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Chapter Nine – An Ending – Page 282
there may be very different ways of reading the communication. For example, the
student may be being compliant.
INTERPRETATION
Phantasy in the group, and at the level of the group
Thinking of the time context of the experience under study, there may well have been a
group phantasy for this group-as-a-whole that they killed off their younger sibling.
There was massive tension between this group (the study group) and the intake that
followed them (‘the first year group’). Because the group under study were the first to
have a longer programme, including a one hour Reflective Group after their two hour
teaching session, I had arranged for the year previous to the study that they would move
rooms between sessions, being taught downstairs, and then moving upstairs for their
group session. This was no problem when they were the only group having a second
session, but when we got to year two, there was the new first year group to manage too.
I was clear that I wanted the study group to be taught upstairs (where they had had their
Reflective Group the previous year), and then to come downstairs for their Reflective
Group, and vice-versa for the first year group. This arrangement made sense to me, but
it was clearly disturbing to the group under study. I can see that it would seem as if
everything was different not just because of the presence of a new ‘baby’ (in the form of
the new intake), but also because the study group had lost their arrangement of rooms.
Indeed, for them it may well have seemed as if their previous arrangement had been
turned on its head. At the Transference Level, Mum and Dad (represented by Judi and
myself) had not only gone away for a break and acquired a big and greedy new baby,
but they were planning for it to have its special time in the study group’s time and
space.