A Group’s Process and the Therapist’s Dreams – Unconscious Identification with the Therapist in Analytic Group Psychotherapy

Abstract

On the basis of their own psychotherapeutic group, the authors present the extent to which a therapist’s dreams and the development of the group will refer to one another. They proceed from the assumption that, in treating patients with early disturbances, the therapeutic relationship is not only characterized by projection, transference and countertransference, but also – and essentially so – by an unconscious identification. They provide manifold and extensive correspondences between the dream process and the group’s progression concerning their respective dynamics and symbolism, following them in detail over the course of several sessions. On the basis of the psychoanalytical literature, the importance of identification as the earliest expression of emotional ties to another person, and its significance for treating pre-Oedipal states is discussed. Their thesis is that a group’s process and the therapist’s dreams arise from a collective, unconscious matrix which is formed, to a considerable extent, by the therapists’ identities.