DREAMS FROM ANCIENT GREECE TO

FREUD

by Manuela Tagliaferri

GREEK-ROMAN WORLD

• Ambivalence towards dreams

• The “objective dream”

Ambivalence towards dreams

Greek world is a passage between arcaic cultures, in which dreams were doors to transcendence such as phenomena like ecstasy and vision, and western modern culture, in which dreams are doors to interiority. In classic Greece is possible to find both.

The “objective dream”

Dreams in Greece were considered to be not as a dreamer’s own creations, but something that really exists outside of him. Dreams “visit” the dreamer, they are “above him”, and leave material evidences.

PLATO

In Plato we can find the ancient vision on dreams and the new one too. This author sees dreams as a mere possibility to find the transcendent truth. Only who was able to keep his mind still and aware could reach the truth. Otherwise dreams can show us only our deepest irrational impulses.

EARLY RATIONALISM

Also in the Greek world we can find dreams as products of the human mind, even if the possibility of transcendence is never denied.

ARISTOTLE Dreams are thought activity during sleep. In

this author dreams become “psychological objects”, since the oniric phenomenon is a product of phantasmata, that is the psychic faculty of forming images, and it comes from the feelings felt during the day.

  ARTEMIDORO

In this author we can find different kinds of dreams:

-truthful and prophetic dreams; -insomnium, that makes wishes and

aspirations come true, through imagination.

PARADIGM SHIFTINDIVIDUALISM

Dreams are no more messages to the community, but to the dreamer himself.

INTERIORITY BECOMES MORE COMPLICATED

Personal dreams, that in the Greek world were absolutely clear, now need an interpretation.

THE TRANSCENDENT WORLD BECOMES INACCESSIBLE

Impossibility in communicating with the transcendent.

EFFECTS ON DREAMS

• The inner dreamDreams express the interiority of dreamers

• The rationalized dreamDreams have a logic that has to be find

DREAMS PURPOSE IS THE DISCOVERY OF THE SELF

CARDANO• Dreams are products of the Phantasia, a human

psychic faculty which operates through images • Dreams allow to come inside the dreamer’s

psychic stateDESCARTES

In this author we can find the first theorization of modern western thought: dreams are just fantasy, in opposition to the logic thought we can daily experiment. In dreams we can find the existential state of dreamers, expressed through simbolism that has to be interpreted.

ROMANTICISM

Dreams are misterious doors to the self: they disclose the human mind hidden faculties.

EARLY SCIENTIFIC STUDY

• Mysterious power of dreams (Myers 1903)• Awareness about the deepest inner truth (Hildebrant 1875)

HERVEY DE SAINT-DENIS (1867)The forerunner of twentieth century studies on

dreams• Sleep phases (we produce dreams even in deep

sleep)• Dreamer’s psychophisical state in dreams• Memory and imagination are involved in dreams• Psychic faculties are active during sleep • Continuity of the thought while sleeping and being

awake

CONTEMPORARY WORLD

• Dreams as psychic creations

• Sacrality of the person

FREUD

Freud goes on within these points of view (internalization/rationalization: dreams as knowing the self) and radicalizes them. So dreams become definitely an individual psychical product, having a meaning that has to be discovered.

In contemporary world, all the different theorizations about dreams covered a common ground: dreams are individual psychic products, that elaborate and integrate experiences, in order to build and narrate the self, as it happens during awakeness.

PSYCHOANALYSIS• From dichotomies sleep/awakeness,

unconscious/conscious to thought continuity• From theory of impulses to narration of the self • From dichotomy manifest/latent content to the

representation of the unconscious

COGNITIVISM• From mental contents to emotive integration • From random ricombinations of memories to

narration of the self

CONCLUSIONS

• Conceveing and experiencing dreams are cultural constructions, as it is showed by the turning over of the conceivings about dreams

• The individual dream experience can be an indicator of environmental fitness. Diversions from cultural average are average-specific.