When she lost her temper: On conditions for learning from experience.
Ellen Ramvi
Mail:
ellen.ramvi@his.no
Introduction
This paper draws upon data
collected for my Ph.D project where the goal is to
explore the conditions for “learning from experience” (Bion 1991(1962)) among
teachers. According to psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion, thinking is a continuous transformation of emotions
and experience, which irrevocably changes the thinker and his/her perception of
inner and outer reality. The process of learning from experience is, in Bions’s understanding of the term, considered as a personal
development. It is described as acknowledgement of emotions, and thought
processes that lead to what Bion calls action. The
opposite process is an anti-developmental one, where the person instead of
“learning from” experience, is “learning about”, that is acting as a means of
avoiding thought. Failure to learn from experience is linked to fear of
thinking, a lack of capability to contain feelings. Which of the two processes
a person is capable of in a frustrating situation is related to the person’s
tolerance of the uncertainty that exists until a thought arises. If a person
does not manage this uncertainty, it is denied by defence. This process of anti
development is a process of repetition and stagnation.
With the same model, Bion (1996
(1961)),
also describes development or anti-development in groups, Work Groups and Basic
Assumptions Groups. On a Basic Assumptions level, the group culture is suffused
with unspoken and unconscious assumptions shared by all the group members. In
contrast the members of a Work group address the consciously defined and
accepted task of the group.
In this paper I attempt to relate
learning from experience and basic–assumptions characteristics to a particular
teacher’s everyday life, and especially to one incident when the teacher said
she lost her temper with a student. I want to contrast these psychoanalytic
concepts with the concept “feeling rules” from a Social constructive
perspective (Hochschild 1975, inYanay and Shahar 1998). Feeling
rules define what employees’ believe is acceptable to feel in different
circumstances. I want to explore the following question: What is the difference between following
“feeling rules” and being able to “contain” feelings?
The method of analysis
Throughout my fieldwork I have
studied a teacher, Kristin, in her first year of work (2002-2003) after
graduating from Teachers’ Training College. I observed her in her daily life at
a middle school, in the classroom, in the teachers’ room, and at different
staff meetings. Through Kristin, I also met her colleagues, the headmaster and
the rest of the school administration. I have collected data in two different
ways: through more or less structured conversations with teachers, and by field
observation. In many situations I used a dictaphone
so that I could transcribe the conversations later on. I also made field notes
on a regular basis.
As I am concerned with
capturing the teachers’ lived experience, it was natural for me to try to
present their reports in a narrative form, because that is the usual form when
we tell somebody about our daily life (Clandinin 1994; Murray 2003). I use
the term narrative[1]
about the stories the teachers told me about particular persons in particular
situations. The unit of analysis is thus these narratives[2].
Narratives turned up in different ways. The narratives I present in this paper
were told to me spontaneously. They concern Kristin, and her experience of
loosing her balance in relation to a student. When Kristin reflects on her first
year as a teacher this is the episode she remembers best. She says: I did not master the situation, at least,
that is what I think. But I wonder if such negative feelings seem stronger than
the positive? That the positive are all for the good, so everything is fine,
while the negative feelings are stronger because they destroy the good
feelings.
Inspired by Wendy Hollway, I have chosen to call my method of analysis
psycho-social. In the literature psycho-social means a lot of different things.
I want to define psycho-social as Hollway does:
We are psycho-social
because we are products of a unique biography of anxiety- and desire-provoking
life events and the manner in which their meanings have been unconsciously
transformed in internal reality. We are psycho-social because such
defensive activities affect and are affected by discourses and also because the
unconscious defences that we describe are intersubjective
processes (that is, they affect and are affected by others). We are
psycho-social because the real events in the external, social world are
desirously and defensively, as well as discursively, appropriated.
(Hollway 2004, p 7)
My psycho-analytical
interpretation framework requires that in the analysis of narratives I
emphasize the continuous psychological work which seems to be necessary for the
teacher to accommodate the more threatening emotions, in order to reconcile the
incompatible emotions and to master the unpleasantness in each experience. I
have mainly been interested in the teachers’ stories about relationships that
were frustrating or challenging in some way, and I am interested in the
psychological work the teacher is faced with in this particular situation. I
try to gain knowledge about this by analysing how they construct their
relational experiences through their narratives.
I would like to stress that
the purpose of the narrative is not to analyse Kristin as a person, but to
understand the work of the teacher. This means that when I present her story
about the time she became furious with a student, the story is interesting
because of her descriptions of her lived experiences.
Theoretical framework
Interest in research on
emotions has steadily increased, both as an important dimension of individual
and organizational identity, and as a powerful influence on daily
organizational processes. In studies about emotions and learning, there is,
among others, an interest in how learning is hindered by emotions. Learning and
changing are often understood as the same processes.[3]
Feeling Rules – a Social Constructive
perspective
Many would say that the
work of Hochschild is one of the most significant
contributions on emotion in organizations (Brown
2000).
