Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

1.3.8. Poetry
Writing poetry enabled me to work through my emotional responses to trauma. It gave me a safe 
space where anything could be written, thought, imagined, and played out in the protective space 
provided by my note books. Poetry, opened up language into the sphere of another world, the 
primal world of space, day dreaming, reverie (Bion 1962, 1967) and creativity, where the inside 
and outside of being invert their dimensions in the simple and complex space of poetic 
expression (Bachelard 1994). Here, meaning can be left in the outside world for in the creative, 
poetic space, the wonderment of expression, of the fit between feeling and language takes 
precedence. What cannot be spoken or made sense of in the internal world, finds its place in a 
poem, and moves into the external world, as it emerges on the page. The atmosphere created by 
such words transcends meaning. Understanding is replaced by a realization (Waddell 2003), as 
the unknown finds expression through the metaphors and symbols of the known world of 
language, discovered in the medium of the poem. Yet at the same time the expression of a poem 
gives a truth to understanding. There is knowledge, and a feeling, that I have gone through 
(Taylor 1997) the experience of trauma, lived it, and expressed the perceptions discovered in the 
poems. At the same time something new has been created. Each poem is a new creation, giving 
meaning to a moment for in expressing myself and finding new realizations, the world feels new 

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and even beautiful again (Bachelard 1994).
This writing out of self on the page (Hunt and Sampson 1998) in the form of poetry promoted the 
wish to discover what is, and yet is unknown (Bollas 1987). The process of writing poetry gave 
words to split off parts of the psyche (Green 2003) that could not cope with murder. This 
transformative and liberating aspect of writing poetry aided understanding as well as activating 
movement through trauma. The potential space for thought, provided by such a way of writing, is 
also a form of containment (Waddell 2003). The counselling or psychoanalytic theory of 
containment (Bion 1962; 1967) meets an aesthetic counterpart in the creative act of writing 
poetry. As the poetic reverie of the writer contains herself in the freedom of such potential space 
she is enabled to play with thoughts, feelings, and words, and create the capacity for emotional 
shifts or movement to occur in the internal world. By playing in this way there is the possibility 
that the mind of the writer will be fed by its internal objects (Harris Williams 1997). By being 
asked to write a short phrase on each line of their journals the participants demonstrate the 
usefulness of this poetic type of creative writing as their internal objects feed their 
thought/feeling processes. 
1.4. The influence of Beauty and the Beast 
Fairy tales may be used in counselling to stimulate memories/experiences within the client to 
enable the discovery of “preconscious aspirations” (Brun 1993; 17). Cooper (1984) suggests that 
the soul may be imaged in the fairy tale while Brun (1993; 5) calls fairy tales “symbols of the 
soul”. Fairy tales tell their stories through the use of “symbolic language” (Bettelheim 1976; 
279) which enables the reader to look for the hidden meanings concealed in the symbols. Hayes 
(2004;19) suggests that the symbol “provides safety for the exploration of emotions”, which is 

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perhaps why I chose a fairy tale to help give meaning to a story that felt too dangerous to explore 
without the safety/distance provided by such symbols.
I used the safety of Beauty and the Beast to come to some understanding of what had happened 
between my sister and her husband. If my sister is represented by Beauty, she becomes that 
character within the story and her husband becomes the Beast. However in the symbolism of the 
story Beauty and the Beast are in fact aspects of one person. Separating them into two characters 
means that each are cut off from the opposing aspects of themselves. So rather than the happy 
ending of the marriage between Beauty and the Beast as the individual comes to accept opposing 
aspects of his/her character, there is the horrific ending of murder as the Beast refuses to 
acknowledge the Beauty within himself. He cuts off all hope of Beauty as he kills her, and 
remains only the Beast, wild and outside of the law. Beauty on the other hand is killed because 
she cannot find the Beast within herself who could have protected her.
The story of Beauty and the Beast became a key aspect of my understanding of containment, 
freedom and the possible opposition between them. In the story Beauty is a young woman who is 
obedient, cares for her family with no thought for herself, for she is a compliant „good girl‟. This 
„goodness‟ is what makes her come to be perceived as Beauty. She is not a young woman who 
demonstrates her feelings but seems to keep them hidden inside, contained internally and 
invisible to the outside world. In this sense her goodness becomes a metaphor for the 
imprisoning pole of containment. She may in this sense be seen to represent the repressed child 
(Miller 1996) who has lost her own will and ability to be rebellious. Her fate is affected by her 
ineffectual father as she is given to the Beast to placate him when he has been angered by the 

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father. The meeting of Beauty and the Beast may be seen as the coming together of two 
opposites. Beauty is over-contained in that she is good, obedient to her father and does not 
appear to think and act for herself, in this sense her „self‟ is imprisoned. The Beast may be seen 
as being over free in that he is wild, making his own rules as he thinks and acts only for himself. 
He does not care for others as Beauty does, and he howls, like a beast, and expresses his own 
feelings at the expense of others. He may be seen to represent the more primitive aspects of the 
psyche (Malan 1995) or the wild child who uses aggression to get his own way. If Beauty and 
the Beast are taken to represent the opposing sides of one person‟s internal world then their 
coming together suggests the integration that is possible when these two sides meet. Prior to this 
meeting they may be understood as being split off, or defended parts of the individual which are 
unknown or denied. In the story, it is only after they have met that Beauty finds that she can 
claim the power to make her own decisions, have her own feelings and choose not to continue 
caring for her family. The Beast on the other hand finds that he can no longer survive alone as he 
needs Beauty‟s goodness or reparative containment to curb his destructive freedom. The Beast, 
who had been under a spell, turns back into a handsome prince and the couple are married. But 
that marriage may be understood as the integration of opposing parts of the individual‟s internal 
world. Estés (1992) suggests that such integration occurs when the individual starts to care for 
hurt or damaged part of themselves. Beauty may be seen as damaged because she is unable to 
own her feelings and cares only for others whereas the Beast cares only for himself and not for 
others. The integration of these opposing natures enables the individual to incorporate more 
aspects of him/herself to feel whole or even healed. 
Discovering my own defended selves after trauma, or the Beast who had awoken in me seemed 

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to validate just how much of an individual remains hidden. Many of these hidden selves emerged 
during therapy and writing poetry. The combination of therapy and poetry enabled such splits or 
unknown selves to be discovered and integrated so the desire to bring therapy and poetry 
together in research seemed apposite. The participants‟ journal narratives and the findings 
demonstrate the appropriateness of this link between poetry and therapy particularly in regard to 
reflexivity and the unconscious and this is discussed in the final chapters. 
1.5. The legacy 
The everyday realm of being that existed before trauma has not returned. Life exists in a new 
realm of being. Through the journey into this ever changing realm, external structures provided a 
secure base from which to work. This enabled a letting go of what was known so that the 
unknown could be investigated and integrated into myself. The process of experiencing the 
unknown led to the discovery of personal meaning which in turn developed into research giving 
value to my sister‟s shortened life as the atrocious act of murder becomes strangely transformed 
into a precious legacy. This legacy is perhaps best felt - rather than described or understood - in 
the following poem which intends to demonstrate my transformation through the processes 
already described in this chapter: