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. For purpose of stimulating our discussion today, I will first describe social dreaming in the context of contemporary relational psychoanalytic theory and suggest that the idea of intersubjectivity can best be viewed socially from a cross-cultural analysis of individual versus collectivist views of the self. After this I will provide some organizational examples of the application of social dreaming from my work with Marc Maltz. Finally, I will conclude with the dream narrative from a social dreaming matrix held 2 weeks after 9/11/2001 coincidentally at a location equidistant from the three major events of that terrorist attack on the United States and invite you to share your own associations to this material.

Social Dreaming and Contemporary Psychoanalysis

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 Frued'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 inattended links between self and other both inside and outside the consulting room.

So what is the confusion of dreams? Lawrence's (1999) proposed social role for dreams defines their significance beyond exclusively individual, intrapsychic, domains of interpretation. 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 inattended links and interconnections between individuals, extending beyond the dyadic realms addressed in psychoanalysis that have been 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 to dreams, function 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) Another important element in the social theory of dreams is Lawrence's (2000) adoption for groups of Bion's notion of the "infinite" to describe what would have previously been called the unconscious. This permits the creation of a social context for emergent thinking that saves participants in Social Dreaming matrices from the pitfall of prematurely assigning "meaning" to dreams. Again drawing from contemporary psychoanalysis…"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 inattended links between individuals parallels the contemporary psychoanalytic idea 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) "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 had hinted at with his insistence on the participant-observer stance of the analyst. (1936)

Insert Elliot Jacques

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 then becomes a social equivalent to the non-linear creation of the road to the patient's unconscious by the participation of an analyst who is unconsciously co-constructing that which she is consciously engaged in looking for. (Bromberg, 2000)
To summarize up to this point, I am here making the case for understanding how social dreaming occurs in a space between the self and the other. Bion's "Experiences in Groups," gave rise to an entire literature about group and institutional phenomena by describing the operation of that space, but unfortunately theorizing about it has been limited to the application of Melanie Klein's developmental model. There have been few attempts to apply Bion's own original psychoanalytic insights to it, not to mention other perspectives such as those presented today. Elaborating on that is beyond the scope of this paper, but I believe that one of Gordon Lawrence's great contributions has been to rescue those unique aspects of Bion's work that are present in contemporary psychoanalysis and apply them to thinking about groups.

Social Dreaming Between the Self and the Other.

Lawrence (1999) has also previously noted anthropological references to dreaming socially in cultures around the world, but in order explore the space for dreaming that arises between the self and the other I will briefly describe two cross cultural models which apply here. 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. (Sampson, 2000)
Examining a cross-cultural view 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 structural characteristic of the 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 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. Lawrence (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.

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."

Another cross-cultural view of individualism vrs. collectivism is embodied in rabbinic traditions that have been harnessed to illustrate contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives by Edgar Levenson's 2001 paper "Freud's Dilemma: Thinking Jewish and Writing Greek," among others. The roots of rabbinic thinking are found in holy texts which 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) 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) In a slightly different description of this third sphere in psychoanalysis, Poland (2000) states that the rabbinic tradition "emphasized a constant feeling of strangeness…[a strangeness] that is the sense of the universe in which any individual comes into being, [where] the self is always opening in awareness of otherness as an irreducible aspect of being." (p.31) Going back to Buber, 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, I will also describe how Marc Maltz and I have used dream work to reveal inattended aspects of organizational life . (Maltz and Walker, 1998, 2003) The following two case examples drawn from my consulting and writing with Marc Maltz (Maltz and Walker, 2003) show how the development of a Social Dreaming network 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 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 this paper, I will go back to my original thesis and try to demonstrate what this "confusion" of dreams actually looks like. Let us examine dream material from a social dreaming matrix 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 likely brought down by its own passengers in western Pennsylvania. What follows is the content of 27 dreams reported among 22 individuals during 90 minutes that opened a two and half day dreaming matrix.

" 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 I continue to read, you may be able to avail yourself of some aspect of the actual experience of participating in a social dreaming matrix by imagining that you are listening to this narrative as a dream from a single source.

"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 are not mentioned again so far, but will 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, we see a newly recurring theme of fences and I.D. photos that meld the public security measures that had transformed American life with participation in the dream matrix itself. This invokes the issue of locus of control by raising the question of who is in control of what, which reverberates through the image of a body burning inside the house, to a universal "leader" with one eye sewn shut, and to the President of the United States as the new kid in class.

"My husband and I are arriving at a colorful, verdant, farm where we are going to get some vegetables. It was very safe and pleasant. A field opened up in front of us to reveal vegetables that were suddenly all autumn colored and larger than life.

I though: 'Why not get some strawberries.' I got some beautiful fruit and felt very fortunate, but I ended up in a tractor that got stuck in the mud. I was on an old truck that driving through circuitous overpasses in Rome. I got separated from my husband. I was with a group on an island where there were demonstrators protesting. My son was in charge of the protestors, but for some reason he wasn't there. There was a gathering with a lot of people. One woman had all these registration materials filled out and there was a large card on the door to the room. Her name was Hope and she was waiting for others to come in. I was with my 10-year old daughter, who was going to get chemotherapy. Her eyes were closed, but I saw her open them and said: 'Mom.' She turned on her side and became a spiraling light that looked like a womb. I knew then that she would die from the cancer. I was left in a hall that had pews like a church with an academic friend and a War Lord from the story 'Dune.' There were dark winds and the back of the church looked like an x ray of the contents of a suitcase. Then there was another image being projected on the wall that was the color of dawn, and then a blue/black image. I urgently told a woman to look, saying: 'There's the answer!' The black spirit winds were blowing across her face when she looked back at me and said: 'You will see nothing outside the church.'"
This narrative 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.

On close examination, it 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 consensus reality that binds the present, the past, and the future, for a particular group of people at a particular point in time.

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