Special Interest Group – Dreamtelling and Social Dreaming
The SIG (special interest group) is organized by Marit Joffe-Milstein to use the developmental opportunities in our international Group Analytic Society. Alice and Robi joined in convening a short course of working with dreams told in two settings: the small and the median group. Zoom made it possible to experience and share knowledge on dreams in an international group of about 20+ participants from 10 countries (Austria, Czechia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Israel, Poland, UK). The opportunity to learn and experience how dreams told in groups may be approached, was administered in a setting of 8 evening meetings, each time for 2 hours, once a month, in a closed group. Participation was free and we spoke English. Each time a short theory was complemented by an experiential section and followed by a reflection. From the first four sessions we approached dreams in the small groups besides, three were done by Dreamtelling and one session was devoted to a psychodrama/group-analytic mix. Again and again, we evidenced that zoom provided for the “usual surprise” of being a good-enough setting. Discussions developed through learning by experience, putting dreamwork on the center of the group’s stage. Openness and the will to share understanding and knowledge made the process of personal and professional development possible. Mainly we discussed the necessary transposition of the work with a dream in an individual therapy unto working with dreams in the small group analytic group. There is more to a dream told than its content. Dreamtelling uses the significant and often unconscious requests for containment and the dreamer’s demands for influence on the relations with his audience to make significant personal and group elaborations. We experienced and discussed ways to include this richness of possibilities in small and later in larger groups. The second half of the SIG’s process was devoted to the social sides of dreams shared. Also here, theory, experience and reflection were used by the group’s participants to show how dreams may convey social aspects. Two sessions were convened in the “classic” Gordon Lawrence’s approach, who convinced many that one can deal only with the meeting of dreams told, “without the dreamers”. One session we convened with our group analytic understanding that the relations between group members and told dreams are inseparable as a baby from their mother. Dreams told, especially if addressed from a social perspective have strong relational aspects which are not only necessary for informative and formative aspects but especially for the transformative aspects of the dynamic matrix. We conveners also felt we learned and managed to work and use what some of us learn from our group analytic practice and thinking.
We actually enjoyed working together enormously, even if working with dreams always furthers difficult emotions which pervade the groups and call for containment and elaboration.