Yes I believe I understood her method as initially stated. My own is very similar - I have not studied the 'meanings' of the cards. I did this once with the meanings of dreams only to feel greatly misled upon encountering the superior approach of Jung. Returning to Tarot - I too intuit their meanings as a stream of consciousness, every time I read the cards (rarely) I ask them 'Show me' this person or that. I think about them and then I extract five, loosely describing distant past, past, present, near present, future (in contradistinction to your sister-in-law - I do use time as a foci) but they always mean something very different pending the individual to whom I'm speaking, any of whom have remarked that my readings leave them reeling. I think to come at Tarot with pre-loaded associations is far less conduitious than to simply let the meanings arise of themselves. I find nameless decks less hindrance than those carefully labelled and defined from the outset.