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That adults demonstrate this quality is crucial to any other
provision so it merits rather full discussion here. Clare Winnicott (1964a,
p. 29) says:
residential workers and case workers have something very
important in common in their attitude towards those whom they are trying
to help. This attitude has been expressed as one of acceptance of the
individual. Acceptance goes very deep. It is not a passive thing,
but an active effort on the part of the worker to know the individual as
he is, as a person in his own right, with his own life to live, and his
own intrinsic value as a human being. This does not mean that we accept
or approve all that an individual does or says, but that we try to reach
behind the delinquent act and the deceitful language to the suffering in
the human being which causes the symptoms we see. Acceptance in this
sense is in itself a basic therapeutic experience. For one thing it is
the opposite of rejection, but in a more positive way it implies to the
individual a sense of value, of worth, which is essential to life .
What are the implications of this for our discussion?
Acceptance (in this special sense) can be part of the climate of a unit;
something which is just there, and which, though its expression may vary
within limits (like the weather) remains reliably within these limits. This
is perhaps what visitors mean when they describe a unit as ‘warm’ or ‘cold’.
They are, in fact, sizing up the climate (rightly or wrongly) from the
particular ‘weather’ they see. Children make this kind of judgment too,
sometimes cautiously shedding a layer of defences to sample warmth or
wrapping themselves protectively when things look cold. Acceptance as part
of the climate of a unit means that children are never treated as just
another ‘admission’. (See Robert Kydd (1964) for a very
sensitive study of the feelings surrounding the moment of admission.) As any
guest knows, either too much or too little attention can be embarrassing,
and the host’s judgment of when to be available and when to leave him to his
own concerns is crucial. Acceptance as part of the climate also means a
readiness on the part of the staff to accept one another. So hierarchical
staff structures which devalue contributions from individuals as persons
work against acceptance among staff and acceptance of children.
To an extent, therefore, acceptance can be, and perhaps must be
institutionalized, i.e., built into the habitual living patterns of a group.
But acceptance which is only demonstrated thus is hollow indeed. An
apparently warm welcome followed by lack of any individual person-to-person
contacts at a depth beyond civilities is disheartening and bewildering. So,
eventually, and often very quickly for a small child, acceptance comes to
depend upon one or two special individuals through whom the general climate
of acceptance is made personally relevant. As with adults entering a strange
situation, the first person a child begins to relate to, as one individual
to another, stepping temporarily out of the flow of the community life
around, may be chosen for an odd variety of reasons: some apparent
similarity with a more familiar person or way of behaving, an accidental
throwing together away from the rest, even joint bewilderment. These first
tryings-out of individual acceptance need to be encouraged or the child may
opt out of acceptance and relationship even at this depth and merely float
along on the surface of the group. At the same time, although such first
transitory friendships may ripen and continue, it should not be expected
that they will always, or even generally do so. The reason for their
existence is often accidental, and as child and adult display more of
themselves to one another there needs to be freedom and encouragement to
make new choices based on less superficial beginnings.
If this comes about, then it becomes possible for adults to show, and
children to recognize, acceptance at a deep level. Children and adults who
are ‘normal’ and who have not suffered substantial damage or disturbance
have large parts of their life which are private and kept to themselves.
Only as some part of this personal, private aspect of oneself can be safely
revealed to others, can a deep feeling of acceptance develop. Disturbed or
upset children may demonstrate strongly some part of their feeling about
what has happened to them, and may be at great pains to cover up another
part which they hardly dare to face themselves. The accepting adult will be
neither dismayed by the former nor pounce eagerly on the latter as a ‘way
in’, but will encourage a gradual development to a more realistic statement
of feelings which can form a base for further growth in the new situation. A
child, having been already subject to a change of base, can rarely be
satisfied that a general climate of acceptance is safe enough by itself;
there is an absolute need for these deeper, personal kinds of acceptance to
develop and often to be tested out by demanding or awkward behaviour.
Testing out of this kind is a valuable affirmation that the child is
prepared to respond to an accepting climate or an accepting individual.
Acceptance then is a general attitude taken up by the unit and the people in
it. It is not expressed in a vacuum or necessarily verbally, but by what
people do, so it pervades all that follows here and in the next
chapters. |
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