The Issue of Consent

Every January I look back at the year in practice and reflect on prominent themes. In 2024 a large number of women talked about their experiences concerning the issue of consent. My practice included, among other things, cases of coercion, stalking, rape, psychological and physical abuse.

Experienced, as I am, in working with trauma and its effects, the sharp learning curve about how these cases are handled is staggering. As the socio-political landscape continues to change, so do women’s voices; however, what isn’t changing is the system that is supposed to listen to them.

Women are speaking up more and yet there is still work to do on raising awareness for everyone. Many people know that very few cases of crimes against women are reported and those that are rarely make it to court. The general demeanour of women I’ve been working with is that there isn’t much point in trying or they go to the police, having to fight to be taken seriously and the therapy becomes about the impact of being silenced or not being heard.

I’ve heard women talk about being coerced, manipulated, controlled, raped, threatened with death, violence, stalked, followed, abused verbally, financially, emotionally, physically and even spiritually. Horrifying disclosures became a prominent theme in 2024. It’s like a post pandemic cataclysm. One thing that I’m determined to do is raise awareness about boundaries and more specifically, consent. What is is important to recognise is that people don’t often know when they’re being manipulated. It can feel like part of a relationship and things usually escalate.

This isn’t just about women. Men are affected too. My Wife My Abuser a powerful documentary about the systematic abuse of a man by his wife was heart breaking. He finally spoke out after his best friend encouraged him. Having been brave enough to capture footage of his wife abusing him, physically, emotionally and mentally, he went to the police in a bid to protect his children and ultimately himself.

The insidious nature of manipulation and coercive control are the carbon monoxide of relationships, it cannot be detected. To help people become more aware, knowledge is power and boundaries are essential in establishing it. A common topic is the issue of consent. Consent is involved in many aspects of relationships and day to day life. Saying no is often difficult for some people and this can be where things get blurred.

In some relationships there can be a power dynamic that stems from a traumatic childhood experience that made it difficult to challenge the parent or caregiver. Many children like this went quiet because they quickly learned that speaking up resulted in more abuse. One of the biggest problems I see as a therapist is how people have grown used to being treated badly and have a high tolerance for abuse. They haven’t been shown what constitutes consent or what boundaries are.

What consent is and how it is obtained needs to be a conversation we are having with our young people. In a culture that conditions women to be passive and allows priority to be given to men, there needs to be education around how to speak up when it comes to consent. In many cases women saying no are being made to feel obliged and end up capitulating much to their regret when they eventually realise what’s happened to them and an education later in life ensues. Becoming familiar with the language is a good start.

The delineations of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, sexual violence and domestic abuse are intertwined. Women’s Aid describe domestic abuse, “We define domestic abuse as an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threatening, degrading and violent behaviour, including sexual violence, in the majority of cases by a partner or ex-partner, but also by a family member or carer.” Rape Crisis UK say, “At Rape Crisis England & Wales, we use the term 'sexual violence' to talk about anything sexual that happens to someone without their consent or that they didn't want. This can be something sexual that involved physical contact or no physical contact.”

What is consent? The Oxford English Dictionary says, “Consent is defined as agreement or permission to do something. It can also refer to an official document that grants permission. 

As a noun

• Consent can refer to permission to do something, especially when given by an authority figure. For example, "The written consent of a parent is required". 

• Consent can also refer to agreement about something. For example, "She was chosen as leader by common consent". 

• Consent can also refer to an official document that grants permission. 

As a verb 

• Consent can refer to agreeing to something or giving permission for something. For example, "He reluctantly consented to the proposal".

In the context of medicine 

• Consent can also refer to agreement to undergo medical treatment or participate in medical research. This is known as informed consent.”

  
  

Sexual consent according to The Crown Prosecution Service  says, “Consent is defined by section 74 Sexual Offences Act 2003.

• Someone consents to vaginal, anal or oral penetration only if s/he agrees by choice to that penetration and has the freedom and capacity to make that choice.

