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Chapter Eight – A Consulting Break - Page 268
Much of identity is a result of choices. Indeed, as noted in Chapter Two Part Two, the
third of Hopper’s reasons why groups are helpful to difficult patients (discussed on
Pages 60 and 61) is that,
… the group provides opportunities for safe play, that is, for trying on and
taking off various gloves of identity without serious consequences. (2003b).
I propose that what Hopper describes has been happening here, in that Bill and Judi
have been clashing, with varying degrees of success, over dilemmas which challenge
identity, for example in terms of who knows about how training should be conducted.
Conclusion - findings, both methodological and substantive
Methodologically, a key elaboration here is the use of another position from which to
reflect, and the use of interaction between colleagues in that position as a way of
elaborating dynamics in which both (or all, if there are more than two) have been
involved elsewhere. This notion was highlighted in Figure 8.2 on Page 262 in relation to
the revised Reference Locator, where the sub-groups (i.e. the students and the staff) that
form the group can be separated, and from that, new perspectives are possible. This
capacity, to reflect through displacement, is important in any field that depends on
relationships, but it is both a central facility in a psychoanalytically informed
methodology such as this, and also a major contribution brought in as part of the clinical
legacy of this methodology.
Substantively, the findings that emerge from this analysis include the importance of
breaks, resonances between locations and layered attention, and the importance of a
matrix that can contain powerful dynamics such as polarisation.