ABSTRACT
The outcome of shared dream work is often remarkable. Participation in a dream group is an unusual and demanding commitment. Dreams are, after all, private events and are not often shared with people one does not know well. Most of them have had nothing in their past experience to prepare them for sharing ourselves at such an intimate and revealing level. So, at a first session, a number of protective restraining mechanisms come into play. A dreamer who is depicted as responding passively in a dream may, during work on the dream, also be noticed as responding in a passive manner. When a group observation of this kind is validated by the dreamer, it adds to the impact of the relevant imagery in the dream. Dream work will sometimes open up long-buried emotional sores and release torrents of feelings. The effective way the group can deal with such a situation is to allow the dreamer to go with his feelings.