• Consent to sexual activity may be given to one sort of sexual activity but not another, e.g.to vaginal but not anal sex or penetration with conditions, such as wearing a condom.

• Consent can be withdrawn at any time during sexual activity and each time activity occurs.

Investigating the suspect, it must be established what steps, if any, the suspect took to obtain the complainant’s consent and the prosecution must prove that the suspect did not have a reasonable belief that the complainant was consenting. There is a big difference between consensual sex and rape. This aide focuses on consent, as allegations of rape often involve the word of the complainant against that of the suspect. The aim is to challenge assumptions about consent and the associated victim-blaming myths/stereotypes and highlight the suspect’s behaviour and motives to prove he/she did not reasonably believe the victim was consenting. We provide guidance to the police, prosecutors and advocates to identify and explain the differences, highlighting where evidence can be gathered and how the case can be presented in court.”

Claire’s Law, the domestic violence disclosure scheme introduced in 2014, is where women can exercise the ‘right to ask’, where they can request information from the police about a potential abuser. There is also the 'right to know', which, in certain circumstances, permits police to disclose information to the public. It is intended to reduce intimate partner violence. Clare's Law is named after Clare Wood, a woman murdered in England by a former domestic partner who police knew to be dangerous, Wikipedia (2025).

The number of stalking cases involving ex-partners is high and cybercrime is new arm of the law that requires its own special training and enforcement. Research suggests that a significant portion of stalking cases involve ex-partners. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the UK found that most stalking offences were committed by abusive ex-partners. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust says, “This organisation reports that 87% of their stalking victims were stalked by ex-intimates.” How likely is it that stalking escalates to murder?

Suzy Lamplugh disappeared in 1986 and was legally declared dead and presumed murderd in 1993. “The last clue to Lamplugh's whereabouts was an appointment to show a house in Shorrolds Road to someone she called Mr. Kipper. The case remains unsolved with Lamplugh still missing, and is considered the world's biggest-ever missing person's inquiry” Wikipedia (2025).

How many women are at risk? An article in The Guardian pledged to report on every women allegedly killed by men in the UK in an attempt to raise awareness. A huge number of cases go unheard and unreported. The article tells the stories of 80 women who died in the UK in 2024. An alarming number women are killed by an ex partner.

A study by the University of Gloucestershire found that stalking was present in 94% of 358 homicides they examined. Another study found that stalking was related to homicide in 15% of cases involving men stalking women in the workplace. Research by Jane Monckton-Smith found that stalking was present in 94% of ex-intimate partner homicides.

If you have been affected by any of the issues here, seek help.

National Stalking Helpline 0808 802030

Rape Crisis Uk 0808 500 222

I run a workshop periodically that covers all of the above. You can contact me to register for a place here.

Wild and Unknown

The Lady of Shallott is one of my favourite pictures. It hung on my sister's bedroom wall and as teenagers we used to wonder why she looked so melancholy. Love lost and lonely ourselves, we thought the lady in the boat might be waiting for someone.

The poem, The Lady of Shalott' by Alfred Lord Tennyson, tells the story of this young woman in medieval England, imprisoned on an island near Camelot. She must weave a colorful web and only watch the outside world through a mirror. If she looks at Camelot directly, she will be cursed.

This looking at the world through a mirror and the curse of daring to look directly at her wished for destiny results in her death, before she reaches the palace of Camelot. Never quite reaching her destination and her longing are pictured above in “The Lady of Shalott” (1888) by John William Waterhouse. The mirror and it's curse play a potent role in this story and still today it has its impact in the form of technology. Think of the selfie.

At this pivotal time in history, we are more concerned with self-image than ever, in part because of the way we view ourselves and others online and that the world is changing necessarily. The internet plays a huge part in the way our sense of identity is defined and this influences our world-view. I heard someone say that the internet is like a giant mirror we created to see ourselves in. We each have our own relationship with the entity that is the internet. It is huge, complex and layered.

