Luis Román Rabanaque^[2]

Abstract

The question of dreams is closely related to the problem of the unconscious. Due to its place within consciousness at large, the latter faces very particular difficulties. In this paper, we will deal with four main topics. Firstly, we will discuss the possibility of phenomenologically accessing the unconscious and dreams. Although Husserl seems to grant this, some important objections have been raised in recent literature that need to be addressed. Secondly, after showing that access to these phenomena is possible, we will consider what methods can be appropriate for their analysis. For this purpose, we will draw on Lester Embree’s indications on reflective analysis, as well as on descriptions provided by Edmund Husserl and Eugen Fink. Thirdly, we will briefly sketch the most relevant structures in the phenomenon of (night) dreaming. In the final section, we will provide an eidetic typology of dreams based on a set of both formal and material criteria, including the logical coherence of dreams, their content, their relationship to temporality, and the role the I and the body play in dreaming.

    

Key words: phenomenology; dreams; unconscious; Husserl; Fink.

Resumen

La cuestión de los sueños se relaciona muy estrechamente con el problema del inconsciente. Debido al lugar que ocupa dentro del todo de la conciencia, este último enfrenta dificultades muy particulares. En este trabajo trataremos cuatro temas principales. Primero, la posibilidad de acceder fenomenológicamente al inconsciente y a los sueños. Si bien Husserl parece admitirla, en la literatura reciente se han presentado importantes objeciones que es preciso responder. Segundo, tras mostrar que es posible acceder a este fenómeno, consideraremos los métodos que pueden ser adecuados para su análisis. Para ello recurriremos a las indicaciones de Lester Embree sobre el análisis reflexivo, así como a descripciones proporcionadas por Husserl y Fink. En tercer lugar, esbozaremos brevemente las estructuras más relevantes en el fenómeno del sueño (nocturno). En una última sección, ofreceremos una tipología eidética de los sueños basada en un conjunto de criterios tanto formales como materiales, que incluyen la coherencia lógica de los sueños, su contenido, su relación con la temporalidad, y el papel que juegan el cuerpo y el yo en el soñar.

    
Palabras clave: fenomenología; sueños; inconsciente; Husserl; Fink.

§ 1. The possibility of analyzing dreams

The topic of dreams faces very particular difficulties. Unlike other phenomena, we do not have direct but indirect access to them, mainly by means of a recollection. However, even the latter is a very particular case since it is essential to a recollection to be a presentification of some event that was once lived in conscious life. What is distinctive of dreams is that they are never lived in that way, for they occur in that unconscious state called sleep. This poses a problem for phenomenological analysis since access cannot be granted in advance, as with other phenomena, we cannot simply turn the gaze reflectively to what is already there or to an imaginary variation of it. Thus, it must be first shown that such an access is possible, and in the phenomenological literature, opinions have often been contrary to such a claim. On the one hand, Husserl himself and some of his close disciples, notably Eugen Fink and Theodore Conrad, support the positive view. On the other hand, Jean-Luc Nancy and Dieter Lohmar argue against it.

Nevertheless, if we take a step back in our inquiry, we can see that the root question concerning dreams lies in the unconscious itself. The unconscious is an opaque dimension of intentionality, which Husserl discusses mostly in the context of genetic analysis, whereby intersubjectivity is bracketed in order to disclose the structures of the living present. As we shall see later, it bears a close relation to the question of affection. First, Husserl’s usage of the term “unconscious” is ambiguous, since it may refer to two different but connected realms. On the one hand, to passivity as the background of the I’s wakeful activity. On the other, to the domain of sleep and dream, which goes beyond the boundaries of the wakeful I.

For the most part, Husserl employs words like “sleep,” “dream,” “wakeful(ness),” “awakening,” etc., in a metaphorical sense. Scattered as they may be throughout his manuscripts, he provides, however, some relatively detailed analyses on dreamless sleep and, occasionally, brief remarks on the topic of the thresholds of dreaming, that is, falling asleep and awakening. It is in these connections that he deals with the question of the unconscious, chiefly in the context of his discussions on the phenomenon of affection. As we said, Husserl does not question the possibility of a phenomenological analysis of dreams.^[3] But it is Eugen Fink who, in his doctoral dissertation on presentification, first devotes a brief but sharp study to dreaming (Fink 1966). Jean-Paul Sartre also addresses the topic, as well as, in later times, Theodor Conrad. In recent years, Jean-Luc Nancy has reopened the discussion by denying the possibility of a phenomenology of dreams. He argues that, since dreams are the complete absence of any kind of experience, they are therefore completely unfeasible in phenomenological terms (Nancy 2007: 31). Nicolas de Warren, for his part, defends their phenomenality over against Nancy (de Warren 2010: 274 ff.), as do Julia Iribarne and Hans-Rainer Sepp. Recently, Dieter Lohmar has casted doubt on it again, by means of significant arguments. In the context of a discussion about daydreaming, he contrasts it with night dreaming by stressing the irrational character of the latter, in which

[…] causality is often suppressed, identity is not guaranteed, temporal order is occasionally not preserved. There are also problems concerning the understanding of night dreaming, which demand a psychoanalytic interpretation. It is enciphered. All of these objections taken together allow us to see that it can hardly be considered a useful field of description for phenomenology (Lohmar 2008: 160).