From a Social constructive perspective Hochschild has
been interested in what she calls “emotional labour” and refers to what
employees do with their feelings to comply with the role requirements of the
organization. She defines emotional labour as the effort that an individual
puts in to deal with the emotions of others (Yanay and Shahar 1998). She
coined the term to give visibility to an aspect of paid work that involves
labouring “of the heart”, as distinct from labour of the hand or mind (Price
2001).
Hochschild is interested in employees who must show
feelings different from what they actually have, where the organisation rather
than the employee gives the correct interpretation of situations at work. The
employee looses touch with his/her own feelings, she claims, and has to follow
feeling rules. She defines feeling rules as norms and standards that
reconstruct inner experience in cultural, social, or organizational settings (Yanay and Shahar 1998). Price (2001) explores Hochschilds concept of feeling rules and says they are
contained in an authoritative cultural “dictionary” of emotions. In managing our
emotional response, we always have one eye on other people’s readings of the
emotional response we have offered. Explicit feeling rules concern the
voluntary manageable and expected ways of providing service in aid of the
commercial or strategic targets of the organization. Implicit feeling rules are
related to the informal culture of the organization, and to the procedures
which help people with their everyday social interaction (Brown
2000, p. 284)[4].
Studies of medical and
psychiatric institutions show that employees in the helping professions manage
their feelings as part of the work requirements (Yanay and Shahar 1998). In the
light of Hochschild’s terms, Yanay
and Shahar (ibid) have studied psychotherapy students
in their exertions for emotional self-control. Kristin and her colleagues have
a lot in common with the psychotherapy students described, not because they are
going to be therapists, but because they face the same emotional challenges of
experiencing strong negative feelings alongside an ideal of being empathetic,
fair, protecting, etc. Yanay and Shahar
claims that in a profession like this it is the professional ideology, not the
management that sets the feeling rules. The authors claim that no one gives the
students training in showing the “right” feelings. What about the teachers,
what could the consequence of following specific feeling rules be for them?
Brown (2000, p.
284)claims:
“Hochschild’s work has caused us to re-evaluate the
ways in which we construct emotional experience and “perform” our emotions”.
Her constructionist approach ultimately suggests that the meaning of our
emotional experience is given to us by our culture. I want to contrast Hochschild’s understanding with a psychoanalytic way of
understanding the emotional experience.
“Learning from Experience” - a
Psychoanalytical Perspective
Where Yanay
and Shahar speak of the need for training to show
“right feelings”, Bion offers another approach to the
problem. The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion studied the
relationship between thinking and learning. In his book, “Learning from
Experience” (1991(1962)), he
emphasizes the early relationship between mother-child, creating the
experiential foundation for the human being’s ability to think. The mother
receives the child’s feelings, both positive and negative. She accommodates the
child’s feelings so that the child can gradually accommodate them
himself/herself. This is Bion’s container/contained
metaphor and he calls this learning from experience. The basis for continuing
learning from experience is a growing, strengthening container/contained, made
possible through evolution of thought and interaction with other thoughtful
minds, and which remains flexible and adaptable (Bion 1991(1962), p. 92).
Bion’s
theory of thinking rests on the distinction between the terms Beta elements and
Alpha functions. Beta elements are described as particles of raw experience
that must be evacuated from consciousness if they cannot be developed to
thoughts. Beta elements are expressed as thoughtless activities, acting out, or
acting on impulse, mindless group or herd behaviour or somatisation,
as well as a more pathological state of being such as hallucination. This is
what Bion calls anti-thought damaging to the mind (Bion 1991(1962), p 6-7).
In contrast to this, the
Alpha function represents the process where the raw elements of experience are
transformed into thought. The first symbols are developed to ever more
sophisticated forms of thought (ibid. p 8-9). Bion
believes in the possibility of human development through the whole life span
(thanks to the Alpha function):”As long as one is capable of thought and truth,
the mind can continue to evolve or develop far beyond the dictates of early
influences.” (White
2002, p 87-88)
This study is based on Bion’s understanding of learning from experience. He sees
learning from experience as an integral part of personality development. It
concerns the learner’s life experience so far and it changes the learner’s view
of the world forever (ibid). In order to learn from experience the learner must
try to accommodate the feelings he/she receives from situations that happen to
him/her.
Development (“learning from
experience”) Action (K)
The following model explains how I study teachers’
conditions for learning from experience and the impact the school has.
The process of development
or anti development.
In the above model, I try to
describe two processes, a developmental one (K) and an anti-developmental one
(-K). It starts with an emotional experience:(A). If the teacher acknowledges
actual feelings during the experience (for example, feelings of helplessness,
or feelings of ignorance, or fear of being out of control) the teacher has a
possibility for mature relating of the experience (e.g
being the teacher of a student who doesn’t obey.) The teacher is in an
emotional learning process which changes him/her and the social environment
he/she is a part of, which in turn means that the next emotional experience
will possibly be easier to understand. Relating in a mature way requires
working with thoughts about feelings.
An omnipotent relating on
the other hand is a defence against reality (frustration). It concerns the
person’s tolerance of the uncertainty that exists until a thought arises. If a
person does not manage this uncertainty, it is denied by defence her kommer dette uttrykket
igjen som jeg altså ikke
forstår helt. Bion calls this premature knowledge. By “action” Bion means a well-thought-out decision in contrast to
thoughtless action, on impulse, or as a means to avoid thinking (White
2002).
