The Social Dreaming Matrix as a Container for the Processing of Implicit Racial Bias and Collective Racial Trauma

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe central thesis of this article is that social dreaming theory and the modified application of Gordon Lawrence’s social dreaming matrix, a group-as-a-whole method, not only provides a window into the social unconscious, but may serve as a “container,” in the Bionian sense, for the processing and potential healing of “racial trauma” and “white fragility.” The article describes episodes of aversive racism and white fragility surrounding social dreaming experiments. Finally, the article summarizes some lessons learned in facilitating and managing two fundamental types of “resistances” encountered in social dreamwork: “attacks on social linking” and “defenses against moral witnessing.”