Dreamtelling and the Learning Matrix
The course ” Psychodynamics of Groups and Institutions ” for final year Psychology students of the FISSPA Department at the University of Padua was conceived, structured and proposed as a time-limited group. The idea was to use the course as a direct experiential example of a group with specific characteristics set in an institutional field, that of the university. The group was aimed at developing knowledge and skills of group theories and dynamics.
The primary task was to develop a learning matrix where knowledge was not taught from above by an authority but could be discussed, tested and questioned through active and involved participation. The principle that hermeneutics and democracy are the foundation of knowledge is one of the core myths of our university, founded 801 years ago by some students and teachers with the motto “Universa universis patavina libertas” (all, for all, freedom in the University of Padua).
It was then essential to create a group, the class group in this case, where students could feel they were in a protected and safe place, where they could expose themselves to dialogue and earnest debate, respect and feel respected, listen and be listened to, in a climate of sufficient trust in which they could risk making mistakes, express an idea and then be able to change it without feeling judged or attacked. The learning matrix was, in this perspective, both the instrument through which to pursue the general objective of the course and the main object of observation, reflection and study.
In order to bring out, observe, describe and study the formation of the dynamic matrix of the “course” group, in addition to the theoretical lectures, three different types of experiential groups were established, in which almost all the students enrolled in the course chose to participate: a film (movie) group (7 participants), an observers’ group (6 participants) and two dreamtelling groups (8 participants each, all female). The observer group consisted of four observers of the classroom and two observers of each of the dreamtelling groups. Participation in these activities was voluntary so as not to force anyone into potentially uncomfortable situations.
The groups were held in extracurricular hours, each one of the series of four groups for one-and-a-half hour sessions every two weeks. All the extracurricular groups were on the Zoom platform, and were led by one of us not involved in the class group.
This device was aimed to change the students’ attitude towards group dynamics, encouraging them to experience directly and thus integrate the theoretical lessons with experience and practice. The dreamtelling small groups were proposed to allow experiencing the unconscious in relationship. The median class group was deemed to be too complex for this purpose. The film group was intended as a softer alternative to the dreamtelling group. The movie may be conceived like a dream, but it is less engaging for participants.
The observers’ group was proposed for two reasons: 1) the theory of observation in the group is part of the course, and the presence of some observers in the class group and the small dreamtelling groups would be a good occasion to link theory and practice; 2) even if in the group, especially in the small one we are all observers and are observed at the same time, the presence of an established observer makes this function explicit and encourages the initiation of reflective and self-reflective activity.
The students thus had the opportunity to experience different settings, in-presence and online, and the difference in their relational functioning in the small and median groups.
The participation of some students, even if not all that attending the course, in the small (dreamtelling) groups would have positively conditioned the processes of the class group as a whole. While not neglecting the possible manifestation on an individual level of envious, competitive and exclusionary feelings, phenomena of a transpersonal nature, of the resonance between internal virtual groups, was deemed more important (Silvestri and Ferruzza, 2012). Each course participant, in this way, silently carry with them all the group experiences they were going through, thus contributing to determining the overall dynamic matrix.
In particular, we hoped that the two dreamtelling groups would foster the emotional involvement of students by helping them recognize and contain the anxieties aroused by the unusual teaching modality of this course. We wanted to investigate the formative and transformative aspects (Friedman, 2021) of dreamtelling groups.
As hoped, working with dreams proved to be significant for the students’ learning, as it allowed them to get more in touch with their own internal experiences; this made the learning experience more emotional, helping to develop and sustain curiosity. Moreover, the use of dreams was a sort of a catalyst because it triggered the creation of the group very quickly, almost spontaneously, also thanks to the evocative and associative characteristics of dreamtelling. All the participants were immediately very interested in working with dreams as if they wanted to explore this psychoanalytic object they had heard so much about before but were approaching for the first time in practice.
In retrospect, what we found most interesting and surprising was that very similar dreams were brought to the two dreamtelling groups. Also, the related and subsequent associative chains were similar. Some participants re-dreamt dreams originally taken into the dreamtelling field by others within the group. In this way, the same themes were elaborated and gone through, testifying that the participants belonged to the same educative dynamic matrix and confirming the axiomatic point that the social permeates the individual to the core (Foulkes&Anthony, 1957-1984), thus leading the focus to the social unconscious (Hopper, 2003-2018; Hopper&Weinberg 2011-2017), of the group itself.
What characterized the emotional climate of both dreamtelling groups was the dreamlike atmosphere provided by the online experience. It seemed to increase the idealized self-perception of the group and provided a defense against “real” participation in the group. On Zoom, the other participants were perceived as virtual presence, just as dream characters are: present and real in the internal world, but not in external reality. This made the perception of others at the liminal zone between me-not-me, just as dreams are: something of our own, but also something new that does not belong to us until we become aware of it later, through a dialogue with others. In addition, the possibility of connecting from one’s own home, often from one’s own bedroom, encouraged the students to express their intimate contents easily.