Thus, regarding psychoanalysis he adds: “the analysis of the meaning of dreams seems thus to be excessively multivocal and very little controllable as to offer a good field for description” (2008: 160). Finally, in line with Nancy: “the most important reason, however, for me to exclude it is that while we are dreaming our consciousness is not awake, and this, from a phenomenological point of view, makes a methodologically controlled observation almost impossible” (Lohmar 2008: 160). This notwithstanding, in the next line he admits that dreams bear certain rationality, for, although causality sometimes does not function or the identity of a person or thing is not preserved, dreams offer a minimum of sense as far as they are capable of displaying unitary objects, actions, motives, and contexts. This is possible because in dreaming the constitution of objects and actions is ruled by the same types (Typen) that govern our daytime perceptual life. Furthermore, Lohmar mentions still another reason why dreams are not entirely inaccessible:

[…] the fact that we can remember the dreams indicates that in dreaming not all functions of the I are suppressed. If merely retention were the means for looking back just for a short while into the process of dreaming, then we would not be able to remember meaningfully connected stretches of dreams (2008: 161).

Recollection of a dream thus resembles the memories we have of long-gone vacations, of which we can recall whole sequences, but we can also have lacunas.

At this point, Lohmar is touching not only a central difficulty but also a possible key to its solution. As Fink early observed, although sleep cannot be shown (Aufweisungen) directly, because we are always awake when we theorize, the very fact that we are able to remember stretches of dreams and meaningful connections among them indirectly proves that dreams are given in some way. Fink writes: “precisely this argumentation, the one that intends to show the impossibility of analysis, makes use of an understanding—however elemental—of sleep. Whence do we know that we do not know anything about sleep?” (1966: 63) Husserl’s following comment is also to be read in this sense: “the sleeping I in its peculiarity is, of course, revealed only from the perspective of the awake I by a reflection of a peculiar sort which reaches back and seizes it. More closely considered, sleep has sense only in relation to waking and implies a potentiality for awaking” (Hua IX: 209 [160]).^[4]

§ 2. Method for analyzing dreams

Now if we can grant dreams a certain phenomenality, how should we seize them? Here I would like to invoke Lester Embree’s procedure as a guide for our investigation. He claims that phenomenology understood as reflective analysis is an approach that is not argumentative but descriptive, and to this extent, it is “more like comparative anatomy than theoretical physics” (Embre 2009). Although he admits that it is also an eidetic approach and that it can even have a transcendental side, he underlines the value of the empirical in it, especially when particular cultural phenomena are to be characterized. Reflective analysis thematizes the intentional correlation and its elements, which Embree, following his teacher Dorion Cairns, calls “encounterings” and, correlatively, “things-as-encountered” (Embree 2001: 5–6).^[5] Concrete encounterings include components of experience, belief, valuation, and volition in a wider sense. The most general concept of intentionality, which Embree, again following Cairns, calls “intentiveness”, has two major modalities, namely, positionality and experiencing. The former includes willing, valuing, and believing, whereas the latter admits as species direct and indirect experiencing. Direct experiencing includes perceiving, remembering, and expecting, whereas indirect experiencing has a linguistic and a non-linguistic mode, within which the indicative and the pictorial are comprehended (Embree 2011: 98).

Now we can return to our main topic. How should the above-mentioned reaching-back reflection on sleep and dreaming proceed? It should address these phenomena from what is apparent to what is unapparent. This means, on the one hand, that we have to reflect on direct experiencing, which in our case admits two modes. First, we must focus on the conscious thresholds of sleeping, that is, we must start at the level of what is given itself in perceiving and then explore the phenomena of falling asleep and awakening as submerging-in and emerging-from the unconscious. Second, we must reflect on the recollection of the material the dream offers to the conscious life. Then we have to turn, on the other hand, to indirect experiencing or reflecting on the linguistic accounts other people make of their own dreams. This may include personal diaries, so-called dream-books, the oneiric stories told by literature and by myths, as well as the stories dramatized in plays and movies. That is, veridical accounts as well as imaginary variations of actual accounts on dreams. While the two forms of direct experiencing operate primarily on the level of experience in the first person, indirect experience deals with descriptions made by a third person, that is, already objectified in language. This would entail further difficulties related to specific conditions of interpretation, with which we will not deal here. In this paper, we will center our attention on the two forms of direct experiencing.

