On the ethical stance of the therapist in the present moment

The Ethical Stance of the Therapist i Alexis Ibarra Mexico City, Mexico Abstract In this paper I reflect on the role of the therapist in a time of global crisis such as the current one. Our present state of pandemic and confinement is a starting point to question the limitations of expert knowledge within psychology and therapy. The questions guiding this paper are: How do we inhabit the expert role in therapy? What stances and practices support our work? What impact do they have on the people we work with? My framework of thought is constructionist, psychology is understood as a socio-historical product. The text moves along four lines of thinking: the fractures in daily life triggered by the pandemic, the role of psychological discourses in this context, the possibilities of a narrative metaphor and the ethical stance of the therapist. I join the voices underscoring the importance of acting as reflective practitioner, of sustaining a philosophical stance in sync with our practices and relationships. It is a way of thinking about therapy where ethics shapes the encounters between people. Key Words: ethics, vulnerability, collaboration, dialogue, discourse, expert knowledge In this essay I reflect on the role of the therapist in a moment of global crisis such as the present one. In the process of writing this text, my first intention was to reflect on a unique situation of global emergency, where psychotherapy professionals face unknown challenges questioning their preferred frameworks for action and understanding. The scope of these ideas might be limited if one is to assume that the pandemic will eventually end, and so-called normality will come back. These events may arrive, or not, before this article is published. However, the pandemic has acted as a magnifying glass that brought out the fact that we live in a world of accelerated changes, that lives unfold within unstable and uncertain contexts, and that each individual faces unique challenges. This moment of crisis poses relevant questions for the long term: How do we inhabit the expert role? What stances and practices shape our work? How do those stances and practices impact the people we work with? Even though a state of lockdown and pandemic may not be permanent, the question about the frames of thought and action that allow us to respond to people will still be relevant. Therefore, the therapist’s ethical stance is of central importance. The ideas that follow come from different sources, but they all share a common background: social constructionist thought. The various strands of constructionism draw on the implications of postmodern critique in order to examine the problem of knowledge production and the problem of reality representation (Gergen, 1999; Rorty 1979). International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 1 Ibarra Regarding the first issue, social constructionism questions what gets to count as knowledge, for whom, under what circumstances and with what consequences. As a result, a critical distance from all knowledge traditions is suggested. Regarding the second issue, social constructionism inquires how descriptions of the world and reality are generated within social processes and specific communities (Gergen, 1999; Potter, 1996; Potter & Hepburn, 2008). Constructionist dialogues treat psychology as a socio-historical by-product and not as universal knowledge which would reveal the inner truth of the subject. There is a marked interest in how psychological knowledge is disseminated across society, what sort of practices and institutions give this knowledge legitimacy and how they are filtered through everyday life. Special emphasis is placed on what gets to be named as expert knowledge, which is not a neutral label because it incites people to look and act toward themselves following normality standards. In the present moment of urgency, it is expected that people will look for certainty and refuge in the knowledges of psychology. As practitioners, the need to interrogate our knowledges and their effects becomes more compelling than ever (Anderson, 2014). In that sense, this essay joins the voices underscoring the importance of acting as a reflective practitioner, of holding a philosophical stance that is in sync with our practices and relationships, and of ethics shaping every interpersonal encounter. The text moves along four lines of thinking: the fractures in daily life triggered by the pandemic, the role of psychological discourses, the possibilities of a narrative metaphor, and the ethical stance of the therapist. Fractures In Everyday Life Witnesses Before dealing with the subject matter of this text. It is necessary to distinguish between two groups of people. On one hand, there are those who have suffered the coronavirus disease and experienced its brutal damage directly. Here I think of individuals who have been infected by the virus, their close network, and healthcare professionals providing medical care. They all have experienced or witnessed accelerated health decline, uncertainty regarding the final outcome and even death. On the other hand, there are those who have not faced illness directly. All of us who question everyday if