Thomas Michael
veryone has dreams. And Thomas Michael wants to help people understand those dreams and use what they learn to improve their lives.

In fact, since his 1999 retirement, the 26-year faculty member has made a second career of drawing parallels between the brain’s nocturnal wanderings and organizational behavior.

Michael came to then-Glassboro State in 1973 as one of the founding faculty members of the College of Business. He taught courses in organizational communication at the undergraduate and graduate levels and continues to teach as an adjunct.

Work follows people home whether they like it or not, Michael says, and when the office invades their slumber, he encourages them to share their dreams in discussion groups, a practice called “social dreaming.”

Dreams represent the “unthought known,” according to Michael, and employees’ subconscious goals and desires affect the organization as much as their actions. By openly addressing them, Michael says, he hopes to improve the way a group operates.

Michael recalls one instance when social dreaming helped a company that lost employees to the 9/11 attacks. “A friend of mine was working with a financial consulting firm in the World Trade Center at the time of the destruction. About half the people in that firm were killed. They were having an awful time trying to pick up the pieces and were filled with survivor guilt. Sharing their dreams with one another helped them come up with a recovery plan for the business,” he says.

As a minister at the Calvary Presbyterian Church in Wyncote, Pa., much of Michael’s consulting work deals with church communities. A Union Theological Seminary graduate, he has guest lectured at the seminary and taught courses there in dynamics of groups and organizations and the psychiatry of religion.

Michael also contributed two chapters to Social Dreaming at Work, by Gordon Lawrence (1998), as well as a chapter in Experiences in Social Dreaming (2003) by the same author. In the latter book’s introduction, Lawrence writes:

“Thomas Michael is in the world of adults and writes of social dreaming in the context of churches. The dreams are wonderfully human and illustrate something of the dynamics of being a church member at a time when churchgoing is not highly valued. An important element in this rich account is the effect of the September 11 tragedy in America. He asks the question, ‘can we experience the transcendent infinite?’ He concludes that social dreaming may be one way that we access the infinite depth that calls to the depth of ourselves across the ordinary barriers of our humanity.”

When not contemplating the infinite depths of humanity, Michael finds plenty of time to pursue his own dreams. “I play golf, though not very well,” he laughs. “This past June, my wife and I drove our car across the country up to Ottawa, across the northern United States, up to British Columbia and back through Oregon.” But the couple’s travels extend beyond North America. In March 2005, they toured China on one of former theater and dance department member Mike Kelly’s popular faculty jaunts.

Michael remains active in the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organization, which introduced him to social dreaming. “The idea is that our dreams are a way of connecting us to the intimate reality. As people share the dreams, they begin to notice themes and links. The purpose is to help understand organizations and societies.”

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Alumni can honor retired faculty by donating to a scholarship fund and other investment. Call James Spencer at 856-256-5402 or visit the Rowan University Foundation.