Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework
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2.2.3. Polarity A dictionary meaning of polarity (Chambers 1983; 992) states: “it is the tendency to develop differently in different directions along an axis as a plant towards base and apex; some animals towards head and tail.” In the client then, it seems possible that as growth occurs in the direction of internal containment, so it must also occur in the opposite direction towards internal freedom. This seems to confirm my difficulties in both wanting and not wanting to contain the experiences and consequences of trauma in that I felt myself pulled in opposing directions. The idea of dualities, of opposition, attraction and dichotomy, was promoted by Freud (Bischof 1964), Kelly (1963) and Fromm (1941). Jung is also an eminent example of those personality theorists who for decades used the concept of polarity (Koch 1959; Jung 1969) as a major principle in their work. He saw opposition and polarities (Jung 1969) as the key to movement within the client towards synthesis and the fleeting equilibrium which signifies progress. He states: 52 “Their working together makes possible the balanced regularity of these processes, which without this inner polarity would become one-sided and unreasonable. We are therefore justified in regarding all extravagant and exaggerated behaviour as a loss of balance, because the co-ordinating effect of the opposite impulse is obviously lacking. Hence it is essential for progression” (32-33). If polarity is essential for progression as Jung suggests then attempting to discover this in the client may add to counsellors‟ understanding of clients‟ processes and experience of counselling. Shock, anguish, rage and howling split my internal world into unknown realms where opposing parts of my self-image struggled to accept unknown selves who were suddenly part of me. It was the imbalance of these polarities, these internal selves who were poles apart that began to teach me about opposition. The concept of polarity is implicit in counselling theory as may be seen in the opposing drives suggested by Freud (Salzberger-Wittenberg 1970; Greenberg and Mitchell 1983; Freud 1986), such as the drive towards life and the drive towards death. This notion of polarity (Koch 1959; Jung 1961; 1969) as a construct within the internal world of the client, allows the possibility of meeting between containment and freedom to form a single construct. Polarities and opposition (Jung 1961; 1969; Wallace and Findlay 1975) seem to be an accepted tension of the therapeutic relationship, indeed of life itself: “The polarity of opposites seems integral to consciousness itself: it is a commonplace that without light there can be no notion of darkness: without up there is no down, and so on. Duality can be found across the whole spectrum of life” (Field 1994; 476). 53 This duality of opposites may suggest that internal containment and internal freedom do exist and may be experienced by the client. According to Jung (1961) the psyche of the individual possesses its own inner polarity which creates the dynamic that enables movement within the internal world. He states: “Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as this inner confrontation of opposites” (378). This was my experience following trauma, as the more I worked with opposition the more aware I became of different selves within me. The universal idea of polarity suggests that “conflict begets progress” (Bischof 1964; 182) yet such opposition may not only be about confrontation or conflict for: “In opposition, the different is not confronted by any other, but by its other” (Wallace and Findlay 1975; 173). Thus each pole of opposition is in essential relation to its other. In this way containment may be the polar opposition to freedom one moment while being complementary and necessary to it in the next moment. According to Jung, energy unites opposites: “in a co-ordinated flow of psychic processes. Their working together makes possible the balanced regularity of these processes, which without this inner polarity would become one-sided and unreasonable” (1969; 32-33). Opposition then becomes an imbalanced duality, or a polarity within which both parts are necessary for movement and growth to occur. Two contrasting illustrations in Wharton (1985) highlight the attraction and repulsion of fear and death in uncontained forms, noting the desire 54 for death as attraction and the fear of it as repulsion. Davor (1996) looks at transforming such a nameless dread (Bion 1967) so that it can be taken back in more manageable form. He sees it as the ability to distinguish between two states of being, “surviving or living” (Davor 1996; 302). There is a connecting flow of movement in each of these accounts which Eigen (1985) also highlights as he unravels Bion‟s framework of containment. Travelling back beyond Kleinian thinking he shows that the paranoid schizoid (Ps) position and the depressive (D) position, are each dependent on the other (Ps-D). The traversable veil of psychic reality enables the containment of the counsellor to hold the split off elements of Ps so that the client has the opportunity to reach D and vice versa (Eigen 1985). This capacity to move, to transform, is also present in the counsellor‟s free floating attention (Brown and Pedder 1979) which is described as “an alert readiness, an alive waiting” (Eigen 1985; 326) in which the client‟s chaotic states are tolerated in the therapist‟s mind. Movement, between polarities, between past and present, between the client and counsellor, between good and bad, (between Beauty and the Beast) seems to be the axis of therapeutic life. 2.3. Poetry There was a desire to provide a way of collecting data that empowered the participants to use their own words (McLeod 2001b). The potential of creative writing as an aid to understanding the therapeutic process is an accepted aspect of counselling both for clients and counsellors (Bolton 1999; Etherington 2000; Daniels and Feltham 2004). Bolton (2003) feels that: “Poetic diary writing is an effective route to self-understanding as it uses images, metaphors and the voices of others, just as psychotherapy does” (121). So it was hoped that participants‟ journal entries would provide a narrative of their lived experience of counselling that would disclose understanding for me and the participants. 