Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

 
INTRODUCTION TO THEORETICAL CONSTRUCTS 
 
RATIONALE FOR THE KEY WORDS
 
Containment, Freedom and a Polarity 
Containment and freedom within the therapeutic relationship may be understood to be enabling 
in that the counsellor attempts to provide a safe (containment) space (freedom) where the client 
can think and feel his / her own internal experience in the presence of the counsellor. However 
both containment and freedom as experienced within the internal world of the client may be 
disabling. Life events may have provided a containment that was confining and even harmful so 
that any from of containment may be experienced as disabling. Freedom may have been 
experienced as dangerous or overwhelming so this potential space may also be experienced as 
disabling. Within the enabling containment provided by the counsellor the client may experience 
the very opposite of what is being provided. In the language of theory this may be described as 
transference, countertransference and a myriad of other theoretical terms but these terms do not 
describe the client‟s personal experience from their perspective. The key words of containment 
and freedom in this study are used to discover if these concepts are understood and experienced 
by the client to the extent that the participant client feels the analysis and the theoretical 
constructs fit his/her internal feelings as a client. These concepts became the key aspects of my 
therapeutic journey when a traumatic event changed me and as I worked through the effect of the 
trauma I became conscious of strong notions of containment and freedom within my internal 
world. Perhaps one of the most important aspects of my process of change was to know 
consciously how life events were affecting me. It was this knowing that in turn enabled me to 
have the freedom to reclaim my self from the trauma and create a new life for myself. 
Etherington (2000) states: 
“We cannot go back and undo the events that have happened to our clients or to ourselves but 
we can change how we feel about it and respond to it. To do that we have to know it 
consciously, feel it and understand the effect it has had on our lives. The freedom 
consciousness creates, allows us to reclaim our selves and in that freedom we can create new 
ways of using the rest of our lives – given the resources we discover within ourselves.” 
But to discover the freedom that consciousness creates I journeyed through experiences of both 
disabling and enabling containment and freedom where these two concepts appeared inextricably 
linked. My reflections on the paradox of containment and freedom being both enabling and 
disabling led to the idea of a containment-freedom polarity.