Foreword

I am already working for a longer time on this article. This is the first bit that I feel is good enough to make public. The other bits are still in the process of writing and being vetted by people whose judgment I highly value.

At the moment it is published at the Co-Counsellors-Only section. When it is finished, it will be published in the section accessible for the general public.

Introduction

We all hope that there is peace among people and that all things run smoothly between them, especially between Co-Counsellors. However, perhaps a bit too obvious to say, Co-Counsellors have also weaknesses and the potential to get things wrong and by doing so to harm other people, especially their reputation.

Co-Counsellors generally are able to sort out conflicts among themselves. Rarely this leads to allegations and complaints. But if it happens, there is a chance that a case will rumble on for years with rumours and allegations whispering around in the background. As bad-mouthing is not experienced as bliss it is not healthy for the reputation of Co-Counselling, the people targeted and eventually the 'storytellers' themselves.

Allegations might be real and accurate, but can also be based on Chinese whispers, exaggerations, make-believe imaginations and thinking errors, fuelled by social dynamics.

Allegations can be about very serious matters. Therefore we need in Co-Counselling ways of sorting out which allegations are false and imagined and which ones are true and accurate.

We also need a good insight into how social dynamics may exaggerate false and imaginary allegations. Witch hunts provide us with a very good historical lesson about how imaginary allegations resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Europe. Chapter 1 looks into the social dynamics of witch-hunts.

Chapter 2 and 3 are about evidence, what constitutes good and imaginary evidence. The part about how people mentally construe 'evidence' is presented here. I am still writing the rest of this chapter. Chapter 4 is about "Dealing with complaints"