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Chapter Five - A Beginning – Page 174
There is a style of talk which reflects the group getting into an associative
mode, as if engaged in group-analysis
The content of the beginning of this session is slightly unusual in that one member is
very diligently trying to raise and air their personal experience. Even though, as noted
above, the tutors offer a relatively open invitation for reflections at the beginning of
each session, generally sessions begin with people asking questions about previous
teaching which invite a more cognitive or didactic response. This difference contributes
to this session seeming more like a group psychotherapy session, and the session is from
the start in an associative mode. As part of this, there is a kind of ‘loose talk’. By this, I
refer to two aspects of the talk that are loose. One is the apparently chatty and fluent
nature of the discourse, without apparent regard for the unconscious themes, and hence
loose in the censoring that participants employ. The other is the trajectory of the
discourse, which leaves it not confined to formalities, and open to non-linear
progression determined by links that arise spontaneously. Taken together, this is a
highly productive state for a group to be in, if appropriate use can be made of these
phenomena. An example of ‘loose talk’ follows in Table 5.3, and aspects of this are
explored in the section that follows the table.