In this way he separates actions that result from learning from experience,
from actions arising from omnipotent relating. Therefore, learning from
experience can only be described theoretically. In my study it is not possible
to be certain whether the teacher learns from experience or whether the actions
I see are “actions”, or something done on impulse or to avoid thinking. It is
the conditions for learning from experience that I am trying to get a deeper
understanding of. It is important to remember that the process of “Anti
development” (-K) is a process of repetition and stagnation.
The theories in which he
has used the sign K and –K can be seen to represent realization also in groups.
“ In K the
group increases by the introduction of new ideas or people. In –K the new idea
(or person) is stripped of its value, and the group in turn feels devaluated by
the new idea. In K the climate is conductive to mental health. In –K neither
group nor idea can survive partly because of the destruction incident to the
stripping and partly because of the product of the stripping process.” (Bion 1991(1962), p 99)
In his classical book Experiences
in groups (Bion 1996 (1961)) he
describes how groups can function on these two levels. The Work group (W-group)
consciously define and accept tasks of from? the group, they learn from
experience. The group is characterized by K activities, a climate in which
diversity in opinions is allowed for and appreciated could be developing in
itself. Such climate is dependent on a tolerance for uncertainty, and that
different opinions can be put forward without giving one opinion moral priority
over the other.
At another level the group
may be functioning differently, characterized by –K activities, the group is
captured in what Bion calls “Basic assumptions” (BA
group). All the group members share an unspoken and unconscious agreement that
the work task can be resolved without any effort, without thinking and
learning. “There is a hatred of having to learn by experience at all, and lack
of faith in the worth of such a kind of learning” (Bion 1996 (1961),p. 89). The BA
group acts “as if” their basic assumptions were real. While there is good
connection with reality at the W-group-level, the BA-group is irrational and
out of contact with reality. But still the team spirit and relationships at BA
–group level can be thriving in a seductive way.
It is important to
emphasize that a functioning at a BA level is common and inevitable for all
groups. “The work-group state usually shows signs of active basic assumption
states and Bion thought of the basic assumptions as ‘valencies’ which drew people inevitably together and
established group belonging” (Hinshelwood 1991, p. 228).
The challenging distinction
between the two perspectives
I have now presented the
two different theoretical points of view I will use to interpret a situation
when an employee is exposed to strong emotions. The two conceptual frameworks
show two different ways of understanding the problem this represents. Hochschild’s route to our experience of emotion lies
outside our self. Hochschild claims that emotional
labour is the effort that an individual puts in to deal with the emotions of
others. The problem according to Hochschild is that
the employees have to do emotional work which involves to follow feeling rules,
that is to show feelings different from what they actually have.
Bion’s
theory of an emotional experience gives primary weight to the inner world.
According to Bion one may say that emotional labour
is the effort that an individual makes in order to acknowledge and think about
her/his own feelings. To contain frustrating feelings involves considerable
pain, and an omnipotent relating to the emotions may be used as a defence. This
would be an attack on thinking (-K) and describes antidevelopment. I will use
these two perspectives in my interpretation of the following narrative as a
mean to understand conditions for learning from experience.
Narrative description
Kristin`s
ideal.
I would like to stress what
I mentioned earlier that the purpose of the story is to understand the work of
the teacher, not to analyse Kristin as a person. This means that when I present
her story about the time she became furious with a student, the story is
interesting because of her descriptions of her lived experiences. Kristin
brings out important aspects of being a teacher
The story is about the
situation when Kristin experienced becoming uncontrollably
angry[5]
at Ole, but let’s start with something that Kristin said about feelings before this
episode.
While Kristin was still a
student, I had an interview with her and she talked, among other things, about
it being hard to know how angry one can become, and I asked if there were any
ideals connected to this. Kristin answered (May 2002): I know at any rate that I will never be so enormously angry that in
some way I lose my head, for example, if it came to such things, eh, but ...I
think it is possible to try to be a bit stable and even-tempered, I would
almost say. Not that you are like a yo-yo that whips up and down, and
...vehemently, but that you are a little stable and even, it has to do with the
students’ feeling of security, that they know where they are with me. mm
Half a year after this
conversation, Kristin has begun her work as a teacher in the middle school
(lower secondary). I am doing my fieldwork and we talk once again about
feelings. I ask her if there are any rules connected to feelings when being a
teacher, are there any feelings that she can show, or must not show? Kristin thinks
before she answers (Nov 02): It is more
like, not a fear exactly,..not anxiety,..but
more the feeling, no let me call it fear for the time being, then perhaps I’ll
find a better word, but fear of doing things that you don’t wish to do, that
you don’t manage to keep all ...for example, there is a thing that you don’t
want to do, not to do...Or explode because you become so incredibly angry, that
you just lose control.
She goes on telling me that
she thinks there is a limit to how angry she can get with students, but no one
has told her this, she decides herself what these limits are. She says that she
does not believe that becoming angry is the right way to react. Extreme feelings must not take over, and
I ask if this is difficult now and then?
