ABSTRACT
Among the many shocks with which the modern age has confronted the subject is the ominous insight that it is by no means the master of its own self. There is, however, at least one consolation: thanks to Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams (1900),2 dreams are no longer considered visionary manifestations in which higher powers articulate themselves, but rather as a specific ‘organisation of [the individual’s] thoughts’.3 To be sure, they appear at first as a kind of bewildering picture-puzzle but, once deciphered, they prove to be a perfectly plausible ‘organisation of thoughts, or a discourse expressing one or more wishes’.4 The individual knows more about him or herself in the dreaming than in the waking state, it appears, which also explains why dreams are ‘so strange and so difficult: for we have learned from experience that they are invariably seeking to express something that the ego does not know and does not understand’.5
