4 a Lacanian Approach to Dream Interpretation

A Lacanian Approach to Dream Interpretation

Filip Kovacevic University of Montenegro, Podgorica, Montenegro

In the century-old history of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan was one of its most controversial practitioners. Though found opaque and convoluted by many, Lacan’s ideas have transcended the conﬁnes of psychoanalytic practice and have since the 1960s been applied to the study of cultural, social, and political processes and phenomena. In this article, the author presents the main aspects of a Lacanian approach to the interpretation of dreams. He examines Lacan’s reinterpretation of a crucial dream from Freud’s classic work Interpretation of Dreams: Freud’s own dream of Irma’s injection. He shows the importance of Lacan’s conceptualization of the psyche as the structure containing the registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real for the interpretation of this dream. Furthermore, he demonstrates the applicability of a Lacanian approach by interpreting several other dreams: Descartes’ 3 dreams, which have determined the development of modern science, and his own dream. The article is intended for all audiences and its aim is to expand the number of theoretical approaches available in the ﬁeld of dream interpretation. Keywords: dreams, desire, death, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan

Many historians and scholars of psychoanalysis consider Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) to have been one of the most talented, though controversial, psychoanalysts, the so-called “French Freud.” Lacan himself thought that he was the most faithful interpreter of Freud’s ideas to such an extent that, in the 1950s, he presented his year-long seminars to the French intellectual elite at the Paris psychiatric hospital St. Anne under the title of a “return to Freud.” Among many of Freud’s ideas that Lacan discussed and commented upon in these seminars, the key place was taken by the reexamination of Freud’s ﬁrst ground-breaking book Interpretation of Dreams (Traumdeutung) and certain dream interpretations Freud presented there. In this article, I will offer a close reading of Lacan’s analysis of Freud’s dream interpretations to extract what can properly be called a Lacanian approach to dream interpretations. Later, I will use this approach to interpret certain dreams important for the history of philosophy, such as Descartes’ three dreams. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. Appropriately enough, Lacan mentioned Freud’s book in the very ﬁrst public seminar he gave, the seminar on Freud’s technique in the academic 1953–1954.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Filip Kovacevic, Associate Professor of Political Psychology and Psychoanalytic Theory, University of Montenegro, 81000 Podgorica, Montenegro. E-mail: ﬁ[email protected] 78 Dreaming © 2013 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 23, No. 1, 78–89 1053-0797/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0032206 Lacanian Approach to Dreams 79

Here he compared Freud’s work on dreams with Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. Namely, the idea common to both Freud and Maimonides is that discourse (be it a dream discourse or a public discourse under strict censorship) reveals by its organization and style what cannot, or must not, be said openly.1 This is why Freud compared every dream to a rebus and posited the mechanisms of condensation and displacement as keys to the interpretation of its meaning.2 The day-residues (Tagesresten), which, according to Freud, make up most of the dream content acquire, within the dream structure, a meaning different from the one they had during the day. The structure of the dream, brought into being by an unconscious desire, which “we only ever see silhouetted at back,” assigns them a role to play according to the utility they have for the desire’s covert manifestation.3 This desire, according to Freud—and Lacan put an added stress on this claim—is always addressed to an other, a person with whom the dreamer is in an intimate emotional (transferential) relationship. For those undergoing an analysis, this person is the analyst. To provide an example of how exactly this works in practice, Lacan mentioned the dream of a Freud’s patient, of which the patient could recall just a single word—the word channel.4 After a session of free-associating with Freud, the patient recalled that the impetus for the dream was the French witticism ostensibly commenting on the French–British relations, but which, in the actual dream, was put into the service of expressing the patient’s unconscious attitude toward psychoanalytic procedures. The untranslatable witticism goes, “De sublime au ridicule, il n’y a qu’un pas.” “Oui, le Pas-de-Calais [that is, the English Channel].”5 Hence the key importance of the word channel.

