Context December 20106
“A vivid imagination compels the whole body to obey it
”Aristotle
The ﬁfth province: Imagining
a space of dialogical co-creations!
Imelda McCarthy
Theﬁfthprovince:Imaginingaspaceofdialogicalco-creations!
Introduction – A space beyond dualisms
This paper will re-present some ideas which were shared at the
TraininginaWoman’sVoiceconference organised by KCC in June
2009. Here, I will refocus on key aspects of my working in and from
the ‘space of the ﬁfth province’ (the ﬁfth province will be described
later) particularly around the ideas of dialogue, sacred space, presence
and love. Today, I see what I call a ﬁfth province co-creative therapy as
facilitating conversations and contexts of transformation which bring us
beyond the enthrallment and/or dilemmas of a dualistic world view. This
is not to say that we deny the constraints and aﬀordances of our physical
and social worlds. We cannot, because they constantly make themselves
felt as they tickle us through ongoing challenges and invitations.
However, more and more I have come to see that these challenges
and invitations also beckon us tooccupy, as it were, a space beyond the
conﬁnes of the dualisms, to live with them but not be captured by them.
A dilemmatic tale
In our helping roles, we are presented daily with the dualisms
of ordinary living, not to mention its problems. In each request
for help, there is nearly always a dilemma, a not-knowing which
way to turn (Byrne & McCarthy, 2007; Partridge, 2007). We want to
change but do not know how to bring it about. We do not want to
continue with a relationship or behaviour which pains us, but we
do not know what to do about the suﬀering it brings. Sometimes,
we even want to change but ‘the devil we know is better than the
devil we don’t know’. There is an old Hasidic tale that I love to cite,
of the many people in a village who come to a Rabbi complaining
about their lives while yearning for the lives and perceived ‘better’
problems of their neighbours. In an attempt to solve the problem,
the Rabbi invites the townspeople to hang out their problems in a
public manner and then for everyone to come, view them all and
ﬁnally to choose those problems of their neighbours they would
prefer to have themselves. When all had seen the array of problems
laid before them, they experienced a dilemma in terms of their
choice and they ended up choosing to have their own problems
back rather than those of their neighbours! It is sometimes diﬃcult
for us to give up the familiar. Change is indeed perturbing!
Imagining something more – dreams!
On the other hand, our dreams of a better life spur us on towards
transformation and beyond the constraints of our dilemmas. One
beautiful reframing of the concept of ‘problem’ is to see each one
as a “frustrated dream” (McAdam & Lang, 2009). The ‘problem/
dream’ dilemmatic can be held together where the problem points
us towards a dream yet to be realised. As we acknowledge the
problem while simultaneously placing an emphasis on the dream
that has been or is being frustrated, we can begin to light up the
path we want to follow once again. This process of holding the
dualities, where both sides of the dilemmas can be viewed, has been
previously referred to as ‘juxtaposing’ or ‘juxtapositioning’ in ﬁfth
province work. It has been my experience that such juxtapositioning
of the dilemmatic issues can be central in ‘pulling taut the nerves of
insight’, as it were, in catalysing transformations in consciousness,
emotions, behaviour and relationships as it brings us through the
dualities to a ‘space’ beyond them.
Betty’s story
Betty, a 65 year old woman, had been suﬀering from what her
doctor told her was ‘agoraphobia’. She could not go out without a
family member. In our ﬁrst session together, her husband, Joe, also
participated, as she was afraid to come alone. This meant that, while
other family members went outside the home to work, she was
home alone and felt unable to venture out. She came to seek help
when her daughter became engaged. We began with the question,
“What brought you at this time to seek help?” She replied, “My daughter
is getting married and I want to be able to help her. But, if I cannot get
out, I will not be able to do that”. Here, encapsulated in her story was
a frustrated dream, her desire to go do something that her problem
prevented her from doing. As she dreamed of all that she would like
to do with and for her daughter in her new home, she would break
into tears of great sadness. Her husband told how it was even a
source of anxiety for her to speak with their neighbours. He too had
a dream that she would be able to return to a more independent
life. We wondered what might be the wisdom in this challenge for
her. Maybe her home was some kind of retreat or safe haven for her,
also? “Yes”, she said, telling of a time when a male neighbour had
been very aggressive to her. After this episode, she was afraid to go
out unaccompanied. It felt safer to stay in. After asking more about
this, she became somewhat hesitant as if remembering something
that maybe could not be put into words at that time. This seemed
to be so because, at the end of the session, she requested that the
next time she came to see me she would like her husband to wait for
her in the waiting room. It turned out that the questions in relation
to her neighbour’s behaviour had triggered an earlier memory she
had never spoken about. She had, in fact, always wondered why she
had reacted so intensely to his behaviour at the time. It did not make
sense to her and yet it seemed to provoke a great fear in her. In the
previous session, it suddenly came to her why this might have been
so and she wanted to protect her husband from what she had to say.
