Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

2.2.2. Freedom
Freedom has a strong philosophical background with roots in the existential counselling model 
(Hare 1963). In some thoughts about free will Storr (1960) feels that some potential between 
choosing alternative actions has to be present between the counsellor and client. In the context of 
free will Kelly (1963) believes that determinism is the opposite of freedom, suggesting that the 
individual sets the measure of his own freedom and his own bondage. Rogers (1978) suggests 
that once responsible freedom has been experienced by an individual that even though it may be 
suppressed in behaviour, it will never be completely extinguished. Yalom (1980) found no 
research on the notion of freedom within the counselling relationship and two decades later I 

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face the same problem. This lack of research into freedom or free will within the client is 
surprising when the concept is alluded to frequently in the literature (Storr 1960; Bowes 1971; 
Yalom1980; Jacobs 1986). In the context of free association (Bollas 1987; Brown and Pedder 
1979; Jacobs 1988; Storr 1979) it could be inferred that freedom is always part of the client‟s and 
the counsellor‟s experience of counselling. It feels important to provide a glimpse of the 
historical trajectories of the unseen forces of freedom as they have appeared in relevant sources. 
After her experience of being a client Lott (1999) began the process of researching women‟s 
experience of counselling. This was partly influenced by one of her experiences collapsing into a 
short sexual relationship with the therapist and by conversations with other women in a writing 
group who shared experiences of therapy. Lott was concerned by the fact that there was an 
absence of clients‟ experience of counselling in the literature. She discovered that women wanted 
counsellors who could bring enough of their “real selves” (10) into the relationship whilst 
maintaining clear boundaries. Clarkson (1994) suggests that it is the therapeutic relationship 
which exists for the client, which is the most important aspect of therapeutic work. Yet Lott 
found that many of her participants never felt they could use the relationship for fear of being 
judged or not heard. She demonstrates that there is much to learn from the experience of clients 
who want their real selves to be heard by a real counsellor. Lott‟s research suggests that clients 
felt their counsellors did not bring enough of their real selves into the relationship, but relied too 
much on a theoretical stance. Polanyi provides a clue to what may be happening in such 
situations:
“From an aeroplane we can see the traces of prehistoric sites which, over the 

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centuries, have gone unnoticed by people walking over them; indeed, once he has 
landed, the pilot himself may no longer see these traces” (1969; 237). 
Perhaps viewing the experience of the client within the counselling relationship, from the client‟s 
perspective (as opposed to looking at it from an already accepted theoretical stance) may enable 
us to see what has not been visible before. As Polanyi suggests we may have been walking over 
„sites‟ or intrinsic knowledge that we have felt too familiar with to really see in that there may 
not be enough distance between the counsellor and the client, or between the counsellor and a 
theoretical stance. In her research Lott discovered that many of her participants never revealed 
the “secrets” (Lott 1999; 287) that they revealed to her, to their counsellors. Perhaps, the 
theoretical stance of counsellors hid their empathy and prevented clients from sharing secrets. Or 
perhaps their counsellors were just not „real‟ enough for the clients to risk sharing in that the 
counsellors‟ real selves remained too hidden behind a theoretical stance. The tension aroused 
here is that a counsellor might argue that the clients were not ready, or were caught in the 
transference or were too defended to share their secrets but the fact that they did share with Lott 
could argue otherwise. This highlights the importance of putting the theory to one side and 
listening to the clients‟ experience.
In Rennie‟s (2001) study which uses either audio or video recordings of clients‟ counselling 
sessions the discourse is replayed to clients to “stimulate his or her recollections of the 
experience of it” (83). Rennie looks at reflexivity as agency to demonstrate the flow of agency in 
and out of self awareness and puts the client at the centre of the study. However I was left 
wondering how much the replaying of a session affected the client and what differences would 

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there be if the client was just asked to recall the session without the replay. The power of the 
counsellor in a sense would still be present in the replay whereas the clients‟ recollections away 
from that power/relationship might be quite different. This is perhaps why I chose to ask clients 
to write in their own time away from the counselling session in the hope that there would be as 
little influence as possible from the perceived authority of the counsellor or me as the researcher.
However Rennie‟s study did discover that clients‟ experiences were not always revealed to the 
counsellor. In regard to this he notes that within the client “particular desires arise from an over-
arching desire either to enter into or avoid inner experience” (82). He also acknowledges that 
there are “unconscious influences” (88) present within the client which seems to suggest that the 
client‟s agency is not always within their conscious control. If the client‟s agency is seen as an 
aspect of their freedom to choose what they do or do not reveal then it seems that such internal 
freedom is a complex concept. The question I asked myself in chapter one was about how to find 
such freedom. Maybe such a particular moment of questioning is where opposition or the lack of 
it affects the outcome of a choice. It seems likely that with opposition the internal world may feel 
chaotic but also aware of the choices available. Whereas without opposition there is no choice as 
such for the decision is made without the presence of other choices by an unconscious that is 
conditioned or instinctual (like Beauty and the Beast). Jung (1969) looks at choice as a volitional 
process but he also recognizes that instinctual processes may deny freedom of choice: 
“As further contents of consciousness we can also distinguish volitional processes 
and instinctual processes. The former are defined as directed impulses, based on 
apperception, which are at the disposal of so called free will. The latter are impulses 
originating in the unconscious or directly in the body and are characterized by lack of 