Due to all these aspects, participation in the dreamtelling groups was very engaging in a contained and emotionally charged atmosphere: “It almost seemed as if the participants were sometimes travelling on a cloud“. This idealization of a group experienced as a positive, safe and protected place is reminiscent of ‘the community of brothers’ described by Claudio Neri (2017), where the sense of community and brotherhood are prioritized. One wonders: is this a real lived and perceived experience or a heavenly fantasy that does not correspond to the truth?
In the first two dreamtelling groups, the dreams that were brought spoke of the need for a frame, a setting that would give meaning to the figure-background games that will come to unravel, which made us consider how participants, even in the online setting, were unconsciously working together in order to build a group ego-skin (Anzieu, 1999). Almost immediately, the theme of the shadow emerged, which accompanied us throughout the whole experience in both groups. “I dreamt I was in a classroom and had to take an exam. There was a white sheet of paper inside a frame, one over the other on one white sheet of paper; the two could only be distinguished if you could see the shadow that one cast on the other“. It was essential to have a frame, a screen sheet, where participants saw their images projected in eight small rectangles. But there were other projections! In the associative chains, the students told of their common characteristics, such as being psychologists at the end of their studies, but above all, they had to have the courage to expose their differences and experience that they had no control over what they projected onto others. They thus understood that in the group, through mirroring and resonance, we can get to know hidden parts of ourselves, which others see and send back to us and that it is only through earnest debate and dialogue that we can get in touch with our own shadow zones.
The group was experienced as overwhelming, new and disturbing: “I am on a raft in the middle of the sea, there is a tsunami, and I am at the mercy of the waves. With me is a girl. I know that together we can save ourselves”. The students were very uneasy about being in this new dimension but also curious about the overwhelming and powerful new experience. They enthusiastically gave accounts of their dreams but were afraid of others’ references, of what the dreams aroused and evoked in them. In this dream, a profound experience of anxiety emerges, typical of the nascent state and the sharing of dreams: the perturbing sensation of being in a group, in a succession of losing and finding oneself, of conversing with the other in the liminal space between me and not me, me and the other, conscious and unconscious, known and unknown.
The theme of loss came then in the shape of the dream of one participant who “lost her bag“, the container for all her personal belongings, a good image of entering the group and jeopardizing her identity. Another participant reported dreaming of “human bodies torn to pieces“: there was much talk of the fear of losing parts of oneself within the group as if one was being dismembered by the other’s gaze. There was a fear of being known and classified even for the small part of us that we chose to show and that the others perceived.
This was a repeated experience of the participants, generally perceived as painful but at the same time necessary and highly rewarding. The following dream represents the situation, associating it with having to make an imprint with a shark: “to do this, you must allow the animal to bite you, but not devour you“. And then adding: “In the dream, however, the pain takes a back seat because the feeling of connection and the possibility of swimming alongside this great creature is more satisfying“. As if the fear of being seen and intruded by the other could, at the same time, return a deep feeling of satisfaction.
Dreamtelling groups gradually become a kind of “sacred place” in which to experience a new intimacy with others: how is this sacredness protected? Participants wondered how and whether to bring this dialogical possibility into the classroom group as well, where paradoxically, they had not even been greeting or speaking to each other. It is as if they could only afford to be a connected group during dreamtelling groups, protected by the screen on Zoom, but not in the reality of the classroom.
The class group was very different from all the other groups. It was bigger than the others, with 35-40 attendees every lesson and more variable in its composition: even if many students were always present, some participated discontinuously. In addition, seating was arranged as a lecture theatre because of how university classrooms are structured, consistent with the traditional top-down training model. The expressed emotions in this group were different, too. During the initial lessons, the invitation to contribute and the request to state one’s name caused some surprise, then, probably in connection with the start of the small groups, exhibitionism, competition, power-seeking, fear, anger, anxiety and overt protest appeared. Male students were the most involved in this dynamic. These manifestations may be read as the physiological expression of the turmoil of the transformation of the dynamic matrix triggered by small groups, above all, the dreamtelling groups.
Talking about the class group, the students expressed fear of the teacher’s judgement, but especially that of their classmates, as if they were afraid of saying things for which they would be judged as lacking or wrong. They all expressed a desire to be able to experience a more serene and contained climate in the classroom as well, where they could dialogue freely, as in the dreamtelling groups. The participants then began to sit closer together, look at each other and smile as if to support each other during their first shy interventions in the classroom.
At this moment, some of the classroom observers demanded more interactions from their classmates in order to be able to do their job and observe the classroom dynamics, to do so they used the words “here we are a group” pushing the others into dialogue. As much as this was a common desire, these words were perceived as a very aggressive act. The shadow was named and carried with itself a load of projected or imagined aggression: we are only a group in the online space of dreamtelling, here we are in the flesh, with our bodies, and it is scary to perceive ourselves as a real group, to have real relationships and contacts. Anti-group defences (Morris Nitsun,1996) clearly emerged; one speaks of feeling raped in one’s intimacy, of violence of the gaze and the need for consent to be observed.
