Years ago, I worked with an organizational consultant who was steeped in the Group Relations tradition, and through her, I developed an interest in the work of Wilfred Bion, Tavistock and many aspects of psychology and group dynamics. One area that particularly caught my attention was the work of Gordon Lawrence and others in Social Dreaming.

The idea is to share a dream in a social context, and instead of focusing on the interpretation of the dream, focus on the free associations to the dream to gain insight into social situations. It is with this in mind that I share three dreams that I had last night.

Only a snippet of the first dream remains. In this dream, I was participating in some sort of group and the group leader asked why I was not sharing anything. My reaction was that my thoughts were not well formed enough to be shared. Yet as I thought about the dream, I realized what really matters is sharing the not yet well-formed thoughts so that people could work together and we could all form even better thoughts.

To a certain extent, this is part of my philosophy of blogging. I perhaps do it best when I write about technology. I describe a project I’ve been working on, what works, what doesn’t, and then ask other people to share their experiences. Sometimes people share their experiences via comments, emails or instant messages and when this happens usually both of us learn more.

The same thing should happen, perhaps, for politics, education, and for that matter anything else that interests us. Yet this is very different from the dominant model. Newspapers, politicians and educators seem to believe they have to get it right the first time. They need to be the ‘sage on the stage’ and tell everyone what to think, instead of sharing information and encouraging people to think and to share their own thoughts. Perhaps the Internet will help change this model.

Yet this sort of change could have massive results, and it takes me to my second dream. In this dream, I am near a river that has been flooding. Coming down the stream are all kinds of object from the flood. Much of it household objects. I gather these objects out of the stream to repair and use. Another person owns some sort of market on the side of the river and is retrieving objects to barter or sell. I work out a deal with this person to gain access to the river across his property if I help bring in additional objects from the river for him. From this, I get to choose the five best objects that he has.

The final dream was also a water related dream. Instead of a river, I am at the shore of an ocean. There is a storm and the surf is high. Some people are out playing in the ocean. Off to the right there is a small cove, where the surf is not as high that seems fairly safe. Straight ahead is the expanse of the sea and the surf is rougher. People are playing in this surf as well, and at times people get pulled out to sea. Some get rescued, others do not. During this, a bright golden sandbar emerges going out into the sea, and some people go very far out on the sandbar playing safely. I know they are safe as long as the sandbar is there, but I know that the sandbar could easily shift and they could all be in peril.

Unlike the first dream, to which I have some clear reactions, my reactions to these later two dreams are less clear. What comes to your mind when you read these dreams? I’m perhaps more interested in related dreams, songs or movies that it makes you think of, or other things going on in our society, then I am in interpretations about what it might mean, but I welcome all comments.
Years ago, I worked with an organizational consultant who was steeped in the Group Relations tradition, and through her, I developed an interest in the work of Wilfred Bion, Tavistock and many aspects of psychology and group dynamics. One area that particularly caught my attention was the work of Gordon Lawrence and others in Social Dreaming.

The idea is to share a dream in a social context, and instead of focusing on the interpretation of the dream, focus on the free associations to the dream to gain insight into social situations. It is with this in mind that I share three dreams that I had last night.

Only a snippet of the first dream remains. In this dream, I was participating in some sort of group and the group leader asked why I was not sharing anything. My reaction was that my thoughts were not well formed enough to be shared. Yet as I thought about it, I realized what really matters is sharing the not yet well formed thoughts so that people could work together and we could all form even better thoughts.

To a certain extent, this is part of my philosophy of blogging. I perhaps do it best when I write about technology. I describe a project I’ve been working on, what works, what doesn’t and ask other people to share their experiences. Sometimes people share their experiences via comments, emails or instant messages and when this happens usually both of us learn more.

The same thing should happen, perhaps, for politics, education, and for that matter anything that interests us. Yet this is very different from the dominant model. Newspapers, politicians and educators have to get it right the first time. They need to be the ‘sage on the stage’ and tell everyone what to think, instead of encouraging people how to think and to share their thoughts. Perhaps the Internet will help change this model.

Yet this sort of change could have massive results, and it takes me to my second dream. In this dream, I am near a river that has been flooding. Coming down the stream are all kinds of object from the flood. Much of it household objects. I gather these objects out of the stream to repair and use. Another person owns some sort of market on the side of the river and is retrieving objects to barter or sell. I work out a deal with this person to gain access to the river across his property if I help bring in additional objects from the river for him. From this, I get to choose the five best objects that he has.

The final dream was also a water related dream. Instead of a river, I am at the shore of an ocean. There is a storm and the surf is high. Some people are out playing in the ocean. Off to the right there is a small cove, where the surf is not as high that seems fairly safe. Straight ahead is the expanse of the sea and the surf is rougher. People are playing in this surf as well, and at times people get pulled out to sea. Some get rescued, others do not. During this, a sandbar emerges going out into the sea, and some people go very far out on the sandbar playing safely. I know they are safe as long as the sandbar is there, but I know that the sandbar could easily shift and they could all be in peril.

Unlike the first dream, to which I have some clear reactions, my reactions to these later two dreams are less clear. What comes to your mind when you read these dreams? I’m perhaps more interested in related dreams, songs or movies that it makes you think of, or other things going on in our society, then I am in interpretations about what it might mean, but I welcome all comments.