Date: Wednesday, September 16th, 2026: 7:30pm-9:00pm (Refreshments provided at 7:00pm)
Credits: 1.5 CE
Speakers:Dale C. Godby, PhD, and Melissa Black, PhD

Meeting is both on Zoom & in-person at:
The Center for Integrative Counseling & Psychology
4305 MacArthur Ave.
Dallas, TX 75209

Zoom link will be sent out via registered email within 24 hours of meeting.

All the World’s a Group

Dale C. Godby, PhD, and Melissa Black, PhD, will host a Social Dreaming Matrix (SDM), followed by a Median Dialogue Group, to begin our exploration of Endless Becoming.

The Social Dreaming Matrix

For those who are new to the Social Dreaming Matrix, participants are invited to share dreams. The focus is on the dream—not the dreamer.

Dreams are offered as gifts to the group. They are not interpreted individually; instead, participants freely associate to them, allowing one dream to stimulate the recollection and telling of other dreams, whether current or from the past. In this way, the dreams begin to speak to one another.

The unconscious is a major source of creativity. The Social Dreaming Matrix offers a way of being in the unconscious and continuing the processes of thinking that occur while we are asleep—when the boundaries of concrete knowledge become more permeable and new possibilities for thought can emerge.

Learning Objectives

The Primary Task of the Social Dreaming Matrix

1. To transform the knowledge contained within the dreams of the Matrix.

2. To work through free association.

3. To make links and discover connections among the dreams.

4. To remain available for new thinking.

After 30 minutes of social dreaming, we will convene a median dialogue group to further explore the themes that emerged in the SDM around the year’s theme of Endless Becoming.

Speaker Bios

Dale C. Godby, PhD—was the fourth president of DSPP and is a founding member of the Group Analytic Practice of Dallas since 2001. He recently returned from the Group Analytic Society International in Athens, Greece where he hosted a social dreaming matrix and median group with German colleagues and led a workshop with Melissa Wallace, MD on co-therapy. He is grateful for DSPP and its contribution to his Endless Becoming…

Melissa Black, PhD—is a past president of DSPP and is a founding member of the Group Analytic Practice of Dallas since 2001. She enjoys bringing variations of group to people, notably running T-Groups at UTSW and conducting workshops in a variety of international settings in addition to running therapy groups in her practice. Recently returning from the Group Analytic Society International meeting in Athens, Greece where she and Drs Melissa Wallace and Carla Pulliam presented a workshop titled “Reclaiming Her-Story – Trust, Storytelling, and Identity Development in a Woman’s Process Group”, she looks forward to what will emerge from the DSPP membership in this group experience.

Reading:

1.Social Dreaming International Network.

https://socialdreaminginternational.net/

2.Juchau, Mireille. “How Dreams Change Under Authoritarianism: Charlotte Beradt’s ‘The Third Reich of Dreams.’” The New Yorker, November 7, 2019.

https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism

3.Group Analytic Society International. “The Median Group.”

https://groupanalyticsociety.co.uk/the-median-group/

4.Rogers, Cynthia. “Engaging with the Median Group.” Group Analysis, vol. 46, no. 2, 2013, pp. 183–195.

https://cynthiarogerstherapy.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/10-median-group-group-analysis-2013-rogers-183-95.pdf

Godby, Dale C. “Introducing Median and Large Group in the Training of Psychiatrists.” Group Analysis, 2015.