A FREUD’S DREAM

Although in Seminar I Lacan does offer several perceptive insights on Freud’s dream theory, he does not go into the extensive analysis of a single dream until the second part of Seminar II, held the following year.6 The dream in question is Freud’s own dream, which in the psychoanalytic literature came to be known as the dream of Irma’s injection. Here’s the text of the entire dream:

A large hall—many guests, whom we receive. Among them Irma, whom I immediately take aside, as if to answer her letter, and to reproach her that she doesn’t accept the “solution” yet. I say to her: “If you still have pains, it is really only your fault” She answers: “If you knew what pains I have now in my throat, stomach and abdomen, it’s tightening me up.” I am

1 Lacan, Seminar I, p. 245. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. 2 Lacan, Seminar I, p. 266. 3 Lacan, Seminar I, p. 155. 4 Lacan, Seminar I, pp. 45–46. 5 Literally, “From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is but a step.” “Yes, the Step-of-Calais [which is how the French call the English Channel].” 6 In his seminars, Lacan very rarely mentioned Karl Jung, another great interpreter of dreams. But there is a reference to him in the Seminar I, when Lacan, in passing, made a critique of Jung’s theory of the archetypes, rhetorically asking “how are they truer than what is allegedly at the surface? Is what is in the cellar always truer than what is in the attic?” See Seminar I, p. 267. This critique has to do with Lacan’s claim that truth is what is said in speech that is, what is on the surface, even if it is (very likely) not heard. 80 Kovacevic

startled and look at her. She looks pallid and puffy; I think, after all I overlooking something organic. I take her to the window and look into her throat. With that she shows some resistance, like women who wear a denture. I think to myself, she doesn’t need to do that. Her mouth then opens properly, and I find on the right a large white spot, and elsewhere I see some remarkable curled structures which evidently are patterned on the nasal turbinal bones, extensive white-gray scabs. I quickly call Dr. M., who repeats and confirms the examination...DrM.look entirely different from usual: he is very pallid, limps, is beardless onthechin...Myfriend Otto now also stands next to her, and my friend Leopold percusses her over the bodice and says: “She has dullness below on the left,” points also to an infiltrated portion of the skin on the left shoulder (which, I, in spite of the dress, just as he, feel)...M. says: “Without a doubt, it’s an infection, but it doesn’t matter; dysentery will follow and the poison will be eliminated...”We also directly know where the infection comes from. Recently my friend Otto, when she was not feeling well, gave her an injection of a preparation of propyl, propylene...proprionic acid...trimethylamine (whose formula I see in heavy type before me)...onedoesn’t give such injections lightly...Probably, the syringe wasn’t clean.7

Lacan’s approach to interpreting this dream consists of interpreting it together with Freud’s own interpretation of it. For Lacan, both the dream and its interpretation form a whole, which, if properly analyzed, could offer a signiﬁcant insight not only into Freud’s unconscious, but also into the structure of the unconscious in general.8 In other words, his framework includes two aspects. First, what Lacan called “imagining the symbol”, that is, analyzing the transformation of the symbolic idea into the image, which is the work of actual dreaming with the dream as the ﬁnal product. And, second, “symbolizing the image”, transforming the given image into the symbol, which is the work of actual dream interpretation. Here Lacan introduced one of the ideas that marked his entire psychoanalytic opus, which is that “the unconscious is structured like a language.”9 This means that what is done in dream interpretation is actually the kind of translation of the material which was already translated once before. And, as in every other translation, certain shades of meaning (sense) will inevitably be lost. This is why Lacan emphasized Freud’s correctness in claiming that no dream could be completely analyzed—there is always something that cannot be recalled on awakening. In this particular case, as Lacan pointed out, Freud consciously decided not to pursue certain associations and so the full meaning of his dream will forever remain unknown.10 Yet, there is still quite a lot to analyze.

