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Chapter Four – The diachronic analysis – who, what and when? – Page 117
This is a trajectory of migration, of beginnings, of finding a place, of being sought after
and sought out, and then relatively ignored. I have a range of positions and perspectives
as a result. These include that of total outsider (the stranger), welcome immigrant,
envied fast-tracked rival, respected member of the community, deliberately isolated
mentor, researcher, and all the way through, participant-observer. A major trope 1 is the
setting, including the agency, the professional communities of psychotherapists,
psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health workers, the communities that we
serve as therapists and of which we are a part, and our national and international
groupings of professionals and others. This setting impacts greatly on the group under
study.
The fieldwork
The most intense part of the fieldwork takes place in the second half of the year 2000. I
think that there is a sense of disturbance around the millennium, evidenced by the
amounts of bottled water and torch batteries that have been purchased in case of major
breakdown of computer control systems. By the time of the set of experiences that I am
studying and analysing (i.e. July to November 2000), things have resolved a lot. The
annual conference of the national psychotherapy association (always a major marker of
time in the local professional year) has been and gone in February 2000, with a lot of
tension around dual relationships. The previously uncontested model of how The
Agency functioned was contested then, and things were never the same again. We (the
Agency staff) could no longer afford to do what we had done. The Director had resigned
from May 2000, and my colleague and teaching partner Judi had become Acting
1 The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford English Dictionary, 1971) defines trope as ‘In rhetoric, a figure
of speech which consists in the use of a word or phrase other that that which is proper to it: also, …
figurative language’. The use of trope in describing Sticky Moments has something of the former
meaning, and in describing the setting has the latter meaning.