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Hana Salaam Abdel-Malek has written a dense and well-researched psychoanalytic piece on social dreaming and group relations, suggesting the importance of the frame, the inter-subjective transferences to each other and the hosts, and defences against the task of social dreaming itself. The main focus is that social dreaming is a “task” taken on by a group with group dynamics needing more attention.
One of the main issues in group relations or any group is how the group resists or reframes the task. The article goes on to show through a series of matrices how the task “social dreaming” is challenged by the dreams and associations reflecting the lack of containment or holding in the role of the hosts, the training set-up, various seating arrangements and note-taking, paradoxically pointing to how the social dreaming as set up is part of the lack of containment and holding in the social world. Inside and outside are reflected in the Matrix itself. Abdel-Malek, in attempting to enrich the social dreaming experience, says, “Through understanding the dream tellings personal and social, aspects of the relationships between self and culture are transformed” (p. 735). Social dreaming, as practised, generally avoids these group dynamics as represented by the relations between individuals and hosts and setting in the matrix.
Over the years of practising social dreaming, I have become more aware of the group dynamics, especially in matrices, which last over an extended period of time. Social dreaming appeals to Jungians mainly because of the symbolic nature of the dreams and associations, which can have individual and collective resonance. Social dreaming can reveal a cultural complex, which we may be in but not be aware of. The group you are literally in, or that you know, is transformed in the matrix to a more symbolic group which is “found” in the matrix through the dreams and associations. This symbolic group may be a painful and challenging place. There can be enormous relief