THE EGO AND THE DESIRE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS

For Lacan, the reason that this dream is important is that it can help him reveal

7 Quoted in Lacan, J., & Miller, J.-A. (Ed.) (1988). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954–1955 (Sylvana Tomaselli, Trans). New York, NY: Norton, 1988, pp. 148–149. 8 Lacan, Seminar II, pp. 152, 163. 9 Lacan, J., & Miller, J.-A. (Ed.) (1978). The seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XI: The four fundamental principles of Psychoanalysis, 1964–1965 (Alan Sheridan, Trans.). New York, NY: Norton. pp. 149, 203. 10 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 152. Lacanian Approach to Dreams 81

topic in the psychoanalytic circles.11 The significant number of very influential psychoanalysts, including Anna Freud, Erik Erikson, and Lacan’s own analyst Rudolf Loewenstein, subscribed to the view that the key task of psychoanalysis was to strengthen the ego. The strong ego was supposed to balance out the demands of the superego on one hand and the id on the other and to enable the individual to lead a psychologically fulfilling and stable existence. For instance, in an article that Lacan cited in the Seminar II, Erik Erikson examined the dream of Irma’s injection and interpreted it as revealing the stages of Freud’s ego development.12 Lacan strongly disputed this conclusion and rejects the idea that strengthening the ego should have anything to do with the psychoanalytic cure. The individual’s ego cannot be the analyst’s ally because it is, according to Lacan, “radically contingent” considering that it is made up of the subject’s imaginary identifications and narcissistic fantasies. In Lacan’s picturesque analogy, the ego is like “the superim- position of various coats borrowed from...the bric-a-brac of its prop depart- ment.”13 The ego is a mask whose function is to censor and repress the articulation of unconscious desire. And, for Lacan, this is precisely what Freud’s dream of Irma’s injection shows. This is why Lacan voiced his suspicion of Freud’s claim that this dream provides for the fulfillment of Freud’s desire not to be held responsible for the failure of Irma’s treatment.14 This is no doubt the preconscious (ego) desire, but what about the unconscious desire, which, in Lacan’s view, reveals the subject truly desires? How and where is this desire manifesting itself? In attempting to uncover the unconscious desire of the dreamer, Lacan’s methodology is straightforward and in line with his claim about the linguistic nature of the unconscious. As pointed out, Lacan put an interpreting emphasis both on the text of the dream and the text of Freud’s interpretation, and not only on the claims of the dreamer Freud.15 What becomes apparent very quickly is the multiplicity (more precisely, tripling) of dream figures. There appear to be three male and three female figures. The three male figures (Dr. M, Otto, and Leopold)—Lacan refers to them as the “trio of clowns”—are all there for a reason: all three have important functions in the structure of Freud’s psyche. In other words, according to Lacan, they are all sites of identifications which constituted Freud’s ego.16 Dr. M, for instance, stood for Freud’s imaginary father who, as Lacan reported, had the real-life equivalent in Freud’s half-brother Emmanuel, who was the same age as Freud’s mother and was the principal object of Freud’s aggressive Oedipal tendencies. Otto and Leopold, on the other hand, represented rival friend/enemy figures with which Freud alternately identified. The presence of all three, according to Lacan, testifies to Freud’s being This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. in the midst of intense inner questioning and uncertainty regarding his work: “Am

11 This perennial, one can even say the eternal, question is still not conclusively resolved. 12 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 148. Erikson, E. (1954). The dream specimen of psychoanalysis. Journal of American Psychoanalytic Association, 2, 5–56. 13 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 155. 14 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 151. 15 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 153. 16 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 156. 82 Kovacevic

