Dreaming revolutions — group analysis beyond words. The Elaborative Matrix
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6426583 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hayley Berman (0000-0001-7020-6029, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 339-356 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-11 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Group Analysis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0533-3164 • E-ISSN: 1461-717X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/05333164251353360 |
| OpenAlex | W4413127289 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 19 |
We are in urgent need of ways to understand and reorganize societies so that culture-frames of mind can be steered towards more generative paths’ (Bollas, 2018, xiii). This paper contributes to applied group analysis as a creative and progressive discourse and practice that can actively address and respond to trauma and social injustice, to liberate traumatic dissociation into free association. Both group analysis and psychoanalysis emerged as a resistance to dominant totalitarian and oppressive political structures. Following a similar trajectory, this paper builds on my response to growing up in an oppressive and totalitarian society, with an attempt in my practice and research to ‘liberate the life force in a traumatized society’ (Berman, 2011). My resistance took the form of the provision of sustainable free access to analytic group-based mental health training, services, and communities of care 1 , using an extensive free associative vocabulary. Free association is a method of understanding and transforming traumatic states of mind and counteracts restrictive forms of knowing that enable generative paths. I offer continued investigation with a group analytic focus on adaptive methods of responding to trauma and social change. I introduce the term ‘Elaborative Matrix’, cojoining group analysis and social dreaming, drawing on case material from temporary groups in Chile during the social revolution of 2019. I stretch the group analytic frame to include an extended aesthetic tool kit to facilitate collective acts of creativity, enabling mourning, reparation, and elaboration. In this context, there is a pre-existing generative function of a society already dreaming of new futures. This paper offers the reader an experience and invitation to consider the value of an elaborated methodology to promote group analysis as a form of activism
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| Highly cited | No |
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