Welcome to the Psychology Cafe. This is an exercise in imagination and I invite you to pretend you have come to my cafe, chosen some refreshments, and are listening to my talk before I do some individual work with William, one of the customers:

Dictionary definitions of friendship generally include words like  relationship,  mutual affection and interpersonal bonds. They also usually discuss quantity, duration and depth and make the distinction between friends and colleagues, associates and/or peers and  romantic relationships.  I wonder what a friend is to you? There’s no question that whatever a friend is, it is a complex, important and significant phenomenon in most people’s lives, and one that can vary in duration and form.  Francois Mauriac’ (1885 – 1970) French writer, wrote of  friends: “…no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”

If I asked you to write down the five most important qualities of a good friendship, chances are, most of them would be reflected in the following poem, ‘A Good Friend’, written by John Quincy Adams, President of the United States, 1825 – 1829:

I want a warm and faithful friend, To cheer the adverse hour; Who ne’er to flatter will descend, Nor bend the knee to power, – A friend to chide me when I’m wrong, My inmost soul to see; And that my friendship prove as strong, For him, as his for me.

Although it was written for a different time and the slightly archaic language and style reflects this, there is still much that is relevant today. Of course, the  characteristics described in the poem are not necessarily going to be present in all our friends.  Whilst warmth, loyalty, and reciprocity are probably necessary, and ‘base-line’ aspects for any friendship, being an honest critic, a challenger, and someone who sees deep into your soul and understands, probably only develops over time, and as a shared history and mutual affection develops.   

The central message in Dale Carnegie’s 1936 best seller ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’,  is summed up well in the following quote from him:

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you.”

Put simply, if you want to have friends be a thoroughly nice person who treats people like they’d want to be treated themselves and is interested in them.  Carnegie (1888 – 1955), was an American writer and lecturer, who developed courses, largely for corporate organisations, in self-improvement, salesmanship, public speaking and interpersonal skills. This commercial interest in friendship has developed exponentially and we now live in a time of new technology and social media, harvesting the field of human relationship to the tune of trillions of dollars.   

I’ve long thought that what we tell our young about complex subjects like relationship and emotion speak volumes about what is going on in the world and with ourselves.  My books on child psychology and on parenting teenagers contain accounts of typical development, common challenges and suggestions for how parents might support their children. In the book about parenting teenagers I wrote:

“Their understanding of how to interact with others, friendship and friendly behaviour, conflict and conflict management develops over time and reflects the individual child’s temperament, preferences and situation.” 

In the mental health field, friendship is a key area for clinical practice and research.  For example, in the 2023 OxWell Survey, which employed the McGill Friendship Questionnaire,  adolescents are asked about the functions and importance of their friendships. In an interview for ACAMHS (Association of Child and Adolescent Health), researcher Tanya Manchanda, comments on the survey’s findings:

“most adolescents do tend to report having high quality friendships…And then, another thing that we found is that adolescents, again, are reaching out to their friends most for support, but what most surprised me is that many adolescents are actually not finding the support helpful.”

She goes on to say that perhaps the research could inform an intervention, provide better understanding and possibly “train” adolescents to be supportive friends. She also talks about the friendship needs and experiences of young people with diverse sexualities,  post-Pandemic friendship practices, i.e. on-line and/or face-to-face. 

My  experience tells me that much of the current state of knowledge and understanding about friendships of children and young people often applies just as much to the adult population. This would not necessarily go down well with academics and professionals who have specialised in younger populations but if that is the case surely it is saying as much  about the needs of professionals as those of the populations with which they work?

Commerce, mental health and academia  are undoubtedly heavily invested and keen to generate know how, answers and skills on the subject of friendship. Yet another contemporary knowledge and power empire, politics, is implicated. In a 2018 episode of BBC Radio’s Channel 4, Moral Maze, celebrity wordsmiths, academics and thinkers debated the morality of breaking or maintaining friendships with others who hold different beliefs and values, following a highly publicised comment by a Labour Shadow Councillor saying she could never be friends with Conservative colleagues, which stimulated both endorsement and approbation.    Much of the radio discussion seemed to centre around the tension between political and intellectual rationales for friendship and the more sentient, spiritual and emotional aspects. 

One thing that seems to be clear about friendships is that the vast majority of people of all ages want them, many don’t have them, or don’t have enough of them, and often are dissatisfied with the ones that they have.  Few people are completely content and/or confident in how to manage them.  This makes for some very fertile ground in terms of development and learning, for individuals, but also for those structures, corporate and governmental, in wider society, charged with helping and looking after people.  It also means that every one of us has a part to play in developing a better understanding and probably, a better world in which material profit does not have to be and ideally isn’t, the driving force behind work in this area.  

