In this paper I focus on the epistemological bases and operational features of the Social Photo Matrix (SPM) method (Sievers, 2013), one of the vast range of socio-analytic methods that have been applied in organizational settings. An offshoot of Gordon Lawrence's (1998) Social Dream-Drawing (SDD), the SPM method - which is based on experiential learning – offers access to the unconscious thought patterns of groups and organizations, in accord with Bion’s theories (Bion, 1961; 1962), with the aim of rendering unconscious processes consciously thinkable, and bringing to light the bond between individual-group and organization. The SPM is designed to generate experience, through the collective viewing of photographs taken by the research participants. The pictures are used as raw material on the basis of which to produce associations and amplifications of hidden meanings in the institutional field (Correale, 1999), meanings that usually remain unseen and unthought. The practice is based on the assumption that, when a photograph is taken, a close relationship is established between that which is photographed and the deep inner world of the photographer (Hutton, Bazalgette, & Reed, 1997). The further assumption is that the pictures taken by the members of a group may be understood as illuminating the shadowy areas of the group unconscious. Hence, the photographic material allows participants and researchers to think about the scope of connection between subjects’ private worlds and their membership of a group in a specific social and political context. In this paper, I present a study conducted with a group of students attending an undergraduate course. The study was conducted using action research methodology (Denzin-Lincoln, 2000;) and a qualitative design, with the aim of investigating the unconscious dynamics joining - via a set of deeply interlinked processes - individuals, groups, and the university institution (Hinshelwood-Stamenova, 2019) The students were invited to participate in the generation of a social photo matrix, within a dispositive designed to meet specific educational objectives, namely, to foster their ability to engage in meta-reflection on their own position within the institutional setting. The aim of the group exercise was to intercept the students’ unconscious experience of the academic staff, of the training process and more generally of the university itself as a dynamic field concentrating fantasies and anxieties that - once brought to light - could help the students to become more proactive, mindful, and self-legitimizing in relation to their own educational trajectory.

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