55 Poetry, as a representation in words, and the interpretation of those words, has been discussed for centuries. From the time of the Bible to modern day poets representation fills our reading worlds. Aristotle not only felt that we learn through representation but that it is intrinsic to us: “Representation is natural to human beings from childhood. They differ from other animals in this: man tends most towards representation and learns his first lessons through representation” (Poetics: 4). Brittan (2003) suggests that this representation of abstract thought is brought into being by symbols and allegory. In other words what is unknowable is put into symbolic form so that what is unknown can be discussed because: “whatever is unknowable cannot be contained in language” (Brittan 2003; 147). Yet it seems that what is unknowable may be contained in allegory, symbols and metaphor which is language. The paradox/tension seems clear: what cannot be contained in words is contained in words. The power of this paradox is that the commonplace words that we use in speech everyday change as poetry makes them powerful (Finch 2005). This power appears to be demonstrated by Eliot (1996) when he describes how emotion is evoked in poetry: “ The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an „objective correlative‟; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of the particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, emotion is immediately evoked” (100). 56 Emotion and the unknowable in this way each seem to be made into an image, „an objective correlative‟, which creates feeling. An example of this is the isolation created and felt in the first lines of John Clare‟s poem „I Am‟: “I am: yet what I am none care or knows My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self consumer of my woes.” (1966; 132). A link or meeting is made between writer and reader or there is “an interaction between text and reader” (Brittan 2003; 204). In the verse above there is recognition of what it is like to feel alone created in the images evoked in the reader‟s internal world. Initially, perhaps there is a meeting within the writer as his conscious and unconscious meet within the words. Hunt seems to describe this meeting when writing about reflexivity in the social sciences as creating an internal space: “reflexivity involves an increased awareness of the rigidity of our ways of thinking about ourselves and our ways of being in the world, and the ability to distance ourselves from them in order for all the voices of the muffled silent parts of ourselves to be heard” (2004; 156). Such reflexivity seemed to enable me to change the way I thought about myself following trauma as my rigid ways of thinking were questioned and I found more of my own voice. The intention behind asking the participants to write a short phrase on each line was that such 57 reflexivity might enable their unconscious or „muffled‟ voices to be heard. Creative writing, within the narrative approach has been used to encourage clients to re-write their own stories (White and Epson 1990; McLeod 1997). There is a growing trend within qualitative research looking at the benefits of creative writing which is linked to clinical practice (Fuchel 1985; Moskowitz 1998; Etherington 2000; Bolton et al 2004). There are also projects which facilitate creative writing and explore the benefits of the process (Bolton and Latham 2004; Bolton 2005; Hunt and Sampson 2006). One of these, the Kingfisher project set up in 1999, works in social care settings and aims to use creative writing to promote healing and well being (Harthill et al 2004). Creative writing workshops offer facilitators with a range of expertise in order to help health care users to deal with illness, or help them recover from illness. Etherington (2000) brought counselling and creative writing together when she worked with two adult brothers who had been sexually abused in childhood. Their stories are co-constructed through their journals which include poetry and prose and the resulting narrative is a powerful portrait of their stories which includes the story of the counsellor. There is an emerging sense in these projects of the “transformative power of language” (Harthill et al 2004; 111) within the individual. Reflexivity and the poetic space seem to be part of each other for both appear to aid transformation. The idea that language and poetry in particular may have transformative properties is confirmed by Flint: “I think that the discovery of poetic space and its expression through the imaginistic, metaphoric language of art or poetry, alteration occurs: that which was solid or frozen gain the possibility of movement and fluidity. As change is made in the inner 58 metaphoric level so it will become manifest on the outer, both in the creation of the work and in the feeling that surrounds it” (2004; 144). It is this sense of movement, of emotional shifts from a frozen/stuck position that I hoped would be discovered in the narratives of the participants. There was also