The ego is sometimes used to mean a kind of self-agrandizing principle of the psyche. Ego-centric can also mean that we focus on ourselves at the expense of others; this is a related but not identical meaning to the first sense. These differing meanings are related insofar as they both entail some psychic action by which we seek to prop up ourselves as individuals, one by self-promotion, one by self-interest. Both generally are related to a degree of insecurity in the individual in question. All people are different and have different histories; the ego level is contingent up various factors related to these differences.
A one-to-one support session is necessarily a meeting of egos. There is an imbalanced power relation between the student and the support worker. This is not an ego-trip itself, but a position of necessity. The student wants help with their writing and the writing support worker theoretically has the skills/knowledge to help them. This means it is not only a position of necessity but a position of responsibility, that is, the writing support worker is responsible for the student. Interestingly this means the power relation is more complicated than it first appears, for from this perspective the student is actually in control. They place the burden of their writing problems upon the support worker, whom they expect, to a greater or lesser extent, to solve them.
The initial manifestation of the support worker in this relation will be varied, but we all can be seduced by the desire to please, to be liked. Much more important than being liked though, is needing the student to trust us; this means we need to have (some) confidence in ourselves. If we project confidence, the student will trust us —unless we screw up so much that it’s painfully laid out for them to see. There is a difficult borderline (depending on our ego-structures) between the successful projection of confidence with the aim of inspiring trust and the confidence which inspires ‘being-liked’. We’re not supposed to care about ‘being-liked’ but because of the borderline, it can sometimes be hard to not do so.
I have often found myself lost in the early stages of a consult. Worried I won’t know where to go with it. Listening to the student, scanning the work. Looking to convey a mixture of honesty, but not so much honesty to give away the rising sense of ‘what to do with this?’ whilst also bringing the aforementioned confidence. I referred before to periods of quiet reading in the session that help let the problems in the work show themselves. These periods enable me to find a space in which any desire to be ‘liked’ can largely be eradicated as I get deeper into the work. Slowly seeing the problems emerge from the reading and talking about what they are trying to say, brings has a satisfaction that is not egoistic but only has its own satisfaction, like finding the solution of a puzzle on one’s own.
However this is not the end of the struggle. If the problems are successfully identified and a path forwards (that is not too disheartening) is found, then the student will often be very pleased. This pleasedness is then projected onto the the support worker in the form ‘being-liked’. Which is worse now, as it is not artifical (in the sense of inspired by the projection of confidence) but a genuine pleasure that their writing problems (for now) are resolved. It is course hard not to take some excess of pleasure in the pleasedness of the student, however it is to be avoided as much as possible.
The reason for this is that the classical issue of hubris is a very real one. If we allow the either spoken, or unspoken praise of the student to go in, then we may generate an attitude that will serve us very badly on another occasion. The projection of confidence, secure in the knowledge this is a contrivance is one thing, but the real thing is perilous. The tempered projection of confidence, should always contain the possibility of admitting to not know the way forward —a piece of writing for another time- whereas when hubris crashes into such difficulties the result will be an embarrassing mess, leaving the student lacking faith in the service and the support worker with another level of ego crisis to resolve.