She thought that if he heard about it, he would be greatly upset. She
then told for the ﬁrst time of her endurance of sexual abuse from the
age of nine until the age of twenty-four at the hands of her maternal
7Context December 2010
uncle who had lived with her family. When she was seven, her
father had died and her mother had suggested to her brother that
he come and live with them. He brought a pension with him which
helped the family ﬁnancially. Knowing how important the ﬁnancial
support was for the family’s survival, Betty did not tell her mother
about the abuse as she knew she would ask him to leave. Even after
his death, she could not bring herself to tell anyone and it was not
until the story was told of her neighbour’s “explosive aggression and
threat” that she realised the possible relationship to her abuse as
a child. Seeing that there may be a connection to her fear of going
out alone, she had chosen to tell her story in a bid to release her and
in the hope of realising her dream of helping her daughter. After
some time, she began telling her husband about her childhood
experiences of abuse. As she shared her story, she also began to take
steps in moving outside of her home on her own once more. When
she decided that her dream was in sight, she also began to feel that
she no longer needed to come for therapy. She was able to visit her
daughter’s home on her own and so had realised her dream.
Here we see the focus on Betty’s frustrated dream released in her
the recognition of how the convergence of two traumatic processes,
her neighbour’s aggression and her uncle’s abuse of her, triggered
in her a fear of going out alone. She had transcended the dilemma
presented by a problem and a dream by the telling of a story of
abuse and realising the wisdom of protecting herself in the safety
of her own home. This retreat to safety (agoraphobia) was, in this
instance, the ‘wisdom’ often found at the heart of what seems on the
surface to be a problem.
So, while our conversations searched for the dreamed-of
solutions, they also considered those wisdoms contained in the
presented challenges and the ensuing strengths they had triggered
(Wade, 1997, 2007). It has been my constant experience, both
professionally and personally (McCarthy, 2010) that, when our older
ways are honoured and often even thanked, we can be freed to
move on with grace. How much more powerful can this be when we
reconnect to our dreams. The philosophical orientation or aesthetic
which guided the holding of dualisms in this way comes from an old
Irish metaphor, the ﬁfth province (Byrne & McCarthy, 2007).
The ﬁfth province
In Ireland today, there are only four geographical provinces.
It is not known whether or not such a ﬁfth province actually ever
existed as a geographical place. However, its trace has come down
through time in the Irish language where the word for province
is ‘coiced’ or ‘cuige’, which mean ‘ﬁfth’. In the writings of two Irish
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Ireland from space
8 Context December 2010
philosophers, Hederman and Kearney (1977 – 1985), it has become
a province of imagination – a sacred space that transcends the
dualities of life where the ordinary becomes extraordinary (Byrne &
McCarthy, 1988).
“The notion of a ‘ﬁfth province’ is an aesthetic analogy which
describes a space which is neither physical, geographical, nor political.
It is a place which is beyond or behind the reach or our normal scientiﬁc
consciousness. It therefore requires a method and a language which are
sui generis1
both to reach it and to describe it” (Hederman, 1985, p. 11).
The metaphor of the ﬁfth province was ﬁrst re-awakened by
Richard Kearney and Benedictine Abbot, Mark Hederman. From
1977 to 1985, they provided a literary forum for the expression of
diverse views across political, religious and cultural divides in the
Irish context. Their invocation of the ﬁfth province, through their biannual
journal, The Crane Bag (Hederman & Kearney, 1977 – 1985),
attempted to transcend these ambivalent divides in the Irish
cultural landscape. It was a forum that moved towards a diﬀerent
kind of ‘community’ on the island of Ireland. It was envisaged to be
a forum where people of diﬀerence, whatever this was (religious,
ethnic, cultural, etc), might peacefully co-exist, inter-act and cocreate.
It was a forum for viewing oneself and the ‘other’ (one-andother/one
another) diﬀerently – of ‘inter-viewing’ as it were! It was a
forum where one might ‘be’ diﬀerently in a more peaceful harmony
– a space of inter-being.
