I believe Freud was correct in his observation that ‘dreams are the royal road to the unconscious mind’. One of his modern day students, Robert Langs, took it further when he said that the conscious mind cannot be trusted to accurately judge our motivations and perceptions. Dreams however, reveal the truth about the individual’s emotional life but the meaning is disguised and encoded. It is the analyst’s task to help the dreamer to decode the message in a dream; however, the interpretation of dreams in group therapy is different than in individual therapy. When a patient reports a dream in individual therapy, I ask two separate but related questions: 1. What is the feeling in the dream? 2. What do you think it means?  When a member reports a dream in group, I also ask  two questions but they are directed to the members: 1.”What is the  dream’s message to the group? 2. What are members feeling toward the dreamer?                                                                                                               For example, John was conflicted about group.  Though he had not made much progress resolving intimacy issues in his personal life, he was attached to the group and attended regularly, albeit always 10-15 late. He was thinking about quitting the group out of utter  frustration. John reported a dream in which he was packing to leave for a trip but he got so anxious that he couldn’t get to the airport on time and missed his flight. When I asked the group those questions, there were all kinds of brilliant and spot on reactions to the dream and the dreamer. Mary said that she was angry with John for wanting to leave the group. She thought that dream meant that he had too much baggage and it kept him from leaving. Peter felt compassion for John. Peter too wished he could fly free but was stuck on the ground, just like John.  When Sarah said she felt sad for John, I had to remind her that sad is a self-feeling; it wasn’t interpersonal.  She said that she didn’t know how she felt toward John. I asked the group:” Does anyone know what Sarah is feeling? Irvin thought she felt identified with John.  While identification is a primitive way of relating to someone, Sarah was satisfied with that explanation.

For his part, John was delighted with the group feedback.  Clearly it worked because John was able to take the array of thoughts and feelings about him and his dream, and elaborated on how they resonated with his life both in and out of group.