A Lifetime Passed: Remembering Christine
By Dave Mann
Christine and I first met as fellow trainees in 1989 on a Diploma in Gestalt Therapy at The Sherwood Psychotherapy Training Institute. The group were perched on mattresses on the floor as our first-year trainer, Ian Greenway, uttered the words, “This is the moment that your training has started and now that moment has passed.” Over thirty years later, on 27th April 2020, the moment that Christine’s life ended passed. Unlike the beginning of my contact with Christine that began with a nervous glance and half-smile across a crowded training room, I learnt that cancer had claimed her life through the cold starkness of email during lockdown.
I remember the first exercise we were given on our training being to choose someone who you saw as opposite to you. We chose each other only to discover (surprise, surprise) that we were far more similar than we were opposite. Initially, I found Christine mildly intimidating; she was articulate, intelligent, worked as a university lecturer and had clearly read far more Gestalt than myself or anyone else in the group. That sense of intimidation soon evaporated as I discovered more of her ability to play, a quality that in my experience she rarely wore on the surface although her wicked laugh gave clues to what lay beneath.
Christine was ambitious and hard-working. It was no surprise that she was one of the first to qualify from our training group and she went on to initially set up a foundation-year feeder training for SPTI before developing her own full Gestalt training programme and founding The York Psychotherapy Training Centre. I got to know the quality of her training through supervising several people who had emerged from it, her strong ethics and thoroughness coming as no surprise to me, though I also know that setting up and running that training was an exhausting process for her.
Our paths have crossed many times over the past thirty years at conferences and GPTI meetings. We’d sit over a glass or two of red and reminisce about instances from our training years, laugh over assignments that developed creativity but would never be accepted now, smile with a tinge of embarrassment at various points of our development as psychotherapists and trainers. Yet, on reflection, I never knew much about Christine’s current situation, even the ‘small’ stuff, in many ways I experienced her as intensely private. I did know that she was a keen rock climber and that she has been a rock for many clients, supervisees and trainees. As a trainer of many years, her final lesson was on the fragility of life.
Her death is a sad loss for the Gestalt community just as she will be so sorely missed by her climbing community. My thoughts are with her partner, Terry.
An appreciation of Christine Kennett
By Lin Harrison
Christine was my main Gestalt trainer in a one-woman training institute for the first three years of my core Gestalt training, and my supervisor for many years more. Unsurprisingly, she had a huge impact on me; one that has remained and will always stay with me. Although I only saw her at the occasional conference or training in recent years, it was always lovely to catch up. She would predictably ask me about my cats and love life, in that order. I would then ask her the same two questions, in the same order, and we would laugh. I can picture her smiling on those occasions as I write this. It was lovely to get to this point of warm, collegial contact as I had struggled with her hugely at times through my journey as a trainee, clashing dramatically and painfully. When I think of who I am today as a therapist, how I learnt the craft of that, and who has most shaped and affected that, it’s her actually.
I started my training at 25 and had just begun in my first clinical job as a counsellor in a Rape Crisis Centre. I’d moved to a new city for the job, was thrilled and excited by it but also scared and out of my depth clinically. I’d quickly realised that my counselling training wasn’t going to be enough to support me in the work I was doing. The tutor on my counselling course, Dan Lehain, was a Gestaltist, and one of my new colleagues was training at Sherwood; I loved how they both spoke about Gestalt and felt hungry to learn more. Like many of us, I’d been drawn to the world of counselling and therapy instinctively and clumsily, seeking things I’d missed in my own childhood, balm for wounds I wasn’t even aware that needed healing. I’d worked out in my previous voluntary roles for a HIV/AIDS charity and The Samaritans that I seemed to have a natural affinity for difficult conversations with people about taboo subjects. I loved this new world but was also tottering through it slightly haphazardly. I knew I needed to learn so much more and couldn’t wait to start.
Somewhere, I have no idea now where, I stumbled across a flier for a weekend Introduction to Gestalt Psychotherapy in York. I still have the yellow leaflet in a box somewhere. I sent my application form off with a cheque to Christine Kennett and eagerly anticipated what seemed like a brave new adventure. My memories of that weekend are sketchy. I don’t remember any difficulty or confrontation. I just remember loving it, admiring Christine, this strange tribe of people that I had discovered and a whole new way of being together. I’m aware that this sounds a wee bit evangelical, but I think that’s how it was. I felt both finally at home and utterly alien all at once. Christine seemed so much older than me, much more than the difference in our actual years; warm, wise and steady. I was very drawn to her and delighted to hear of plans for a full Gestalt training that she planned to launch the following year. I was already sold and determined to join.