hope that as change became manifest (in the body) that this physical embodiment of their words would add to the discovery of meaning. Just as the isolation of Clare in the above opening of his poem „I Am‟ may be embodied in the writer, it may also be embodied in the reader as such loneliness is felt in the body of the reader. Hunt and Sampson make the link between the word and the body clear: . “Poetry shifts the meaning and experience of texts further into the physical world: it‟s because we‟re sensory creatures that we can experience and enjoy sound. Writing which embraces the aural elements of language moves outward from the merely instrumental to celebratory engagement in both writers‟ and readers‟ embodiment” (2006; 148). Although the participants were not poets it was expected that they would use their emotional feelings when writing their journals. In this way their feelings might be expressed in their words and move out into the physical world where they could be experienced and embodied in me as the reader. Poetry is also used to write up some of the findings, mixing my words with words from the participants‟ journals and feedback. Few researchers seem to have used poetry in this way. However, writing on postmodern literary poetics of experience, Biley (2004) discusses the „Beat 59 Generation‟ of the 1940s to the late 1950s. He looks at the innovations in literature with particular reference to William Burroughs. He explains how Burroughs used „cut up‟ or „fold in‟ techniques taking text from random sources like newspapers or novels. Burroughs literally cut out text with scissors and then rearranged these cut up morsels of writing to form a new text. Biley used this type of cutting up as a new method of inquiry by taking client scenarios and re- arranging the text while seeing if new relations/patterns emerged within the client‟s story. He states: “By using such a process, Burroughs achieves a disturbing and anxiety-provoking level of unease and vague feelings of familiarity” (142). By using this process in his work Biley discovered that he experienced the emergent text as opposed to understanding it as if bringing into consciousness the unease and familiarity that was hidden in his original client scenarios. He sees the resulting text as confronting the researcher at a “subconscious” (143) level as opposed to a conscious level which intends to create a snapshot of the lived experience of the client. This fascinating concept immediately made me think of what I do as a poet. In a sense I cut up text even before I put pen to paper for I reduce thoughts into a minimum amount of words. It seems possible that poets when writing cut up the conscious in order to find a glimpse of the unconscious hidden in their writing. Writing and reading poetry is perhaps more about experiencing than understanding. Asking participants to write journals in a poetic style seems to have released this cutting up process into their writing and certainly I used a similar process in the findings poems. Even though I did not literally cut the work up with 60 scissors I did choose which words to use and which to leave out, and added some of my own, to attempt to present the reader with a glimpse of the lived/embodied experience of the participants. Riessman (1993) uses a transcription method of writing up oral narratives which leaves out all the interviewers‟ conversation and forms the remaining participant‟s narrative into stanzas. This creates verses which look and feel like poetry and highlight meaning which enhances her analysis. The process: “involves reducing a long response, parsing it according to a set of rules into lines, stanzas, and parts examining its organizing metaphors, and creating a schematic display to the structure” (1993; 50) Riessman felt that working in this way enabled her to come closer to participants‟ subjective experience because it helped her to experience the tensions in the composition of the narrative. Putting the oral narrative into written stanzas seemed to enable such opposition to be experienced. In turn Riessman was discovering that opposition between the real life of the participants and their dreams enabled her to encounter something of their lived experience. The way the participants were asked to write in the current study, provides weekly stanzas of their experience of counselling which are then analysed. Only after the analysis of the journals is complete do I write the findings poems. In this way I attempt to bring together the unconscious of the participants with my conscious and unconscious responses. The participants‟ unconscious dilemmas are discovered during the analysis by analyzing metaphors and searching for the concepts of containment, freedom and opposition. The findings poems intend to provide the 61 reader with a glimpse of the lived experience of the participants as well as showing their transformation during the time of the journal keeping. Much of my processing as a client in counselling was done outside the therapeutic hour, by writing poetry. Lott (1999) also discovered that her processing was mostly done outside of her counselling and this was confirmed in her research with other clients. Perhaps by asking participants to write about their counselling sessions I am tapping into and encouraging this processing. Certainly the internal space for writing in a poetic style seems to encourage a potential space for meeting with split off or defended aspects of internal selves. By writing only a phrase or a few words on each line, as opposed to full sentences the participants‟ usual writing processes appear to change. As Maltby (2003; 64) states: “The use of lines means the usual logic of sentences can be subtly disrupted.” It seems