ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to reassess the nature and validity of the thoughts emerging in dreams that are shared in the context or container of a social dreaming matrix, and in doing so create a theory of social dreaming, or at least to make a start in the direction. It focuses on the use and meaning of the term “association” in the context of social dreaming. The language of social dreaming – its dreams and associations – is indeed that of created thoughts and figurative language, embodiment and affect, our approach and attitude towards the knowledge within the social dreaming experience cannot be that of the habitual and rational. In social dreaming, the dreams and associations can also usefully be described as a circulating fluid, and their associative strength is partly based on the maintenance of the fluidity. The ensuing patterns resemble a collage of associations that has been created from the space of the social dreaming matrix.