I next met Christine in the attic therapy room at her house in York – joined by her cats, of course – at my interview for a place on the course. I remember her warning me clearly that these trainings could be unsettling, had profound impacts on people and may cause them to question fundamental life choices, resulting in relationships breaking down for instance. As the young woman I was, desperate for ‘real’ contact, I think this just sounded all the more enticing. I had no idea that I would genuinely be so bruised and disturbed throughout the journey ahead, and that some of the most painful aspects of this would be due to our relationship. I think at that time Christine seemed like a very loving mother figure, I was clearly oblivious to that fact that I was seeking someone to place on a pedestal and her openness to contact and relational exploration fitted the bill completely. As I write this, I know this is one of the many lessons I’ve never forgotten from Christine; however much I attempt to calibrate my presence in a bid to avoid a potential pedestal position with a client or supervisee, sometimes our meeting is the perfect storm, the honeymoon period is in motion and the fall and rupture to come, an inevitability.
Our training began in October 1997 at the Northern School for Acupuncture in Acomb, York. I can clearly picture the room still, the floor cushions, my group and the windows and magnificent trees that I focused on constantly, terrified of the contact I had been longing for with the actual people available. Christine sat at the front on a floor cushion, tossing her hair back over her shoulders, eyes sparking with what seemed to me vibrant possibility. From that first weekend, the harsher reality and risk of this more authentic contact became apparent. I’ve read back my journal from that first year this week and it describes conflicts with other group members that shocked and terrified me. I wrote about feeling more vibrant and awake than I had in years, of the rightness of this, feeling something palpably clicking into place, a sense of coming home at last. I’d forgotten some of the more difficult experiences though, as Christine dramatically challenged another group member on our first weekend in a way that scared me. I describe in my journal a sense of having ‘survived’ this first weekend and then an unexpected wave of distress hitting me, I was bewildered but also eager to return.
That first year is full of memories of Gestalt experiments, presented by Christine with a challenge and invitation. I’d never known anything like this then – feeding each other and being fed, different foods, tastes, textures and temperatures, blindfolded with arms behind our backs, unable to use words or hands to push away the unwanted spoon. On another weekend Christine played different pieces of music and invited us to experiment. I instantly loved one song she played but felt too much shame to move as my peers cavorted around the room laughing and playing with such freedom. This was incredibly painful and brought up so much. For these last 23 years since then I have loved that song and adore dancing to it now, remembering Christine fondly each time I do. She is a part of the journey from the curled up 26-year-old, collapsed, sobbing and unable to move, to the more playful 48-year-old who now loves to dance and play. I can’t put into words her part in that transition, but I know it’s truth.
My core difficulty with Christine focused on my expression of my sexuality as a lesbian and her response to this. I felt an enormous hitherto unmet need to express and explore how my sexuality shaped the relational field for me. I felt a hunger for us as a group to name the societal and cultural field conditions that were the ground to my painful experiences of difference. Christine in turn was focussed on meeting me in as immediate a way as possible, to challenging me to move beyond my stance of avoidant terror that the contact boundary presented. It was the perfect storm in many ways, and I feel we both missed each other in these passionate attempts. I was desperate for her understanding and acknowledgement of the field conditions, and she was frustrated that in doing so I seemed to be deflecting, avoiding the terror of an I-Thou encounter. My memory, imperfect as it may be, was of her shouting that she wasn’t hearing from the real me, she was just hearing politics. I shouted back in fury and hurt that this was me, that was the point!
That same missing was repeated on many occasions and in many forms throughout our training. Looking back, maybe I needed this, to war with a longed-for other, to feel missed and share the impact. Perhaps I was selfing in relation, in a way that gives me the stronger foundations I now have? It certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. Meanwhile, I saw others in the group wage their own wars at times, bruising confrontations and ruptures ensued, as did powerful meetings that seemed to me like the very pinnacle of contact I had so yearned for. Training weekends and the fallout following them became my constant, and ‘real life’ burnt less brightly as a result. I think in some ways many of us have similar stories of our initial training journey as Gestaltists, whoever our trainers were and are. The ground is fertile and the storm conditions perfect in the between that unfolds. Although as I say that, what stays with me is what feels unique about Christine and her part in mine and many others’ journeys.
If I were to describe Christine, particularly her stance as a trainer, therapist and supervisor, I would say that I haven’t met anyone who stays at the contact boundary so utterly relentlessly. At times ferociously, in my experience. In all of our ruptures, and there were many in those early years, she stayed, insistently inviting, sometimes pulling me back to contact. From where I am now, I’m grateful for that. It taught me the courage to stay in contact with my clients, to trust in the process, to remember the often-healing nature of a rupture repaired rather than avoided. It reminds me of the power of authenticity, of trusting my clients’ potential for growth in spite of their fragility. It taught me that I can survive ruptures that seemed annihilating, perhaps even blossom as a result of them. It also taught me that this stance isn’t always best, it wasn’t always for me with Christine. I calibrate my presence more for these bruisings, I think, I trust my instinct when withdrawal and waiting are fine-enough stances. And, of course, it has taught me all of the above in my personal life too, with my now wife Ali, my ageing Mum, good friends and my therapy group; and of course I’m still fumbling along in a haphazard and clumsy manner, still learning.
The years that followed our training, when Christine was my supervisor, saw our relationship shift to a more collegial one, a huge relief from those earlier tumultuous parent-child encounters. I remember her now with loving fondness and gratitude and know that some of my peers in our training group have spoken mostly of her generosity, kindness and support over the years in their contact with her. I re-read Christine’s feedback on my year-one journal this week. Seeing her handwritten words ‘I see you let love in’ have really touched me. I know she has played a huge part in me being increasing able to do that, however much it remains a struggle.
