The Private God in the Group: The God-Image in an Object-Relations View

Abstract

This article describes how religious themes became central in one of my group-analytic therapy groups. The focus was on the group members' private image of God, their God-representations.' I try to show how this religious material gave access to deeply personal material regarding primary object relations and more hidden parts of the self Working on their God-images the members seemed at the same time to carry out important work on their relations with parents and their self-images. At the group level the religious themes offered a common ground of recognizable experience, which increased cohesiveness and opened the way for a more emotional climate. When religious material was focused upon, the group worked in a concentrated and intense way.