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freedom and by compulsiveness” (142). 
According to Jung then if the possibilities of choice experienced within the individual are open, 
that is the choice is not already fixed (Bowes 1971) by previous experience, then the choice 
made may be seen as being guided by freedom. He is suggesting that the individual‟s ability to 
choose to experience his/her own feelings or decide upon his/her actions may be predetermined. 
In the same way I discovered that showing a contained face to the world felt more acceptable 
than the freedom of my real feelings. Family, social, historical and cultural values, rules 
assumptions or expectations (Parkes 1972; Bauman 1993) seem to create the unconscious 
instinctual processes that deny freedom. However Frankl (1984) might argue that the individual 
is ultimately self determining, and that whatever is chosen is based on his/her decisions, and not 
on the conditions that lead to that choice being made. In this way my sister could be seen as 
choosing to be murdered because she did not to use her power to prevent it. My experience of 
her was that she could not see alternative choices to the ones she made. As Beauty she could 
only do as she was told for her Beast was external and controlled her. Internal freedom (or her 
internal Beast) it seems is as much an illusion (Bauman 1993; Smilansky 2000; Jacobs 2000) as 
external freedom, yet both are felt and experienced as a reality in the moment of experiencing 
(Mandela 1994). Various sources suggest that internal freedom cannot be separated from 
psychological processes like consciousness, experience, ethics, morals and illusion (Kelly 1963; 
Bowes 1971; Bauman 1993; Mandela 1994). 
Smilansky (2000) makes the distinction between different forms of freedom, such as political 
freedom, the freedom to find oneself, having a free spirit and the free will problem. The freedom 

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of finding oneself, or of discovering one‟s authentic self (Rogers 1961) or voice is nearest to the 
freedom being reviewed here. It has to do with the story of self actualization (Rogers 1951; 489) 
within the internal ethical norms that Hegel (Patten 1999) might suggest guide the individual‟s 
subjective practical reasoning, thinking processes and subjective experience (Ellis and Flaherty 
1992). Such subjective freedom was demonstrated by Nelson Mandela (1994). He lost his 
physical freedom yet kept hope alive for the future of himself and his countrymen. He must have 
held onto the freedom to think his own thoughts (Bion 1990), despite physical imprisonment. 
When Mandela and his associates were sentenced to life imprisonment, they turned to the 
courtroom, smiled and waved their arms (Mandela 1965). Even in that moment they retained 
their inner freedom to believe in their struggle and demonstrated freedom in their physical 
movement. 
Tillick (1952) sees freedom as man‟s power of life, where vitality and intentionality are united. If 
this is so then as an ingredient of the client‟s experience it would appear to be essential if the 
client is to risk exploring his/her internal world. Freedom, according to Yalom (1980) implies the 
internal states of loneliness, isolation, responsibility and authorship of oneself, he states: 
“it is the facing of aloneness that ultimately allows one to engage another deeply and 
meaningfully” (362). 
But if this internal loneliness is too well defended against, or too well contained the client may 
be unable to risk the task of exploration. Hirsch (1981) however, reminds us that it may be a 
person‟s anxiety with regard to freedom that brings him/her into counselling. Therefore the main 

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aim in counselling is for the client to find the freedom to enable him/her to detach him/herself 
from all forms of irrational authority (including the counsellor‟s perceived authority). The client 
may feel constricted or over-contained by these internal authorities so that exploration is difficult 
to embark upon without the opposition of freedom. For example following trauma I found the 
wish to murder the perpetrator of the crime and the desire for revenge incredibly strong. Finding 
the courage to examine the depths of such destructive affect was difficult for there was a felt 
cultural assumption that it was dangerous to experience such primitive emotions. However the 
freedom from authority provided by the counselling relationship enabled this exploration to be 
undertaken. The opposing containment provided by the counsellor created a safe place within my 
internal world to explore rage so that it could be worked through as opposed to acted out. 
Foucault‟s (1984) description of enlightenment could be considered as a process of an 
individual‟s freedom when he/she chooses to take risks in order to discover more about 
themselves: 
“Enlightenment must be considered both as a process in which men participate 
collectively and as an act of courage to be accomplished personally. Men are at once 
elements and agents of a single process.” (35) 
Just as Rennie (2001) sees the client as an agent, so Foucault sees the individual as an agent, 
making decisions. In this way the client may be seen as the agent, the driving force of their own 
learning. But such freedom can perhaps only be accessed through the processes of opposition. 
Without opposition the awareness (or freedom) to make a choice may never be brought into 
consciousness because of the unconscious or instinctual (Jung 1969) processes that may limit 

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choice. It feels difficult at this point to separate freedom from opposition as if there is an innate 
opposition embedded within the notion of freedom. According to Wallace and Findlay (1975) 
this seems possible for “its other” (173), that is the opposite pole of freedom seems intrinsic 
within freedom. This also fits with the metaphor of Beauty and the Beast. Inherent in the 
freedom or wildness of the Beast is the potential to contain his wildness, or the Beauty to care for 
others rather than harming them. In the same way the potential to be free or wild may be inherent 
in Beauty so that she can protect herself. This marriage between Beauty and the Beast is essential 
in the sense that the individual acknowledges their plurality and learns from opposition as 
opposed to shutting down parts of themselves by the denial of either Beauty or the Beast.