Gordon Lawrence’s Social Dreaming Matrix: background, origins, history and development

Abstract

This article comes soon after the death of Gordon Lawrence, the ‘discoverer’ of social dreaming. It captures this moment to celebrate Lawrence’s legacy and to reflect upon the development of social dreaming since its ‘discovery’ in 1982 and its potential, both realised and unrealised. The article gives a brief history of social dreaming, its origins and development. In doing so, it attempts to situate social dreaming in the context of the Tavistock group relations tradition. Social dreaming is described as both belonging to and rejecting that tradition. It draws upon Lawrence’s unpublished notebooks, personal communications, experiences in social dreaming, and selections of the available literature. The post social dreaming matrix events such as the dialogues and reflection groups and the Creative Role Synthesis are also briefly discussed. Finally, there is a discussion of some of the theory of social dreaming.