I right or wrong? Where is the truth? Where am I placed? What is the meaning of neurosis and the psychoanalytic cure?”17 Moreover, the three female figures—Irma as the central one, but also the much less visible Freud’s wife and another more attractive patient of a colleague (who surfaced in Freud’s own interpretation of the dream)—stood for Freud’s concern with the sexual nature of unconscious desire. In fact, one of the two crucial transformative moments of the dream occurs when Freud looked into Irma’s mouth. In Lacan’s words, “everything blends in and becomes associated in this image, from the mouth to the female sexual organ...[itis]theflesh one never sees, the foundation of things...”18 It is the sight carrying in its wake profound anxiety and, as Freud’s own interpretation shows, the “image of death,” which he associated with the recent nearly fatal illness of his daughter Mathilde and the actual death of the patient with the same name.19 And so, the key question for Lacan remains the following: confronted with the anxiety-provoking situation, why does Freud not wake up? In Lacan’s view, the explanation has to do with the strength of Freud’s desire to discover the secret of the dream life.20 Freud was committed to persist even with extreme anxiety all around. Still, the confrontation with the image of death does have an impact on the dream. According to Lacan, Freud’s ego dissolved into the “series of egos,” the series consisting of Dr. M, Otto, and Leopold.21 These various “ego-identifications” had a function of helping Freud come up with the answer to his enigma about dreams. And, then, all of the sudden the answer popped up: It’s the formula for trimethylamine, which Freud saw “in heavy type” (in symbols) before him. For Lacan, the sudden appearance of this formula is the second crucial transformative moment of the dream. It reveals the predominance of the symbolic function in the constitution of the stable identity out of the endless succession of identifications. In other words, prior to signification and speech, the subject is, in Lacan’s terminology, “in-mixed” with things and objects and they exist only as his or her ego-images. It is only with the emergence of the symbolic order (speech and language)22 that there appears the “neutral” ground for the resolution of all imaginary rivalries and the foundation of (intersubjective) truth. Dreams could not exist without language. In fact, they are an enigmatic language that one can decipher if one takes the text of the dream literally. As for Lacan, he used the dream of Irma’s injection to score a point in his broader argument on the linguistic nature of the unconscious. He took this dream as the account of Freud’s heroic confrontation with anxiety and death to wrest the truth of dreams and, in the fashion of Prometheus, bring it to the people. And this This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly.

17 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 157. 18 Lacan, Seminar II, pp. 154–155. 19 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 164. 20 In fact, Lacan says that the Irma dream is the dream of “someone who is trying to ﬁnd out what dreams are.” Lacan, Seminar II, p. 137. 21 Lacan, Seminar II, pp. 164–165. 22 Lacan also called this order the big other as it is always beyond the subject and his or her ego identiﬁcations. In this context, Freud’s statement to his correspondent and friend W. Fliess becomes understandable—“dreams are located in another psychic locality.” Lacan, Seminar II, p. 131. Lacanian Approach to Dreams 83

emerging truth has all the ingredients of Hegel’s cunning of reason, because the “irrational” turns out to be rational after all: dreams speak.23 The analysis of dreams therefore should be structurally similar to logical and grammatical analysis. Here Lacan relied on the advances in modern linguistics, especially the formulations regarding metaphor and metonymy. For Lacan, metaphor is structurally similar to condensation and metonymy to displacement. Because the laws of dreaming are the laws of language,24 Lacan rejected anything that may appear as “an intuitive approach” to dream interpretation.25 There is no arbitrariness in dreams. The structure can be revealed if one follows the correct methodology.

DREAM, DEATH, AND THE REAL

The claim that dreams may point to a structure, a register, or “a reality” more fundamental for the subject than the ordinary, waking reality is substantiated by Lacan in his discussion of two particularly distressing dreams conveyed to Freud by his patients. The ﬁrst dream is from Freud’s 1911 article “Formulations Regarding the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” and is dreamed by Freud’s patient who had taken care of his father while the old man was sick and dying. The dream was dreamed after the father’s death and went as follows (paraphrased by Lacan): “His father was alive once more and he was talking to him in his usual way. But he felt it exceedingly painful that his father had really died, only without knowing it.”26 Freud’s interpretation sounds simple enough. The dreamer actually wished his father to die because the father in his illness suffered so much and it was the fact that the father’s suffering had not ended that made seeing him alive painful to the dreamer. Freud believed that the key to the dream interpretation was the insertion of the short phrase “as the dreamer wished” the father to die into the dream. The original, infantile (Oedipal) wish was in this way disclosed and the dream turned out to concern the very core of the dreamer’s identity. Lacan pointed out that this dream is structured as a metaphor, because it revealed “something new which has a meaning...no doubt enigmatic...[but] one of the most essential forms of human experience.”27 It provided additional evidence for Freud’s basic claim about the ambivalence of feeling toward the parents. In this dream, the father as the rival was wished into disappearance, and yet the father’s death left the dreamer defenseless against his own death.28 This is so because, according to Lacan, the father is “a sort of shield...asubstitution” for the absolute master, death.29 And this is why “he did not know” refers as much to the dreamer as to the father who is dead. The “he did not know” shows that the dreamer (and all human beings) prefer ignorance to facing the hard fact of death, that all who are born must die. This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly.

