Group Analytic Contexts, Issue 77, September 2017

110 Group-Analytic Society International - Contexts
Psychosis is perceived as lack of dream-work alpha (ability
to mentally digest primeval psychic material), because the primal
scene is solely depicted as sensual and fragmentary experience on an
ontological level. Dreaming can become healthy when dreams are
produced as group dreams in the dream matrix. The dream matrix
appeals, because it is based on communication, resonance, condenser
phenomena, mirror reactions, and transpositions. It acts as container
for projective identifications, which are expressed by recounting
dreams. The group’s task is to represent the fantasy of the primal scene
(combined parents). This representation will help psychotic patients
to acquire dream imagery instead of consisting of sensual fragments
only. In this way, better negotiation of the paranoid-schizoid and
depressive position can be achieved, and psychotic dreaming
transformed into neurotic dreaming. Koukis describes this process
beautifully.
In part 4, ‘GA and its relationship with the social unconscious
and art’, we encounter GA at its best: excellent discussions of the
matrix, the impact of the social unconscious and the group analytic
conductor. Koukis’ description of the conductor/leader is one of the
clearest I have read in GA. He distinguishes between the leader, who
is more directive and of the group, and the conductor, who is in the
group. He compares the group analytic group to an orchestra and the
role of the conductor to the ‘dead’ symbolic father. Archaic leadership
is transformed into servant leadership, Koukis writes. The group
analytic conductor is like a “maestro in reverse”. Group dynamics are
described in “crescendo” (intense, empowering) and “decrescendo”
(diminishing). Successful therapy concludes with an internalisation of
the mother figure (inner strength) and that of the conductor’s strength
as ‘dead’, symbolic father, whose power is diminishing (decrescendo).
The musicality of the group analytic conductor vibrates through the
text.
Koukis points out that absolute and servant leadership are
continuously negotiated in the hope that the latter will prevail and
achieve replacement of the ‘live’ father by the ‘dead’ father. This ideal
is provided by western societies in the context of modern liberalism
and democracy. Koukis is pessimistic about leaderless groups. Neither
orchestras’ nor groups’ efforts to perform “leaderless” have ever
worked, he writes, and goes on calling them “utopian”. This leaves us
with a rather bleak perspective on leaderless groups and societies.
Elaborating on the leader’s role in society when examining desire and
despair in postmodern society, leadership is perceived as being
structured by the symbolic order.