#Mockingbird Redux II: Working with Political and Psychological Polarities
‘Personal Note: It is a bizarre thing watching a book emerge and grow. The world has changed so much during this time, during these past five years, and not much of it for the better. We live with a fear and anxiety which was always with us, nay which many of us as minorities endured so readily as we were on the outside. Yet, as many more previously myopic groups see what is happening, as ICE agents murder as much as deport in the U.S.A., as Reform threaten to do much the same in the U.K. should they come to power, now it seems like so many previously protected peoples are afraid.
I can’t help but notice the irony.’
As I said in my previous blog, Intersections of Privilege and Otherness in Counselling and Psychotherapy is now 5 years old (Turner, 2021). This was a book built out of my doctoral research, which ended in 2017, yet, which in itself was conceived during a period of intense pain at the end of my marriage, it is a book which nonetheless means a lot to myself as it does to so many people out there who have read it (and to whom I owe my eternal thanks).
Yet, this is not a perfect book, and it was never conceived to be one. It is a book which was by its very nature designed to start a conversation, or conversations plural, about the nature of identity. Who are we? What forms do we take? Which parts of ourselves hold either privilege or otherness? It was a book designed to work with the polarities which sit within us, some of which we know well enough, some of which we deny and most probably project onto another in order to use them as our figures of hate.
And it was a book which was constructed to move us beyond the binary of polarising debates about race, gender, sexuality etc, and to move us more into the intersectional phenomenology of identity, whereby we all hold multiple identities at varying time, seeing these like fish in a lake which swim back and forth, round and round, some taking up more prominent positions whilst others regress into the background. Their positionality provoked by anything from the time of day, month or year, to what we are doing, where we are going, and what is needed from us at that time.
‘His career began on the streets of Luton, his hometown in Bedfordshire, where he was a member of the MIGs, the local hooligan gang. He became an anti-Islam activist as the leader of the English Defence League (EDL), then an anti-vaccine “citizen journalist” during the Covid-19 pandemic, and is now a pro-Israel advocate and defender of Christian values. Yet some traits have remained constant in this 42-year-old with a closely cropped haircut and boxer’s nose: a simmering anger, violence and a tendency to cast himself as a victim of the authorities and of the mainstream media.’ (Ducourtieux, 2025)
Yes polarities exist. I can’t deny that. The world that we live within, the wider political landscape, is very much built out of the need to polarise people. From Brexit and the rise of populism and neo-fascism to the emergent efforts of left leaning groups such as the Green Party here in the United Kingdom. From the emergence of White Supremacists in the politics of the United States of America and the U.K. to their opposition being called out as Radical Left Loonies, or having the Woke Mind Virus, the politics of polarisation is very much driven by a binary need for create an other and for hate to therefore permeate this form of polarisation.
Taking Brexit as an example, that vote back in 2016 which split communities, cultures, families, which drove a wedge between aspects of the whole country (Boffey, 2018). The fear and hatred that this engendered seemed to come from nowhere, a rage which has been captured and harnessed by those who would manipulate and use it for their own political ends. Yet, to believe that this split was not there previously is massively flawed. This split was there, yet was covered up, nay silenced by the political Left in the years gone by. By the liberal, who didn’t really want to see too much of the system change, so they put in edicts which performed the function of pretending that we were all equal, that we all saw each other as the same, but denied us the chance to talk about, to explore, and to learn from difference.
This is one of the most important aspects of #mockingbird. It was never a book designed to maintain that silence. It was, it is and always will be, a book designed to explore our many identities, providing and encouraging space for the discussions which need to happen. For the stories which need to be heard, whichever side of the political spectrum they come from.
‘I remember what you did at a workshop you ran online. A woman turned up and started berating you about your position as a black man, and how it was white men who were more disadvantaged than any other group. And you let her get on with it. You gave her space to have a go at you. And I watched you, and realised that in your silence you just held her. You met her and you held her. And you held her with love. That was a special moment for me.’
Meeting hate with love, is not an easy task for any of us (and love is not necessarily the word I would use). Meeting the hatred of the other based upon my position doesn’t mean that I know more than they do, or that I am better than they are. It means that I am willing to use myself, my therapy self, as a conduit for them to work out whatever moral dilemma they need to in the service of their inner willingness to grow, to change, to become more moral, and to see more of the humanity of the other.
It is about them being challenged to see me as more than just an object. In positioning myself as an educator, lecturer, or a psychotherapist, one of the things which my mere presence challenges is the internalised and stereotypical social constructions of my identity which they have based their prejudices upon. This means that no longer am I a mugger who watches Toy Boy for example. Now I am Dr Dwight Turner, an experienced prominent psychotherapist. This means that no longer am I an immigrant who has only come to the U.K. to take their jobs and steal their women. Now, I am a father, a partner, and a activist.
Political polarities other the Other. They make the Other way less than they actually are. They dehumanise the Other, making them an object for our own unwanted aspects of our socially constructed psyches. Being able to sit and listen, to receive and not react to, the stories, messages, and rants, of those who need us, even if their positions are different to ours, this is the route towards understanding and healing for all of us. This does not mean that any of us are not going to be hurt, triggered, or provoked, by such experiences. We are all only human.
‘Personal note: #Mockingbird. The book started a conversation. An important one. And now the genie is out of the bottle, I hope that it continues to make waves, to hit home, and to lead to the inclusion of more people on our courses, in our practices, and in our communities. Our identities are intersectional, our lives are intersectional, and our world is intersectional. This is the pathway towards equity.’
References
Boffey, D. (2018, November). Empire 2.0: the fantasy that’s fuelling Tory divisions on Brexit. Guardian Online, 1. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/08/empire-fantasy-fuelling-tory-divisions-on-brexit
Ducourtieux, C. (2025). Tommy Robinson, a racist hooligan turned mass mobilizer. Le Monde. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/10/19/tommy-robinson-a-racist-hooligan-turned-mass-mobilizer_6746571_4.html
Turner, D. D. L. (2021). Intersections of privilege and otherness in counselling and psychotherapy (1st ed.). Routledge.