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Summary of INTERPRETATION
Chapter Seven – A Discussion – Page 233
I will take the last device, the play within a play, to form a summary of the meanings
that I have elaborated for the sticky moment, as a play within the wider play of the
observable events of the session.
The baiting and display of the fishhook, and what emerges from the tear in the fabric of
consciousness that it causes, capture layers of meaning. These layers include the
challenge of development, personally and clinically, and the role of the group in the
accomplishment of that development. They also include the achievement (or the lack of
it) of a series of balances, between enactment and reflection, between comfort and
learning, between a focus on the task of a group and a focus on the experience of being
in the group, and between success and failure in the realisation of the potential of the
learning group.
Conclusion - findings, both methodological and substantive
Methodologically, the analysis in this session (like those in Chapters Five and Six) is
linked to a Sticky Moment, the emergence of a symbol which is rapidly recognised as
extremely dense in meaning. As before, this is located and explored in a wider context.
The ‘unpacking’ of a symbol is similar to the analysis in Chapter Six, and hence
depends on participant observer responses to interaction. At the same time, the notion of
the Reference Locator is introduced in this chapter, which enables a form of layered
consideration. This is useful for untangling condensed threads of meaning, offering a
series of meanings and of ways of thinking about the relationship between these.