we might be carrying the virus, with a constant fear of being infected or infectious, anguished that someone close to us might fall ill, not knowing how serious the illness might be and if there will be any possibility of a cure. At the same time, we live in the limbo that is the total suspension of our ordinary lives, in an unprecedented state of confinement and uncertainty. Facing illness and dying involves larger challenges that will reverberate throughout time. Therefore, here I will only write about those whose lives have not been directly disrupted by the virus but nevertheless are positioned as witnesses. I borrow this term from Kaethe Weingarten. It is a complex notion insofar as it comprises what our senses perceive regardless of personal choice, the consequences of being a witness and the possibility of shaping a response (Weingarten, n. d.). International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 2 Ibarra Occupying the position of a witness may induce a state of common shock. The definition of shock entails a sudden and violent disturbance of spirit or body. During this pandemic we all have been placed in a position of witnesses, we are bombarded with information about the virus, and we cannot withdraw from it. Individual experiences regarding confinement and the pandemic are diverse. Nevertheless, to a certain degree we all live in a state of shock that is shared with those surrounding us. How should the so-called mental health experts respond to this community of witnesses? What are the assumptions shaping this response? The Global Context The facts are widely known: from the first time the virus was detected inside a human body in Wuhan to the declaration of a state of pandemic. In order to stop the virus propagation several measures were implemented, people across the globe had to comply with different degrees of reduced mobility, confinement, and physical and social isolation. The pandemic triggered various overlapping crises: sanitary, economic and social. Such crises are not simply caused by the virus ‘ability’ for transmission and reproduction. There are other matters at hand: what sort of infrastructures can manage the health crisis and care for the population, what the economic consequences generated by confinement will be, how they will be managed by governments. Such crises and their ramifications are not a product of a virus, they involve human decisions and the beliefs behind those decisions. What is labelled a natural catastrophe is usually originated within a social matrix (Bacigalupe, 2019). Many thinkers have been trying to articulate the global consequences of the pandemic. Within those debates new issues emerge: some have pronounced capitalism dead, others assert that the current crisis will propel ‘disaster capitalism’ with elites benefiting from it, others warn about new forms of totalitarianism being imposed and of emerging forms of technological surveillance to control populations. Many point out that the pandemic has deepened race, class and gender inequalities (Agamben, 2020; Butler, 2020; Han, 2020; Klein, 2020; Preciado, 2020; Zizek, 2020). Ethical dilemmas become more pressing than ever: what will be safeguarded, which lives will be protected, what will prevail self-preservation or mutual care? What will be accorded a higher value, profit or ecology? Life or the economy? The former reflections are not meant to provide a full survey of the pandemic and its ramifications. They work as a background that enables us to interrogate that complex tapestry of practices and discourses called therapy. What kind of response can therapy offer in this time of crisis? To what extent those responses acknowledge the complexity of the current landscape? How is the current crisis impacting life trajectories? If our everyday life has been dislocated, what are the consequences on our interpersonal relationships? International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 3 Ibarra Transformations of Everyday Life The cascading of global-scale changes could not leave our lives unaltered. However, the early days of the pandemic seemed to revolve around the tacit notion that life does not come to a halt, it simply moves to the screens. The anonymous message is that everything (work, school, family, intimacy) can happen online. A false parallel is established between activities mediated and regulated by the screen and the sharing of physical and affective spaces. During this period, there seemed to be a collective illusion of business-as-usual urging everybody to keep the axes of ‘normality’ intact: productivity, consumption and entertainment. As long as this collective illusion permeates our view of the pandemic, other dimensions are rendered invisible: the limitations of our bodies, the affective and social sustenance of life, the material circumstances in which lives unfold. The experience of confinement cannot be the same for everyone. The pandemic has deepened previously existing inequalities, while at the same time it has amplified other differences. The population can be divided between ‘global’ citizens with no ties to a geographical space, able to labor and acquire goods and services remotely, and those who depend on their physical bodies as labor