Kristin: No, there haven’t been any situations when I
have come under pressure. But...I don’t
know how I’ll react if that happens. That I don’t know. It could be that I do
exactly the opposite of what I have said just now.
The reason Kristin
emphasizes not losing control is related to the students’ need. She has maintain balance for their sake. The anxiety
she talks about still suggests that she also needs to keep control for her own
reasons. This will become more obvious later on, and in the last part of my paper
I will discuss more in depth what her need for control might be an expression
of.
When I look back at the
reflections Kristin presented in these two situations, I suggest that one might
call this a feeling rule. In slightly different words we can summarize her
feeling rule in this way: I must have control over my feelings, not lose my
composure, but be even-tempered and stable. This feeling rule is so strong that
she bears a feeling of fear or anxiety of not being able to live up to it.
When Kristin lost control
One day in February Kristin
tells me (25.02.03): You should have been
here the day before yesterday. There was a hullabaloo.
The “hullabaloo” she
mentioned was related to a situation between her and Ole in 8th grade (about 13
years old). Ole is a student whom the
school has found difficult over several years. Kristin says that they have tried to work deliberately with him, but
it is difficult for me to discover what has actually been done. Kristin says: We have taken him out in the hall and said
that this won’t do, but nothing happens. Contact with the home has not
brought any results, she says, for they
seem to support his behaviour.
Kristin says that she and Marit (a colleague) often talk about Ole. They tell each
other stories about him. Kristin says: We
have been a bit like this: “Today he did this and this” and “Do you know what he said to me”, etc.
Kristin continues: So he has irritated
us. We get complaints from other teachers , he goes into other classrooms and throws paper around, trips
people, says nasty things. By this Kristin shows that it is not only she
and Marit who have talked about Ole, but the other
teachers have also told negative stories about him.
Kristin gives an example of
how he can be: Last week I said to him,
“Now you must start to work!” “You’re so damned crabby”, he answered. ”What did
you say!”
“You’re
so damned crabby”, he repeated. Well, of course one is completely taken aback,
aren’t you? I took him aside and told him that I would give him a demerit mark
for this, and that I wouldn’t stand for any more of this, not once. He rolled his eyes up and said okay.
After that Kristin tells me
in detail what happened the day she lost control. It began when Marit came from a class where Ole had again pestered a fellow
student. Marit had said to Kristin, Do you know what -- I can’t stand him any
longer. I am so fed up and he is so awful. Marit
had said that in the last class she had moved Ole to a desk apart from the
others and she had said to Kristin that they now had to do something.
Kristin went to the class.
Ole tried to sit together with the other students. Kristin stopped him. He
answered by saying that he would like to change classes because Marit and Kristin didn’t like him. I was about to say that it would be a real pleasure if he changed
classes. But I didn’t say it.. I am glad
that I controlled myself to the extent of not uttering something so prejudiced,
Kristin said. After that Ole left the classroom (they were working with
something they called “work program” and if the teachers allow it, they work
and cooperate with the others also outside the classroom). Ole had neither
asked nor received permission to leave. In the hall a lot of students were
gathered, and there was quite a lot of noise. After a few minutes Kristin went
out and asked everyone in her class to go in again. My God, do you see how she keeps going on, Ole said. Quote from
Kristin’s story to me. “In the classroom
it‘s quiet and here in the hall it’s noisy”, I said. “If you
go out in the hall, it’s because
it is quiet, but it isn’t now. Everyone in 8a come on in.” Then he said
something very bad, and then....he said, ”It’s obvious you don’t like me.” Then
I said, “Do you know what, ” and then he stood in front of me, and all of the a and b classes were standing behind. Then I
got so angry that I said, “Now I’m fed up with you. I’m sorry to say it, but I
can’t stand you. You behave so.... I’ve never experienced this before,” I said.
“That there can come so much filth out
of that mouth of yours I don’t
understand!” I said.
Kristin told me that she
had spoken so loudly that the students had heard her through the vents in the
classroom.
I
don’t remember word for word what I said, but they came like beads on a string.
But I was at any rate so stupid as to say that there were complaints from your
class and from the parallel class, and they talk about you in the teachers’
room , about what filthy words you use.
I’m never going to give in, I’m going to give you bad marks all the
time, because I won’t accept that kind of behaviour, never! While I’m standing and talking, he stands
there glancing at the ceiling and rolling his eyes. “Yes, yes, sorry, sorry”.
He tries to grasp the door handle to go in, but I stop him and say, “I’m not
finished with you.” Then I continue on
the same key, scolding and scolding. “Look at me when I’m talking to you”, I
said. It was now completely quiet in the hall.
Kristin said she felt the blood throbbing in her head,
she was so angry. Afterwards, they had gone into the classroom. There were l0
minutes left. Ole sat still and Kristin continued her round among the students.
After class, Kristin told Marit what had happened and that she had given Ole a severe
reprimand and a bad mark for behaviour. Marit thinks
it is important that such incidents should be documented in case the parents
ask. With this remark Marit turned the situation away
from the emotional world and into the practical.
