in 1985, Michel Foucault wrote an introduction to the French version of 1930’s Traum und existenz, a work on the connection between dreams and existence written by the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger. The introduction was actually a personal and independent interpretation of the relevance of dreams that challenged the current theories. In this essay Foucault confronted in fact the philosophers who had previously speculated on the meaning of the oneiric (dream) activity.
Foucault’s dream v Freud’s dream
Contrary to Sartre and his reduction of imagination to the level of unreality, Foucault advocates the original function of imagination and dreams towards reality. But the crucial comparison is with Freud, whose theory on dreams he recognizes as revolutionary. Nonetheless, he notes that the father of psychoanalysis ended up depleting the real significance of dreams by constructing a complicated system of induction and interpretation.
Freudian interpretation, Foucault says, reminds of a sort of “divination” that runs after the meaning of the dream while moving away from it. Placing the meaning of the dream in a setting of external references, psychoanalysis - far from unveiling the truth - only reaches a series of “possibilities”. The dream is never understood and recognized in its intrinsic value and meaning.
Binswanger, Romantic philosophers and the freedom of imagination
While Freud gave psychological relevance to the dream, he did not understand it as a specific form of experience. Biswanger – the role model for Foucault’s interpretation of dream - relates instead to a previous tradition that read the dream through the lens of experience rather than through the lens of psychology.
From Greek tragedy to Spinoza, to romantic philosophers Novalis, Schelling and Schleiermacher, the dream used to be seen as an imaginative, specific experience which linked the human being to a transcendent level of existence and comprehension – a sort of state of “aware freedom”. Recovering this tradition, Foucault argues, is the real merit of the Swiss psychiatrist as it allows to recognize the dream primarily as an anthropological experience.
Foucault continues saying that the dream is an accessible “sign of transcendence”, an original movement of freedom towards the world that represent, for the subject, the most radical experience.
Far from Freudian interpretation of it as a system of external references, derived from external causes, the dream is here a totality within which the individual freely defines himself and his relationship with the world.
Foucault opposes the imagination to the images
Foucault distinguishes imagination and image, the latter being a reduction of the former. Imagination is the dynamic force of the human being in his “radically free essence”. Dream is just at the core of imagination.
Here, the compromise is not longer between repressed content and censure (Freud), but between the authentic movement of imagination and its adulteration into images. Images constantly bring back to the larger multiplicity of the meaning - they are just “allusions to the meaning”, which is hidden behind the plastic and fluid imaginary of dreams. Images are “impure and precarious” – what we clearly remember of our dream is merely a part – not necessarily meaningful - of a whole scenario. “Imagination is iconoclastic by nature and constantly breaks the images it generates”, Foucault says.
Freeing the imagination is “a task of refusal”: going beyond neat images, man can access the global movement of imagination. It is just through the dream that our imagination averts the alienation of images and turns back to its liberty.
Foucault's unusual “romanticism”
At the end of his suggestive premise, what the French sociologist seems to be saying is that dreams cannot be reduced to a condensed resemblance of what the individual experienced and removed in the past (Freud). They are rather about the present and the outside than the past and the interiority. They represent the constant possibility for the subject to reconnect to a broader experience of the world. They rather belong to the level of actuality and movement than to that of memory and steadiness. The subject is actively linked to the motion of his imagination rather than entrapped among still memories and images. And he gets to know the world through imagination.
It almost seems that, after Dr Freud took romanticism and fascination away from dreams, Foucault tried instead to drift away from mere psychology and return to a more arcane respect for the oneiric experience.
Author Sunil S.
Foucault’s dream v Freud’s dream
Contrary to Sartre and his reduction of imagination to the level of unreality, Foucault advocates the original function of imagination and dreams towards reality. But the crucial comparison is with Freud, whose theory on dreams he recognizes as revolutionary. Nonetheless, he notes that the father of psychoanalysis ended up depleting the real significance of dreams by constructing a complicated system of induction and interpretation.
Freudian interpretation, Foucault says, reminds of a sort of “divination” that runs after the meaning of the dream while moving away from it. Placing the meaning of the dream in a setting of external references, psychoanalysis - far from unveiling the truth - only reaches a series of “possibilities”. The dream is never understood and recognized in its intrinsic value and meaning.
Binswanger, Romantic philosophers and the freedom of imagination
While Freud gave psychological relevance to the dream, he did not understand it as a specific form of experience. Biswanger – the role model for Foucault’s interpretation of dream - relates instead to a previous tradition that read the dream through the lens of experience rather than through the lens of psychology.
From Greek tragedy to Spinoza, to romantic philosophers Novalis, Schelling and Schleiermacher, the dream used to be seen as an imaginative, specific experience which linked the human being to a transcendent level of existence and comprehension – a sort of state of “aware freedom”. Recovering this tradition, Foucault argues, is the real merit of the Swiss psychiatrist as it allows to recognize the dream primarily as an anthropological experience.
Foucault continues saying that the dream is an accessible “sign of transcendence”, an original movement of freedom towards the world that represent, for the subject, the most radical experience.
Far from Freudian interpretation of it as a system of external references, derived from external causes, the dream is here a totality within which the individual freely defines himself and his relationship with the world.
Foucault opposes the imagination to the images
Foucault distinguishes imagination and image, the latter being a reduction of the former. Imagination is the dynamic force of the human being in his “radically free essence”. Dream is just at the core of imagination.
Here, the compromise is not longer between repressed content and censure (Freud), but between the authentic movement of imagination and its adulteration into images. Images constantly bring back to the larger multiplicity of the meaning - they are just “allusions to the meaning”, which is hidden behind the plastic and fluid imaginary of dreams. Images are “impure and precarious” – what we clearly remember of our dream is merely a part – not necessarily meaningful - of a whole scenario. “Imagination is iconoclastic by nature and constantly breaks the images it generates”, Foucault says.
Freeing the imagination is “a task of refusal”: going beyond neat images, man can access the global movement of imagination. It is just through the dream that our imagination averts the alienation of images and turns back to its liberty.
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Foucault's unusual “romanticism”
At the end of his suggestive premise, what the French sociologist seems to be saying is that dreams cannot be reduced to a condensed resemblance of what the individual experienced and removed in the past (Freud). They are rather about the present and the outside than the past and the interiority. They represent the constant possibility for the subject to reconnect to a broader experience of the world. They rather belong to the level of actuality and movement than to that of memory and steadiness. The subject is actively linked to the motion of his imagination rather than entrapped among still memories and images. And he gets to know the world through imagination.
It almost seems that, after Dr Freud took romanticism and fascination away from dreams, Foucault tried instead to drift away from mere psychology and return to a more arcane respect for the oneiric experience.
Author Sunil S.
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