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Chapter Eight – A Consulting Break - Page 263
context, at times, the processes of projection in a group, particularly when there is
disturbance such as tension or conflict, will introduce distortions between what is
communicated and what gets represented and experienced.
This is a kind of fight
It does seem as if a kind of fight is going on between Bill and Judi in this break. This is
the case soon after the start of the break, on Page 243, when Judi questions and opposes
the idea of a community meeting including all course staff, this intake and the one that
follows. It is also there at the end of the break on Pages 250 and 251, when Bill
describes how, in the course of the practice of training, one can become impaled by the
intensity of interactions with people, notably ones professional colleagues. It is also
there in between, on Page 245 in relation to personal psychotherapy, and on Page 249 in
relation to the sandwiches. The significance of this will be considered below.
The theme of turmoil about ‘coming back’
It is important not to underestimate the impact of breaks, endings, disruptions and other
disturbances on the group and on the process of interaction in that group. It does seem
as if the theme of turmoil about coming back is present in the patient’s experience as
she resumes her work with her therapist after a trip to the country where she grew up
and from where she migrated. This is also an experience shared directly by more than
one member of the group (returning from overseas, some as migrants), and symbolically
by the whole group (returning from the break). It may be that this resonance enables the
group to be empathic to the material brought by the patient, for example when the
group pick up on the patient having experienced some kind of collapse, detected I think
by reflection on countertransferential experience. In my first draft, I registered this as,
‘quite lost’. It is important that by the break the group had reached that point, and it is