ABSTRACT
The author describes his experience of observing a transactional analysis training group focused on work with highly challenging clients. This encounter precipitated his inquiry into the nature and effect of researching. Drawing on Bion’s psychoanalytic concept of “containing”—with its aspects of receiving, thinking, and interpreting—the author hypothesizes how an engaged approach to research into human functioning might actually be therapeutic or growth-enhancing for the individual or group being studied. Such engagement requires the researcher’s ability to structure experiences both bodily and mentally on the path to understanding and affecting human capacities in the direction of growth and development.
