ABSTRACT
The dream engenders a free form of expression unencumbered by the need to make sense, to be clever, well-read, or admired. A dream is just a dream. There are no cash prizes, no marks out of ten; no certificates for good dreaming are awarded. There is no hierarchy of dreaming, the inventiveness of the unconscious is available to all. Whereas social dreaming involves a matrix of people collectively and consciously dreaming together over time, this was a disparate heterogenous mix of several hundred people who were mostly temporary citizens of a town at festival time. There were very few ‘good’ dreams of bliss, joy, satisfaction or tranquillity. When such ‘positive’ dreams did emerge they were accompanied by sinister or ‘negative’ features. The idea of a dream collector implies that social dreaming, the process of sharing our dreams as a collective and thinking about them, might be a useful idea in a violent world which is frequently not conducive to thought.
