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This study deals with countertransference on the part of observers in analytical groups. It complements an earlier study by the same team on participants' feelings towards observers. In a content analytic evaluation of an anonymous survey conducted among group observers, only around a third of all response items, interestingly, referred to the observer's feelings towards participants, whereas about half of the items referred to the observer's own position as an observing person, and the remainder to the group leaders and other staff. In contrast, in the preceding complementary study almost all response items referred to the group participant's feelings towards observers. Almost all observers reported positive, sympathetic states of feeling touched or moved, while negative feelings towards participants were the exception. Where states of stress were reported, they referred to the setting or to situations by which the respondent felt stressed or productively impacted. Participants were found to be viewed consistently as individuals who were following a path that also concerned the observers themselves. The accompanying supervision was described as valuable and beneficial. By contrast, perceptions contained very little evidence in favour of views found in the literature according to which observers are able to provide support to group leaders by giving them feedback or by offering insight, through analysis of their own feelings, into unaddressed issues within the group. In a different setting this resource could possibly be made better use of. Clear evidence was found of idealizing transference from observers to group leaders. This can be readily explained as a natural phase in developing an identity as a therapist. The response items confirm the assumption that an important function of observers lies in "neutralizing participants' superego". Conversely, the reflective setting helped observers to attenuate their superego traits, thus promoting a lively development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Works of art can due to their abstractness mirror expectations toward certain groups. Often, subliminal fears and conceptions of wishes shape these expectations. Especially in crime movies, a curious doubling in the underlying demands on psychologists appears: At the same time, they should reconstruct what has happened, should solve the problem, as well as to convict the perpetrator and save and protect future victims. The characters lead to conclusions on the basic tensions apparent in the often unconsidered picture of the task and the efficiency of the work of psychologists. The examination of several characters in television-series and films (from Dr. Eddie »Fitz« Fitzgerald and Dr. Hannibal Lecter to Dr. Helen Hudson) introduces the topic. A close-reading of the character Dr. Vera Bergman in the German Tatort Heimatfront (homefront) reviews the results and leads to more general conclusions. As a theoretical base, I choose narratological accounts, countertransference-analysis as defined in literary theory by Carl Pietzcker and Melvin Lerner's »Belief in a just World«. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]