I’ll never forget Christine and her impact on me, both personally and professionally. I’m also aware of the impact she had on the wider field. She passionately encouraged us as new trainees to join GPTI, to be an active part of the wider community of Gestaltists; she trained several groups and took enormous pride in seeing each cohort complete and particular delight in each of us as individuals as we graduated. I felt shocked and saddened when I heard of her death and I won’t be alone in that. I feel that I lived, rather than learn, Gestalt through my relationship with her, with her encouragement, with others. I will always remember her as the passionate and imperfect woman that she was with great fondness.
In celebration of Christine Kennett’s life
By Graham Colbourne
I have had the privilege of knowing Christine as a close colleague for many years. As I write to share this with you, I fill with respect, sadness and warm, profound appreciation.
Christine’s life and being was richly suffused with warmth, generosity, insight, wit and wisdom together with a unique combination of strength and vulnerability. The primary metaphor emerging for me is that of a skilled, wounded healer.
Christine and I had common roots in the midst of the dark, satanic mills of post-war industrial Lancashire, and in working-class families that knew intimately about economic, class and emotional struggle; how these are interwoven with mental ill health; and how these inspire passion, compassion and vocation within education and psychotherapy. I think this also informed Christine’s energy and capacity for contact and connection, and her striving for an embodied sense and continuity of reciprocal love and security. All of this shaped her therapeutic practice. She was able to stay with and understand a wide range of clients through thick and thin, in despair and joy. Hers was not a simplistic, warm fuzzy approach, but one forged through gritty experience; she was also capable of fierce, sustained challenge, of tenacious theoretical exposition, and of accurately naming what she saw without fear or favour. Christine was an active and accomplished therapist, supervisor and trainer. She has deeply touched and enriched a great many lives.
She loved music, literature, aikido, tango and latterly rock climbing. She was an excellent and much appreciated cook and creative home maker, enjoying her garden.
I will cherish memories of her with fondness and gratitude.
In memory of Christine Kennett
By Rachael Kellett
From the very first time I met Christine Kennett, her warmth and luminosity enveloped me in a way no-one had ever done before. I met her in her converted attic that reminded me of the inside of a Bedouin tent but with less fabric. She very gently put me at my ease and teased out all she needed to know. It was 1999 and I was working as an Assistant Psychologist at The Retreat Psychiatric hospital in York, feeling very unsupported. Meeting Christine and finding Gestalt was life changing. It helped to reveal the pain I was holding from the Psychiatric field. I couldn’t believe my luck that there was a Gestalt training so close by and was eager to get started.
The training course itself was held on the top floor of a large Georgian house in Acomb, York. There were roughly fifteen of us and in that year we sat in a circle around the edge of the room on blue futons. I remember the time we were looking at visual awareness. I completely lost my vision temporarily. I was scared but Christine helped support me to ground myself and calm down until it came back. Then there was the time she asked us to check in as an animal and during that process she leapt across the floor as a monkey where she was met by another monkey (Kevin) and they danced together.
The most important and meaningful support she offered me though, was when I became ill with Fibromyalgia and feared I would have to give up the course. She encouraged me to attend without putting myself under any pressure to perform. Just to show up and allow myself to just be. She set up a mattress in the corner for me and gave me permission to do whatever I needed to do. Whether that was to move around or sleep. This was a completely novel experience for me. I was used to adjusting myself to meet other people's needs. I wasn't even convinced I had any needs of my own. The concept that I not only had needs but that I deserved to have them met was a revelation to me. She allowed me to be with my pain and disability and persuaded me not to give up my training. I have many happy memories of sitting and lying on that mattress with other group members taking turns to come and sit with me. As I write this, I make contact with the emotion of love and light that Christine touched me with. She set me off on a new path where I could just be and helped me to believe that I was enough. I am truly grateful for her and her complete acceptance of me.
In the second year we met in a cottage in Heslington, York. This time there were a variety of different chairs, ranging from armchairs, sofas, dining chairs and cushions but still in a circle. My memories from this time are Christine and Mike Turton facilitating an exploration of my drowning dream with the whole group as participants. Another wonderfully supportive moment was when I had done a piece of therapy in front of the large group. When we finished, Christine spontaneously said to the group “If this were an ice-skating contest, what score card would you hold up. Everyone gave me a 10. She had never done this before and didn’t do it again. I have a vivid memory of Christine’s smiling face, and the warmth from the whole group. I emotionally softened, feeling seen, heard, competent and proud. This was a momentous moment for me, that enabled me to really start believing in myself as a therapist.
Overall, I remember Christine’s energy and spirit. She had high standards and wouldn’t pull her punches if you were off track, but she could be relied on to explain clearly what was required and was incredibly supportive. She significantly helped shape both the person and therapist I am today.
Thank you so much Christine. To paraphrase the message you wrote in my card when I qualified: “You have earned your wings now, so go well, and fly.”