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Ron
Choice.
Mary
We lived on a country block for a while,
and the thing I enjoyed most about it was
having chooks. I loved them, eh?
Apart from they used to shit all over the
deck, but I thought they were the
grooviest thing.
Must be that my Methodist up-bringing
gave me huge amounts of satisfaction that
all those nice kind of healthy looking
scraps could go to the chooks, and they
used to scuttle round after them.
Paula
(inaudible) and you get to raid their nest,
and get their babies.
Mary
… follow you around. That’s right, and
you have to push the broody ones off with
a broom so you can get the eggs and … a
bit like (inaudible)
(Silence)
Bill
I don’t know if there are things like
connecting up to last time. This is Week
10, so we’ve got five more meetings after
the break. So we’ve got a break after
today, back on the 11th October.
Chapter Five - A Beginning – Page 148
Again interesting – approval of rural
domesticity.
Warm childhood memories, a sense of
reverie. (NB ‘Chooks’ is New Zealand
slang for chickens).
Who cares about the shit everywhere?
(Here, and in my next two comments, I am
underlining and expanding the student’s
statement, for emphasis. Effectively, I am
adding bi-logical depth in this expansion).
Alchemy – turning shit into gold.
Glee at aggression.
A kind of chain phenomenon – as if Mary
is trying to merge with Paula (happens
again later). Could be rivalry, or Mary’s
difficulty in being there in her own right.
A pause here. A sense of discomfort, as if a
rather anxious beginning, possibly
reflecting the poor turnout at a crucial stage
of the proceedings). (What follows is my
reflection, made on the basis of recall of
the event, and also on considering it again
when listening to and transcribing the
audiotape). This group seem to be locked
into an early (i.e. developmentally early in
human terms, infantile, primitive, helpless)
pattern of ambivalence. Bion’s notion of
hatred of learning from experience comes
to mind.
Focussing on how little time we have left.
Is this an anxious response to the last set of
changes or an existential acknowledgement
and drawing of a boundary?