Kristin also told the
counsellor. I don’t understand it, said the counsellor, because
he’s not like that with me. But it is obvious he isn’t like that in her group
where there are only 4 of them....that is, he gets so much attention then that
he wouldn’t allow himself to be so unruly. In the large group in class it is
clear that the teacher cannot keep her eye on him all the time. But I had him
yesterday, and then he acted completely different. But he hadn’t been like that with the
others. Not with Marit
and the others. So…
Analysis
After Kristin had told me
the actual course of events, we reflected together about what had happened. I
will now bring Kristin’s reflections together with my own analysis of the
story. Kristin herself has hit upon the main theme. She has spoken about the
importance of control over one’s own feelings. In this paper I have called that
expression a feeling rule.
In my analysis I will look
more closely at what it is that characterizes the teachers’ handling of a
student who is experienced as difficult. My research question is: What constitutes the difference between
following “feeling rules” and being able to “contain” feelings? By
exploring this question I want to contribute to an understanding of conditions
for learning from experience.
Struggle
for power in everyday settings
An overall picture that
appeared after the end of my fieldwork was that the relationship between the
teachers and students often seemed to be a struggle for power. In the case of
Kristin this also became clear. Both in the first everyday story when Ole
called Kristin damned crabby and in
the second, when she lost her head,
it seems as if Kristin tries to keep control over herself by struggling for
power (by being authoritative, sticking to the school regulations and the
sanctions that follow a break in the rules). Ole participates in the power
struggle in two ways. One is complementary to hers, that is, by breaking the
rules she sets (he attempts to undermine her authority and power in the
relationship.) But he is also the one who goes beneath the surface of what is
happening and tries to explore the feelings that are connected to this (you don’t like me). Ole’s double communication (he
says okay, sorry, sorry - he gives
in) at the same time as he rolls his eyes to the ceiling (he doesn’t give in)
means that neither of them loses face completely in the situation, but no one
wins, either. The struggle for power is obvious.
That the relationship is
characterized by a power struggle is being manifested by Kristin’s use of
metaphors. She says, for example, He must
understand that I’m not going to give in,
even if he goes on. It is not I who is going to lose on this, only him. She also says: He is perhaps used to the fact that if I just yell enough at people,
they will not fight me, so he tries to see how far he can go,
how much can I do to get it exactly as I
want it. He doesn’t see when he has reached the limit. Kristin
uses many fight metaphors and gives quite a hostile picture of Ole. She credits
him with a strategic design. Is it in this hostile light Kristin understands Ole’s behaviour?
Distancing of feelings
Through my fieldwork I
became increasingly aware that the
problems that arose in the classroom were seldom brought up for serious discussion among
colleagues. The teachers often spoke about the students in the teachers’ room
and with each other, but in a way that Kristin describes as: ”Today he did this” and “Do you know what he said to me”, etc.
They exchanged small stories over which they shook their heads or laughed.
My work with the written
material from the fieldwork strengthened this impression, that is, that they
did not talk seriously about the everyday worries and frustrations they
experienced. It was as if the idea was that if they could only tell each other
about the difficult event, the pain would evaporate. An earlier study of
special education teachers (Ramvi and Roland 1998) showed
that special education teachers experienced a great need of “letting off steam” (as they expressed it)
together with other adults after difficult experiences. I found the same
phenomenon with regards to the teachers observed in this study. Kristin talks
about difficult feelings from the situation with Ole: If you look at it (the
event) incident for incident, it’s
nothing. It is something you very well experience from the other students
during the whole school day that just bounces off, but with him there just
wasn’t room for more....he had in a way used up his quota, and a little bit
more than that....therefore, the outburst.
She uses the metaphor “
bounces off”. What does this say about Kristin’s view of handling difficult
feelings? Something runs off when it touches impregnated material, or a shield.
Does she feel herself impervious, invulnerable to what these daily insults do
to her? The metaphor suggests an omnipotent attitude about being invulnerable.
“Run off” stands in contrast to the other expression Kristin uses in the same
quotation. Here she uses a container metaphor and says there wasn’t “room for more”. In our conversation she
also uses the expression “the cup was
full” and “the drop that made the
milk spill – cup runneth over ”. A psychoanalytic
interpretation of these metaphors is that Kristin isn’t able to contain her
feelings, and unconsciously the consequence is that she feels the need to get
even (compare the relationship mother-child and the containing object). To feel
omnipotent in the daily experience of insult, or act as if the insults
evaporate by letting them out as funny and horrible stories are what Bion calls attack on thinking (-K) and leads to anti
development.
The turning point in the story
The
outburst, the loss of control is the turning point in the story. Kristin
breaks out of a somewhat rigid reaction pattern. She yells at Ole and bawls him
out. Now I’m thoroughly fed up with you.
You behave yourself so........that so
much dirt can come out of your mouth. Etc.
(She is tired of him, his behaviour, and what he says) Afterwards she says, almost
amazed:
In a way it was also rather good. I have to say that, even though it
sounds cold.
