The Political Reality in Dreaming: a focus on form over content in the psychoanalytic view of Social Dreaming.*

E. Martin Walker

Abstract

This paper takes as its point of departure the contemporary psychoanalytic reframing of views about the unconscious. In a manner which parallels the interpersonal/relational view of the unconscious in psychoanalysis, social dreaming looks at the dream not in terms of content (in the earlier Freudian manner) but in terms of the systemic thinking of the form of the dream, i.e. its narrative.

I will begin with an introduction in which I describe social dreaming in the context of contemporary relational psychoanalytic theory. Following this, I will elaborate on how intersubjectivity can be applied to social dreaming with a cross-cultural analysis of individual versus collectivist views of the self, and how the power of narrative has evolved both cross culturally and psychoanalytically over time. Leaving theoretical considerations behind, I will share with you some case examples of organizational applications of social dreaming. (Maltz andWalker, 1998, 2003) Finally, I will conclude with a narrative from a social dreaming event held 2 weeks after 9/11/2001 at a location equidistant from the three major events of that terrorist attack on the United States.

Social Dreaming and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Ferenczi’s “Confusion of Tongues between adults and the child” (1933) reformulated prevailing Freudian ideas on symbolic material, or fantasies, in ways that remind me of Lawrence’s (1999) reformulation of dreaming as a social experience. In “The Confusion of Tongues,” Ferenczi challenged the idea that childhood images of abuse were fantasies and that transference was simply the “replay of infantile and childhood conflict.” (Zaslow, 1988, p 213) Ferenczi suggested that, in both cases, these were based on events in a person’s lived experience of the world. He departed from Freud’s seduction theory by insisting on Freud’s earlier theory that memories of sexual abuse were based on real experiences, and also proposed that transference included a …” commentary on the experienced person of the analyst.” (p 213) Finally, he suggested that the exploration of sexual abuse and transference in psychoanalysis revealed unattended links between self and other both inside and outside the consulting room. Ferenczi’s interest in what went on between him and his patients took him beyond the standard transference interpretations of the day, in a way that ultimately led to a break with Freud. Ultimately, by suggesting that real events revealed unattended links between himself and his patients, Ferenczi planted the seed that has grown into the interpersonal/relational turn.

Lawrence’s (1999) proposed social role for dreams defines their significance beyond exclusively individual, intrapsychic, domains of interpretation. Again…looking at the dream in terms of its systemic form, not just in terms of content. Building on his idea that dreams reflect elements of shared experiences of the world, I propose that the dreams of a social aggregate also reveal unattended links and interconnections between individuals and society, extending beyond the dyadic realms of psychoanalysis reviewed by Lippmann (2001).

During social dreaming matrices over the past 12 years, I have observed that an aggregation of the dreams of different people engaged in the activity of freely sharing dreams and associations, functions as a window into an “interpsychic”(Poland, 2000, p 29) space which links people with each other, reveals interconnections between thought processes belonging to different people, and fosters the emergence of new thinking (Lawrence, 2000, Maltz and Walker, 2003) In this regard, a key element in the social theory of dreams is Lawrence’s (2000) adoption of Bion’s notion of the “infinite” to describe what would have previously been called the unconscious in groups. This permits the creation of a social context for emergent thinking that saves participants in Social Dreaming events from the pitfall of prematurely assigning “meaning” to dreams. As Lippmann has stated…“Only if we are not preoccupied with the question of the ‘correct’ interpretation of dreams can we begin to appreciate the[ir] extraordinary richness….” (Lippmann, 1998, p 219).

