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Chapter Eight – A Consulting Break - Page 256
Following this, on Page 247, Bill is able to raise his anxiety about a student’s
presentation. There is a concern that the feared relationship between Bill and the
student is being re-cast between Bill and Judi, as occurred previously above in the case
of the relationship between Bill and The Students. 1314
Returning to the transcript, on Page 247, Judi seems to be experiencing persecution by
Bill at that point. On Pages 247 and 248, Bill and to some extent Judi engage in some
‘wild analysis’ about the student. Importantly, this ends on Page 248 with Bill’s letting
go of the anxiety, by finding a positive frame for things. Judi is helpful in challenging
Bill’s potential identification with the role of persecutor to a student, hence enabling
Bill to challenge this too. This can be seen as an example of Bion’s (1970) notion of
containment in action, with Judi containing Bill’s anxiety.
At the end of that segment of dialogue (on Page 248), Judi acknowledges the student’s
cathexis to (or psychological investment in) her, albeit defensively. Bill jokingly
diminishes the role that Judi plays in that. His response seems quite possibly over-
determined, arising both from an empathy with Judi’s unease as well as a resentment of
her more idealised and hence superficially easier relationship with the student.
Discussion about ‘The Sandwiches’ which follows on Page 249 refers to the question of
whether the course should provide food for the students between the teaching session
and the Reflective Group. This group is the first to have a pattern of teaching as
extensive as this, and to have a significant emotional experience (the Reflective Group)
in addition to an already full evening of teaching and learning following a full day’s
13 As an aside, this raises the question of how are the students perceived by the staff (and indeed by each
other), as individuals, as a group of individuals or of sub-groups of individuals, or as a group as a whole.
This brings to mind Foulkes’ (1975) notion of the group-analytic matrix, discussed in Chapter Two, as an
array that can assist in consideration of questions such as this.
14 At the risk of overloading the reader, this experience, of handling simultaneously text, footnotes and
transcript, is a useful representation of the research task, to keep a series of foci in mind at the same time.