The turning point for
Kristin is that she does something she never wanted to do (loose
control). The turning point for Ole is that he gets a new reaction (from
Kristin) on his behaviour. Exactly as Hochschild
claims, Kristin, as an employee, tries to control her feelings. According to Hochschild she is struggling with the emotional work it is
to follow certain feeling rules (show feelings different from what he/she
actually has) Following these rules feels so important for Kristin that she
experiences a feeling of fear or anxiety of not being able to
manage to live up to it. But than it happened, that shouldn’t. Kristin lost her
temper and became furious. Afterwards she experienced herself as a failure. She
had done something she hoped never to do. Kristin showed Ole the emotions she actually
had in the situation. Hochschild claims that the
problem with following feeling rules is that the employee looses touch with
his/her own feelings. In light of this it is obvious that Kristin at the same
time feels both good and bad to break the feeling rule. She has mixed feelings.
Remark the quotation : In a way it was also rather good. I have to
say that, even though it sounds cold.
According to Hochschild an interpretation is that she
felt a sense of relief by not simulating feelings.
Nevertheless,
Kristin’s main conclusion after telling me the story is that acting out was
wrong and she hopes never to do it again. Why is it
so important to Kristin to follow her feeling rule? Kristin herself says that
it is important because of her students, their needs for predictability in
relationships. I think Kristin also is motivated by
fears of experiencing emotions that are out of control (as we all are afraid of
being out of control). It is because of the considerable anxiety that her strong
negative feelings are held in check, and also fear of what harm they might do.
These are reinforced by the professional ethic and her recognition of the power
relation, which ties in to the fear of harm. Let’s look more closely at
the anxiety behind the fear of loosing control.
Acting out as a result of parallel
processes.
The psychoanalytic terms
transference, resistance and counter transference are based on the idea that in
social relationships we transfer emotional states to each other constantly, and
that we have a continual resistance to these states that are transferred.
Viewed in the light of transference/counter transference, the overall picture
puts me on the track of parallel processes[6]
between teachers and students in regard to anxiety. It concerns an anxiety
about feeling ignorant, about lacking influence/power, and the fear of the
possibility of being subject to a malicious authority. Like the students, the
teachers are faced with the temptation to reject the possibility they are given
to learn, contrary to the implicit harm of omnipotence (Price 2001). An
unconscious tension arises between two opposite needs, that is, the need to
live up to one’s ideal of being a good teacher and the need to resist the
vulnerable state of not knowing, not mastering, lacking skills. According to Bion’s theory the process of containment will be difficult
in such conditions. The persons will more easily relate to each other in an
omnipotent or punishing way that denies recognition of “the other” or of
aspects of oneself. Kristin’s
response implies an anxiety of her own impotence. Acting out in a power
struggle represents what Bion calls –K. Kristin acts
on the same level as Ole. She retaliates to get even with him. The more Kristin
is capable of understanding herself and her relationships, the less she will be
dragged into the same situations, to be taken over by it and the more likely
she will be able to retain a degree of neutrality in the situation.
Acting out as a result of lack of
ability to differentiate between feelings and actions.
Kristin’s fear of strong
feelings can also be understood as a lack of ability to differentiate between
feelings and actions. In my interpretation of her trying to follow feeling
rules, it seems that she thinks it is wrong to have negative feelings towards
the student, at the same level as it is wrong to act out the anger. It seems
that Kristin thinks it is a break of the feeling rules to have negative
feelings. The expression gets angry, lose control and so on is in
one respect both a feeling and an action. It has to be frightening not to know
what may be happening if you loose control. Her descriptions of right and wrong
feelings become the same as what it is right and wrong to do.
The expression “thinking with
feeling” is a good description of the emotional labour that is required in
connection with learning from experience. The emotional labour (according to Bion) in this setting is for Kristin to be able of
observing her own feelings and that of the student’s, reflect on them and
thereby avoid the automatic response from feeling to action. Kristin has to
acknowledge the difference of being driven by a feeling and thinking about a
feeling. In Bions theory it is exactly the space
between feeling and action that is so important. Winnicott
talks about “the moment of hesitation” (Winnicott 1985). If
Kristin is not able to make this distinction she will go on losing control. To
think with feeling makes it possible to take responsibility for actions and put
them into words.
Acting out as a result of BA
functioning.
It can be useful to look at
the collegial group as a basic assumption (BA) group. The way they talk about
Ole and how awful he is, promotes a BA functioning. It is a massive projection
into the boy. The stories give small opportunities for Ole to develop, there is
little curiosity about him, and there is little identification, little personal
knowledge of him, just the general stereotype. The way they conspire against
him excuses themselves from responsibility and feelings for him. Such
environment prepares for, or reduces the threshold for what Bion
calls “acting” (-K). They evacuate difficult feelings rather than creating
conditions for learning from experience. The relation between the subject
(knower) and object (known) can be such that it “no longer represents the
painful emotional experience but the supposedly painless one. Such a manoeuvre
is intended not to affirm but to deny reality” (Bion 1991(1962), p. 49). They
don’t try to see Ole as he is, they seem to see only the charicature
of him. Bion is sceptical of the kinds of knowledge
that are stripped of emotional experience, whose reason is to substitute rigid
control, for the uncertainty of being open to new experiences through thinking (Hollway 2000).