The observation that dreams of a social aggregate dreaming socially reveals unattended links between individuals parallels the psychoanalytic view that the unconscious does not exist in a polarized relationship with the “conscious,” but refers to the way that within the analytic situation there exists the possibility of discovering how two individuals give rise to their relatedness to each other. (Mitchell, 2000, for review) As Bromberg puts it… “The road to the patient’s unconscious (read; the real data about what is actually going on in the analytic situation) is created nonlinearly by the analysts own unconscious participation in its construction while he is consciously engaged in looking for it.” (Bromberg, 2000,  p 686) With this statement, Bromberg sums up the arrival of psychoanalysis to a Heisenbergian universe that H. S. Sullivan initiated with his insistence on the participant-observer stance of the analyst. (1936)

Social dreaming demonstrates that the “real data” about what is actually going on in a social situation arises from the co-participation of dreams and associations which are allowed to surface by listeners who share them, and who allow themselves to associate freely to both dreams and associations. This real data of social dreaming arises from the in between. This idea of a both underlying and overlying narrative truth in the creation of historical reality was made popular by Spence within psychoanalysis, but the idea of applying it larger social configurations is a key discovery of social dreaming.

Social Dreaming Between the Self and the Other

In order describe the space for dreaming that arises between the self and the other I will introduce two cross cultural models that address the boundary between self and other. The first is known as indigenous psychologies of the self (Sampson, 1988) and the second is drawn from rabbinic views of the self that have been overshadowed by the prevailing Greco-Christian traditions of our culture (2000). By describing these anthropological and psychoanalytic views of the self-other boundary I hope to provide a framework for understanding why dreams taken up in institutional/political settings illuminates a shift in the formal definitions of authority over what is "real".

Examining theories of the self requires a standard set of parameters which defines individuality in terms of boundaries, locus of control…. meaning the sense of agency that derive from either inside our outside of the self, and inclusiveness versus exclusiveness, or that which is intrinsic versus that which is extrinsic to the self (Heelas and Lock, 1981, Sampson, 1988). Cultures that emphasize firm boundaries and high personal control tend to view the self as exclusionary or "self contained.” Fluid boundary, strong field control cultures, view the self as "ensembled,” meaning that the self is inclusive of other individuals. While “self contained” individualism is indigenous to the United States and to the European countries from which its dominant ethnic groups draw their roots, “ensembled” individualism is far more prevalent as a percentage of all known cultures (Sampson). Ensembled individualism is also indigenous to Aboriginal, Native American, Senoi and other cultures that are widely known to use dreams for social purposes.

The event that has been created to share dreams in a contemporary context has been named a “,” by Lawrence in order to distinguish in from other kinds of groups enterprises. This matrix is a group that has been designed to maximize the social sharing of dreams and freely associating to the dreams of the participants. The structural characteristic of a social dreaming matrix resembles ensembled individualism cultures in terms of the permeability of its boundaries, locus of control, and self-other relationships. Its boundaries are purposely fluid, particularly in contrast to traditional psychoanalytic settings. The role of matrix conveners or “hosts” is limited to creating a supportive environment for sharing and associating to dreams, as well a noticing links between them. My own suggestion of renaming the role from that of “taker” or consultant to “host” has been taken up by many in order to emphasize Lawrence’s notion that the authority to “understand” dreams in a matrix is located in the un-orchestrated aggregate of multiple participant’s associations, and not in the mind of an authority figure (2001). This de-emphasis of “expert” opinions results in strong field control – versus internal control – that is characteristic of ensembled individualism cultures. Finally, the focus on the interpsychic content of dreams neutralizes the exclusive-of-others nature of traditional dream interpretation and thus mimics the inclusive-self characteristic of ensembled individualism as well.

The fact that the social dreaming matrix is, in itself, a cultural framework that differs significantly from traditional psychoanalytic settings and the prevailing “self contained” cultural milieu, exerts a powerful selection process on the dreams themselves. Social context has always had this effect on dreams and on the experience of telling and hearing them (Lippmann, 1998, 2000). From a “contained self” perspective, one may not initially accept the possibility that the content of one’s own dreams are social, however, when participating in a dream matrix that extends itself over several days with intervening periods of sleep and dreams, one inevitably dreams about the dreams and associations being shared, and about the social aggregate in which one has been telling and hearing them. Dreams that are experienced “within” the self, but a not “of” the self, allow for an experience of ensembled individualism that is rare within the prevailing Western culture of our society.