Kearney and Hederman borrowed the notion of the ﬁfth
province from ancient Irish legend and imagined it at Tara in County
Meath, acting as a “second centre of gravity” to the administrative
centre of the country. The balance between the two centres “was
a guarantor of peace and harmony in the country as a whole” (1977, p
10). The purpose of their journal was to mirror such a place in (post-)
modern Ireland.
Towards a space of dialogue: Some histories and
mysteries!
There has been much debate as to the whereabouts or identity of
this hidden ﬁfth province, with popular myth recording two stories.
One claims that the four provinces met at a mythical hill, Uishneach,
while the other claims a geographical location in County Meath. The
Irish for Meath is Midhe, meaning middle or centre. The ancient Annals
ofWestmeath sites the ﬁfth province as an actual historical location
in the centre of Ireland. The Hill of the Kings (Uishneach) is stated
to be the spot, in Westmeath, where the four provinces met. It is a
slightly elevated vantage point with extensive vistas in all directions.
It is also said that the High King of Ireland, Tuathal Teachtmar, in the
ﬁrst century (AD), erected a palace on the Hill of Uishneach and cut
oﬀ tracts of land from each of the surrounding four provinces, thus
creating an actual geographical ﬁfth province. This new province,
which has since long ceased to exist, incorporated the other provinces
whilst simultaneously transcending them. It was a place that was both
a part of the four provinces and apart from them, simultaneously. It
was also said that it was a pagan Druidic site where kings and leaders
from the other provinces came to settle their conﬂicts and reconcile
their disputes through conversation and talks. Arms were left aside
as people came together to speak and receive counsel. It was a place
of dialogue where all opposing and contrasting views could be held
together, heard and voiced in a collaborative, non-violent way.
Thus, whilst both traditions, the mythical and the historical,
disagree as to whether the place was real or imaginary, both agree
on the importance of the notion of a ﬁfth province in Ireland.
The ﬁfth province is thus more akin to a dis-position2
(Hederman
& Kearney, 1977, p. 10). It was an imagined place where diﬀerent
interests came together and discoursed. Relationships between
one-and-other became possible. Realities were deconstructed and
constructed. Fact and image were sundered and reunited. It was a
province of imagination, a province of possibilities.
Dialogue in the ﬁfth province
Re-inventing this space in therapy, it was imagined that a
conversation of the possible facilitates both clients and therapists
to move with one-and-other co-creatively. Here, a sense of
inconclusiveness in our lives is embraced, a province wherein there
are no experts only co-travellers; no certainty or righteousness,
only various and unknown possibilities. Jack, who was struggling
with relationship diﬃculties, referred to this inconclusiveness in his
therapy in the following way:
“I like the whole idea of the ‘expert’ being open and, if I may use
the word, unﬁnished.”
To come to a place where there is no rigidity or safe adherence
to a historical frame, no particular philosophical or theoretical set,
is a humbling and exciting proposition. As has been said previously,
certainty crumbles as we constantly place ourselves at risk, as it
were, in the face of the marvelous and as yet unknown possibilities.
Perhaps, as Hederman states:
“The space created by ... arrival in the transcendent dimension
of the ﬁfth province is enough to allow the fresh air from this noman’s
land or non-place to blow through the province ... just left ...
Breaking through creates a draught which blows the cobwebs from
the ordinary and traditional” (1985, p. 115).
The Irish artist, Le Brocquy (1981), articulates the process
whereby his artistic images conﬁgure themselves on canvas,
facilitated by him as a watcher of an ‘accident’. Here, the word
‘accident’ can stand as a metaphor for the surprising emergences
as we are co-creating. While his world is that of art, this artistic
vocabulary speciﬁes also for us the reﬂexivity of the therapeutic
encounter. In this other world, the landscape of the artist is
analogous to the conversational domain of co-creative therapy.
Within this conversational domain, the therapist or counsellor,
like Le Brocquy’s artist, is not seen to impose a professional
discipline but to facilitate the emergence of possibilities (McCarthy
& Byrne, 1988, 2008; McCarthy, 2004). It is in the interweave of
dialogue that the ordinary lines of communication between the
participants are ruptured and re-conjugated (Le Brocquy, 1986). In
this interweave, participants become, as it were, co-authors in the
elaboration and invention of new transformative experiences and
stories. As a result, these emergences could not be said to stem
from a universalised, professional (disciplinary) practice. Echoing
the words of Le Brocquy, one client has outlined the therapeutic
process as one of “being in hands”. This being in hands implies
an expansive cradle in which the therapeutic relationship rests.