A BA functioning always ends with
acting out (-K). Kristin is doing that on behalf of the group. It is a sort of
“you made me” acting out. She said: I
think I had psyched myself up a little bit beforehand (before the outburst) because we had talked so much about how
negative he had been, and that Marit had moved him
and there had been that episode in her class, and she said you just had
to....he mustn’t get any leeway this time.
There is may be an element
of containment in the colleagues’ way of sharing stories with each other, but
is it a good enough condition for learning from experience?
Fear of feelings
After this exploring into what may
lie behind the fear of loosing control, it might also be useful to take a look
at consequences of controlling feelings. An obvious consequence of Kristin trying to control herself even harder
can be an avoidance of feelings. I would like to cite something Kristin
told me in our last conversation (June 2003). We talked about the fact that
there had been certain incidents with students that had been hard to handle
this first year. What had she learned?
Kristin: I guess it is that those incidents become less uncomfortable as time
goes by. I think so. You become more thick-skinned....you learn not to take it
in. You don’t take it personally.... It peels off...Yes, that’s how I feel it…
A little later on she said: But even if you become more thick-skinned
and tolerate more, it doesn’t mean that you ignore… anything. That is, you
react to exactly the same things as you
did before, but more mechanically I think….So it is not in a way that you stop
to take the fight or the discussions, but you don’t involve yourself so much
emotionally as you do the first time you experience something uncomfortable.
My interpretation
is that Kristin, in order to avoid getting all these strong
feelings, may be in danger of being insensitive to feelings. This is a crucial
point in this analysis of the difference between following feeling rules and
containing.
Containment
Let us look at the turning point
as an emotional experience (according to Bion). When
avoidance of feelings can be the result of following feeling rules, it is on
the other hand working with acceptance and tolerance of feelings that can be
the result of an emotional experience. The challenge faced by every human being
is to integrate love and hate. Benjamin (1995, in (Hollway 2004b) talks
about “negative moments”. She claims that it is not just the love, or the
understanding, or the mutuality that is essential to ensure that an
understanding of the capacity to care is not a romanticised one. It is also the
aggression, the misunderstanding and the competition. According to Bion it is also essential to maintain being sensitive to
both positive and negative feelings, because that gives an opportunity to
understand the relationships. No matter how much a teacher loves his/her
student he/she can’t avoid also to hate and fear them. The more the teacher realizes
this, the less hate and fear will be determined motives for behaviour towards
the student. Winnicott claims (1992, p
196)[7],
"Hate that is justified in the present setting has to be sorted out and
kept in storage and available for eventual interpretation".
To accept and tolerate is
also to forgive oneself. It could be important for Kristin to be able to
forgive herself, not because it wasn’t wrong to act out towards Ole, but
because of that. Kristin has to feel the pain of hurting another person, but at
the same time she has to forgive herself without blaming others. She has to
accept the feeling of being a person who does wrong as well as good. It is
painful, but necessary to move on, and to develop as a human being. Bion’s theory of thinking emphasises this potential pain of
knowing. To acknowledge that one is a person out of control in certain
situations makes it perhaps possible to be able to contain that feeling. Kristin
seems to be able to put her feelings into words (I feel angry, frustrated etc)
but can she accept the feelings? It is easy to say I lost control, but
difficult to accept and realise to be that person who is out of control.
To be able to learn from experience
Kristin must be able to contain her own fear of feeling ignorant and helpless.
By doing so she may also be able to help the students to contain their fear of
the same thing. It might even be possible for students to feel pride rather
than fear and uncertainty in relation to the struggle to understand (Price
2001). Learning from experience is about the capability to contain ones
feelings, and take a responsibility for having them and how one passes them on,
not to deny them.
The turning point for Ole
Kristin tells me that Ole
had been more quiet and controlled in the class the day after the incident. How
can we interpret that? I would like to suggest two possible interpretations.
The first is that he is scared into being quiet. Kristin was the winner of the
situation and he was the looser. In this situation nothing has really changed.
He will probably fight back, even harder, another time. He will repeat his
actions (-K) over and over again.
The other option is that he
gets an emotional experience because of Kristin’s expression of genuine
feelings. Kristin gives Ole a piece of her own mind in this situation. But maybe it is better for Ole to experience
genuine feelings from Kristin, despite her being uncontrolled, than being part
of a “sentimental environment” (Winnicott
1992). Winnicott claims that if one isn’t able to
contain strong feelings the environment can be sentimental. If Ole experiences Kristins reaction as authentic, it could make him feel
sorry for her, or make him feel concerned, feel guilt etc. It is also possible
that he gets comfort from her showing authentic reactions. In other words it may constitute a condition for learning
from experience for him. It is impossible to know which option is the
right one just by recognizing that Ole was being quieter.
The person within the professional
role
In this paper I wanted to
explore the difference between following feeling rules and being able to
contain feelings. I have tried to relate Bion and Hochschild’s concepts to a teacher’s everyday life and in
particular to a situation that involved strong emotions, a situation that
require emotional labour. Kristin’s story is therefore not only a story about a
provocative student. It is also a story about Kristin’s ideal. She wants to be
a good teacher. What the students say matters. She has a strong wish to stick
to her ideal. Whether this is a general phenomenon or stronger among teachers
than among other professions is difficult to say.
