The dramatic space that we have described often recurs in group members’ dreams, appearing in many different transfigurations that address the themes described above. The following dreams to be looked at will be accompanied by only a brief interpretative comment or reference to their real-life situation to avoid the confu-sion that such an abundance of material may bring and to let the dream images speak for themselves.
They invite me to a party, but when I go inside the house, I find myself in a big room where people dressed in white are walking. I recognize some of my fellow group members who pass me by without seeing me. I realize that they have spots on their faces even though it seems to be a natural thing for them.
I feel uneasy and I am afraid of contagion.
The dream was brought in by a participant a few months after he entered the group. It expresses the idea of the space experienced in psychodrama as a kind of
gateway. The dream clearly emphasizes a fear of suffering in the participant that the group may have transmitted to him. In the dream the unnerving side of entering the ‘space of the gods’ predominates, while its positive potential has not yet been recognized. The participant’s motives for joining the group were mainly professional. He chose psychodrama for its ‘play’ aspect. His dream reveals and accentuates the other aspect of psychodrama – its disquieting aspect. This is some-thing that he had already experienced in the group. Its evolution into somesome-thing positive came out in his associations and subsequent dreams. When he went over his thoughts after the dramatic enactment, he said that he felt that there may be a better chance for him to heal himself more permanently in that very context, no matter how unnerving it may be. However, this potential was hidden somewhere inside the room and had to be looked for.
The following dream uses images significant for bringing out the theme of the transfiguration. In it, a space for regression and fusion is transfigured into a space for individuation.
The group is in a barn-like room. It is nighttime and there is a lamp in the middle of the room. The light reflects a shining circle onto the floor. At first it seems that there is nothing inside. Then I notice that there is a very intense life among the insects and gnats there. After this the group leaves the room and every-one goes his own way. It’s snowing outside. Gigantic snowflakes hit me. I note their harmony and symmetrically crystalline structure.
After the dream was enacted, the participants realized that the group space first appeared in the dream as a place of welcome where they had the chance to warm themselves among the herd that they belonged to. The circle of light at first seemed empty, but later it was seen as teeming with life. It was associated with the relations among the group members that had first seemed to be non-existent but later turned out to be rich in interpersonal dynamics and mutual interests. However, the barn’s aspect of regression and fusion seemed to serve as a prelude to the required task of facing the cold, that is, the solitary individuative path out in the open, where each person went his or her own way. In this dimension it was possible to appreciate the symmetrical harmony of the snowflakes, even if only fleetingly. Their unity and perfection were associated with the loneliness of the individuative path and the symbol of the Self.
On other occasions, psychodramatic space appears as a means of transportation for a trip.
In the central square of the town where I lived as a child there is a minibus that I see members of my psychodrama group get on. I follow them and get on. I notice that the sign that is supposed to show the destination is completely blank.
The bus driver is wearing mountain clothes. He is someone I don’t know. While I am wondering if the group is going to meet or not, I notice that the bus is going towards a snowy mountain.
Here the psychodramatic space becomes a means of transportation, a ‘going towards’, a starting off from one’s home town towards a goal that the group shares. The sign for the destination is blank. This seems to indicate that it is not possible to define the goal ahead of time or to identify it with something concrete that can be written down in ‘black and white’. The bus driver is the only one who may know the destination of the trip. He is an unknown but seemingly well equipped. Perhaps he is a personification of the ‘transcendent function’ that is activated by analytic work.
This dream takes up the same themes of travel and psychodramatic space as travelling space:
I am riding in a compartment in a train with some other members of my psychodrama group. C. gets in at a little country station. [C. is another group member.] C. brings me an old suitcase that I had thought I had lost a few years before. It holds a lot of personal effects and also some things that may be rather compromising. The same scene repeats itself several times in the successive stations with other group members.
Simply by being present, the other group members allow the dreamer to reclaim pieces of his history and inner reality, something that the lost and found suitcases seem to be alluding to. Travel and psychodramatic space as transportation seem to be associated thematically with a person’s search for his or her inner and social identity, as in the following dream (to be treated more extensively in the section on transvestitism).
I find myself on a trip with the psychodrama group on a horse-drawn wagon that has all the features of a circus wagon and of a knick-knack cart. In the middle of it there are old and new clothes of all styles and sizes, used shoes, costumes from melodramas, clown suits, make-up equipment, jewels, and flowered straw hats. I notice I have only my underwear on and at first this creates a certain uneasiness in me, but bit by bit I realize with satisfaction that this will let me put on everything more freely.
Here psychodramatic space is again a means of transportation directed towards an unknown destination. The group members are caught between the serious and the facetious. They seemingly question their exterior identities as ‘social persons’, represented by the clothes and by the chance they have to swap clothes and even to jokingly cross-dress. They question their deeper and more vulnerable essences, represented by the underwear.
In the same group member’s dream, which follows, the group transforms itself into a steady, welcoming space. This may have to do with the issue of integrating the shadow into the group – the black cooks and waiters who provide the food.
Around the corner from my house I discover the presence of a sort of Grand Hotel that I had never seen before. I have the impression that this thing has
something to do with me and I enter the hall. I recognize some group members who are chatting with each other and eating holding plates. I notice several waiters in livery with dark skin. One of these comes up to me and offers me some very delicious-looking and nourishing food. I then notice a door opening to the kitchen and I observe that the cooks are also black.
In conclusion, we will consider some dreams about psychodramatic space that were dreamt by training-group participants. These people had already completed a formal educational programme as well as two or more years of group work on themselves as patients. By that time, they were aspiring to become psychodrama-tists and to put themselves to the test as group conductors.
The group is seated at the edge of a kind of great round tub made out of some sort of rough material. I am happy to see that R. is there too, who is wearing a ring in an ear. The tub is a kind of pool with water inside. The woman group leader is wearing gypsy clothes and throws us into the tub one by one, saying
‘Ready . . . Go!’ and keeping the time with a stopwatch.
Here the dramatic space is a tub where the members learn to swim. The material that the tub’s container is made of is a richly authentic ‘raw material’. The group leader’s gypsy clothes refer to a previous dream of B., another group member.
B. had been in the group for a long time and played the role of a guiding figure for the dreamer, a young woman psychologist. B.’s dream had involved a group of dwellers of a land over the border who had rediscovered their common ethnic roots. This land is another example of a commonly experienced space and the theme of ‘rediscovery’ of roots, analogies, and memories is what came out of the psychodrama.
A young doctor brought in this dream on the eve of his first experience as group leader:
I find myself in an amphitheatre. W. and M. [the psychodrama group leaders]
accompany me to the centre of the room and then they wish me good luck and leave. I then realize that the group members are in front of me. They are looking at me inquisitively.
Several group members associated the room with the medical school amphitheatre for the introductory anatomy classes where cadavers were dissected. The dreamer found himself here again as if he were in medical school. He had to demonstrate that his ability to observe and his acquired skills were enough to transform theory into practice. The stance of the departing group leaders alludes to the fact that the time was ripe for him to take up his responsibility.
The same doctor brought in another dream right before he was about to conduct a group himself for the first time.
I am in a space where there is a lake in the middle. I see my girlfriend in the water. She is swimming but seems to be in trouble. I realize that I’ll have to make an effort to bring her to the shore. I then notice that I have a doctor’s white smock on and that I have to take it off before I jump into the water.
This dream seems to be saying that it is possible for him to conduct a group only if he is ready to take off his professional uniform (the white coat) – at least temporarily – so that he can save his anima (his girlfriend) as a figure to guide him.