journal_august_2026_release_full_edition - Flipbook - Page 11
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infidelity to consider anything other than that which has been considered by the
manual designers or the algorithm.
One of the matters that Michael and I saw eye to eye from almost the very first
day we met was our dissatisfaction with the professionalisation of the interview.
We both began our careers in child psychiatry, Michael in Adelaide, Australia, and
myself in Auckland, New Zealand. We were frustrated by how such 8interviews9
allowed us to both know and regard those who sought our assistance and, as well,
how they came to know us through such interview questions. In fact, Michael
soon renamed the inquiries we were adopting and inventing by substituting
8therapeutic conversation9 for the commonplace term 8interview9. Why did he do
this? It was to characterise something very different & conversation, yes, but a
very particular form of conversation for a very particular purpose: therapeutic. By
contrast, the interview positioned the professional as an elevated outsider, in a
manner of speaking, looking down upon the other. We sought a means to share in
the making of the conversation, a kind of 8train of thought9 on which both of us
travelled alongside one another.
Many of our inquiries may have been regarded as heretical at the time according
to the taken-for-granted assumptions of psychotherapeutic inquiry, and that still
may be so. Although then, I very much doubt we would have been able to
articulate what we were embarking on in the way I propose to do so now, for I
have the benefit of the wisdom of hindsight to assist me. This address has had me
reminisce, which is appropriate to those of my age, looking back on our efforts to
realise our intentions some 40 years later.
What did we seek our questions to do? That is the question I posed to myself in
my reminiscences. In the 1980s, whenever I taught a workshop in Australia, often
in Adelaide, Michael would invite me to stay another week so we could work
together. He would seek consent from his clients—as he put it,
