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Chapter Seven – A Discussion – Page 220
It is also possible to look at some of the sequences of this session through the lens of
this device, the Reference Locator. These serve as examples of its use in the process of
data analysis in research more generally, as well as its particular contribution to the
understanding of this session.
EXAMPLE 7.1 (Taken from the description of events on Pages 214,
above. The Code in brackets, that is Clinical, Task or Group, represents the
researcher’s decision as to the core focus in that particular statement or
event): ‘Frances then turns to having lost what she got from Judi (Group),
but then to being able to find what she needed for herself outside
(Task/Clinical). Judi mentions research (Task), and Paula then brings in
material from a patient, to emphasise the importance of clinical work
(Clinical), as well as the impact of case studies (Task). Judi responds to
Paula’s difficulty with her patient in relation to Paula’s need to write a case
study by offering her own solution, to write the case study prior to asking
permission to use it for purposes such as a membership application to a
professional body (Clinical/Task). These two contributions seem to raise
anxiety in the group (Group)’.
Changing voice, in this example, Frances seems symbolically to come towards Judi
with the loss of what Judi said, yet also with her own success outside, and the focus is
more on the latter than the former. I want to argue that on a level that is largely
unconscious, this both protects Frances from feared and fantasised retaliation from Judi,
whilst subtly erasing Judi in an attacking way. 14 In the interaction that follows this,
between Paula and Judi, both are ostensibly focussing hard on Task and Clinical areas. I
want to suggest that these two participants are managing something between them for
the group, and so their interaction can be seen as falling in the Group focus. The tension
is possibly that between, on the one hand, the risks of identifying closely with patients
who are anxious about exposure (Task and Clinical foci collapsing into Group), and on
the other, holding on to one’s own professional self and identity as a psychotherapist,
14 This is very much like a clinical interpretation. It is based on what I experience both from participation
and from observation, whilst making use of the epistemology I have described in Chapter Two Part Two.
In particular, I am using an awareness of bi-logic and depths of layered experience (Matte-Blanco 1975,
1988) to imagine what may lay beneath the rational and ordered surface level of interaction. This
interpretation, and much of what follows in relation to Examples 7.1 and 7.2 represent my evolving
hypothesising about sequences of interaction.