force. One side of the population can experience the pandemic with a relative feeling of safety, meanwhile, others are not only at a higher risk of contagion but of losing financial and job security (Bauman, 2003). Socioeconomic realities generate different experiences of isolation and lockdown. Not every individual has financial and job security, not every individual has adequate housing conditions. Extreme wealth or poverty can create radically diverging experiences of confinement. Some people have been driven to an extreme condition of isolation and loneliness, others are in a state of intensified physical and relational proximity. The stay-at-home message is based on an implicit notion that any housing infrastructure will be experienced as a place of shelter. Home becomes the equivalent of the nuclear family, which is always associated with an ideal of happiness (Ahmed, 2010). During quarantine, the notion of home as a private space is defined as a safe place, meanwhile public space is signified as a source of contagion. Staying at home cannot guarantee physical and emotional safety for everyone. There are always individuals at a higher risk of being subjected to violence: women, sexual minorities, anyone in a condition of dependency. In addition, the family is facing an overload of societal demands, it must keep fulfilling the function of providing care for its members, while simultaneously it has become the new site for work an education. The burden of maintaining the image of the happy home tends to fall on women, so they are more likely to face an unequal and unjust distribution of roles and tasks. International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 4 Ibarra The emotional toll of the pandemic tends to remain unacknowledged. There are specific figures within the family who take on their shoulders the task of providing emotional care to alleviate such impact. This task is naturalized as feminine. How is expert knowledge that falls under the rubric of psychotherapy responding to such transformations of our daily lives? One would expect that specific life situations, singular challenges and unique resources are taken into account. However, the professional response seems to leave no space for difference and instead imposes uniformity. An overwhelming number of expert-driven assessments and recipes that fall under the notion of one-size-fits-all. Responding From Expert Psychological Knowledge Since the beginning days of the pandemic, a wave of mental health experts has provided comfort and advice in social and mass media. While the sort of professional support they offer may differ from the one provided inside the therapy room, insofar as both may feed from the same discourses it may be useful to unpack them. Therapy has been described as a mirrored room, an isolated space blocking voices from the outside (Hare-Mustin, 1994). Psychotherapy has been criticized for producing individualistic explanations of suffering, since the practices and discourses that are embraced by its professionals run the risk of being cut off from the wider economic and social context (Davis, 1986). No one can deny that there is an abysmal difference between this unprecedented global crisis and so-called normality, but the kind of technical and theoretical knowledge that is mobilized in order to provide professional guidance is exactly the same. Two central issues are rendered invisible: that lives are situated within specific contexts and the additional challenges the current crisis poses to individuals. My concern is not with the usefulness, validity or objectivity of expert knowledges. Authors who have critically examined the practices and discourses of psychology point out that such knowledges can survive when they are disseminated across institutions and every space in ordinary life regardless of their truth value (Foucault, 1975; Rose, 1998). What is needed then is to analyze the way ‘universal’ psychological knowledges are intertwined with the present moment. When experts lend their vocabularies and languages to interpret and modify the distress and suffering caused by the pandemic, they start from unacknowledged premises regarding the self. Psychology is legitimized as a discipline when it is applied across varied settings in everyday life. In order to be available for the public, psychological theories have to be packaged and even marketed. In this article I make a distinction between two kinds of packaging. The first deals with psychological knowledge that intends to describe experience: what is happening to us. The second with psychological knowledges that intend to modify experience: what should we do. International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 5 Ibarra Identifying Causes The interpretation of experience seeks to name the reactions to, and the distress caused by the pandemic, to assign definite causes. It resorts to the scientific language of pathology and deploys the vocabulary of deficit (Gergen, Hoffman & Anderson, 1996). The terms used to describe what is happening to us in the present moment are widely known, they are recycled terms that are in the public domain: words such as stress, anxiety or trauma. This collection of terms seems to be powerful enough to diagnose