Dreams and Narratives: From Psychoanalysis to Contemporary Imaginaries

Abstract

The close relation between dreams and narratives emerges from the very definition of the former: “successions” (Random House Learner’s Dictionary of American English 2016) or “series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep” (Oxford Dictionary 2015 [emphasis added]). Such successions have a specific semiotic capacity, which means that they are charged with particular meanings, therefore inevitably requiring—or at least intensely inviting—interpretation . From Freud ’s model—according to which dreams give expression to prior, unconscious dream thoughts (Freud in The interpretation of Dreams —Standard Edition. Hogarth Press, London, 1900)—to contemporary collective imaginaries, such a semiotic force has been foregrounded and variously explored, revealing relevant aspects related to dreaming (e.g. the role of memory, the importance of the perceptual level, the negotiation between the unconscious and the censorship of consciousness, the processes of spatialisation and temporalisation, etc.). Building on existing literature and the semiotic analysis of relevant case studies, this paper analyses the processes of meaning-making and the narrative logics underlying dreams and their collective representations, making particular reference to Greimas’ models (Greimas in Sémantique structurale: recherche de method. Larousse, Paris, 1966; Greimas in Du sens, essais sémiotiques. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1970; Greimas in Maupassant: la sémiotique du texte, exercices pratiques. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1975; Greimas in Du sens 2. Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1983).