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The aims of this chapter
Chapter Eight – A Consulting Break - Page 239
My methodological aim in this chapter is to conduct and elaborate the investigation of a
set of processes, those of the learning group, by using an allied experience,
consideration of the interaction between the tutors in the break, as an example of the
unconscious phenomenon of displacement.
My substantive aim is to detail what is revealed by this methodology, which includes a
reconstruction and appreciation by the tutors of the world of the students and the group.
This is argued to be central to the work of the semester, in that this process is a core
element of the learning group.
Almost inevitably as a result of the structure of this episode (as a displaced element of
the interaction which is the original focus of the study, the learning group), and as a
result of the theory used, but also in terms of the processes that are exemplified, I want
to argue that the predominant characteristic of the unconscious in the material of this
chapter is displacement. 3
DESCRIPTION AND SOME ANALYSIS
A summary of the session before the break
The session opens with the group re-convening after a two-week mid-semester interlude
of not meeting, two-thirds of the way through this final semester. Only six of the nine
members of the class are present together with the two tutors when the session starts.
The remaining three members arrive late and join the group during the discussion.
3 See Chapter Two Part Two, Page 85 for an account of the significance of this characterisation, made in
each of these five synchronic analyses, of the episode considered in this chapter as showing a
predominance of one of Freud’s (1915) characteristics of the unconscious. The aim is not to reduce the
richness of the particular episode, but rather merely to highlight a key aspect of the unconscious in
operation. The capacity to recognise these phenomena is a key feature of this epistemology.