Routledge Dreamtelling, Relations, and Large Groups: New Developments in Group Analysis (The New International Library of Group Analysis)

Robi Friedman is an experienced group analyst and clinician specializing in conflict resolution, and in this important collection of his work, he presents his most innovative concepts. Dreamtelling is an original approach to the sharing of dreams with partners or within families, exploring how the dreamer’s unconscious messages can be communicated, and helping to contain emotional difficulties. The book also explains Friedman’s concept relation disorders, which locates dysfunctional behavioural patterns not within intrapsychic issues, but rather as a function of dynamics in group relations. And finally, the book presents the soldier’s matrix, a method for conceptualizing processes in highly stressed organizations and societies which are either under existential threat or pursuing glory. In the process of becoming a soldier’s matrix, subgroups and nations progressively lose shame, guilt and empathy towards perceived enemies and the Other, and every society member embraces a selfless role. Applying this method to training in groups provides an optimal way out of organizational and national crisis. The book will be of great interest to group analysts. It will also appeal to psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists with an interest in conflict resolution. Review "Readers will be fascinated by Robi Friedman’s refreshing perspectives on psychoanalytic thinking. Dreamtelling approaches dreams not only as the working-through of emotional excesses, but as influential communications. He considers psychopathology to be created in a relational frame of reference and possibly healed in it. His concept of the Soldier's Matrix provokes thinking about threatened societies, social trauma and social glory. This book will touch your minds as well as your hearts." – Vamik Volkan, M.D., DFLAPA, FACPsa, internationally renowned psychiatrist and President Emeritus of International Dialogue Initiative "This book is very much worth reading. Robi Friedman’s ideas of relational, transpersonal and communicative aspects of dreams, relational disorders and the Soldier´s Matrix, develop and renew Foulkes’ basic ideas. His Sandwich Model of a combination of small and large groups suggests a way of treating personal and social disorders and conflict resolution." – Gerda Winther, MA is a clinical psychologist in private practice, former chief psychologist and head of department, and past president of the Group Analytic Society, international "Robi is an innovator. His unique vision of group analysis blends leadership with nurture. In this selection of his published papers we can read and appreciate him as a theorist and a dreamer. His originality will inspire readers for generations, helping to shape a moral compass for the troubled society in Israel where he has made his home." – John Schlapobersky, Training Analyst, Supervisor and Teacher at the Institute of Group Analysis, London, and Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He is in private practice at the Bloomsbury Psychotherapy Practice About the Author Robi Friedman, Clinical Psychologist and Group Analyst, was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and emigrated to Israel at the age of thirteen. He has a private practice in Haifa, Israel; was the co-founder of and teacher at the Israel Institute for Group Analysis; and is the past president of the International Group Analytic Society.