The ambitions of this paper are to make an overview of the three basic phenomena in the process of group analysis: mirroring, projective identification and empathy. The emphasis is on the influence and therapeutic possibilities of these phenomena, on developmental function and timing in early childhood. Mirroring seems to be developmentally the earliest process, that occurs in the relationship between the child and the mother. It is the basis for a later process of identification. When speaking about its function in the group, it can occur in the libidinal context and carries the possibilities for psychotherapeutic process and change; or it can occur in a destructive form of malignant mirroring. The process of projective identification enables the possibilities of getting rid of something, where already a shape of boundaries is needed, so it occurs with the beginning of the differentiation process. Adults without capacity for empathy are not able to create or to stand closeness with others, as psychotherapists they functiononly through rational constructs, they can never feel the feelings of other people. The capacity for empathy is linked with the process of projective identification between the baby and the mother during the very early period of symbiosis in the developmental line of creating object relations.
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