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Chapter Six – Part of a Session – Page 204
important topic for exploration, and not just ‘out there’ – what is the understanding in
this group? Maybe this is one contributor to Heidi’s eruption. How to manage distance
in relationships – am I too much for you, how do I deal with it when you pull away and
push me away so forcefully, and how do I deal with the frustration when I can’t get
close to you? How do I and we deal with our morale in the chaos that is in here?
Conclusion - findings, both methodological and substantive
Regarding how I am investigating and what that is revealing, I will consider
investigating first. I have described in this chapter how I have processed the raw data of
my participant observation and the audiotape recordings to arrive at consideration of a
powerful moment, and how I have then dealt with that data to arrive at the themes and
issues that I have elaborated. This, like other examples of the application of group-
analytic ethnography, relies on an understanding of an individual unconscious as well as
a group unconscious, and a capacity to engage emotionally with the range of researcher
experience including countertransference.
From a substantive perspective, an episode has been highlighted in this chapter, placed
in the context of the session as a whole, and linked to the semester as a whole. A series
of images have been traced that can be seen in the process of the session, and some
themes have been outlined that locate these images. These can be summarised as a
reflection of those faced by patients in the clinical work, and by students in the learning
task of the course and the semester, and occur in the group. However, the group does
not have the remit to address these directly, and the capacity to negotiate such remits
does not yet exist between the staff and the students. What erupts sees the light of day,
and is experienced and witnessed at some level, as is the absence of an overt
acknowledgement of what remains un-acknowledged.