HUB RESEARCH PAPER - Hogeschool-Universiteit Brussel

Process consultation revisited 17
say now that they have the ‘social capital’ to deal with all kinds of deviant behavior. The
research consisted of describing the kind of interactions patients and Geelians engage in and how
boundaries and interaction spaces were set. It was very difficult to draw general conclusions.
Care givers were not directly controlling deviant behavior but they acted through offering tasks
and roles that were feasible. Most patients had a unique kind of role, somewhat at the edge or as
a growing up child. The attitude and capacity of the Geelians is very implicit and passed on from
generation to generation in the care giving families. People who move into Geel from outside
will not have patients.
Here is a typical, for outsiders very humorous, interaction event in a church. Felix is a
middle aged tall patient, who sits among the schoolboys in the nave of the church during the
solemn mass on Sunday. The sermon of the parish dean is lasting far too long for all those
present and the schoolboys are getting impatient but keep quiet under the close supervision of
their attendant teacher. Suddenly Felix rises up from his chair and stretches his arms slowly high
up in the air and sits down again. The schoolboys don’t bother about the gestures of Felix, but
the supervising teacher who only recently moved to Geel, cannot succeed in suppressing an
audible laughter. All the boys turn backwards towards the teacher, who turns red out of shame
for being the only ‘deviant’.
This is a vivid illustration that the meaning of an activity is in the patterns of lived
relationships. By interacting, people position themselves and others in a specific way. By doing
this they exchange meaning depending on the experienced relationships through practices in
‘contexts’. The schoolboys relate to Felix as Geelians dealing with patient behavior in their
‘traditional’ and tolerant way. The supervising teacher is struck by the daring spontaneity of
Felix in expressing his impatience right in front of the preaching priest.