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Chapter Six – Part of a Session – Page 198
eruption. At this point in the experience of being in the group in the room during the
performance of the task of the group, attention was clearly and firmly returned to this
reflection. This mechanism has a quality that seems homeostatic.
Rivalry
Heidi is clearly able to acknowledge her rivalrous feelings, which certainly seem to be a
major determinant of her speaking out when she did, as if she was unable not to do so.
After the transcribed part of the session, she goes on to talk about rivalry with her
clients who seem to be moving (i.e. making progress, in this case in their psychotherapy
with her) when she doesn’t feel that she is (in her own personal psychotherapy), and
also makes her own experience of rivalry in the group decidedly real by describing how
she has discussed it with her supervisor. The introduction of the topic of the supervisor
at this point may itself be a rivalrous move (albeit an unconscious one), in that such
relationships (between student therapists and their various supervisors, as well as
between student therapists and their patients, which are inevitably triangular, as noted
by Ekstein and Wallerstein (1958, 1972), among others, unlike the dyadic nature of
individual exploratory therapy) can be sites for rivalry and rivalrous feelings that
originate (at least partly) 3 in relationships between students, and between tutors and
students.
Keeping spirits up in chaos
This is Frances’s topic, and is an issue for her in her workplace, which she describes as
chaotic. It seems that other students (for example, Tom and Paula) challenge her clear
distinction between ‘in here’ and ‘out there’, but she seems to hold firmly to it. The
3 Here I am aware that some of the rivalry and rivalrous feelings that emerge in situations such as this
group have their origins in the families of origin and the experiences of the members of those families,
including particularly those of the participants in this group.