Examining recalled dreams with many others in a Social Dreaming Matrix leads to the transformation of the thinking embedded in the dreams. There are infinite meanings to a dream by regarding the dream as an unconscious product of cultural knowledge, not as an expression of the psyche exclusively, opening new possibilities of thinking.

This book describes a way of sharing dreams in a group, called ‘social dreaming’. It explores how the sharing of real, night time dreams, in a group, can offer information on and insight into ourselves and the worlds we live in and share. It investigates how we can turn dream images, and ideas and feelings that arise from these images, into conscious thought, before describing the ways in which these can be used. Using a background of the psychosocial combined with a philosophical lens influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze, Julian Manley shows how social dreaming can be understood as a Deleuzian ‘rhizome of affects’, a web or a root design where things interconnect in a random and spontaneous fashion rather than in a sequential or linear way. He illustrates how social dreaming can link dreams together into a collage of images, and compares this to the rhizome, where clusters of emotional intensity – which emerge from the dream images – weave and interconnect with other clusters, forming a web of interlinked dream images and emotions. From the basis of this rhizome emerges an interpretation of social dreaming as a ‘body without organs’ and the social dreaming matrix as a ‘smooth space’ where meanings emerge from the way these images form connections, and come and go according to our emotions at any particular moment.

This broad range of papers covers different aspects of social dreaming.The book begins with a summary of the Social Dreaming Matrix conceptualised as a temporary system with its intakes, transformation processes and outputs. The remaining chapters cover social dreaming in different contexts including, amongst others, from the perspectives of art, architecture, theatre, working with immigrants, with pilots and lawyers and family mediators and hospitals.All the papers cover areas outside of the goal orientated activities of the institution, and examine what they may be saying about the organization of the participants.

The book describes the experience of four Social Dreaming Matrices held online between March and May 2020, during the first lockdown caused by the Covid 19 emergency. The pandemic isolated us and imposed prolonged contact with ourselves and our solitary thoughts. Against this backdrop, there was hope for change, a desire for a different kind of sociability and different forms of intimacy. On the basis of this evidence, our research supports the shift "from experiencing trauma to reacting to trauma", looking at a collective traumatic experience not only as something to be overcome but as an opportunity for a transformation that changes our mental schemes in relation to the external context. We have identified Social Dreaming as a privileged technique to overcome a collective traumatic experience, supporting its elaboration through collective feelings, new connections between intuition and rational thought, the discovery of community meanings. The authors's thesis is that the much-needed transition from 'magical thinking' to 'transformative thinking' takes place in a setting that is able to contain the anxieties of life's transitional phases, supporting the creation of new rituals and new social bonds and sustaining the passage from “me” to a “wider we”.

The idea of social dreaming argues that dreams are relevant to the wider social sphere and have a collective resonance that goes beyond the personal narrative. In this fascinating collection, the principles of social dreaming are explored to uncover shared anxieties and prejudices, suggest likely responses, enhance cultural surveys, inform managerial policies and embody community affiliation. Including, for the first time, a coherent epistemology to support the theoretical principles of the field, the book reflects upon and extends the theory and philosophy behind the method, as well as discussing new research in the area, and how social dreaming practice is conducted in a range of localities, situations and circumstances. The book will appeal to anyone interested in the idea that social dreaming can help us to delve deeper into the question of what it means to be human, from psychoanalysts to sociologists and beyond.

We are running out of ideas in Western society. Faced with global warming, Third World devastation, nuclear proliferation and the threat posed by religious conflict, we need new ways of thinking. After the loss and carnage of the Twentieth Century there is prevailing mood of uncertainty and paranoia, yet at the same time a denial of tragedy, a salvation fantasy, an illusion that we will be saved. The decline in social solidarity, the fragmentation of communal values and a growing sense of 'I' as opposed to 'we', are all signs of an inversion of moral certitudes, a disconnection from reality. This book asks what methods do we have at our disposal to understand and reverse this breakdown of communication within and between communities.

Dreaming the Social uses social dreaming as a tool to explore aspects of contemporary life and examine how we can reverse social fragmentation and large-scale trauma. Since the attack on New York on 9/11, the world has been balanced on the edge of potential disaster, exacerbated in recent years by global warming, the Covid pandemic, and war in Ukraine. Since the first edition in 2009, these national and global events have come to dominate our lives in unforeseen ways. With this in mind, this new edition explores the potential of social dreaming to help access things we know but are unable to think, except through the complex activity of dreaming. Based on several research studies, group sessions, and mass dreaming experiments, the book explores peoples’ experiences of dreaming during times of change, transition, and upheaval and discusses the insights that these dreams offer. Dreaming the Social will be of great interest to all professionals interested in dreams and the power of social dreaming, including psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and clinical psychologists.