Another cross-cultural view of individualism vs. collectivism is embodied in rabbinic traditions that have also been harnessed to illustrate contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives by Edgar Levenson (2001) in “Freud’s Dilemma: Thinking Jewish and Writing Greek.” The roots of rabbinic thinking are found in holy texts that differ significantly from the Bible in that they were composed of “fundamentally open ended and indeterminate discussions… where no finalized meaning or single interpretation was either possible of felt to be desirable” (Sampson, 2000, p 1429).

Poland (2000) references the impact of this tradition on psychoanalysis when he writes, “the self is always opening in awareness of otherness as an irreducible aspect of being.” (p 31) Both modern rabbinic and psychoanalytic extensions of this tradition suggest that the self cannot exist in the absence of a lived dialogue with others, and that what is most essential about the self can be found neither individually nor in the dyad, but in a third sphere that Buber (1965) referred to as “the between” (in Sampson).

Social dreaming gives rise to his “third sphere” by locating the meaning making capacity of dreams between the un-orchestrated aggregate of multiple participants’ associations, thus invoking socially Bion’s concept of the “infinite” to define the unconscious dynamics of groups.

Social Dreams @ Work

So far, I have provided a theoretical perspective on social dreaming. Switching to organizational consultation, Marc Maltz and I have used dream work to reveal unattended aspects of organizational life. (Maltz and Walker, 1998, 2003) The following two case examples show how social dreaming had a dramatic impact on the capacity of two large organizations to innovate and to change in reaction to environmental factors that threatened their existence. The first is a large entertainment media-manufacturing firm that was encumbered by obsolete production methods and the second is a financial services firm that was located in the World Trade Center when it was destroyed in September 2001.

Case 1 – During a complex restructuring of a multi-national manufacturing company, in which manufacturing processes were being radically redesigned to improve efficiency and profitability, dreams were shared among the internal and external consultants charged with making the changes necessary for success. In these dreams, the consultants became aware that workers were fearing that the change would cost them their jobs and that the system would be radically changed forever, disrupting 17 years of full employment, caring management and an atmosphere of family first. The external consultants were alarmed by these dreams and the understanding associated with them. They used this data to confront management about the unspoken, unknown dilemmas that the management faced. This breakthrough allowed the management to rethink their strategy and realize that not only was the new production system unable to sustain more than 50% of the current workforce. More importantly, the new system under development would not sustain the current management structure. Six months later, only six of the 21 executives in the leadership team and 1,500 of the nearly 4,000 employees remained, and the son of the founder of the business retired to be replaced by the first non-family CEO. Radical change that the organization could not face or come to terms with was exposed in the dreams of those charged with planning the transition and, once shared, enabled the organization to smoothly transition to a new way of life.

Case 2 – The following is a dream from a consultation with a financial services firm after the September 11th attacks killed one-third of its employees.

The Dream – “I am in my office and my [dead] colleague is alive and asking me what has been happening. I feel socially awkward with him. He feels reserved, cautious, not sure that he can trust me. We have a short and uncomfortable interaction. I am confused by our lack of rapport and find myself unable to say so to him.”

This dream came to be seen by others as the dream of the firm as a whole at this particular point in time. How do they integrate the memories and recapture the institutional learning of those that are now gone? How do they build on the internalized experience and knowledge of those they have lost and become whole again? These and other questions had been difficult if not impossible to raise and discuss in the immediate aftermath of the trauma experienced by all. The telling of this dream allowed a management group to begin the conversation of what and who was missing and how to rebuild. Without these dream images being shared and associated to, the dreams would have remained in the realm of the forgotten fragment of dream. Once shared, they functioned as an integral part of the development of new organizational intelligence that helped to heal the grief by opening up discussion that portended survival for the firm as a whole.