The metaphor of the ﬁfth province can serve as a reminder of a
space that is always there beyond the dualistic play of our physical,
social, mental and emotional lives. It is simultaneously a part of
them and apart from them. This space has been described in the
following ways by some of my conversational co-creators from the
domains of coaching, mentoring, consultation, supervision and
teaching:
“The way we talk we can hold emotion & intuition without
division - there is a wholeness about it” (Therese Hegarty).
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9Context December 2010
“When conﬂict or confusion arises - giving the conﬂict or
confusion its dues but knowing and paying attention to the space
that exists beyond the conﬂict/confusion.” (Julie Uma Brown)
“The meeting of hearts and minds in a space that’s beyond both
of us as individuals has been exciting.
Underneath the words is an almost tangible larger force that’s
bigger than two of us and I feel a certain sense of humility to what
emerges from THAT.” (Chan Madhavi Jadoonath)
Therapy as a sacred space
Connecting, therefore, with experiences that are more
expansive and which lead to the experience of unity and oneness
with whoever we are relating with or in whichever situation we are
involved with, would also suggest a spiritual orientation. In this
‘oneness’ or ‘communion’, the counsellor or therapist could not
really be seen as the primary ‘doer’. In this inter-connective space,
it is not they who do something to the client. Rather, they do things
together with the client. This is the process of co-creation where we
inter-act, inter-view and inter-are! (McCarthy, 2004).
This co-creative process was echoed in the following dialogue
about therapy with a client, Mary:
Interviewer (I): What did it bring about in you, this process of being in
this kind of therapy?
Mary (M): Conﬁdence is a word that isn’t really strong enough to use;
the process of the therapy brought around to me the conﬁdence to
make decisions in my life. I called it, “weeding the garden”, getting rid
of stuﬀ that really was just baggage ... so it ...
I: When did you begin to call it “weeding the garden”, during the therapy?
M:During therapy, Yeh.
I: Are you a gardener?
M:No.
I: Where did the metaphor come from?
M:I haven’t an idea.
I: It didn’t come from the therapist?
M:No, no it didn’t. No deﬁnitely.
Not knowing and non-doing!
This understanding of a non-predetermined, co-evolving
and surprising co-creation has resonances with Anderson’s (1997)
concept of not knowing and the Daoist concept of ‘Wu We’ or nondoing.
Therapists and clients are involved in a co-evolving process
that includes all participants and life itself. What is often surprising is
that, during such processes, an answer, an image, a metaphor, a gut
feeling or an intuition will suddenly appear as if from nowhere or the
‘now here’, as Mary highlighted. In this process, there is no pre-set
goal or norm of the therapist or the therapeutic system (agency
or professional community) to be reached. Instead, therapists and
counsellors become servants and participants in the co-constructing
of the relationship, the goals, the therapeutic process and the
emergent outcome. In this regard, my Irish colleague, Bernadette
O’Sullivan (2010), invites us to become “willing apprentices” in
our journeys with clients. Each opportunity for conversation is a
commitment to, and a surrendering to, the wisdom of the situation
co-created. Each session invites us to be in service to our clients and
to life itself. It invites us to occupy a space, a sacred space, where
stories of pain can be accepted in an environment of appreciation
and love and so can be transformed (Waldegrave et al., 2003). A
client, Debbie, stated, she was: “gaining insight” and “able to own up
to my weaknesses and still feel worthwhile and totally accepted”.
Communing in a ﬁeld!
In this process, it is as if the participants merge together in what
we might term a larger ﬁeld. When we are interconnected in the way
that Mary was implying in her interview above, we feel ourselves
to be part of this larger ﬁeld. Clients have referred to the process as
a feeling of strong ‘presence’ in the room, that pervades the whole
context including individuals and environments. During this process,
the participants feel deeply connected and guided whilst also
simultaneously aware of their individuality and pro-activity. Talking
about this process of guiding and simultaneous pro-activity, one
young woman, Deirdre, put it like this during the following dialogue:
I: Were you leading [in the therapy conversation]?
D: Yeh, I’d be leading but sometimes the questions were leading,
because they hinted at or suggested, maybe a problem, maybe an
unresolved situation, and I’d given a hint of that. And the questions
were giving me the idea that the power was in me to answer. And I
suppose in that way you were asking a question, and your question
was leading as well, you know what I mean. But, I probably, obviously
I’d have to give you some idea how to ask that question.