the inner world of the individual. As a legitimized discourse with the authority to speak about the psychological, it is able to define reality. Using a vocabulary of pathology and deficit in order to define how each person is relating to the present moment is anything but harmless. Words such as anxiety or trauma are partial approximations, they lend a linguistic form to experience (Shotter, 1993). Such vocabulary provides certainty amidst a climate of uncertainty because it can name that which we have been unable to name, but when it establishes itself as a monopolizing discourse it runs the risk of eliminating alternative ways of describing experience. The promise of certainty is based on what Gregory Bateson has called an epistemological error: thinking that a name and a cause are one and the same thing, believing that a label provides a definite explanation of a phenomenon. By this process, labels turn into causes. A possible way of naming turns into a device for segmenting the flow of experience, then experience is turned into easily identifiable units: symptoms. Once they are identified they become treatable and can be medicalized. Symptoms erase individual differences and become divorced from the context in which they originated. The sort of solutions that are provided by this view seek to treat disorders as if they are the source of the problem. In its most extreme form, pathologizing language produces spoiled identities (Goffman, 1963). It treats symptoms as the outer manifestation of a private realm. The object of treatment is no longer the person responding to an unknown and uncertain scenario, but the inner structure that causes a ‘dysfunctional’ response. The language of deficit reproduces the dynamic of the mirrored room as it only reflects the certainties of its own discourse. It treats a person’s reaction as originating in some inner realm, it pathologizes and makes the present context invisible. The Language of Happiness They seem to be on the opposite side of the vocabularies of deficit. They are not interested in finding causes but in providing practical and effective tools for dealing with distress. At first sight they reject the dark side of psychology, instead they offer a language of happiness: optimism, potential and success. They wear the clothes of science too. International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 6 Ibarra Such packaging seems promising and attractive. It does not dwell on our failures, it does not force us to see ourselves through the lens of perpetual deficit. On the contrary, it incites optimism, invites us to see the bright side of life and to go through the path of happiness. This cluster of ideas mixes common sense and assertions legitimized by scientific findings. It takes for granted that happiness is a universal wish. Therefore, there is no need to interrogate who defines happiness, in what terms and what ways of living are included in, or excluded from this ideal (Ahmed, 2010). It is assumed that well-being is originated from individual drives and desires, to pursue happiness is an act of one’s own volition defined by personal freedom. No one of sound mind would be willing to renounce happiness, so the freedom to pursue happiness becomes an obligation (Rose, 1998). Experts packaging their knowledge in the shape of solutions are easily recognizable, they offer DIY strategies. If experts on causes can only answer ‘why’ questions, they only answer to ‘how’ questions: how to manage anxiety, how to improve sleep, how to communicate effectively. One should consider what the implications of this kind of knowledges are for the current moment. They draw an image of subjects and their relationship with the crises generated by the pandemic, however they do not emerge in a vacuum. Neoliberalism is often used to describe contemporaneity, it is usually associated with an economic and political system, as such it seems to deal with domains outside the realm of subjective experience. Neoliberalism has been described as a rationality that can shape every aspect of existence in economic and market terms. According to this view, subjects organize their behavior, relationships and lives in order to maximize their market value, they are expected to become entrepreneurs and invest in themselves (Brown, 2015). Neoliberal societies revolve around consumption, they place acquisition capacity as the defining element of the subject. To consume is more than acquiring basic goods and services, it is directed towards the pursuit of a lifestyle, the expression of an authentic self and self-fulfillment. The market and consumerism can shape every facet of life, everything can be treated as a brand, commodity or investment (a university degree, love life, spirituality). Identity is also framed in this way of thinking. Body and soul become plastic, flexible, both can be sculpted freely. A new image of a limitless being emerges (Bauman, 2007; Preciado, 2008). The vocabularies of optimism are not only compatible with neoliberal rationality, they feed and reinforce each other. An economic system can only survive if subjects internalize its values and practices as if they were their own (Billig, 2018). International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 