23 Lacan, Seminar II, p. 168. 24 See Lacan, J., & Miller, J.-A. (Ed.) (1993). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book III: The Psychoses, 1955–1956 (Russell Grigg, Trans.). New York, NY: Norton; dreams speak “the same way as one speaks,” p. 10. 25 Lacan, Seminar III, p. 239. 26 Lacan, Seminar VI, the session of November 26, 1958. 27 Lacan, Seminar VI, the session of November 26, 1958. 28 Lacan, Seminar VI, the session of December 10, 1958 and the session of December 17, 1958. 29 Lacan, Seminar VI, the session of January 7, 1958. 84 Kovacevic

In connection to this dream, Lacan also told of Trotsky’s dream of Lenin after Lenin’s death. Namely, Trotsky dreamed of Lenin praising him on his health and could not bring himself to tell Lenin that he had died, so he replied “yes, but the things are not as good as during the time before you were unwell.” In other words, according to Lacan, Trotsky wanted to face neither his own wishes for Lenin to die nor the fact of his own imminent death. Just like Freud’s patient, he at the same time wanted to get rid of the father and keep being shielded by him.30 In this and other seminars, Lacan referred to the realm of the absolute master, the realm of death as the register of the Real. The Real is that “reality” or a register beyond any articulation, of which nothing can be said, except that it exists. Certain dreams, according to Lacan, bring the subject to the precipice of the Real and it is precisely this that causes the awakening. The awakening is therefore a sort of escape into the structured symbolic reality where the subject has his or her place that is, identity fixed and defined by the others. An example of such a dream is the dream Freud described in the last chapter of his Traumdeutung. It is a dream of a father who has gone to sleep in a room adjacent to the room where his son’s dead body is laid. The father is awakened by his son’s reproach “Father, can’t you see that I am burning?” and rushes to the next room just in time to witness that one of the candle-holders had been overturned and that his son’s body was indeed on fire.31 Lacan posed the key questions: What is the meaning of this chilling coincidence? What kind of desire is satisfied? And, finally—the question that in his analysis of dreams Lacan always found the most interesting—what wakes the dreamer?32 According to Lacan, the image that awakes the dreamer is the one that brings him or her the closest to the realm of the Real, to the dreamer’s disappearance as the ego.33 It is exactly the anxiety of this encounter, this trauma that precipitates the escape into the waking life. In this particular dream, the anxiety must have involved the relationship between the father and the son. Freud mentioned nothing about it, but I think we are justified in speculating that this relationship had its share of ambivalence on both sides. What wakes the father was coming face to face with the son’s direct complaint (which was likely never voiced during the son’s lifetime) and which led to the intensification of the father’s guilt. The dream can therefore be seen as fulfilling the father’s desire to address the secret antipathies of his son toward him. But the cruelty of death has eliminated forever the possibility of reconciliation. This is why Lacan claims that this dream (as perhaps any dream that brings us to the edge of the Real) is “an act of homage to the missed reality—the reality that can no longer produce itself except by repeating itself endlessly, in some never attained awakening.”34 This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly.

