Counseling, Address, Account

This essay grew partly out of my struggle with the ethical issues that I faced when working as a criminal justice counselor (Schuhmann 2015, 24): How should I respond to stories that are both stories of crime and stories of suffering? Is it appropriate to aim at alleviating the suffering of someone who has harmed others? And how do I react when I suspect that an offender is lying to me in order to evoke my sympathy? When I got to know Judith Butler's work – by then I was no longer working as a counselor – I felt that it offered relevant clues for addressing these questions. I found it helpful to read that responding ethically to a story does not require an evaluation of the “truth” of that story. I was also struck by the notion that recognizing someone is not so much related to knowing the other as it is to realizing that the other cannot be fully known. An especially thrilling – but also puzzling – idea in Butler's work in relation to counseling concerns the place of vulnerability and suffering in life, as this requires rethinking the aim of counseling altogether. If, as relational beings, we cannot completely avoid vulnerability and suffering, then the notion that vulnerability and suffering are problems to be solved in counseling no longer holds.