Mood-oriented prismatic balint-groups with victims of torture

Abstract

Drees A. Mood-Oriented Prismatic Baht-groups with victims of Torture. Int Forum Psychoanal 1997;6:225-230. Stockholm. ISSN 0803-706X. Prismatic Balint groups are a further development of classical Balint groups in form of a mood oriented sensory-metaphorical process. The group method enables resolving of chaotic, panic, psychotic and traumatic experiences, which as a source of team conflicts have blocked communications between doctors, nursing staff and patients. A prismatic mood oriented Balint-group remains fully functional within an institution with participants from different occupational groups and hierarchy levels, as both role conflicts and relationship conflicts are defocused prismatically by mood orientation. The theory of poetic communication as well as the violence virus hypothesis are discussed. Experience shows that torture and rape victims frequently seek to suppress the experiences they have suffered and that they thereby infect and paralyse their intrapsychic structures, blocking access to their feelings and experience from the pretraumatic time. Mood orientation and poetic communication open this blockage. They allow the patient to regain his feeling of being accepted by society.