Content analysis of the meeting transcript yielded three meaningful and coherent themes: (1) feeling blocked and helpless in the face of a barrier; (2) a sense of intrusion, defense, and psychological coping; and (3) belonging to the group as a means of coping with an individual and a collective threat. The recent military conflict resonated in each of the three themes.
We also identified a continuous dialectical movement between the individual and the group. This was reflected in the tension between the general and collective dream contents and more personal associative contents. The following description of the themes relates to both the military conflict and this dialectical movement.
3.1. Feeling Blocked and Helpless in the Face of a Barrier
The explicit story of the “rough road” dream shows that the person in the dream succeeded in overcoming the barrier being faced. Nonetheless, the participants referred to negative feelings and fears related to being blocked and feeling helpless in front of that barrier.
I’m already there and I want to move forward, but it is blocked and I can’t get passed it.
(Male graduate student)
An experience of helplessness…something that wasn’t there before and suddenly emerges unintentionally.
(Male undergraduate student)
While at the beginning of the session the experience of being blocked and helpless was associated with the dream content and with the general sense of threat and the accompanying restrictions, it was later expressed as a personal feeling shared in the group.
I was filled with anxiety and I couldn’t free myself from a state of “what will they think of me” and how will I be.
(Female graduate student)
This experience of being observed by others may have reflected the participants’ anxiety as well as the effort to “belong”, which characterizes early stages of group development [
38]. It may, therefore, be argued that this inevitable anxiety was exacerbated in the present group whose aim related to participants’ concerns during stressful times.
One participant expressed a wish to move on to a new place.
I am stuck in a familiar place and I want to change places, I want to move on but I can’t, I am stuck.
(Male undergraduate student)
He, nonetheless, felt helpless and stuck concerning this wish. In the group discussion, stagnation and helplessness were found to be linked with uncertainty and worry about the future several times.
Recently I went back to my parents’ house and, once again, I found it difficult to take the step of leaving the house and I found it strange that it was difficult again.
(Female graduate student)
Now I am supposed, perhaps, to open a private practice…to grow or not to grow, can I or can’t I?
(College alumna)
There’s no future, there’s no place to go, where am I going to? That’s what it reminded me of…like the solution to an infinite equation.
(Male graduate student)
The sense of being blocked was particularly pronounced as participants expressed difficulties relating to the specific personal developmental phases and challenges they faced (e.g., graduation, moving out of their parents’ homes).
These feelings were also associated with the experience of feeling blocked during the recent military conflict. Importantly, this was addressed vicariously through memories and experiences related to their military service (an integral part of Israeli society).
I carried a firearm in the army and I was very good at operating it…and suddenly, the feeling in the dream that the muscles aren’t working.
(Female graduate student)
In the army I had a recurrent dream that I didn’t manage to pull the trigger.
(Female undergraduate student)
These military associations exemplify feelings of stagnation, helplessness, and life- threatening situations. In this context, the participants’ associations express a confrontation with a challenging and long-standing reality of experiencing collective traumas and glories [
39]. Ongoing existential threats transform the Israeli soldier’s matrix [
40] from a foundation matrix, which is a latent basic disposition in the social unconscious [
21], into a manifest and present dynamic matrix, which influences everyone in society.
The flow of the group discussion was, thus, characterized by movement from a general discussion relating to the experience of being stuck, as was apparent in the dream, to a personal experience of being stuck and wishing to be freed from society’s demands and expectations. Furthermore, the sense of helplessness caused by the barrier may be understood as an allusion to the anxiety experienced at the beginning of the session. The possibility to share these feelings with the group provided a containment and an understanding of the individual and social experiences during COVID-19 and the recent military conflict.
3.2. Intrusion, Defense, and Psychological Coping
The aforementioned sense of helplessness was accompanied by strong feelings of intrusion. As shown below, participants were continually searching for mechanisms to help them defend themselves. The somewhat implicit associations with intrusion and, in some cases, with defense against it began with spontaneous recollections and experiences of the recent military conflict and other memories of collective stress in the Israeli context.
At the time of escalation in Israel and Gaza…there were a lot of demonstrations there…and I can’t get to the sea…. This picture really reminds of that.
(Male graduate student)
It may be argued that being under the threat of rockets, riots, and the inability to maintain one’s routine (e.g., going to the beach) represents feelings of intrusion. The following associations underline the personal connection to the military context.
I once had a dream that there was a war…and, at the end, they shot me in the dream, it was a really difficult feeling.
(Female graduate student)
There were also very personal associations relating to intrusion and defense.