This theme appears clearly and powerfully in some of the dreams brought up during dreamtelling: “I am at a professor’s house having lunch; she feeds me a soup full of eyes“. And again: “I am on a table with no clothes on, there is a man looking at every part of my body, even pulling down my underwear”, and again: “I am in the faculty, and everyone is looking at me, I only realize then that I am naked. My feeling was that it was the others who had undressed me; without the gaze of the others, I would not have perceived discomfort”. The other’s eye is therefore challenging to sustain: it can change how we see ourselves, it can trigger a fear of being watched in a voyeuristic manner by someone to whom one has not explicitly given consent (Furin et. al., 2023), and it can hurt us a lot when it rejects us, but it can also make us feel welcomed when it recognizes and integrates us. The observer makes the experience somewhat real because he or she witnesses it, thus providing more reality to the group and the participants’ experiences.
A further level of observation took place in two moments of reflection at the end of the course, in which all the participants of the various small groups explored their personal experiences and tried to investigate what had happened during those months in the development of the dynamic matrix. This provided an opportunity to synthesize, rework and integrate the whole course. It was the moment of greatest intimacy and exchange; the class group had finally become aspace in which to integrate and welcome experiences, to make them dialogue with each other, and no longer a battleground in which to express power. The possibility of having experiences, recording them and reflecting on them afterwards is essential to developing the learning matrix.
We believe that the dreamtelling groups, with their value of intimacy and security, gradually generated a climate of sharing and free exchange, fostering mutual trust even in the median class group and positively influenced the dynamic and learning matrices, benefiting even those who did not participate.
Many participants experienced this as a transformative experience: the group had a benevolent effect on their interpersonal relations and changed their attitude towards group phenomena and the individual-group relationship.
Many verbalized that they had developed a better ability to understand themselves and themselves within a group. Some described the course as “a long journey of reflection and personal growth“. Furthermore, it helped to bring several future professionals closer to group analysis in a lively and affective way.
References:
Anzieu, D. (1999), The Group Ego-Skin, in Group Analysis, 32(3), 319–329. https://doi.org/10.1177/05333169922076860
Cardoni E., Colli F., Colussi Mas N., Sassi S., Turchet C. e Furin A. (2022), La vertigine nel lavoro dell’osservatore: un’avventura tra le pieghe della complessità, In press in Gruppi
Friedman R. (2021), Gestire i conflitti, Dreamtelling, Disturbi della Relazione e Matrice del Soldato, Franco Angeli 2021, 164 pagine, ISBN: 9788835109624
Hopper E. (2019), “Notes” on the Theory of the Fourth Basic Assumption in the Unconscious Life of Groups and Group-Like Social Systems—Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification or (ba) I:A/M., Group 43(1), 9-27. doi:10.13186/group.43.1.0009.
Neri C. (2017), Gruppo, Milano Raffaello Cortina.
Nitsun M. (1996), The anti-group: destructive forces in the group and their creative potential, 2014, Routledge, ISBN: 9780415813747
Silvestri A. e Ferruzza E. (2012), Originalità e valore euristico del pensiero di Ferdinando Vanni sulla psicoterapia di gruppo, in Gruppi, vol XV, n°1, 51-78.
Angelo Silvestri: Psychiatrist, individual and group psychotherapist, PhD in psychiatric sciences; Professor in charge of the FISPPA Department of the University of Padua, COIRAG trainer, editor of the journal ‘Gruppi’, member ASVEGRA, APG, COIRAG; full member GASi and SPR Italia;
Via Degli Zabarella, 64 – 35121 Padova (Italy); angelo.silvestri@unip.it
Virginia Balocco: Dr. STPSI, Sigmund Freud Univerity, Milan, Master degree student in clinical-dynamic psychology at the University of Padua; P.zza Prato della Valle 44 – 35123 Padova (Italy);
Shantal Fummi: Dr. STPSI, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Master degree student in clinical-dynamic psychology, University of Padua; Via Andrea Briosco 13 – 35123 Padova (Italy);
Stefania Mannarini: Psychologist and psychotherapist, Full professor in “Dynamic Psychology” and “Techniques of assessment in clinical and dynamic psychology” at Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology at University of Padua; via 8 febbraio 2, 35122 Padova; stefania.mannarini@unipd.it
Alessandra Furin: Psychologist, individual and group psychotherapist, SPI and IPA psychoanalyst, COIRAG supervisor, ASVEGRA and CVP member, GASi full member; coordinator of the editorial staff of the journal ‘Gruppi’; Via Degli Zabarella, 64 – 35121 Padova (Italy); alessandra.furin@gmail.com