A Social Dreaming Narrative

To conclude, I will go back to my original thesis and try to demonstrate what a dream matrix actually looks like by describing a social dreaming event held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (U.S.A.), at a location roughly equidistant from the three unprecedented events that occurred 2 weeks earlier on September 11th, 2001 (PCOD, 2001). These were the destruction of the World Trade Center, an attack on the Pentagon, and the airliner brought down in western Pennsylvania. What follows is the content of dreams reported among 22 individuals during the first 90 minutes session that opened a two and half day dreaming matrix. Each dream is separated by two forward slashes (//).

“I had jumped out of an airplane at 40 thousand feet and the parachute opened. I was clinging on to a very dear friend from high school whom I had not seen in 25 years and I suddenly realized I was clinging more to him, than he to me. //I saw the face of my only brother, but he was dead and I was at the funeral. //I was driving with a friend down a broad open street very fast at dusk and the road became very narrow. There were all these people on it and I was honking to get them out of the way. I kept driving very fast and the road narrowed until the car started running on rails, faster and faster. The rails were made of marble and it turned out we were on a grave, ricocheting along in a city of the dead. There were tall sarcophagi like buildings. I was racing away from headstones and banging on the car, but my knuckles were hitting a coffin instead. I reversed suddenly and flew out of there. // I was surrounded by the smell of clowns, rather than the smell of the flag. //I was in the city among these extraordinarily tall, very dark buildings. //I saw the St. Louis Arch, the enormous landmark to the Midwest of the U.S., with two horses hanging from it. The horses had been skinned and were still alive, somehow trying to stay on the arches. // I started driving in a Black Cadillac down a very narrow dirt road with tremendous amounts of rocks My destination was an area with a lot of flagpoles where an acquaintance was having a dedication in his honor. My tires sank in the dirt, but I wanted to get out and say hello. Trying to re-park the car, I told my friend, who was now driving, not to spin the wheels. Then I walked towards a bridge in Philadelphia through some very high gates and arrived at a room in which there was an old man in a faded suite. There was a brass plaque in front of him like a monument. He started toddling along like he could hardly walk, and then tumbled down like a 2 year old. He got up quickly as if to show he was all right and I looked around to see if my acquaintance that was being honored had left.”

As you continue to read, you may be able to avail yourself of the actual experience of participating in a social dreaming matrix by imagining that this narrative consists of a dream from a single source, rather than from a group.

“I’m in the air flying. I had taken off and though I usually go up in recurrent flying dreams, this time I decide to fly down. I flew right into a house and was ashamed and very puzzled to discover that I had become naked. //I was standing holding my infant son who had a bad fall but landed face up. His eyes were closed and I thought maybe I should take him to the hospital but I resisted, claiming that there was nothing wrong with him. //I got a phone call from a woman who asked me to facilitate a workshop with Gordon Lawrence, the leader of this social dreaming matrix. I agreed to do it but couldn’t find a location for it because it had to be at a place beginning with the letter ‘P.’ //I found myself traveling around to organize adventure trips in the Sierra Nevada. It was raining and the program stated specifically that one was not to study Italian grammar. Suddenly there was a huge torrent of red bloody water. //I saw an airplane on a golf course whose underbelly was completely transparent. It was behaving erratically, rolling violently in a manner that shifted the contents inside and then it crashed. I ran over to a large crater where a man is pulling out a survivor. All the people are naked and huddled. One particular woman is cowering, naked and ashamed. I pull her out of the hole and cover her with a sheet. When I get her to the hospital a young doctor tells me vaguely that she has been treated incorrectly and had been x-rayed too many times in the face. I thought at that moment that I was actually in some sort of Science Park where experimentation with humans was going on. I was eating from a plate of vegetables. They looked very unappealing but I realized I had to eat for what lies ahead. Looking around I saw that I was in a cafeteria where all the food was extremely peculiar.”