The emotional labour the
teachers are confronted with is hard both in Hochschild
and Bion’ understanding of the concept. But they
approach it from different points of view. For Hochschild
the emotional labour is to follow feeling rules, and that is to show other
feelings than you actually have in the situation. The implication is that the
employee looses touch with his/her own feelings, she claims. By understanding
emotional labour through feeling rules, I have tried to show that Kristin‘s
possibilities for change is limited. Every time she breaks her feeling rule,
the gap between ideal and reality will increase. Her actions may be repeated in
a more and more rigid pattern. The struggle for power will most likely continue.
The emotional labour
according to Bion is to work on accepting the
potential pain of knowing (+K), to be able to think about ones own difficult
feelings. This process of containing instead of omnipotent control may present
a great deal of anxiety, but according to Bion this
may be the beginning of learning from ones own experiences.
Kristin’s great need for
control is perhaps what is hindering her being able to contain her
anxiety. My interpretation of Kristin’s story highlights the many
obstacles that appears when she and her colleagues are exposed to strong
emotions. They have great difficulties in being able to act as a container for
the strong feelings that arise both in themselves and in the students. They
recognize each other on a superficial plane, it functions as a common denial of
their emotional experience. To learn from experience it would be important for
the teachers to work through their experience. Another hindrance I have pointed
out from the story Kristin told me is that the teachers distance themselves
from the relationship to the students in order to maintain an omnipotent relating
and to avoid pain. To learn from experience it would be important that
the teacher remains in a relationship to the student, and contains the pain of
his/her own fear of ignorance.
Wright (1993) asks to
what extent the psychodynamic way of thinking has relevance to the problem of
discipline in schools. Although teachers are not therapists there are elements
of therapy in their relationships to their students, he claims. He says (ibid
p.4): “ Indeed, it could be argued that for teachers to develop as persons
within their professional role, and not be held static by them, this element
(the therapeutic) must be present.” I strongly agree with this opinion. Had the
therapeutic element been present in the situation between Kristin and Ole the
disciplinary issue could have been resolved in a more creative, mutually
respectful way. Whether the therapeutic element in the relationship between the
two is present or not has to do with Kristin’s tolerance of emotional
knowledge, her capacity for thinking about difficult feelings.
Another question is whether
the school allows room for reconciliation between Kristin’s ideal and the
meeting with reality. There are signs that Kristin is more engaged in
“tackling”, as in a power struggle, than in reconciling herself to reality.
There are signs that she understands the emotional labour more as a struggle
for being able to follow feeling rules than to understand emotional labour as
being able to contain her difficult feelings. It seems as if the school leaves
it to the individual to process insult and vulnerability.
References
Bion,
W. R. (1991(1962)). Learning from experience. Northvale, N.J., Jason
Aronson.
Bion,
W. R. (1996 (1961)). Experiences in groups;and
other papers. London, Routledge.
Brown, R.
B. (2000). "Contemplating the Emotional Component of Learning:the
Emotions and Feelings Involved when Undertaking an MBA." Management
Learning 31(3): 275-293.
Clandinin,
J. D. (1994). Personal experience methods. Handbook of Qualitative Research.
N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln. London, Sage: 413-427.
Hinshelwood,
R. L. (1991). A dictionary of Kleinian thought.,
Free assosiation.
Hollway,
W. (2000). Objectivity in British Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis and
society: Critical Perspectives and Contemporary culture, Bolton Institute of
Higher Education.
Hollway,
W. (2004). "Editorial." Critical psychology 4(10): 5-12.
Hollway,
W. (2004b). draft.
Murray, M.
(2003). Narrative Psychology and Narrative Analysis. Qualitative Research in
Psychology. P. M. Camic, J. E. Rhodes and L.
Yardley. Washington, DC, American Psychological Association: 95-113.
Price, H.
(2001). "Emotional labour in the classroom: a psychoanalytic
perspective." Journal of Social Work Practice 15(2): 161-180.
Ramvi,
E. and P. Roland (1998). Containing function. Stavanger,
RF-Rogalandsforskning: 40.
White, J.
(2002). On "learning" and "learning about": W.R.Bion`s theory of thinking and educational praxis. The
Ship of Thought; Essays on Psychoanalysis and Learning. D. Barford. London, Karnac Books: 84-105.
Winnicott,
D. W. (1985). The maturational processes and facilitating environment.,
The Hogarth Press and the Institute of
Psycho-analysis.
Winnicott,
D. W. (1992). Through Paedictrics to
Psychoanalysis, Karnac Books.
Wright, D.
(1993). Psychodynamic thinking and dicipline. Management
of Behaviour in Schools. V. P. Varma. London
and New York, Longman: 3-7.
Yanay,
N. and G. Shahar (1998). "Professional feelings
as emotional labor." JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY
ETHNOGRAPHY 27(3): 346-373.