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Chapter 5
Chapter Ten – Summary and Conclusions – Page 295
Chapter Five (Up-Bringing) shows the group in action, with important expression of
emotion about the personal experience of learning, but also some thought and reflection
on the experience. This is an expression of Foulkes’ matrix, as well as Bion’s
containment of anxiety (see Chapter Two Part Two). It is argued that the extension of
the matrix to include the discussion between the tutors (explored as a phenomenon in its
own right in Chapter Eight) is an illustration of this constellation of the matrix in action.
The heuristic for considering interaction described on Pages 85 and 104 enables
awareness of difference (for example, in relation to feelings of psychological regression
and apparent regard for the group), connection (in that the feelings and the difficulty of
expressing and sharing them are heard and accepted), and bi-logical depth (in that the
phenomena of both Foulkes’ and Matte Blanco’s arrays enable the perception of a range
of constellations of experience, as detailed in Chapter Five). These constellations are the
source of the headings in the analysis (which is a characterisation of a chronological
sequence, in contrast to the analysis in Chapter Six, which is of a series of themes and
issues drawn from throughout the session and not in chronological order). The
constellations are also the basis of the interpretation that is reached in Chapter Five, that
a discernable movement has begun in the group towards the conclusion of the work of
the group.
Chapter 6
How has the group (in the example given in Chapter Six) been shown to be helpful (and
not), to the learning of psychotherapy, and specifically, applying theory to practice? To
answer that, I would say that this moment suggested itself as a Sticky Moment even
before the notion was elaborated. This is because of the sudden shift in the mood of the
session, from frustration to a kind of alarm. I noted in Chapter Two Part Two that the