ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a discussion of the Freudian everyday, including Sigmund Freud’s theory of repression that underpins it. It will then consider Surrealisms revolutionary use of Freud’s work as a way of both understanding everyday life and as a means to change it. From Freud’s theory of dreams, especially in terms of his theory of repression, provides an excellent introduction to his account of the psychopathology of everyday life. Although, as Freud stated, psychoanalysis is a procedure for the medical treatment of neurotic patients; it also contains a theory of everyday life. For Freud the everyday is only on its surface a place of the ordinary and insignificant. Surrealism sought to disrupt and defamiliarise what we normally take to be the reality of everyday life. Surrealism sought to expand our understanding of reality; to get beneath the surface of everyday life, to access its political unconscious and release its repressed political possibilities.
