Sam Brown

The relationship between place and remembering has been a long-standing matter of phenomenological concern. The role of the 'lived body' in mediating acts of remembering in context is clearly crucial. In this paper we contribute to an 'expanded view of memory' by describing how remembering difficult or problematic events -- 'vital memories' -- draws upon inter-subjective and inter-objective relations. We discuss two conceptual tools that provide an analytic framework -- the concept of 'life space' drawn from Kurt Lewin and the idea of the 'setting specificity' of remembering. From this perspective we can see that the 'lived body' does not constitute a singular unity but rather a 'plurality' of potential bodies that have 'operative solidarity' with the material relations in which they are constituted. Drawing on the work of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, we argue that 'body memories' need to be analysed from within the embodied material-relational perspective wherein they are afforded.

The UK government intends to regulate mental health care professions by enforcing title protection of the terms “counsellor” and “psychotherapist.” The operational definition they have adopted for “counsellor”— a specialist in psychological therapy—is not recorded in any authoritative source as an exclusive,predominant or fundamental meaning of the term. In fact, there is no evidence that it is an independent sense in its own right, unlike the professional titles “psychotherapist,” “doctor,” and “psychologist.”It is only in recent decades that the term “counsellor” has been interpreted as the title of a psychological profession. It was first used within the context of psychological therapy in 1940 by Carl Rogers to denote a therapist directing a non-programmatic “client-centred” session, and was eventually absorbedinto the occupational dialect of psychology as a descriptor, but did not constitute the title of a separate profession. It also continued to have applications outside the context of psychotherapy. However, various linguistic tropes have contributed to a widespread misconception that it is primarily a professional title for psychological therapists who eschew programmatic therapies. The term was progressively adopted by non-therapists who offered vocational talking-and-listening services.A careful semantic analysis reveals that the PLG’s interpretation of the term rests on a confusion of sense and reference, a widespread but erroneous assumption about the role of counsellors, a failure to acknowledge the limits of an occupational dialect, biased categorical heuristics, and ignorance of modifyingterms. There is a more constructive approach, which accords with the observation that counselling is an activity rather than a profession and is more faithful to the original semantics of the key terms