30 Lacan, Seminar VI, the session of January 7, 1958. 31 Lacan, Seminar XI, pp. 34, 55–56. There is evidence that the child in question was a son, though Freud in retelling the dream used the term child, which does not specify gender. 32 Lacan, Seminar XI, p. 57. See also the earlier discussion of Freud’s dream of the Irma’s injection. 33 The Real is to be sought “beyond the dream—in what the dream has enveloped, hidden from us, behind the lack of representation”. Lacan, Seminar XI,p.60. 34 Lacan, Seminar XI,p.58. Lacanian Approach to Dreams 85

PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS

Based on the discussion above, I can now formulate several basic rules of the Lacanian approach to dreaming which I will then apply in interpreting Descartes’ three dreams as well as my own dream. It is clear right away that Lacan was heavily dependent on Freud’s formulations but has more explicitly stated certain things that Freud left obscure. First, every dream is an address to an other, that is, to a significant other in one’s life. In most cases, this other is a family member, a friend, or, if the dreamer is in an analysis (as Freud’s patients were of course), then the other is the analyst. Second, the issue of the ego is crucial in dream interpretation in the sense that all figures in the dream are the ego identifications of the dreamer. The key point of dream interpretation is to uncover these identifications, recognize them for what they are, and, in doing so, give expression to the unconscious desire they are articulating. The articulation of the unconscious desire means bringing the dreamer the knowledge of his or her personal “another locality” (the unconscious), which, according to both Freud and Lacan, represents the true motivating source of his or her actions. Third, as far as the method of the interpretation goes, one must treat the text of the dream as a censored but sacred text, because, as Lacan put it, “what [the dream] articulates as not to be said is precisely what it has to say”35 Therefore, all that transpires in the dream is to be read as the combination of metaphor and metonymy, trying to make sense of the fact of human mortality, the fact of death. We awaken when we go as far as we can before the veil is rent, the veil that hides the realm of the absolute master, the realm of the Real from which we came and to which we will return.

APPLICATION 1: THE THREE DREAMS OF DESCARTES

There are hardly more important dreams in the history of philosophy than the three dreams Descartes dreamed on the night of November 10, 1619 when he was 23 years old. These dreams, as we will see, are all related to the intense questioning about the meaning of his life that preoccupied the young Descartes at the time. After waking up, Descartes seems to have acquired the necessary determination to seek a method that could lead him (as well as the others who followed the rules of this method) to absolute certainty. The dreams were as follows:36

A whirlwind revolves him violently upon his left heel. Later a strong wind forces him to bend over to the left. He is terriﬁed by phantoms and experiences a constant feeling of falling. He imagines he will be presented with a melon that comes from a far-off land. The wind abates and he wakes up.

35 Lacan, Seminar VI, the session of December 10, 1958. 36 Retrieved from http://www.phantazm.net/omni/dreams_and_visions/descartes_3_visions.htm 86 Kovacevic

Dream 2

Claps of thunder wakes him. When he opens his eyes, the air seems ﬁlled with sparks ﬂying around his room.

Dream 3

All is quiet. Before him two books. A dictionary, which appeares sterile and dry, of little interest. The other is a compendium of poetry entitled Corpus Poetarum in which appeares a union of philosophy with wisdom. Descartes opens it at random and reads the verse of Ausonius, “Quod vitae sectabor iter” (What path shall I take in life?). A stranger appeares and quotes him the verse “Est et non” (Yes and no).Descartes wants to show him where in the anthology it could be found, but the book disappeares and reappeares. He tells the man he will show him a better verse beginning “Quod vitae sectabor iter.” At this point the man, the book, and the whole dream dissolve.

