Clients‟ experience of counselling within a narrative framework

 
 
 

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POLARITY 
A polarity is generally understood to be the tendency to grow differently in different directions, 
along an axis, as a tree towards base and apex, or roots and branches. It is the opposition that 
Jung (Bischof, 1964) saw as engendering the movement which leads towards resolution and 
momentary equilibrium within the client. In this study the polarity between containment and 
freedom is seen as internal growth (which affects the external life), rooting down into internal 
containment, and branching out into internal freedom. If the client experiences containment as 
imprisoning or restricting then containment within the counselling relationship may be 
experienced as disabling. And if the client experiences freedom as overwhelming and destructive 
then the freedom provided within the counselling relationship may also be felt as disabling. In 
this sense containment with or without freedom may be felt as imprisoning, while freedom with 
or without containment may be felt as dangerous. It is suggested then that this opposition
between containment and freedom form a polarity (within the client) that may enable and / or 
disable emotional movement in the client. When the client takes refuge in a disabled way of 
being that has been (unconsciously) learned through various life events and experiences, the 
opposition between containment and freedom may come into awareness. As the counsellor 
attempts to provide an enabling and contained environment in the freedom of the space between 
(the counsellor and client) the client may be enabled to discover a way to change by finding a 
route through this opposition to a new conscious knowing. It seems possible that this opposition 
provides various but constant emotional movement between containment and freedom that the 
client may experience as emotional traps, pitfalls and ways of escape from different aspects of 
their internal selves (Etherington, 2000) that they find difficult to allow into consciousness. This 
opposition within the polarity may be understood as enabling the client to grow towards their 
own containment and their own freedom which may be likened to developing their own mature 
autonomy (Grotstein, 1982). The paradox of this opposition is perhaps that containment and 
freedom also appear to be necessary aspects of each other. But in the process of changing it is 
suggested that the client splits them apart in order to be able to experience the extremes of each 
aspect. In the space (between the client and counsellor) where anything can be known or 
experienced in the mind (Godwin, 1991) the client may feel containment and freedom as 
different and split before then integrating them back together. The paradox of the polarity may be 
seen as both holding containment and freedom together while also keeping them apart.