The following story , ‘The Jar of Life’, is told by a professor to his students.  The illustration that accompanies this post is a visual depiction of the story’s key points:

A professor shows his students a large glass jar and puts as many ping pong balls into the jar as he can and asks the students if the jar is full.  They say it is, but then he reaches for a bag of small stones and pours this into the jar, right up to the top, and again, asks if the jar is full.  Everyone agrees it is.  Next he brings out a bucket of sand and pours as much as will fit on top of the balls and small stones and he asks if the jar is full now? Once again the students say it is.  Finally, he gets two bottles of beer from his briefcase, unscrews their caps and jokes that they are actually low-acohol, as he doesn’t drink, then he pours the bottles’ contents over everything else in the jar. He tells his students that the story is a metaphor for life and that the ping pong balls symbolise a person’s absolute priorities, for example; health, safety, family, children, passions and friends; the small stones are other things that matter but that could be lived without, such as career, car and home,  and the sand is all the rest, the little stuff like fashionable clothes, jewellery, accessories, meals out etc.  He makes the point that it is important to put the ping pong balls into the jar (life) first as they are what really matter.  Then, when asked by one of the students, what the beers stand for, he says that this shows how whatever  priorities you have there is always time and space to have a couple of beers with a friend.       

Friendships feature in both the first and last additions to the packed jar, which is a salutary reminder of how friendships are so important.    

My audience of a couple of dozen people ends and people thank me, makes various positive comments and gradually leave the space where I have been talking.  One man is left seated in the back room and I guess this is William, (W), the person who has asked to have an individual conversation with me. He seems to be a bit ill at ease so I go over to him and ask if he is the person I think he is.  He nods and I take a seat next to him.

You know, I’m not sure there’s much for us to talk about.  You sort of covered what I would have asked already.

Me Well maybe there are some things I didn’t include that might be useful to think about?

You didn’t talk about the pain of friendships finishing or about how hard it can be to make friends.

Me It’s true; I didn’t explicitly focus on that aspect.  From what I’ve encountered in my work, and also from personal experience, I’d say the challenges take so many different forms and are always very individual, I judged that it was so much a part of our universal human experience, it didn’t need stating.  And also,  this isn’t therapy but rather a conversation that may or may not trigger some useful ideas or thoughts.

I get that.  Anyway, I’ve had quite a lot of therapy over the years.

Me It sounds like you’ve done a lot of work on your friendships. I wonder what you have found most useful? 

Probably the idea that nobody gets it right all the time and that just because one friendship doesn’t work out it doesn’t mean you can’t do better next time.  Mind you, in my case, I’ve got it wrong so many times that I’ve been struggling not to think I’m a no-hoper, and should just get used to having no real friends.

Me What’s a real friend to you then?

Someone who’s got your back, who accepts you for what you are and who will be honest with you and tell you when you’re wrong, 

Me And what is a friend who is not real then?

– laughing – They’re fakes, who, like that poem said; do a lot of knee-bending flattery and who run with the fox and hunt with the hounds.  They’re not real, even to themselves.  That’s why  so-called friends on social media don’t count; not to me, anyway.

Me You know, it sounds like what you’re saying here is that friends for you should have similar beliefs and values about friendship itself?

 Yeah, but that’s the catch 22 isn’t it.  How do you find people who do have similar ideas about friendship itself when so many people are on-line being fake friends? 

Me  I think you’d find an approach that I use, called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy; known as ACT, helpful.  It’s developed over time from an amalgam of ideas from other therapies, research, and applied psychological approaches. Can I tell you a bit more about it?

Go for it!

Me Well the guy who created it is Steven Hayes, an American Professor of Psychology.  He experienced pretty debilitating anxiety and it was when he reached his lowest point that he came up with many of the central ideas in ACT.  Obviously I can’t do it justice here but there are some great books and YouTube films if you want to find out more.  

W So apart from the importance of values, what are his other big ideas?

Me He argues that we all experience pain and suffering, and that it is intrinsic to being human and not something to deny or try to avoid but rather something, along with all other experiences and emotions, which we should embrace and experience fully, whilst at the same time not being defined by these.  In other words, our core selves go on and endure, no matter what happens. He likens our essential self to the sky and our thoughts and emotions to clouds, which inevitably pass. 

W Sounds difficult but realistic.

Me  ACT uses lots of metaphors, activities and stories to help people. The story of the classroom professor is one that is often used by ACT therapists(I reach into my bag and bring out the drawing that illustrates this post)  

W (Laughing)Where is this going?

Me Well, as I said, the jar is supposed to be symbolic of a life with the ping pong balls being the most important priorities and the small stones and sand being other things that are not absolutely crucial.  Did this speak to you?

W It did and it made me think I need to have a couple of drinks more often with people I know and not worry about how things should or shouldn’t be.  I think I’ve been over-thinking and catastrophising and I need to loosen up, go with the flow, and enjoy the journey, right? 

Me I couldn’t agree more.  When I was thinking about what I might say in my talk there was so much I could have included that I didn’t.  In the end, I figured if I did, most people would have left long before I’d finished.  Just because so many people and so many organisations have a lot to say about it, sooner or later, we realise that our friendships, like our lives, are complex, problematic and difficult to understand.  The good news is, that means we have lots to find out, experience and learn, and we each have a life in which to do so.