The Psychology of Helping

1
The Psychology of Helping

• Alison Hardingham, MA Oxon, C Psychol
• Visiting Executive Professor , Henley College of
  Management
• Director of Business Psychology, Yellow Dog
  Consulting

2
Purpose of my dialogue with you today

• To explore and understand what goes on between
  and inside us when we help each other, and so
  become better able to help with lasting benefit
  and no harm

3
Structure of my dialogue with you today

• Who I am and what I believe
• What do we mean by helping here?
• Some provoking comments
• Some thoughts about the psychology of helping
• Some thoughts about the risks of helping
• Some practical recommendations for the
  development and support of those who help
• Open dialogue

4
Who I am and what I believe

• Business psychologist
• Executive coach, and teacher/supervisor of
  coaches
• Eclectic
• Biased towards evolutionary biology and
  psychodynamic approaches
• The unexamined life is not worth living
  (Socrates)

5
What do we mean by helping here?
6
What does it mean to be in a helping profession?
7
Some provoking comments
8
With great puzzlement and a furrowed brow he
said, I dont understand why you are so angry
with me. I wasnt trying to help you.(From
Wilfred Bions work with groups)
9

• (De Gaulle) also had a real hatred of the
  Americans, and a kind of love-hatred complex
  about the British. The truth is I may be
  cynical, but I fear it is true- if Hitler had
  danced in the streets of London, wed have had no
  trouble with de Gaulle! What they could not
  forgive us is that we held on, and that we saved
  France. People, can forgive an injury, but they
  can hardly ever forgive a benefit. (Harold
  Macmillan, quoted in Charltons The Price of
  Victory, BBC, 1983)

10
The act of helping another person is often not
simple and straightforward. It derives from
complex motivations, in both helper and helped,
and it has complex and long-lasting consequences,
often unforeseen at the time of helping.
11
Would you rather help or be helped?
12
Some thoughts about the psychology of helping

• An evolutionary perspective

13
Why do we help?

• Kinship
• To ensure our own survival (physical, social and
  psychological)

14
Why do we seek help?

• Kinship
• To ensure our own survival (physical, social and
  psychological)

15
When we help, we build our own survival credits
at another human beings expense, evolutionarily
speaking.
16
Some thoughts about the psychology of helping

• A psychodynamic perspective

17

• Helping and being helped can elicit transfer of
  emotions and behaviours from those early and most
  powerful human relations those between parent
  and child.
• So the motivation to help taps directly into our
  inner theatre and is often underpinned by
  powerful, complex and unconscious forces.

18
Some thoughts about the risks of helping

• Dependency genuine and cynical
• Omnipotence
• Exploitation
• Disappointment, despondency, exhaustion
• Avoidance of ones own issues and, ultimately,
  loss of self
• Anger is often the presenting symptom.

19
Some practical recommendations

• Those who help need to explore and understand
  their own motivations for helping.
• Those who help need to ensure a balance between
  helping and being helped, in their own lives.
• Those who help need supervision.

20
Supervision

• A (usually guided) process of reflection and
  dialogue which enables
• - self-awareness, honesty and compassion
• - personal and professional development
• - emotional support and re-charging
• - the management of ethical boundaries and the
  assurance of safe helping

21
Final thought
22
No man is an island..any mans death
diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind
And therefore never send to know for whom the
bell tolls It tolls for thee. (John Donne)
23
Reading list

• The Coachs Coach, Alison Hardingham, 2004
• Awareness, Anthony De Mello, 1990
• How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker, 1997
• Leadership Coaching, Graham Lee, 2003
• The Leader on the Couch, Manfred Kets De Vries,
  2007
• Supervision in the Helping Professions, Hawkins
  and Shohet, 1989