possible that the space created by the loss of normal logical thought created a potential space where: “The writing itself becomes a container, a „psychological holding station‟ as it were.” (Lago 2004; 100). This space seemed to enable the participants to display unconscious messages in their writing. However Gee (1991; 9) suggests that “all speech is produced in terms of lines and stanzas” and he notes that opposition in narrative helps the narrator make sense of their history. Perhaps by asking the participants to write in short phrases they were enabled to access an unexpectedly natural form of expression. Their use of metaphor and symbols seems to enable their unconscious to provide hidden messages in their narratives which I attempt to discover during the analysis. According to Ricoeur (1978; 7) metaphor has the power “to redescribe reality” for he suggests that the metaphorical is what it describes although it is not what it describes. In other words the metaphor helps us describe the indescribable. My use of metaphor in writing poetry provided insights into 62 myself that I may not have realized at the time of writing but often discovered when returning to a poem at a later time, for I do not always know what a “poem contains” (Satyamurti 2003; 44). The writing contains my thoughts and feelings at a conscious and unconscious level of awareness so when I return to the writing at a later time I discover new or previously unknown aspects of myself. In this way: “What in conscious thought can only be conceived with difficulty may, at an unconscious level be recognized through a form of felt experience. This constitutes a type of knowing that may achieve realization through an act of inspiration that can both unfold and enfold it in a particular created form” (Maltby 2003; 68-69). Such a poetic stance that unfolds and enfolds enables the unconscious to be accessed through felt experience. It seems this was achieved by the participants through the way they were asked to write their journals. It is the intention of the research to explore the poetic stance and discover how it may be used in research and counselling. 2.4.. The search for voice The search for voice, an integrated combined voice that enabled all aspects or previously split off selves to be heard seems to be a key aspect of my experiences and the research. To find such a voice I experienced strong feelings of opposition between containment and freedom as well as discovering the internal space in which to do the work. Writing poetry, alongside personal counselling provided a solitary meeting place where any part of me could be heard. When exploring the idea of meeting in the literature Winnicott (1965) emphasises the need for the capacity to be alone, which he suggests can only come into being with the experience of being 63 alone in the presence of another. This appears to be his way of describing the counselling relationship where the counsellor enables the client to meet split off parts of themselves in the safety of the therapeutic relationship. Buber expresses this: “The primary word I-Thou establishes the world of relation” (1937; 18). Or in Roger‟s words the meeting is between two subjects, two people: “It is the opposite pole from seeing the client or myself, as an object. It is the height of personal subjectivity” (1961; 202). In this subjective way of being the unconscious desire of the client to merge (or not be alone) enables the counsellor through containment, to offer the freedom that is longed for (Meltzer 1988). Within this contained freedom the client comes into being, into meeting her/his counsellor and his/her own selves (Speedy 2004). Such meeting is complex, happening between, within and across each of the three dimensions (Kogan 1988; Quinodoz 1992; Rosenbaum and Garfield 1996) of containment. Winnicott (1965; 1971) stresses the need for holding, handling the baby (client) satisfactorily so that the baby can use the holding object, and feel it as if it is part of itself, created by itself. He uses this model to outline the client‟s need to merge with the therapist so that s/he is able to relate without the need for projective elements, until separation (Hobson 1985) can be tolerated, or until the client can hear his/her own voice. Lanman (1998) distinguishes between Winnicott‟s holding and Bion‟s containment by laying them on a continuum, with containment being further along it than holding. In Bion‟s model, when containment unfolds, rather than just holding, the therapist actively transforms (Bion 1983) the client‟s projections. His suggestion is that there is a flow of movement, an active unconscious 64 meeting, an enfolding (Godwin 1991), which goes beyond supportive holding or even empathic listening. But as Harris Williams (2005) suggests this flow of movement is also within the client between internal objects or selves. Mahler, Pine and Bergman (1975) describe what they term as the hatching process. According to them the observed baby moves (hatches) into a new degree of wakefulness with a new look of alertness which is seen as the first movement out of the normal merged phase. The counsellor‟s ability to tolerate the merged state of the client both contains the client and enables the hatching process to be reactivated. Only as this process goes on developing, within and through the transference (Izakoff 1993) can the client‟s object relationships (Brown and Pedder 1979; Grotstein 1982) move towards real meeting and relating with others, and with him/herself. This movement in Bion and Mahler, Pine and Bergman‟s work is seen as happening between the counsellor and client. But movement within the client between internal objects must also taking place and it is this emotional movement