A Group Psychoanalytic Approach to the Social Dreaming Matrix: A Found-and-Created Device

Abstract

To differentiate the Social Dreaming Matrix from Group Relations Conferences, Gordon Lawrence provided a specific denomination, framework and primary task. Despite these new parameters, Lawrence understood that group dynamics persisted in the Matrix, perceiving social dreaming and group dynamics as two lenses of a binocular informing the Matrix. However, to fulfil the Matrix's primary task of accessing the social unconscious, he advocated a non-psychoanalytic monocular vision emphasizing social dreaming. In this article, I argue that the Social Dreaming Matrix and the Dream Reflection Dialogue that follows are, from a psychoanalytic perspective, two moments of a group whose primary task is Social Dreaming. Looking from a psychoanalytic perspective through the two lenses of social dreaming and group dynamics provides a wider perspective of the social unconscious, generating insights. This group psychoanalytic approach is a found-and-created framework rediscovering and recreating the object-Social Dreaming Matrix framework proposed by Lawrence. To support this argument, I analysed a series of Social Dreaming Matrixes and Dream Reflection Dialogues occurring during a social dreaming training programme to show how the unfolding group dynamics revealed the social unconscious as did social dreaming.