7 Ibarra In pandemic times the happiness dictatorship does not fade but becomes more insidious. The vocabularies of happiness imagine an autonomous self with no ties to relationships or circumstances, everything can be reduced to a managerial matter. The independent self can calculate, manage and intervene, whether the current crises have an impact or not is a matter of personal skill and choice. This self must deal with the pandemic and all its reverberations. A relationship of control and mastery is established between the subject and their surroundings. The languages of optimism offer a myriad of techniques promising to minimize damage and maximizing profit. They promise a form of happiness that is within reach if the individual directs her life towards ‘positive’ emotions, ‘wellness’ experiences and an ‘optimal’ state. But what if such a state is not achievable for everyone? As the lockdown days turn into months, individuals have had to live with sensations, emotions and experiences that do not fit this discourse. They do not bring instant benefits and they are not disposable, no matter how hard we are encouraged to stay on the bright side of life. In a culture where abundant success is promised, the experience of personal failure is more present than ever. Societal expectations multiply and new standards of what a successful person is continue to emerge, therefore success becomes an unreachable horizon. Personal failure is the impossibility of reproducing the standards of dominant culture (White, 2002). Vocabularies of deficit produce spoiled identities by pathologizing experience, vocabularies of happiness do not seem to achieve a different effect. If individuals cannot stay on the positive side of life, they end up by failing as a subject for not achieving the much-desired optimal state, a state that is said to be within reach regardless of circumstance. The Possibilities of a Narrative Metaphor Psychotherapy and psychology’s responses seem to be guided by a one-size-fits-all premise. They embrace atomistic explanations of human behavior. Their tools for describing and intervening do not acknowledge how ordinary life has been altered, how the pandemic and confinement have impacted individuals and their relationships. The key question is not whether psychotherapy knowledges can be applied to a specific moment such as the pandemic, but whether such knowledges allow us to deal with the ever changing circumstances of individuals living in varied socioeconomic and cultural contexts within a world of vertiginous changes. Some lives unfold within inhospitable environments which compromise their wellbeing, those environments can even prevent subjects from the possibility of living a livable life (Butler, 2020; Orellana, 2016). An alternative is to explore how people generate meanings when they are relating to each other (Anderson & Goolishian, 1988). We create meaning through stories. Circumstances, events and International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 8 Ibarra relationships form the torrent of lived experience, which is vast and open-ended but lacking a definite shape. Subjects do not apprehend life as a succession of disconnected instants but as a story that connects fragments of experience and shapes them into a whole, containing a present linked to the past and projected onto the future (Bruner, 1991; White & Epston, 1990). Reality and time become intelligible by being placed into a story, in that process they acquire a human, that is, a symbolic and social dimension (Ricoeur, 1981). A story serves as a frame, it sets boundaries to the flow of experience, so only some of if its fragments will be observable and recognizable. Stories are our way of being in the world (Bruner, 1986). Each story is placed within a social and cultural context that influences how it will be read and understood. If a story changes, then social practices are transformed; if new social conditions emerge, then the prevailing stories lose their significance and give place to new ones (Bruner, 1986; Cabruja, Iñiguez & Vazquez, 2000). But what does it mean to narrate life amidst a pandemic? Telling Stories Amidst a Pandemic When people are engaged in the act of narrating, they use established conventions and rules in order to form a story possessing coherence and verisimilitude (Gergen & Gergen, 1988). Narrative coherence also involves an affective dimension: what kind of story allows us to navigate life and relationships with a sense of possibility. A story establishes continuity, gives direction and possible futures (Penn, 2001). At the same time, every story is situated within larger social discourses and power relationships. A story is sustained in its social legitimacy. These elements define what experiences can be turned into a narrative, how they can be told, what stories will occupy the center, and which ones will be pushed to the margins (Combs & Freedman, 2012; White & Epston, 1990). Western culture has a preference for progressive narratives, which follow the trajectory of an ascending diagonal line moving towards a valued end point (Gergen y Gergen, 1988; Solnit, 2019; Weingarten, 2012). These stories are about resolution, success, and happy endings. These narrations place the lonely