that enables the client to encounter different selves. But in my experience these meetings, these conversations/movements between selves are also experienced when writing poetry. The writer sits alone and through the writing meets/discovers the presence of other selves. So although as Winnicott suggests the writer may have needed to be alone with an external another before discovering the capacity to be alone, it seems possible that the writer grows and transforms by continuing to use this capacity alongside writing. In such a place (alone yet not alone) the participants seemed to find their voices, their selves as they wrote for this study. They find their own ways of merging, separating, „hatching‟ and meeting split off selves as they narrate their counselling journey. The search for voice then is seen as a search for selves, for what may be experienced as unknown 65 or new selves that have been hidden by past events, or voices that have never discovered how to speak and be heard. This agrees with Foucault‟s notion (1984) of the complex and plural structure that makes up the internal world. If part of the client is unable to speak, to voice their feelings then the confidence to speak cannot come into being for that part if split off, is inaccessible. Finding these selves through writing enables them to exist to have a voice and to be integrated into a more whole sense of self as if Beauty and the Beast begin to discover each other and unite. 2.5. Conclusion. The complexity/plurality discovered in the client‟s internal world seems to be reflected in the complexity of the concepts of containment, freedom and polarity. Fluidity and movement appear to be accepted aspects of the inner world. There also appears to be accepted movement within the three dimensions of containment and in the natural opposition felt within freedom. There is movement suggested by polarity in the energy that seems to be created by the tension of opposition which both attracts and repels. So much movement adds to the complexity of writing as if the nature of the research gets into my thoughts where confusion (or the Beast) threatens to halt progress. But perhaps the strength of the complexities is that they also create the richness or colour (or the Beauty) of the work. The difficulty of holding such richness is perhaps managed in the narrative methodology that was eventually discovered by continually listening to my own voice and the voice of the research. This research came into being due to a new found capacity to listen to my voice. The voices of theory are listened to alongside my voice to discover how the voice of the client may influence 66 what is already understood about the process of counselling. Taking account of all these voices required a method that could layer them into a coherent whole, a narrative in one voice that holds other voices within it. Such a narrative if it is to be reliant on one voice almost demands that I remain open to whatever presents itself during the process of the inquiry. Different perspectives need to be held alongside each other in order to allow the voices of the participants, the voices of the literature and even the voices of the concepts to be heard. It is remaining open that enabled the methodology to go through its own process of change as I learnt to let go of the bricolage that emerged from the original heuristic stance and heard the “collaborative” (McCabe 1991; x) narrative that was forming within the process of the work. An understanding of the poetic stance that emerges through the study both changes and adds to the work as well as highlighting the similarities between poetry and counselling. The method of collecting data encourages the use of metaphors and symbols which demonstrates the fit between poetry and counselling as well as giving the participants a memoir of their counselling journey. Although initially I had an intuitive knowledge of the closeness of the relationship there was no sense of the impact that poetry would eventually have on the whole of the work. Here again there are so many links. For example listening to my voice, remaining open, being aware of the theory of splitting, and discovering opposition in many aspects of the work may all be seen as linking poetry and counselling (particularly in chapters 7 and 9). Poetry and counselling also meet in the methodology as the method of data collection and the findings poems reflect the processes of the counselling journey. A multitude of polarities seem to have emerged, whilst continuing to emerge. Containment 67 holds them stoically in place, while freedom releases them out into the creative chaos of the mind‟s infinity. As a faint impression of order begins to be felt the embracing arc of a rainbow tentatively intrudes across my thoughts. This enfolding phenomenon only comes into being when natural polarities meet. The chaotic wonder of our world captures the scientist and the poet between the poles of storm and sunshine, as science and art meet (Cummings and Cummings 2000). The symbolic rainbow lets sight wipe out the disorder of its conception within the storm and opposing sunlight as polarities give birth to beauty which becomes the focus of the moment. Polarities fill life, yet become only half seen in the busy routine of living or by the evasion of their reality with false acceptance (Wisdom 1953). The containment-freedom polarity may be just one of many polarities, and perhaps a part of every other. As a personal construct (Bannister 1970; Rosen and Keuhlwein 1996), which has come into focus through lived experience the containment-freedom polarity may offer counsellors a way to understand the client‟s perspectives (Rennie 2001) of his/her personal experience of counselling. |