I: So you were helping us!
D: Yes, and your questions were helping me as well. I suppose it’s a
two-way thing, like between a counsellor and a client.
‘Presence’ and the therapeutic relationship: factors
in emergence of change and transformation
Because ‘presence’ has emerged as important in this work, who
the therapist/counsellor is therefore becomes a key element in the
service of the client and the services we oﬀer. Who and how we
are together becomes more important than the what and where
of therapeutic encounters. Hubble et al. (2004) have dramatically
shown us that it is the resources the clients bring to therapy which
are the greatest indicator for successful outcome. To imagine that
this factor is not also applicable to therapists makes no sense.
All therapeutic modalities call for therapist presence. For this to
manifest, we are called to be sitting in a comfortable, non-attached
yet compassionate space. If we are not sitting in such a space
within, then we can be vulnerable to being caught up in the issues
of our clients. We also need to be care-full in relation to the ﬁne
line between, transmission and projection (Vasudeva & McCarthy,
2004). In processes of transmission, we are in tune and resonating
in awareness with our clients on gross, subtle and spiritual levels.
However, when there are processes of projection, we are vulnerable
to harbouring non-conscious personal, theoretical and professional
judgments and prejudices in relation to the lives of our clients. We
become isolated monads as communion fades. There is a poetic and
poignant reminder of the power of projection in the writings of James
Stephens, the Irish writer and mystic. He asks and then proﬀers:
“Is there actually a wolf in our neighbour? We see that which we
are and our eyes project on every side an image of ourselves. If we
look with fear, that which we behold is frightful; if we look with love,
then the colours of heaven are repeated to us from the ditch and the
dungeon. We invent eternally upon one another; we scatter our sins
broadcast and call them our neighbours; let us scatter our virtues
abroad and build us a city to live in” (Stephens, 1978, p. 50).
In not projecting our own ‘sins’ on to another, we return
ourselves to an open, accepting and appreciative dis-position. We
sit in coherence (co-here-ence!) with another without attachment
or over-involvement but always with love and compassion. In this
space, we are present as presence in the present.
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Love as a state of being in therapy (empathic
detachment)
“Life is love” (my father, 2008)3
.
This notion of the ﬁfth province as a ‘space’ of acceptance
within and between all of us calls to mind the Chilean biologist,
Humberto Maturana’s deﬁnition of ‘Love’ (1985):
“Love consists in opening a space of existence for another in coexistence
with oneself in a particular domain of interactions”.
These words of Maturana on love were heard during a week
long intensive workshop with him in Oxford in July, 1985, which
was organised by KCC. Since that time, they have been a wonderful
reminder of the importance of ‘love’ in therapy and counselling. Love,
for Maturana, is a fundament for all social and indeed biological and
ecological relationships. For living beings to survive, love is needed.
We do not stay alive, as it were, without love. This is such a beautiful
notion. For him and for many others in the cognitive, biological, social
and ecological sciences, co-operation and co-existence are the delicate
threads that form the web of life – the patterns which connect.
So, how do we maintain this disposition of love in therapy and
supervision without becoming over-involved and thus part of a
problem we have been asked to help with? If we become over-involved,
it means we have become attached to the premises of those seeking
our help. Their issues take on a personalised or concretised reality for
us. This is an interesting challenge for all therapy and counselling!
In order to scatter our virtues rather than ‘broadcast’ our
sins, then compassion, empathy and love need to hold sway in
our hearts. To be present to those who are before us in a state of
reverence is also to honour the mystery of their ‘beingness’.
A still point
To be centred and present, then we need to be able to go to a
‘space’ inside where we will not be inﬂuenced by those ﬂuctuations
of the mind, emotions or constructs which can distract us from full
engagement. We are simultaneously engaged and detached! It is as
if we rest and attend from this ‘still point’. At the level of ‘spirit’ we
are in ‘oneness’ while simultaneously being aware of the potential
for ﬂuctuations at the level of cognition, emotion and behaviour
in ourselves and in our clients. In this space of connection,
peacefulness and reverence for all manner of things ﬁnd it possible
to emerge. It is in this space that all becomes, and is, possible when
we listen from silence and from the heart. Here are the reﬂections
from another professional dialogical co-creation in relation to
stillness, dialogue and presence. The reﬂections became part of
Ruth’s personal and professional development (PPD) component in
the ﬁnal stages of her supervisory training in systemic therapy:
“My overwhelming experience was of a space that was
invitational, supportive, gentle, and with a sense of deep quietness.
