AUTHOR=Pule Neo , Gibney John 

TITLE=South African student leaders' role experience through social dream drawing: A driver of compassion

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=Volume 14 - 2023

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1109169

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1109169

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=Compassion can be viewed as a central gluing agent for the soul. Coupled with companionship towards a unique quality of listening, we call this companionate listening. South African student leaders’ role is central to decolonisation and transformation of Higher Education based on the legacies founding these institutions. As such, humanized practice that is centred in more emotional or virtue embodied approaches than the traditional lens have been sought. This lens offers avenues for innovative, creative, and inclusive perspectives that promote compassion, social justice, and democracy. Thus, this research looks to extend the lens on compassion in research by using social dream drawing to attain ‘companionate listening’ as a means of exploring communication as ‘exquisite’ empathy. Through psychoanalytic theory, companionate listening is theorised from observing the value of social dream drawing research with South African student leaders. The drawings show how assuming leadership roles re-ignites feelings and dream images of complex political, historical, social, cultural, and psychological South African intersections that emerge during South African student leadership. It is therefore concluded that innovative and inclusive research agendas into new horizons of forms of compassion, like social dream drawing in this research, are necessary within South African student leadership. Accordingly, through social dream drawing, compassionate listening facilitates a process of emotional growth towards an integrated self and group. This is because dreams allow the human capacity for connections that open space for compassion, enabling the feeling of relatedness and connection for student leaders that leads to more impactful transformation of South African institutions