ABSTRACT
Sally had felt good about w hat Carrie was telling her. Sometimes she recognised it could be tha t a session could be quite intense, the client’s emotions pulled this way and that, but then, once it all settled back down then something had chan ged. It was often hard to pinpoint exactly w hat had changed, maybe everything sort of tumbled back in a different sort of order. The image of a kaleidoscope was one tha t often came to her mind when she thought about this process. It was like, in the session, the kaleidoscope gets twisted slightly, and maybe not very much, and the pieces of glass start to tumble around. The client feels them selves in that sort of confused state in some way. And when they leave, or per haps sometimes after, it’s like the twisting has stopped and the pieces have settled into their new places, forming a new pattern. Same pieces, but a differ ent arrangem ent. She didn’t w ant to take the m etaphor too literally, but it felt to her like it captured something of the process. And once the tumbling stops it’s like it all goes quiet, and then there’s a period of in some way getting to know w hat’s new, w hat’s different.