Darian Leader, the modern Freudian Analyst said that when the baby first sees himself in the mirror is when he first learns to hate himself. This is because he sees the other baby as a threat and ends up rejecting himself. Social media is like the mirror, we hopefully look for some kind of acknowledgment that our existence is welcome and because of our natural inclination towards a negative bias, we get a huge hit from not getting that recognition.

Jaron Lanier, the American computer scientist, computer philosophy writer and futurist said that the trouble with the internet is that it has no context, therefore it makes sense that posting on social media is a like throwing a pebble over a mountain. You never know where it will land or how. The carefully crafted content probably lands very differently to the way it was intended. How we register in people’s minds on social media is laden with incomplete gestalten, the unfinished business of our interactions, unacknowledged attempts at recognition and existence.

Unfinished business is at the heart of Gestalt therapy and the aim is to close the gestalt, complete a process and get closure, however large or small. Think of all the times no response was made or about ghosting on dating apps or anywhere else for the matter.

A epidemic of self-crises could be the result of an alarmingly diminished sense of who we are in the age of the internet. Apps that run our lives with algorithms designed to know our behaviours, preferences and habits are worrying.

Checking our phones all too frequently and looking up anything and everything answers questions in an instant but do we retain the information? I heard Elon Musk say he could feel TikTok altering his mind and so he deleted it but the irony is that I saw him say it on the very app he was talking about. I too deleted it.

My mind was filling up with tiny snippets of information but not real knowledge. My algorithm showed me a myriad of therapists and life coaches, some expert and some not qualified, all churning out content for the masses. I could be seriously misguided by the therapist who claims to know me better than I do.

Artificial intelligence grows itself based on its own learning, a bit like algorithms, which has a sinister feel, much like the film, Her with Joaquin Phoenix as a man in the not to distant future with a new piece of operating software on his personal computer. She has a beautiful voice and seems interested in knowing him. You can guess the rest.

With this in mind, the writings of Carl Jung offer some comfort, some reassurance and some sanity. I believe this time in history represents a stage in human evolution that will require us to rethink our concept of selfhood and know ourselves in a different way. Aspects of ourselves that have been forgotten, lost in the wilderness of the internet that are as yet unknown, unseen, unheard and perhaps misunderstood need to be found.

To restore a sense of self and belonging in the world, exploring self-identity through archetypes can be liberating. I started working with archetypes many years ago drawing on the work of Caroline Myss, the theologian and teacher of all things spiritual. I propose to form a group where a safe exploration of your archetypes can further personal development in way that enriches who you are. The unique shape of the group with all its participants who bring to it their own energy, personal style and archetypal patterns will inform the process and our findings. Look out for my online and in-person workshops here.

The Indelible Marks of Shame

This article comes with kind permission of my client who I have been working with on the sticky business of shame. I have great admiration for this man's courage in talking to me about his experience and allowing me to share a process that is particular to him yet speaks to everyone.

He tells me about what has happened to him. A catastrophic chain of events changed the course of his life and it’s left him traumatised. He is so troubled by what happened that he finds it almost impossible to make sense of it all. Trauma, I think. This feels like it’s happening now. Piece by painful piece he unpacks some of it but not all and I begin to get the picture.

This seems to be the story of a man shocked by what has happened to him. Shocked into a state of panic, a state of disbelief, the state of an emotional emergency. His panic has nowhere to go. He is quite literally, screwed up, in a ball of acute anxiety. I think to myself, how are we going to do this? I’m a relational psychotherapist and have travelled this road before. It’s about going slowly. Interestingly, he starts to slow down anyway. This feels better. Eventually we get to a place of some understanding and I’m in but is he?

A year into the therapy and we’ve made headway with some powerful conversations about acceptance, imperfection and that illusive thing he longs for, a relationship. I sit there thinking, you’re in one. The therapeutic relationship is here. This is where you can experience a different kind of relationship to the ones you’ve had before, I say and he looks at me with curiosity. It’s about experiencing the required relationship instead of the repeated one, I explain.

