Description
Dreaming the Social uses social dreaming as a tool to explore aspects of contemporary life and examine how we can reverse social fragmentation and large-scale trauma.
Since the attack on New York on 9/11, the world has been balanced on the edge of potential disaster, exacerbated in recent years by global warming, the Covid pandemic, and war in Ukraine. Since the first edition in 2009, these national and global events have come to dominate our lives in unforeseen ways. With this in mind, this new edition explores the potential of social dreaming to help access things we know but are unable to think, except through the complex activity of dreaming. Based on several research studies, group sessions, and mass dreaming experiments, the book explores peoples’ experiences of dreaming during times of change, transition, and upheaval and discusses the insights that these dreams offer.
Dreaming the Social will be of great interest to all professionals interested in dreams and the power of social dreaming, including psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and clinical psychologists.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword by W. Gordon Lawrence
Introduction
PART I
What is Social Dreaming?
1. Social dreaming and the self
John Clare
2. The night train of social dreams
Ali Zarbafi
PART II
Social Dreaming in practice
3. Dreaming after 9/11
John Clare and Ali Zarbafi
4. Sweet honey in the rock
John Clare and Ali Zarbafi
5. The end of the dance: Dreams at a literary festival
John Clare, appendum by Jane Storr
6. We are all slaves to babble—land: A mass dreaming experiment
John Clare
7. Dreaming in the inner city
John Clare and Ali Zarbafi
8. Social Dreaming: A no-goal method?
Ali Zarbafi
PART III
The long matrix Hay-on-Wye 2009-23
9. Where are we going?
John Clare
10. Covid: The invisible invasion
John Clare
11. War in Europe
John Clare
12. Conclusion
John Clare and Ali Zarbafi
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
