Dr. W. Gordon Lawrence (1934-2013) was the founder of the field of social dreaming. When working as a social scientist at the Tavistock Institute in London in the early 1980s, Gordon became convinced that there was a wider social context to people’s dreams. He was greatly influenced by the German journalist Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams (1968). In her book, she shows how the Nazi’s rise to power in the 1930s generated angst in the German population, particularly amongst Jews. Jewish patient’s dreams, collected from doctors by Beradt, foretold their horrendous future.

Gordon saw the possibility of dreaming socially—to use dreams to understand the human condition and not just about “me”.  In the spring of 1982, with the psychoanalyst Patricia Daniels, he began holding weekly “Social Dreaming Sessions” at the Tavistock, called ‘A Project in Social Dreaming and Creativity’. He held social dreaming conferences in London, Birmingham and Ireland. Social dreaming flourished in Israel, Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, the USA, Ireland, Finland, Rwanda, South Africa, Holland, Denmark, Australia and India.

Social dreaming is at a turning point, with its community developing new ideas to further develop social dreaming for the benefit of all. The current advancements in social dreaming are represented in two recent publications: Social Dreaming, Associative Thinking and Intensities of Affect by Julian Manley, and Social Dreaming: Philosophy, Research, Theory and Practice edited by Susan Long and Julian Manley.