hero overcoming every obstacle at the center. The hero (usually a man) has the tools (usually weapons) to triumph (usually to vanquish and exert dominance) (Le Guin, 1989). These sorts of stories are ubiquitous in fiction. Their impact extends outside of fiction because they serve as a blueprint to shape life, even when our experiences and ways of making sense depart from a trajectory of linear progress. There are experiences that can defy ordinary language. Any circumstance threatening psychic survival can exceed our capacity to put lived experience into words. Those experiences that cannot find a home in existing stories become alienating, they expel us from ourselves and our significant International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 9 Ibarra bonds. They fracture the understanding of our biography: who I am, what is the trajectory of my life (Penn, 2001; Seikkula, 2002; Seikkula & Olson, 2003; Weingarten, 2012, 2013). An individualistic society enshrines the notion that there are autonomous individuals directing their lives at will towards a desired outcome, but the current circumstance shatters stories of progress. The scale of current events destabilizes how people situate themselves in the present, how they read their past and the possibilities of anticipating a future. Our familiar frames for meaning making become inadequate, they cannot contain the strangeness and uncertainty of this moment. It can be a challenge for many people to place the present within the stories that used to guide their lives, or to build scaffolds for alternative stories. The notion of narrative disruption seeks to account for the processes that break the structure of our stories and disarticulate our understanding of the self and life (Weingarten, 2013). Experiences that position us in the face of the inevitable and the unknowable can diminish our agency, the sense that we can have an influence in the direction of our life (Anderson, 1997). How To Think About the Present By placing the social production of meaning at the center, the dilemmas of the present can be situated in a way of thinking that differs from the frames of pathology or happiness. Subjects appear as active and purposeful beings. Pathologizing theories erase any trace of intentionality, while theories focused on happiness imagine individuals in full control of themselves. The notion of agency is relational, people respond and act within the constraints and possibilities afforded by their interpersonal relationships (Shotter, 1993). We are then describing “embodied’ persons, those who are both shaped and constrained by the particularities of their physical bodies and contextual influences (e.g., class, race, gender, culture, geography, history)” (Seikkula & Trimble, 2005: 466). A word that can lend form to the present challenge is disorientation. We are living in a state of unrest, a moment of transition where suddenly the familial became strange. We are misaligned with our surroundings, with a feeling of not being entirely “at home” in relation to ourselves and our circumstances (Shotter, 2008). Understanding ourselves as witnesses to the pandemic involves recognizing our pervasive sense of disorientation and common shock. It also involves our continuous struggle to generate meaning. People act and respond to the tears in the fabric of their stories. Albeit in singular and unique ways, each of us keeps weaving meaning. The sense of malaise individuals experience can be interpreted in its connection to the construction of meaning. Such distress does not point towards a faulty inner structure but speaks of stories fraying, tearing apart. Endeavors to generate meaning are collective and are not necessarily made manifest by grandiose acts, they can reside in the small and the ordinary. The challenge is to (metaphorically) find where International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 10 Ibarra we are in order to respond in a way that fits the moment, to regain (even if partially) our sense of orientation. That is the role our narratives can play. Stories do not erase suffering; they are not the pathway to a goal or a happy ending. Stories are containers carrying that which can be alien or extraordinary (Le Guin, 1989). Storytelling enables us to interpret and understand the unfamiliar, so that our dilemmas become bearable and livable (Kermode in Bruner 1991). An Ethical Standpoint The virus and its transmission forced us to see what had always been there but was ignored: our shared vulnerability. As a consequence, an infinite number of issues emerged: the limitations of our bodies, illness, aging, death and dying. Contemporary modes of life are focused on productivity, profit and pleasure. Anything that diverts from those values is erased. Vulnerability is treated as an exception rather than the rule, therefore it is expelled from communicative exchange and our common awareness, we repress vulnerability. Here repression alludes to social practices preventing the emergence of certain topics for open discussion (Billig, 1999). Here I am interested in the connection between this understanding of repression and the exchanges occurring in therapy. If therapy is not a mirrored room, then it is a social practice that is