Even though I feel challenged and have struggled with ideas and
issues and with my own sense of being limited, I experienced a sense
of warmth, genuine interest and stillness.
Stillness is perhaps how I would characterise the most striking
aspect of …presence and it evokes for me the remarkable reliability
of the process. It reminds me that, when I attend to safety, when I am
fully present in good faith…when I listen to and respond to the other,
then the space that we can create together can have elements of the
‘spiritual’- a feeling of bringing forth more than who each can be of
our own human potential” (Eustace, 2010).
So, you might ask, how do you view a situation without being
swayed by mental ﬂuctuations, emotional storms, prejudices and
judgments? How do we develop the ability to see issues clearly without
making judgments and not deﬁne them based solely on our own
experiences? Another question would be, how is it possible to generate
love and compassion and yet remain in a state of non-attachment and
awareness? The word, ‘generate’, is used because what we do, we do
together. It is another co-creation. Let us say we see someone and we
don’t feel a sort of chemistry with them, how do we generate a feeling
of love and compassion (McCraty etal., 2004)?
Coherence
A simple answer may be the one given above, to develop a
sense of reverential curiosity before all of life’s facades. As James
Stephens (1978) has reminded us, how we look will, to a large
extent, determine what we see. So, the development of reverence
in our work is not only for the beneﬁt of our clients, it is also for our
own beneﬁt. There is now ample evidence that, if we can generate
love, appreciation and compassion in relating to another, then we
actually become more stable ourselves and more physiologically
and mentally coherent (McCraty, Bradley & Tomasino, 2004). This
state of coherence not only protects the health and wellbeing
of the therapist but also invites the client into a similar state of
coherence and stability. Using an analogy from music, apparently,
when two harps are tuned to the same frequency in a room where
one harp is larger than the other and where a chord is struck in the
bigger harp, the little harp is infused with resonance, which brings
it into a tuneful harmony. What is then magical is that the little harp
begins to sound its own tune on its own (O’Donoghue, 2004, p. 68).
Sensings
Like the resonating harps, human beings also transmit
‘something’ in the way we interact, something that is subtle and not
deﬁnable by physical standards. We generate this in a conversation
and in our relationships with each other. We can feel whether we
are being welcomed to speak or not. Love and appreciation are
felt. We can feel positive emotions surrounding us when we are
in appreciative company. So, when we can remain in a state of
physical, mental and emotional coherence and a client reﬂects
something that we don’t like in our own life, we are still able to
remain in a space of love and show compassion and appreciation.
This, in turn, facilitates the emergence of greater coherence in the
client. As Deirdre has said, “It is a two-way thing”.
If we can stay in the ‘now here’, as it were, then awareness,
energy and being become the essential components in our being
together or our “inter-being”, as the Vietnamese Buddhist teacher,
Thich Nhat Hahn, refers to it (McCarthy, 2004). Interestingly,
from a therapy point of view, the language philosopher, Ludwig
Wittgenstein, refers to the eternal nature of living and being in
the following way. He said, if we take eternity to mean not inﬁnite
temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to
those who live in the present. Referring to the spiritual potential in
our dialogical encounters, Meg, a woman facing the challenge of
separation from her partner, used the following words:
“I loved the way we worked together. There was the experience
of opening things up and seeing them more clearly and then shifting
them along. There was a sense of the spiritual underlying the process.
At times, this was very clear. I have a profound sense through my work
with you of the spiritual in all of this change. Our interaction was like
a mirror in which I could see the deep core of my spirit. I feel so happy
within myself I could sing. This is a spiritual therapy.”
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Perhaps, we could even say that, in life as well as work, we
cannot not be spiritual. We also cannot not be present! It is in this
presencing with each other there are possibilities for communion.
In fact, Meg constantly referred to the importance of cocreating
with her. Mary also stated that she would expect the
therapist to “become part of her problems”. In this way, she felt she
would have the conﬁdence to know that she was understood
and not judged. When we dare to imagine and dream, even ‘from
the ditch and the dungeon’, we are at once opening ourselves
to an inﬁnity of possibilities. That great American dreamer and
writer, Henry Thoreau, has described this process so vividly in his
concluding chapter of his famous work, Walden (2004).
