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A group of university students and teachers meeting to study interpersonal behavior were impressed by a constellation of expectations they described as utopian. They distinguished both Oedipal and preoedipal themes underlying this constellation. The group as a whole appeared in a maternal role and it offered both good (nurturant and protective) as well as bad (abandoning and destructive) aspects. With the latter, the group members dealt in fantasy and kept their libidinal and aggressive impulses from consciousness. The group as a large totality of unknown power conjured up a harsh, preoedipal mother image and primitive fantasies about the contents of her body. On the other hand, the individual's emotional investment satisfied a need to belong—the uncomplicated sense of acceptance and well-being found only in an exclusive union with the mother. The equation of group with mother also catalyzes feelings of attraction and repulsion. It is assumed that intrapsychic and interpersonal conflict can be replaced by unconditional love, nutrients, and security. Negative aspects are defended against by splitting. These postulations and their therapeutic handling are illustrated in descriptions of groups which met forty times for fifty-minute sessions three times a week.