not exempt from assimilating or reproducing dominant modes of life. The risk of expelling vulnerability is always present. By vulnerability I do not mean a psychological trait inherent to individuals, nor a sociological trait inherent to specific populations. Vulnerability is the acknowledgment that we never are in full possession of ourselves, that our survival is sustained through interdependence, through our intimate bonds with other beings: whether distant and proximal, those that are known to us and those we will never know, human and nonhuman. It implies placing relationality at the center of an ethical stance (Butler, 2004, 2005, 2009). This brings us back to the key question regarding the ethical stance of the therapist. An ethical stance should acknowledge that vulnerability is an inherent feature of the therapeutic relationship. The notion that therapy can open space for vulnerability is recent and its implications are yet to be fully explored (London & Rodríguez-Jazcilevich). This view of therapy focuses on of how therapists position themselves, how they think about their practices and their relationships with clients (Anderson, 1997). One may think that by definition therapy creates a space for the open presence of vulnerability, individuals going through a painful moment share their life with a total stranger. For the person seeking therapy it means to be exposed, both in the sense of being open to view and not shielded. The topics discussed inside the therapy room seem to be inextricable from vulnerability: loss, grief, hopelessness, despair. International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 11 Ibarra However, if one envisions therapy as a technical enterprise, as the discovery of pathology, the elimination of distress, or the injection of happiness, then vulnerability is rendered invisible. As a consequence, there is a total lack of acknowledgment of the other. Being exposed is not a pathway to be seen and treated as a person but to be at risk of being wounded. We can find parallels between the dismissal of vulnerability and the concept of monologism: “at its extreme, denies the existence outside itself of another consciousness with equal rights and equal responsibilities, another I with equal rights (thou)… Monologue is finalized and deaf to the other’s response, does not expect it and does not acknowledge in it any decisive force.” (Bakhtin in Shotter, 1992: 18) The result is the total absence of a safe space for listening, where subjects can give voice to their vulnerability and shape it into words and stories. In that sense, every action, attitude and way of responding that is oriented towards hearing and listening embodies an ethical position insofar as they are a way for acknowledging the other (Anderson, 2020). In times of uncertainty and global crisis the call for expert knowledge is more pressing than ever. The impulse to diagnose and treat distress, to provide guidelines for action and to incite optimism can be well intentioned, even useful and effective. However, such ways of responding run the risk of dismissing the current circumstance, while failing to acknowledge the impossibility of predicting our future. Professionals may end up offering non-existent certainties that will not fit the diversity of experiential realities. What therapists can do is to act as companions, to stay along with others so they can shape and give voice to experience and create stories. It might be a much more modest offering, but it derives from an ethical position where we recognize the others’ singularity and our shared vulnerability. References Agamben, G. (2020). La invención de una pandemia. In: Sopa de Wuhan: Pensamiento contemporáneo en tiempo de pandemias. ASPO. http://iips.usac.edu.gt/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Sopa-de-Wuhan-ASPO.pdf Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. 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In: Sopa de Wuhan: Pensamiento contemporáneo en tiempo de pandemias. ASPO. http://iips.usac.edu.gt/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Sopa-de-Wuhan-ASPO.pdf Author Note Alexis Ibarra Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) FES Iztacala Mexico City, Mexico [email protected] Note i The first version of this article was written in the initial months of the pandemic at a time when the possibility of a vaccine was non-existent in the near horizon, today there is even talk of the development of antiviral treatments for covid. As I propose here, stories create a temporality, a way of experiencing time. Vaccination and the availability of antiviral drugs represent a temporal marker that inaugurates a distinct episode. At the same time as the reverberations of the pandemic and the lockdown are prolonged and transformed, we have not yet reached a point where the pandemic is a thing of the past. Readers will encounter this text from the present, which is why it is important to point out the context that gave rise to these ideas. The intention is for this text to serve as a testimony to that particular moment in time and also to ask questions about the therapist's position that continue to be vitally important. International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 13(1): 15