“If one advances conﬁdently in the direction of one’s dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet
with a success unexpected in common hours.”
Appreciation and acknowledgement
Thanks to my dialogical partners brought forth here (Therese
Hegarty, Julie Uma Brown, Chan Madhavi Jadoonath and Ruth
Eustace) for all our co-creative conversations together and for
permitting me to use their reﬂections and their names in this writing.
Mary, Meg, Deirdre, Jack and Debbie each chose their own nom de
plume. Without these conversations, the space of the ﬁfth province
would remain in the domain of the mythical rather than the realm of
direct experience. Without the reﬂections from the other chair, as it
were, my own descriptions and reﬂections would remain one-sided
– a half ‘truth’. I also acknowledge those who have been and are my
inspirational ‘team mates’, Nollaig Byrne, Philip Kearney, Bernadette
O’Sullivan, Ernst Salamon and Sri Vasudeva. There are many more in
my virtual community who are not explicitly referenced here, they
are nevertheless a continuous presence in my work and writing.
Some have also left us (*) but their traces are ever present4
.
Notes
1 ‘Sui generis’ is a term which means particular to, original to a particular
situation.
2 ‘Dis-position has been taken to mean in the writings of the Fifth Province
Associates (Nollaig Byrne, Imelda McCarthy & Philip Kearney) an ability to
be multi-sided in accepting all positions while not attaching to any one
position. It has also been referred to as an ‘ambivalent dis-position’, meaning
that all positions were juxta-posed and held in dialogue. More recently, it has
been used in the context of a ‘dis-position of love’ wherein all positions were
viewed compassionately. The word is hyphenated to introduce movement
into the word and to deconstruct the concept of an internal or static ‘trait’ in
the therapist. Rather, ‘dis-position’ and ‘dis-positioning’ refer to a dynamic
openness to a co-creative process that is ever evolving.
3 In early 2008, my father, Kevin Colgan (1920 – 2009), had just come to live with
my husband and me after a stroke had taken away his physical independence.
One night at tea, he took my husband, Michael’s hand and said, “Michael,Ilove
you”to which Michael replied, “andIloveyoutooKevin”. My father, silent for a
few moments, then uttered these unforgettable words, “sure,lifeislove”.
4 (Ireland) Nollaig Byrne, Philip Kearney, Gabriel Kiely, Richard Kearney,
Mark Patrick Hederman, Marie Keenan, Valerie O’Brien, Helen Burke,
Arlene Healy, Therese Hegarty, Marie Kenny, Bernadette O’Sullivan, Jane
Williams, Jim Sheehan, Alan Carr, Ed McHale, Gina Whelan, Julie Uma
Brown, Helen Moylan, Carmel O’Hara, Aileen Tierney (Italy) Gianfranco
Cecchin*, Luigi Boscolo, Umberta Telfner, Laura Fruggeri, (Sweden) Ernst
Salamon, Mia Andersson, Klas Grevelius* (UK) Peter & Susan Lang, Elspeth
McAdam, Elsa Jones, Gill Gorell Barnes, Alan Cooklin, Karen Partridge,
Gail Simon, Gwyn Whitﬁeld, John Shotter, (USA) Monica McGoldrick,
Lynn Hoﬀman, Sal Minuchin, Braulio Montalvo, Marcelo Pakman, Sheila
McNamee, Harlene Anderson, Harry Goolishian*, Peggy Penn, Ken &
Mary Gergen, Sallyann Roth, Norma Van Dyke, Judith Landau, Steve de
Shazer*, Insoo Kim Berg*, Rich Simon, Don Bloch, (Canada) Karl Tomm,
Stephen Madigan, Allan Wade, Vikki Reynolds, Chris Kinman, Chan
Madhavi Jadoonath, (Norway) Tom Andersen*, (Germany) Kurt Ludwig,
(Czech Republic) Zdenek Macik, (Australia) Carmel Flaskas, Michael
White*, Cheryl White, David Denborough, (New Zealand) Taimalieutu
Kiwi Tamasese, Flora Tuhaca*, Charles Waldegrave, (Trinidad & Tobago) Sri
Vasudeva, Reena Rampersadsingh, Diana Mahabir Wyatt.
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Imelda McCarthy can be emailed at imeldamccarthy@iol.ie
Theﬁfthprovince:Imaginingaspaceofdialogicalco-creations!
An exercise around co-creating space from a workshop