When I was living with my parents, I dreamed that someone was trying to break into the house, and I was trying to defend myself and couldn’t.
(Female undergraduate student)
The group session, which began with a general discussion relating to intrusion and defense in times of conflict and threat, thus, became more personal, with participants relating to the issue of feeling secure or protected or being personally intruded on. The main resonating question was who was supposed to protect them and how.
I felt that things would not be OK…there’s something not very simple going on here, no one is protecting me.
(Female undergraduate student)
When I was little, I was traveling with my dad…he held me so that I didn’t throw up. In hindsight, I think it would have been better if we had stopped and I had taken a breath of fresh air, but [instead] he held me. I haven’t thought about it for years, it was a really unpleasant experience.
(College alumnus)
In these associations we identified the desire for a parental figure who would hold and protect the participants (e.g., their own parents, group leaders, or national leaders) from external threats such as thieves, enemies, and the pandemic, as they consider their inner resources insufficient.
Other defense attempts included more implicit coping efforts that were characterized by feelings of happiness (at a wedding) and movement upwards, which may exemplify manic coping mechanisms [
41], i.e., mechanisms that involve the denial of psychic reality through omnipotence and triumph over the objects. This defense allows a reduction in feelings such as loss, guilt, and helplessness that emerge in harsh social conditions to be achieved [
42].
I was at a good friend’s wedding and I came home inspired to look for something new.
(Female graduate student)
It reminded me of an old dream. I dreamed about driving to the top of a mountain…I was in the car on the open road with a far too crazy incline and a very beautiful view opened Infront of me.
(Female graduate student)
It reminded of a trip… a picture of a stream…with huge rocks on the trail on both sides. I had a warm and positive feeling.
(College alumnus)
Despite the fact that most of the dream associations related to distress, it was evident that, through the presented dream, the participants felt invited to observe, share, play, and engage with the task more willingly [
43]. The creativity of associations and the diversity of defense mechanisms employed by the participants demonstrate the dialectical movement between sharing, collectivity, and personal concerns.
3.3. Belonging to the Group as a Means of Coping with an Individual and a Collective Threat
Throughout the session, the participants’ wish to relate to each other and to the group as a whole [
20] through a more interpersonal and intersubjective discussion was clearly manifested.
When you walk in the forest, there are threatening boulders but it becomes apparent that they are cute and friendly trolls…partners on the journey.
(Male graduate student)
It made me think of us here in the group. Maybe we too are slowly becoming subjects.
(College alumna)
The above associations illustrate attempts to transform the obstacle (i.e., the threatening boulders) into an intersubjective experience. As the trolls become “partners on the journey,” the content ceases to be intrapersonal and becomes interpersonal. The concept of the “road” presented in the dream’s title and content thus resonated throughout the group discussion. The transformation of the frightening boulders into cute trolls and partners may be understood as an attempt to associate the boulders with the threat caused by the military conflict while distancing and bypassing the threat as a way of coping with it within the group.
The comfort of not being alone with it.
(Female graduate student)
Bypassing it together or looking at it together.
(College alumnus)
The mutual progress of the group as partners on the journey created a sense of comfort among members.
This collectivity which made me feel more comfortable.
(College alumna)
The sense of a shared effort…I feel like I was charged with energy and now I feel less tired.
(College alumnus)
Sharing difficult and even traumatic experiences in the group, in contrast with the solitariness of the dreamer of the “rough road,” gave the participants a safe place where they could express their reactions to both the military and pandemic threats. This, in turn, enabled them to feel more vital and less ashamed of asking for help and requesting containment [
24].
What happened in the dream [i.e., overcoming the barrier] also happened in the group. We had to get to this thing together…that the dreamer was alone, asking for help.
(Male undergraduate student)
I was reminded of Winnie the Pooh when Tigger comes all bouncy to the forest and takes everyone out on a walk and they realize that they are getting lost…walking in circles. Then they want to go home and Piglet says, “But how? We are lost” and Pooh says, “Until now there was noise…but now there is silence I will listen to it and get us home.”
(College alumnus)
This association, which reads as a “story”, demonstrates the group’s narrative in the current stressful situation where the group can provide the means to both find the way (i.e., the way home) and get lost. It also demonstrates the dialectical movement between both quietness and chaos, and the individual and the group.
The process taking place during the session can be seen as a kind of movement that created the group’s dynamic matrix. This matrix enabled the participants to listen to the potential carried by the unspoken communication [
44] that touched on the sources of distress located in society and in themselves. In turn, sharing and containing both individual and collective experiences in the face of fear, helplessness, and uncertainty exemplified the support provided by belonging to the group.