Reflecting on this narrative, we can see that themes of teaching, blood, injured people and food were added to the previously recurring episodes of flying, falling, relatives, airplanes, and death. Also present was a golf course that happened to be what surrounded the building in which this matrix took place. Earlier references to speeding automobiles, buildings and landmarks recur in the material that follows.

“It was after 9/11 and there were fences being built. I noticed that the old fences that had been built before had been turned into hedgerows for jumping over. There was a long windy road that a friend and I were taking a walk together on. //We were gliding along at 30 miles an hour and came back to a large stone mansion with flames coming from a tower. The whole house was on fire and there was a body inside. //I was waiting for I.D. photos with 20 other people because we were told we had to have them. I filled out a sheet of paper and a roll of film was casually shot to get pictures in order to attend this conference on dreams. Mine was the only picture that turned out, but it showed only 2 ghostly black and white images that looked like ectoplasm. //I needed a photo I.D. card so I stopped off at the passport shop to get 2 clear pictures Those photos came out nicely in color, but they showed me sitting next to a beautiful woman. //I was standing in a jungle forest in Indonesia looking at a stone carving of a religious figure that belonged to all cultures. The figures right eye was sown shut. Later, I was standing at the ocean with a man/shark whose eye was also sown shut and I felt this must be the leader. //I was supposed to be teaching a new class that President George Bush was attending as a new student, but I had to race home to get the teaching notes that I had left behind. //I was in England in the living room of friends. They are explaining that they want to live in the United States. I’m stunned and ask why they would want to do such a thing but after awhile said, “O.K., come and stay in the empty rooms of my home.” I went on to Oxford because I had been a student there and had been called back to discuss my orals. Strangely, I discovered I was actually in Venice, Italy and I couldn’t get back to Oxford.”

Carefully rereading this segment as well, one can see a newly recurring theme of fences and I.D. photos that meld the public security measures that had instantly transformed American life with participation in the dream matrix itself. The narrative presented provides convincing evidence that the dreams involved individuals sharing in a social reality that revealed previously unacknowledged links between them and an emerging social reality which characterized a new world we were all suddenly living in after the events of September 11th.

The narrative lays down a consistent set of patterns surrounding issues of flying, falling, danger, airplane and building disasters, security issues, personal loss, and learning groups that make obvious references to the both the wider and immediate social context in which the matrix takes place, right down to the golf course. The result is the experience of a reality co-created by the participants in a manner analogous to the contemporary psychoanalytic position that the analyst is unconsciously co-constructing that which she is consciously engaged in looking for. The radical nature of Lawrence’s contribution to thinking about group phenomena parallels a process now familiar to contemporary psychoanalysts and provides a window onto the social creation of a consensus reality that binds the present, the past, and the future, for a particular group of people at a particular point in time.

Bibliography

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____ (2000) The Social Dreaming Phenomenon. Harry Stack Sullivan Society Lecture. William Alanson White Institute, New York, February.

 ____ (2001) Personal communication.

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____ (2000) Nocturnes: on Listening to Dreams. Hillsdale, N.J.: The Analytic Press.

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____ (2000) Reinterpreting Individualism and Collectivism: Their religious roots and monologic versus dialogic person-other relationship. American Psychologist. 55 (12). pp 1425-1432.

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Bio and contact detail

E. Martin Walker, PhD., grew up in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, Switzerland, India, and the United States. He has a Fulbright for research applying Bion’s group psychoanalytic theories to cultural identity and inter-group relations in Mexico City. He is also graduated from the Organization and Psychoanalytic Programs of the William Alanson White Institute, where he directs the Social Dreaming project and is on the faculty of the Organization Program. A Clinical Supervisor at the City University of New York and Pace University, his psychoanalytic practice includes individuals, families, groups, and organizations.

Email: Walkerdoc@AOL.com

*An earlier version of this paper was presented to the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations in June 2003. I would like to thank W. Gordon Lawrence for his comments incorporated here.