Journal December 2025 Release - Flipbook - Page 7
5
An Apprenticeship in Extremis
Jo Viljoen
Why do we describe this as 'an apprenticeship in extremis'? Joanna had
previously spent approximately 50% of the previous eight years in admissions to
psychiatric hospitals, and her life was insecure when she was at home; she had
received 12 diagnoses, including Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, and was receiving a
cocktail of more than 12 medications.
Since this therapy was conducted online, all the conversations between
Jo/David/Joanna and Pieter were recorded. David had lost his record of this when
he changed computers, much to his dismay. It was only in 2015, when David
returned to teach in Johannesburg and met Jo after all these years, did he learn
that she had saved the correspondence to hard copy. David and Jo contacted
Joanna and Pieter, and they agreed to publishing this online because it is
important to them that there are witnesses to her struggle and survival. After
some discussion, we all agreed that they provide us with pseudonyms.
Introduction
It was 1995, and in South Africa, everything seemed fresh and new. Apartheid was
officially over, racial inequality supposedly a thing of the past. We were becoming
a democracy without the expected bloodbath everyone was bracing for before
the 1994 election. We were a rainbow nation in the making with a new flag and a
new national anthem, that I still had to learn all the words for. The political
changes opened portals of hope and brought the excitement of change. South
Africans had new opportunities to get to know one another as equal humans, not
as bosses and servants, maids and masters.
This time in our country’s transformation was marked by hope and upheaval. We
held our collective breath as rival factions of the previously banned liberation
movements vied for influence and the old regime resisted change. Negotiations
towards a democratic constitution unfolded into one of the most progressive
constitutions in the world. Our Bill of Rights protects civil, political, social, and
environmental freedoms – which were absent in the apartheid regime.
An Apprenticeship in Extremis
Journal of Contemporary Narrative Therapy, December 2025 Release, p. 5-44.
www.journalnft.com
