For a phenomenology of dreams. On the rebellious temporality we encounter in dream consciousness

Background

Phenomenology defines dream as a special form of being-in-the-world with its own characteristics. Dreams are a depiction of a basic state of consciousness and one of their basic features is a change in temporality.

Summary

Building on and extending the contribution of classics in phenomenology and hermeneutics (Binswanger, Boss, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Zambrano, Ricoeur), I explore dream consciousness form the angle of a modification of temporality, more specifically the weakening of temporal syntheses – the pre-reflexive ability to integrate in a unified picture elements that are experienced in succession rather than simultaneously, and the reflexive capacity to form a continuous and coherent self-narrative. I describe two phenomena that are expressions of rebellious temporality in dreams – ‘condensation’ and ‘rhapsody’. ‘Condensation’ is the merging of events, sensations, thoughts, memories, etc., into a single image or scene, expressing the ‘stratification’ or ‘folding’ on themselves of apparently unrelated fragments to form an aggregate saturated with tension. ‘Rhapsody’ is an irregular collection of apparently unrelated images or scenes, expressing the waning of the chronological links between the dream images and scenes which therefore may appear as discrete fragments. As a consequence of this basic modification of temporality, an alternative form of consciousness can emerge, disengaged from the laws of coherence and continuity that characterize the waking consciousness.

Key message

This form of consciousness fosters a hermeneutical space that can enrich self – and world-knowledge with fragments that are dissonant with daytime consciousness – which, in order to establish and maintain the coherence of the self, may forbid access to phenomena that do not fit the dominant narrative. These fragments are of importance not insofar as they are more authentic than the ‘pieces’ gathered and put together by waking consciousness, or because they are the products or desires, emotions or impulses repressed from the censure of the vigilant conscience. It is rather a matter of allowing oneself to be questioned about the new profile of oneself that these fragments allow one to glimpse. The fragments which appear in dreams are harbingers of a restructuring of self-consciousness based on the freedom and responsibility to explicitly take on the task of the factory of one’s own self and history and their dialectical complexities.