Healing Trauma in Wartime: Dreams, Symbols and Transcultural Wisdom with Dr. Jorge Burmeister and Dr. Gaea Logan 

On December 13, 2025, over 145 participants gathered for a two-hour workshop titled Healing Trauma in Wartime: Dreams, Symbols and Transcultural Wisdom, co-sponsored by the IAGP Social and Collective Trauma Committee and the International Institute for Trauma Studies in Ukraine. Held in tribute to the late Dr. Earl Hopper, the workshop honored his profound contributions to group analysis, the social unconscious, and the fourth basic assumption of incohesion. Co-facilitated by Dr. Jorge Burmeister and Dr. Gaea Logan, the session offered a powerful integration of theory and practice, weaving insights from Gordon Lawrence’s Social Dreaming Matrix, Jung’s transcendent function, other contributors to the field, and the realities of collective trauma in wartime.

The matrix opened with dream motifs of a dark world: violence, threat, killing, torture, silenced grief, trusted guides, and the river that carries us. These images revealed the raw textures of the social unconscious in times of rupture. The facilitators’ poetic synthesis, Circling the Holy Mountain, offered participants a symbolic container- invoking images of swampy paths, raging minotaurs, destroyed bridges, navigating by the sun, Lucia’s day of light, and finding the path in the dark of night. The session affirmed that collective dreaming can restore connection, community, and a sense of relational home- revealing transcultural wisdom still alive beneath the rubble.

Circling the Holy Mountain

from a dream matrix on the front lines of trauma

Even if it’s true

that a mountain can be high

and the way full of swamps,

with no ray of light

and no hope.

Even if

the violence enters us

with all its killing,

its pain, its torture.

And our tears

fall down

while we are crying.

Still,

there is the river

with Gaea,

her dog

and her canoe

waving for us to come cross

repairing what was broken.

Even if a bull comes

raging,

my father

can show us how to tame the beast,

if only a little.

Even if the beast turns into

a man, searching for eyes,

searching for home,

a dog will be waiting,

offering his tenderness.

And even if

the door is wrong,

and we fail

to find safety,

or fail to find a home at all.

Even if violence

has already taken our bridge,

 

not everything

will be destroyed.

Even if

a little bit of pain

spreads into endless time,

and our home

is fallen into ashes.

We can create

for our parents

a home in our hearts,

and wear their ring

with pride

wherever we will go,

because on Lucia’s day,

we receive the lessons of the light:

That it is simply good

to celebrate

the change of seasons,

to stand and play

in heavy winds,

to jump

through swampy roads.

That it is even better

not to climb the peak,

but to circle on the

ground around the

holy mountain.

To see

the sun behind the clouds,

If we follow

our hearts.

To go

with bravery,

with courage

along our way.

And to finally discover

that even ashes

can bring

new life.