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Chapter Ten – Summary and Conclusions – Page 307
The experience of this last challenge was notably different in the next full run of the
course. By this, I refer not to the next intake, which was being taught at the same time
as this group, but the one that followed that, recruited after a re-structuring of the
course. In that intake, the course (by then accredited by a local university) required a
tutor assessment of the work of each student, to be arrived at by the marking of
assignments and by the grading of students’ in-class presentations, and the sessions of
the semester were changed so that the presenter got not only to provide a dénouement
but also to offer their formulation of the case of their patient, enhanced if appropriate by
the discussion in the group. Somehow this restored a kind of balance between metaphor
and metonymy, inviting first a loosening and drifting stream of free association as now,
but also requiring that the fruits of that drifting are then synthesized into hypotheses and
models in order to understand the patient and to conduct the therapy, and hence to learn
the art and science of psychotherapy. The recognition of the different elements of
metaphor and metonymy, and the need for a relationship of balance between them in
practice is a major conclusion of this work.
Sticky Moments
I want to come back to these. In Chapter One, I mentioned Sticky Moments as
something that drew me to this type of study, as indicators. At the most basic level, they
indicate some density of dynamics. If there is space to consider the complexity held in
this density, then the elaboration that can take place is a very rich and useful source of
ideas.
On reflection, it seems that experience is always layered. In the case of the semester
under study, there are the layers in a gradient of closeness to the clinical work
presented to the learning group, from Client and Therapist, via Therapist and Group, to