This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Urlic, I. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Mirroring of Psychogenic Autistic Barriers and Neurotic Boundaries in Group Process

Ivan Urli

Group-Analytic Society London

During a group psychotherapeutic process, many layers of inner and outer worlds are mirrored through constant interaction. The author follows up part of the group analysis of a small group of patients who, through projections and projective identifications, dreams and fantasies, slowly disclose their deep inner conflicts, up to the barriers that all of them avoid. `Going around' the projection of one patient opens a path through these psychogenic autistic encapsulations, enabling the whole group to develop the analysis of the group process. The author conceptualizes this situation as a phase preceded by high tensions and resistances and followed by new insights into the psychodynamics of each member and the group as a whole. Barriers are understood and well defended as nuclei of pregenital conflicts, disclosing early fixations, which imply autistic qualities, while neurotic `boundaries' are seen as conflictual lines against which one uses defence mechanisms, and which are generally more accessible to exposition and confrontation, and are of either oedipal or pre-oedipal origin.

Key Words: group psychotherapy • neurotic boundaries • psychogenic autistic barriers

Group Analysis, Vol. 32, No. 4, 535-546 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/0533316499324008


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?