Above is a picture of a completed Dream Sociomatrix. A sociomatrix is a grid originally created by psychiatrist J.L. Moreno and used to collect the preferences of people toward others or toward some task. A Dream Sociomatrix is a grid used to collect the preferences of characters that appear in dreams, either sleeping or waking, as members of a particular group. These preferences can be used to clarify the role in the dream of the characters, provide additional forgotten information about the dream, provide desired changes to the dream, if any, provide recommended changes in your waking life, provide recommendations regarding some life issue of concern to you, and clarify how a character views its purpose and that of its fellows. In addition both wisdom and meditative witnessing are cultivated when the dream is contemplated from multiple perspectives that transcend and include your own.
Preferences are arbitrary and limiting but necessary expressions of consciousness. Dream Sociometry asks you to identify with a character and then to spontaneously express one of eight degrees of preference toward some element in the dream. Numerical values range from negative three to positive three. These are: Hate (-3, often written as /3), Dislike a lot (-2 or /2), Dislike (-1 or /1) don’t care (0), Like, (1), Like a lot (2), Love (3). When a character feels more than one of these toward a character the score may be written as follows: (2/3) Like a lot/Hate; (3/1) Love, Dislike. It is also possible to care very much but in a compassionate and dispassionate way that seems to transcend preferences. This is also indicated by a blank space, but the meaning is not “don’t care” but “my caring transcends preferences.” The character’s remarks in the commentaries clarifies which usage is present. The appropriate number is placed in the grid square that intersects choosing characters and chosen dream elements (characters, actions, emotions).
The numerical expression of a degree of preference by a character is generally accompanied by an explanation of the preference. This is written down in the Dream Sociomatrix Commentary.
A Dream Sociomatrix is basically a tool for objectifying your waking identity and its perspective by accessing other relevant perspectives in a methodical way. It not only neutralizes the normal biases of waking identity but educates it to more successful perspectives by experiencing the same circumstances from multiple alternative perspectives. Filling out a Dream Sociomatrix allows you to listen to yourself at unusual depth and breadth. Listening to yourself is not enough, because interviewed characters provide specific recommendations for addressing whatever issues generated the dream or life issue in the first place. It was a recognition that these recommendations involved ongoing discipline based on actions generated by interviewed emerging potentials that caused Dream Sociometry to be understood as a dream yoga.
The commentaries provide more information about how your preferences create your reality and how they keep you stuck. They are designed to provide a plan for heightened self-integration. Follow the method. Create and act on an action plan. Judge the results for yourself.
Interviewing Your Dream Characters
Learning to suspend your assumptions about what a character is or is not may take some practice, but it is well worth the effort. Do your best to approach the dream from the perspective of the character, suspending your normal point of view. For instance, if you are interviewing a road, you do not have the perspective of a driver in a car traveling over the road. Instead, you have the perspective of something which is a hard surface that is traveled on, traveled over, something that began somewhere before where you are and is ending somewhere beyond where you now are.
As you take the perspective of your dream characters, cultivate an attitude of whimsy, as if you were a five year old pretending you are a school teacher or a parent or a spy. Be spontaneous and write the first response that comes to mind to the questions, without analyzing them or wondering whether the answer is “right” or “wrong.” You are not only playfully suspending your normal identity but also setting aside your normal systems of judgment and morality and substituting those of the character at hand.
Do you have a dream of your own which nags at you and which feels important? Perhaps you have a sense that you haven’t yet gotten to the bottom of it. Why don’t you follow our steps and create a Dream Sociomatrix on your own dream? Then we’ll show you how to create a Dream Sociogram, an action plan, and monitor your progress.
For instructions in creating a Dream Sociomatrix, go here.
For instructions in creating a Dream Commentary, go here.
For instructions in creating a Dream Sociogram, go here.
