Dreams and the Social Dreaming Matrix
Dr. Robi Friedman and Mrs.Tammy Elad
Dreams can be considered the product of a complicated process of containment of personal, interpersonal and social emotional excesses. Dreams are created at the roots of our emotional existence and long to find wings into a healthier and more glorious future. Social Dreaming was devised as a large group setting to investigate through shared dreams a community’s unconscious preoccupations. Gordon Lawrence’s first designed the method as an effort to concentrate on the dreams told rather than the dreamers and their relations. The contents alone would allow to reveal unconscious aspects of a society’s dynamic, much in the classic Freudian tradition.
Our experience shows that it is worthwhile and often necessary to add the perspective of the dreamers and their relations to the group work in order to understand the unconscious dynamics in society. Dreams cannot be separated from the relational context in which they are told, nor from the impact they want to make on the audience – the large group convened as a Social Dreaming Matrix. The separation may sometimes not only be artificial but false. Furthermore, we think that dreams told seem to not only to “represent” social processes, but the relations they co-create with the audience may influence the unconscious social life of the large group. Social Dreaming may not only have informative functions but also transformative functions; the group “uses” unconscious communication to change the community’s relation. The unconscious and conscious influence of dreams, dreamers and the society on the Social Matrix dynamics will be discussed in the workshop.
Programm:
We will discuss Dreams, Dreaming, Dreamtelling and Large Group dynamics. The Social Dreaming Matrix will be also discussed from a Group Analytic perspective. Our Social Dreaming Matrix will try to touch on significant aspects of our community, both on the level of our dynamic as well as our foundation Matrix. Experiential and theoretical aspects will interchange in the workshop.
Our experience shows that it is worthwhile and often necessary to add the perspective of the dreamers and their relations to the group work in order to understand the unconscious dynamics in society. Dreams cannot be separated from the relational context in which they are told, nor from the impact they want to make on the audience – the large group convened as a Social Dreaming Matrix. The separation may sometimes not only be artificial but false. Furthermore, we think that dreams told seem to not only to “represent” social processes, but the relations they co-create with the audience may influence the unconscious social life of the large group. Social Dreaming may not only have informative functions but also transformative functions; the group “uses” unconscious communication to change the community’s relation. The unconscious and conscious influence of dreams, dreamers and the society on the Social Matrix dynamics will be discussed in the workshop.
Programm:
We will discuss Dreams, Dreaming, Dreamtelling and Large Group dynamics. The Social Dreaming Matrix will be also discussed from a Group Analytic perspective. Our Social Dreaming Matrix will try to touch on significant aspects of our community, both on the level of our dynamic as well as our foundation Matrix. Experiential and theoretical aspects will interchange in the workshop.