- Criticism - the first two points are not criticisms of CCI, except perhaps within RC, but reflect valid differences between the two approaches. Would you describe RC's approaches to these issues on the Co-Counselling page? With regard to semi-professionalising, I do not know what you are referring to. CCI is strictly about peer, non-professional activities.
- The link to Reflections on RC and attacks on it by Harvey Jackins, 1995 is not relevant information about CCI.
I propose to remove your alterations again, after you have had a chance to respond. John Talbut 08:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi John, I think some of your comments are fair and some I wouldn't agree with. I actually think it's very fair to mention RC and describe it as part of the origins of CCI since John Heron at the time (and I remember it personally) was strongly of the opinion that he was revising RC and making it right so to speak. Therefore we should say more about the relationship of the two and the views between them. They may well be very different now, but they are not uninterested in each other; RC RRPs still have strong views about it and exclude people who've done it, and I was surprised you wanted to exclude that remark. The statistics of members come from many years experience and, on the RC front, a careful study of Present Time compared with actual information from many countries and contact with RC members. The CCI figure I suspect may be wrong plus or minus 30% but not more than that and I have given them as estimates. The link to HJs views is relevant in the context of the supposition within RC that John Heron founded CCI essentially as an "attack" on RC following personal disagreements with HJ. All very relevant and I'm curious why you want to suppress it to be frank. MarkThomas 09:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
- Just realised John, I wonder if you are seeking to maintain what I see as an illusion that in some way co-counselling is independent of RC and was somehow created separately and that CCI is part of that movement? Not to be too sharply critical, but I would regard that as a historical distortion which should be corrected on Wikipedia. Sadly I think both bodies distort both their origins and development/influences, and that's what I'm trying to correct on both lots of pages, not to take a partisan position but to expose the whole thing to critical reality so that casual enquirers into either movement can get something more of an accurate understanding from WP. MarkThomas 09:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi Mark, I cannot understand what it is about "Co-Counselling International (CCI) was started in 1974 as breakaway from Re-evaluation Counseling " that in any way suggests that I am denying or trying to suppress CCI's origins.
Although I was not around in co-counselling at the time, I do know about the split between Harvey and John and I am aware that originally John wanted to change RC. However, rather than hanging around attacking Harvey, he forked off CCI. I sense from things that John has written fairly recently that he still carries some of the bitterness of the breakdown and that is not shared by people that I know in CCI. There was a clear development from RC in which John played a large part and was continued by others, including me, leading to the significant differences between RC and CCI. This contrasts, I think, with other breakaways form RC which seemed to be essentially leadership rather than ideological struggles in which someone else took to role of Harvey and the practice remained essentially the same as RC.
I am trying to be fair, and as I have repeatedly stated, I have nothing against RC. I would be happy for some more information to go on the Co-Counselling page about RC's relationship with breakaways. This page is about CCI.
I do think that figures that cannot be verified do not belong in Wikipedia. It seems as though you are aware that the lists in Present Time do not accurately reflect what is happening and it is in the nature of CCI that we could only guess at who are "active members" even assuming we could agree on what was meant by that. The rest of the paragraph makes quite clear the limited spread of CCI.John Talbut 11:25, 26 September 2006 (UTC)