Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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CHAPTER FOUR 
THE FIRST ANALYSIS: THE PILOT STUDY 
4.1 Introduction 
This chapter looks at the analysis of the pilot study to demonstrate how it was done by 
examining extracts from the data. It examines the interrelationships between the forming 
categories and shows how the categories were defined. The participants‟ responses to the 
analysis are included to show how they understood the categories and how the analysis seemed 
to enable them to discover more about themselves.
The analysis of the journals led to the emergence of categories that split the original constructs of 
containment and freedom into the following feeling states: 
1. Uncontained-unfree
2. Overcontained-overfree 
3. Fighting containment-freedom 
4. Desire for containment-freedom 
5. Towards containment-freedom
6. Containment-freedom 
For example the category of uncontained-unfree was named through finding words in the 

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journals that implied that the participants felt stuck and/or unable to move from an internal 
position. This category implies a position of no movement, a stuck place where the client can 
neither, contain their own feelings or free themselves from the stuck position. The categories 
were formed by finding similarities within the journals. All five participants use the words 
safe/safety, and secure to describe their feelings (or how they wish to feel) with the counsellor. 
This seems to suggest a desire for containment which is protective/caring of the self. However 
opposing words like unsafe and vulnerable may suggest a desire for freedom as the client may 
also feel irritation towards the counsellor and want to escape from counselling. Such opposition 
within each category led to the construction of the joint categories which mirror the notion of 
what became the overall polarity of containment-freedom.
4.2 The analysis
Getting to know each journal was an important part of the analysis. Typing them out, accurately 
copying punctuation and format on the page was part of this process. Repeated readings of each 
journal created the first stage of this process so that I became familiar with them. Only then did 
the task of analysing the journals commence. Words and phrases were investigated as holders of 
emotional meaning, and placed in categories by colour-coding so that there was a visual 
reference to each category (appendix 13). However less time was spent interpreting the journal 
narratives than in the main study in that the interpretation and construct categories were worked 
on simultaneously. Unlike in the main study they did not know the theme of the research so the 
main aim of the analysis was to discover whether there was evidence that the containment-
freedom polarity might exist.
The following extract from a pilot study journal provides an example of how the analysis 

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progressed and how the interpretation of text and construct were written about together alongside 
the journal narrative. Precedence was given to searching for opposition and discovering the 
potential categories through interpreting the meanings of individual words and phrases. Initially 
the whole entry was seen as being in the category of containment-freedom: 
Extract 1a . Journal entry and analysis
Line Words from a journal Analysis  
1. Caught between 
2. Chaos and salvation 
3. I tip out the box 
4. That is my secret self 
5. Upon that tranquil space 
6. Beyond the sky