Experts of the ordinary: Bereavement counselling in Britain

Counselling is of increasing importance in British society. Yet, very few d etailed ethnographic descriptions exist of how it works in practice. This a rticle focuses on training courses with the national bereavement care organ ization, Cruse. The discussion revolves around Cruse's conception of grief as a natural and ordinary process, yet individually variable and unique, an d its client-centred approach, which attributes 'expert' status to clients. Consideration of the 'ordinary' and 'expert' in Cruse ideology suggests fu ndamental questions: how does Cruse justify its counselling activity! How d oes it train and motivate people to carry out counselling? I argue that thi s is achieved by grounding the sense of grief in the trainees themselves th rough a process of situated learning that allows the trainees to assume exp ertise of the ordinary. Addressing tile work of counselling theoretically, I argue that, while Foucauldian analysis of the psy-sciences is to some ext ent applicable to counselling, detailed participant observation reveals com plexities in the interplay of subjectivity and subjection that the Foucauld ian approach is unable to grasp.