ABSTRACT
It is sometimes impossible for people in distress to put into words those aspects of their experience for which they want help. They do not know much consciously about what is troubling them; they only know they are suffering. They may turn up at the therapist’s consulting room saying, ‘I feel bad. I get depressed. Something is wrong with me.’ Institutions sometimes seek consultation in the same way, saying what can be translated as, ‘There’s something wrong here, but we don’t know what it is. It doesn’t feel good to work here anymore.’ Attempts made by the consultant to clarify the nature of the problem may be strenuously resisted; the wish, as is often the case with individual clients in therapy, is to have the problems eliminated, not clarified. It is evident that the individual or the institution is suffering, but from what? More information is needed.