The metaphor that characterizes the first dream is the violent whirlwind. It is expressive of Descartes’ search for different signifiers to augment his identity, which, at the time, is in flux. He is no longer able to walk down the habitual path. The old ways of doing things cannot satisfy him anymore, they breed “phantoms,” terrifying beings with unclear identity. A Lacanian approach would stress Des- cartes’ desire for some kind of change, for new things in his life which, in the dream, are represented by “a melon from a far-off land.” This “melon,” which in the early 17th century Germany must have been a rare and expensive gift, can be interpreted as that special signifier that Descartes was looking for to differentiate himself from the rest (from his soldier acquaintances, for instance), especially since the melon in November is way out of the season. It appears that Freud, when shown this dream, found some sexual significance in the appearance of the melon.37 In any case, it is clear that the melon is the object of desire, offering some kind of fulfillment. This is plausible because as soon as the thought of the melon takes hold, the wind (the danger) is lessened and Descartes wakes up. There appear to be no clearly discernible ego identifications in this dream and perhaps this is why the entire dream scene (before the thought-image of the melon) shows such an intense agitation and anxiety. Soon Descartes falls asleep again and has a very brief second dream. The dream involves auditory sensations (“the claps of thunder”). One can interpret this dream as an unsuccessful and therefore aborted unconscious grappling with the issues of identity (one’s vocation in life). Because Descartes awakens quickly, the key issue remains unresolved and Descartes has to dream again. The third dream is obviously the most significant. Here at the very beginning we have an image of two books. They are the signifiers of learning and knowledge

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. and point to Descartes’ preoccupations at the time of the dream. There is the dictionary, “sterile and dry,” not so interesting to him because it represents the old knowledge, the knowledge that is already codiﬁed by somebody else, the knowledge of the symbolic order into which he was born. On the other hand, what Descartes is after is new knowledge and new ways of knowing. The second book “Corpus Poetarum” is to him much more signiﬁcant, because poetry represents

37 Retrieved from http://marilynkaydennis.wordpress.com/2010/08/26/ Lacanian Approach to Dreams 87

creativity and originality (remember “the melon” from the first dream). Instead of the melon, in this dream we have “the poetic body” (the title of the book). According to Lacan’s approach, the title is to be interpreted literally as meaning that Descartes’ ego-identification is precisely the one with the poetic body which would enable him to open up new and innovative paths to knowledge. After all, the poets have historically been the trailblazers and the creators of new things and this is why Descartes wants to identify with them. He then reads a verse of the poet Ausonius: “Quod vitae sectabor iter” (What path shall I take in life?). It is a fundamental question and a question always asked of the other. This question is akin to the question made well-known by Lacan in his graph of desire—Che vuoi? What do you want of me?—asks the subject of the other.38 It is not surprising then that the other immediately acquires an embodiment in Descartes’ dream. “A stranger appears and quotes him a verse ‘Est et non’ (yes or no).” This is a nonsense answer to the postulated question, but it is the kind of answer that the other typically gives, because the other does not know him/herself what he or she wants. The fact that the question “what do you want of me?” gets the answer “Yes or no” means that the being of the subject is in question: Descartes has to decide whether he really exists or not. But, as the dream shows, the answer to the question of being cannot be found in the anthology. “The book disappears and reappears.” It is the question that comes very close to the edge of the Real, the question of human mortality and death. The other (“the stranger”) leads Descartes away from the plunge into anxiety (the return to the first dream and the “whirlwind”) by his offer to help Descartes find the desired verse. However, this cannot be done as death is inevitable for all. This is why at this point “the man, the book, and the whole dream dissolve.” The encounter with the Real and the attendant anxiety initiated the subject’s escape into the waking reality. The interpretation of these three dreams shows the usefulness of the Lacanian approach as it stresses the key issues of the subject’s identity formation and its relation to the other and the symbolic order in which he or she is embedded. The dreams give the sought-after direction in Descartes’ life and put him on the track of the discovery of a method that promises to solve the mystery of being. As Descartes later put it “Cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am). The derivation of being from thinking is no doubt something one could have expected from a person who in his dreams identified himself with poets.

APPLICATION 2: THE AUTHOR’S DREAM

In lieu of the conclusion, I would like to offer a Lacanian interpretation of the This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of individual user and not to be disseminated broadly. dream I had while I was putting the ﬁnishing touches on the article. It is a dream I had on the morning of April 16, 2011. Though it does not refer to the article in any noticeable way, it is one of the dreams that show the dreamer encountering the edge of the Real and hence conﬁrms the importance of Lacan’s insights on this matter. The dream goes as follows:

38 See Lacan, J. “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious,” Ecrits, 690. (2006) (B. Fink with H. Fink & R. Grigg, Trans.) New York, NY: Norton.