title: Acting-out: its functions within analytic group psychotherapy and its transformation into dreams.
abstract: In group processes, acting-out has diverse functions, all of them equally important. It has an intrapsychic, interpersonal, and group dynamic function. Not only may it be understood as a form of resistance, but also in its communicative and reparative potential. The authors investigate the thesis that acting-out also contains the seed for change, thus helping patients divest themselves of pathological behavior. Using a group process as an example, this article shows how boundaries can be drawn between past and present experiences while using the communicative and reparative functions of acting-out. Unconscious psychodynamics can then be transformed from acting-out into dreams.
authors.forename: Bernhard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Richarz
authors.forename: Sylvelin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Römisch
mesh_terms: D000184:Acting Out; D000328:Adult; D004325:Dreams; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D011615:Psychotherapy, Group; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology