The History of Dream Group Forum of Finland
The abbreviation of the Dream Group Forum in Finland is SURF, which comes from the Finnish name of our Forum: Suomen UniRyhmäForum.
One of two main roots of our Forum began year 1980, when during a dream group seminar in Northern Sweden Montague Ullman had a dream about Markku Siivola, one of the later founding members of Forum. His dream made him an instant convert to dreams in a shocking, deeply touching way. The account of this incident, named The Tale of Two Telephone Poles can be read at Dream Appreciation Newsletter 2003 pages 4-5. Because of the impact of this incident Markku found the working key to dreams, and began to have dream groups for both professionals and non-professionals both inside and outside psychiatric settings.
Ullman's book Working with Dreams, co-authored With Nan Zimmerman, had been published 1979. Markku translated it to Finnish, and it was published 1982. Markku published in Finnish a small study Dream - the familiar unknown at Jyväskylä University publication series 1984. These texts were many years the main accounts about Ullman's Experiential Dream group process. The next thorough study about Ullman's dream group process was done in Finnish at Tampere University Psychology department by Mika Rotola-Pukkila 1997 in the form of his graduate thesis Appreciating Dreams in a Small Group (Unien oivaltaminen pienryhmässä). The latest and most thorough account about the process in Finnish was Markku's book Unien opissa - unet itseymmärryksen palveluksessa (In the Apprenticeship of Dreams - Dreams in the Service of Self-Understanding), published in 2008.
In the nineties the other main root of the Forum was growing elsewhere. Two psychotherapists, Anne Lindholm-Kärki and Kirsti Paloheimo, without knowing anything about Ullman, searched for books about dreams, when one of them dropped accidentally and literally onto her own toes the above mentioned Working with Dreams. After picking it up from the floor she realized that the book was exactly what she had sought after. They created their own dream group leader training, consisting about one hundred seminar & supervision hours. Most of Finnish dream group leaders have received their dream group leader education through this training.
These two main roots finally merged Jan 24, 2003, by founding the Dream Group Forum of Finland. (Forum copied its name from the Swedish Dream Group Forum (Drömgruppsforum) , which is the original Forum, founded 1990 with Ullman and 20 Swedes.) The founding members of the Finnish Forum were, in addition to the abovementioned three, Kirsi Salonen, Margareta Renlund and Risto Santavuori. The name of this group is the planning group. The special characteristics of the Forum has been and still is its non-hierarchical nature: it is not registered, it has no officiality, no board, no chairmen, no members, no member fees, no financial compensations for anybody, including the planning group and the presenters at its annual seminars, and no Forum-defined standards, examinations and qualifications for dream group leaders (see the page http://www.dromgruppsforum.org.se/utbildning.htm (in Swedish) about Swedish training and qualifications for dream group leaders). The Finnish dream group leader list http://siivola.org/surf/uniryhmaohjaajaluettelo.htm contains individuals considering themselves capable of leading an Ullman style dream group.
The two main areas of the Forum's activities have since then been the Internet site http://siivola.org/surf/ and the annual seminars. Forum's first two-day dream group seminar was held Oct 14-15, 2005. The fourth seminar year 2008 expanded the seminar to three days, and lengthened the dream group sessions to 2½ hours, and, because of gradual increase of persons capable of leading the dream group, for the first time had a separate meeting for dream group leaders & others interested in leading a group. This meeting consisted of free flowing discussion about practical questions, problems & other topics raised in working as a leader.
Year 2008 seminar was special because it was held in English because of our international guests from Sweden, England and Taiwan. In the planning phase of this 2008 seminar we did not yet know that Montague Ullman is going to leave us, which happened June 7, 2008, leaving us at our own. This created a special challenge to the Forum to strengthen the Ullman style international experiential dream group network. Forum's main task is on the one hand to preserve the originality of Ullman's dream group core process and on the other hand to study its possible stimulating effects when transferring and modifying its methods and principles to other kinds of dream approaches and in addition to various creative processes, including performing arts and education.
Surf's next annual three-day seminar will take place Sept. 18-20, 2009. Surf is planning to start annual one-day winter seminars year 2009, the first one March 28, 2009 in Helsinki.
Feb 28, 2009
Markku Siivola