The change in him is visible. The long body as he allows himself to take up space now. His spontaneous, authentic expression and creativity in describing his experiences to me are more present now than ever. How long has it taken us to get it like this? I say. No more knots, no more ball of anxiety, no more panic, just a man, examining his life and thinking about what’s next.

In his session this evening, we touch on the subject of his experiences with relationships. A recent foray into the dating scene has left him wondering what to do. The thought of what it would be like to fall in love is here. To find that person who would stand beside him and make everything feel better. Then it goes away again, it’s illusive. If only there wasn’t this thing or that thing in my way. He says. These obstacles are the illusion really not the wanted relationship.

We talk about shame and it’s legacy. The way it seems to creep back in years down the line, all dressed up as this or that reason for not doing things. This is the secret armour we wear to protect ourselves from shame. The trouble is that doing things like falling in love, changing career, moving house or anything that gets us closer to what we want means being seen, known, heard and understood probably for the first time.

It’s a huge challenge to become visible, vocal,

validated, viable after a lifetime in the shadows or behind a mask. It’s scarred me. He says. Your scars are beautiful, I say. The invisible scars that are indeed the indelible marks left by trauma, shame, humiliation are what shape us. What you are is all of your experience up until right now. I say. I wouldn’t be who I am without it. He says.

The more I work with people the more I see the inevitable fall from grace that seems to be part of the human experience. I see it as people come in utter disbelief that this could possibly be happening to them. Their righteous indignation, impotent rage, humiliation, terror, trauma. It all needs to find a narrative, be made sense of, understood and registered in another human being.

Mostly, the work is about our development, growth, maturation and coming to terms with it all in the presence of an attuned other. The details are sometimes not important, it’s the wound that is significant. For some, it’s their first and for others one of many. Battle scarred and weary yet open now more than ever, my is client to coming to terms with his story, still unfolding though it is.

As I finish this, I remember some things that have happened to me. Some ancient history and some current affairs, which seem to have a particular pattern, a process that plays out. This is familiar and I realise that it is less about changing that process than it is about accepting it as part of who I am. When I do this work in my practice, I talk to people about archetypes, the Jungian concept that works brilliantly with all of the above.

The indelible mark of shame can be seen as an archetypal pattern that can be interpreted as an expression of the self. This helps develop a sense of oneself with a coherent narrative, an identity, a story, which can be directed more in alignment with what is trying to happen and is often thwarted by our own defences.

I see real progress when people start to accept themselves as they were and then become who they were meant to be, often it’s not who they thought. Maybe they had an inkling and came to therapy to find out. I find this prospect attractive, exciting, daunting, enlivening, scary, illusive, wonderful and illuminating.

That illusive thing my client wants to find is really himself. His own sense of loyalty, love and creativity. His sense of being with himself in a way that he may never have imagined. These were lost back in the storm when all that stuff happened to him. His human spirit was crushed and his internal world scrambled. Through sitting with me for long enough, he is developing a new narrative, one that fits who really he is. It’s the story we tell ourselves that needs changing. This is a transformative experience, a collaboration, a two person job.

This is his unique story. He knows how it goes and how he wants to respond to it. He’s determined to make whatever life throws at him into a profoundly phenomenal and meaningful experience. Shit really does happen and he will be forearmed with his own mind about things. Now he responds to life’s challenges with quiet authority, style, courage, tenderness and grace but most of all with with love.

Every now and then, when another piece of life’s inevitable shit flies my way, I remind myself that I usually manage to send it away, back to where it came from whether it’s a real or imagined. Other times I’m floored. I’m not impervious to these things. It’s part of life and I’m determined, like my client, to make it all part of a phenomenally profound experience. Let it be deep let it be intense because imagine what joy can be found in life’s pleasure if we dare to plumb the depths of the human experience.