‘Social Dreaming’, the practice of sharing, associating to and working with dreams in a matrix in order to identify social trends and social dynamics, was pioneered and developed by Gordon Lawrence and his colleagues at the Tavistock Institute and Tavistock Clinic in the 1980s. The first experiment was launched by Gordon Lawrence and Paddy Daniel. Since then social dreaming has revealed its potential, developed, spread and been used in many areas and fields around the globe. 

Social Dreaming International Network (SDiN) was established in 2019 by some of the former trustees and founders of the Gordon Lawrence Foundation, after its closure. 

The organization welcomed the unique opportunity to work with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) by signing a Memorandum of Understanding, which recognises the international nature and the importance of partnerships for both organizations in promoting and developing social dreaming. Social Dreaming began as a venture into the unknown. 

As Gordon Lawrence was to put it 30 years after the first event, we were on the shore of a strange country, the one tenet we held in mind Wilfred Bion’s injunction that “to spend time on what has been discovered is to concentrate on an irrelevance”.

“Social dreaming (SD) is a method whose goal is to transform dream thinking by means of free association, thematic amplification, and systemic thinking, in order to find links, make connections, and free/generate new thoughts”.

“The purpose of the matrix is to transform the thinking of the dream by associating to the dreams offered in the matrix in order to find links and connections, and to discover new thoughts. Where is the first dream?” And it starts…

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