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The Reformulation ‘16 Plus One’ Interview

Hepple, J., Lloyd, J., 2010. The Reformulation ‘16 Plus One’ Interview. Reformulation, Winter, pp.46-47.

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The editors prepared some questions for a telephone interview and Steve Potter agreed to take part. Steve describes himself as:

I am teaching CAT more or less full time at present and have been doing for the past four or five years. I have learnt so much from teaching a great variety of groups both in the UK and elsewhere. I am a trustee of ACAT and chair of the newly developing International Cognitive Analytic Therapy Association which is a federation of eight national associations. I am part of the Catalyse group of trainers which make up CAT North and co-lead with Hilary Beard the CAT psychotherapy course residential programme for the past three intakes.

1. Welcome to the interview - how are you doing?
   Fine
2. In another life I would have been a… ?
   Fireman or bus driver
3. Freud, Jung or Pavlov?
   Freud; obviously because he asked the right questions even if he got the wrong answers
4. Desert island luxury?
   A canoe with Sat.Nav and a fishing rod
5. Bach, Mahler or Radiohead?
   Bach helps me concentrate and makes me smile, Mahler is outside of musical comfort zone and Radiohead..who are they?
6. Greatest hero / heroine?
   Tony Ryle; because he has the wisdom to design the CAT scaffolding without being fooled into thinking it is a CAT temple
7. Cat, dog or Nintendo?
   None of the above; human beings are by far the most interesting things to cuddle or take for a walk
8. Dream meal?
   Milky porridge half-way up Coniston Old Man in the Lake District and the clouds below us and the possibility of poetry all around us.
9. Who are you in the ‘CAT Village’?
   Well I seem to have become the wanderer going from CAT village to village telling the locals what is new down the road.
10. Why did you become a psychotherapist?
    because I had problems that I finally realised were upsetting me and which I didn’t understand!
11. Who has been the biggest influence on the way you work?
    Albert Camus, Karen Horney, Eric Fromm and Kurt Lewin and that interwar generation of crystal clear, relational psychoanalytic thinking, probably.... but otherwise doing youth work with the roughest kids in Leeds in my 20’s whilst driving a mini-bus and singing “we are off, we are off, we are off in a motor car with fifty coppers after us and we don’t know where we are.”
12. Recommended reading?
    ‘The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View’ by Richard Tarnas: and ‘Middlemarch’ by George Eliot.
13. What do you hope to achieve with clients?
    A stronger capacity to be a participating observer in their lives. Observing is not a position, or an eye (as we put it) on the corner of a map. It is a dynamic, dialectic process. There is a delicate ‘push me, pull me’ dance between participating and observing that in trauma, for example, is dissociated.
14. How do you try to achieve this?
    By learning to make maps together that can track multiple realities with accuracy, compassion and curiosity.
15. What is your number one CAT concept?
    We constantly replay the relational patterns of early trauma and the available responses to it at the time not because we are bad or stupid but because we keep trying to make sense of the trauma. We so much want to understand our lives and worlds. Meaning is our motive. Relating is our method. Mapping is the key.
16. What do you see as a challenge for CAT in the future?
    To ensure its methods are applied as widely as possible with lots of creativity, curiosity and collaboration and without unwarranted bureaucracy or professional snobbery and jargon.
17. Follow/Up: What question do you wish we had asked?
    What is my favourite phrase? My favourite phrase is ‘Shimmering and Hovering’ - as in shimmering and hovering between desired and dreaded states as a step to being able to be a fuller, deeper, better ‘participating observer’ in the rough and tumble of one’s own and others’ lives.

Thank you and Goodbye!

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Full Reference

Hepple, J., Lloyd, J., 2010. The Reformulation ‘16 Plus One’ Interview. Reformulation, Winter, pp.46-47.

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