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me to achieve that aim. The learning and processes of my story, like opposition, reflexivity, the
search for meaning and creative writing all intertwine creating a many layered text where each
part interacts with others. This multi-layered (Bond 2002) quality is mirrored throughout the
thesis demonstrating the challenges and depths of narrative research.
1.2.The pre-conception
of the concepts
The presumption that the conception of an idea is the genesis of that idea is all too easy to fall
into. Prior to conception some meeting between thoughts, experiences, feelings or even
individuals has probably taken place. Ideas may appear to pop out of the blue but in reality
something has happened to create that moment of conception. Before this
journey began I was
already interested in containment as a process within counselling, perceived by Bion (1962;
1970) as a function of maternal reverie within the counsellor. As a counsellor, the concept of
containing the client and enabling a process of “transformation of the self” (Solomon 1998; 225)
was intriguing. From the perspective of the client I had experienced being contained by my
counsellor and was aware of the value of such a process. However,
after living through the
trauma of murder within my family of origin my experience as a client was dramatically
changed. I struggled to find a way to go on living with murder as part of my life experience. The
violence of feelings which were brought into awareness felt uncontainable. Even if my
counsellor could contain all I took to a session, I did not want to. I wanted to get rid of murder
and all that followed in its wake. Within the process of being a client I felt bombarded by
opposing feelings,
thoughts and experiences; such conflicts within my internal world felt
overpowering. Jung suggests (1969) that:
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“The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security, and calm
which is not easily disturbed, or else a brokenness that can hardly be healed.
Conversely it is just these intense conflicts and their conflagration which are needed
in order to produce valuable and lasting results” (26).
Working through such conflict created a security that has become a crucial part of my internal
world which appears to confirm Jung‟s sense of „lasting results‟. It is a security that enables me
to trust who I am, with a confidence not present before trauma. By working with the processes
that followed murder, the counsellor within me became interested in what I contained and what I
wanted freedom from containing. Somewhere within the chaos, as thoughts,
feelings and
experiences clashed together, a meeting between the concepts of containment and freedom
(contained in the metaphor of Beauty and the Beast) began to take place, and an unformed idea
started its journey towards the birth of this thesis.
1.3. My story
One beautiful summer‟s day, over a decade ago, my youngest
sister was murdered by her
husband. The shock of such an horrific reality could not be taken into my internal world. My
strongest feeling at the time was that everything changed. My internal world and the external
world were suddenly so alien that an immense sense of isolation (Storr 1988; Fromm1942)
invaded me. It charged the therapeutic relationship I was in as a client into a stormy commitment
(Parkes 1972) of close engagement. Internal containment of physical, emotional and cognitive
reactions was fought against as none of these experiences were wanted within my known self.
Yet the internal freedom to feel the affect of such an experience was a primitive (Garland 1998)
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response unable to be quietened in the transformed self who began to emerge. Without knowing,
I made myself the primary data (Jackson 1989) of a personal story.
In coming to understand my
story there was also a desire to give voice to an experience that is often shrouded in secrecy
(Ellis and Bochner 1992). Within this secret world
opposition filled thoughts, perceptions and
feelings as the unknown fought with what was known. The difficulty of accepting murder as a
reality in my life led to the questions „how do I contain murder?‟ and „how do I free myself from
murder?‟ In this way containment and freedom became aspects of me that I wanted to understand
as well as opposites that fought for a place within me.
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