The first methodological step we need to make consists in bracketing intersubjective constitution, which allows performing a phenomenological reduction on primordial experience focused on the living present. This is necessary in order to grasp the core of our individual egoic stream of consciousness, that is, the hyletic-kinaesthetic sphere, where sleeping and dreaming take place. Even more:

This is a necessary addition and in a certain way a justification of the analyses of the living present, as far as the distinction between the hyletic core structure and the selfhood <Ichlichkeit>, in which temporalization occurs, must lead to an express distinction between wakefulness and sleep, or rather to the building up from awake and sleeping periods (Ms. D 14: 3).^[6]

If we now reflect on this stream on the living present, we find that it proceeds in the form of a continuous succession of periods of wakefulness and sleep (Hua XXXIX: 587). Wakeful periods do connect with one another through sleep periods, and in every wakeful period the I is aware of its having-slept as well as of the preceding wakeful periods. Moreover, there are transitional phenomena that announce, as it were, the beginning and the end of the different periods (Hua XXXIX: 591). In a text from the C-Manuscripts, Husserl describes them as follows: “We know the ‘falling asleep’ and its peculiar relaxation <Entspannung> and impoverishment of the life of consciousness and awakening <Aufwachen> as a sudden having again a perception field, and more precisely as a world field […]” (Hua Mat VIII: 419). Every sleeping period is marked out through an initial mode of falling asleep and a final mode of awakening. What happens in the former case is “a giving-up <Ablassen>, a letting-fall <Fallenlassen> of the interests that lead me in wakeful life, a de-actualization <Ent-Aktualisierung>” (Hua Mat VIII: 419). When we wake up, a resuming, a (re-)actualizing, a taking up of those interests takes place. Regarding the wakeful life of the stream of consciousness, falling asleep is thus an “untying of oneself,” while awakening is a “coming back to oneself” (Hua Mat VIII: 419). Husserl makes another important observation in this context: the connection between wakeful periods mediated by sleep stretches is due to the work of recollection, which binds wakefulness with wakefulness in a peculiar synthesis, which he describes as a chain (Wiedererinnerungskette). Thus, every wakeful period that is recollected now also carries the recollection of the earlier periods, and so on (Hua XXXIX: 587). Sleep is not just an accidental episode but rather a mode of human life (Hua XXIX: 335).

§ 3. Dreamless sleep and affection

The next step is to focus on dreamless sleep, which Husserl describes as an extreme limit (äusserster Limes) between falling asleep and waking up. In contrast with the latter, it cannot be recovered by wakeful life through recollection. Husserl characterizes it as a “being absorbed” or “being sunken” (Versunkensein) in which the I is totally disconnected from its worldly interests. In this condition of having-slipped-down (Entsunkensein) into the unconscious, “<I> am not a man in the world anymore, I am not for myself the one I always am, who has experience of something, who lives, who acts […]” (Hua Mat VIII: 499). All this now is sunken. This being-sunken is nevertheless not a sinking into nothingness, but “a mode of life itself, a flowing life closed to stimuli and yet flowing” (Hua XXIX: 337). In manuscript D 14 Husserl accounts for dreamless sleep in the following manner:

The non-conscious I <bewusstlos> is in a state of Nirvana, its will, its acting, is a give-in of its interests; nothing moves it, that is, nothing triggers its interest. In being interest-less <Interesseloses>, it does not move, it does nothing, it has no experience, it sees nothing, it hears nothing, it performs no action. […] Constitution and its acquisitions are not lost, but they <have fallen> into the mode of being sunken in the sense of the absence of interest <Interessenlosigkeit> (Hua XLII: 14–15).

In a parallel manner, awakening is a change in that same flow, one in which the bodily senses open up, stimuli burst into the sense-fields and motivate a re-activation of worldly interests (Hua XXIX: 337).

Now these metaphors referring to letting fall, sinking down, being absorbed, etc., in the process of falling asleep, as well as those correlatives to waking up, touch on a phenomenon that allows throwing light upon the description of sleep, because it connects the being-conscious proper to daytime with the being-un-conscious proper to sleep. This is the phenomenon of affection. Affection is an intentional structure common to different constitutive strata. In perception, every turning of the I to individual objects is always a spontaneous operation, which in the lowest level consists in grasping (Erfassung) them. Grasping can, in turn, be either a re-activation of a former act of objectivation or an original act whereby an object is constituted for the first time (Hua IV: 24 [26]). Especially in the latter case the I behaves “receptively,” that is, its interest is awakened because it is affected by something that stands out in the field of presence.^[7] The dimension of what is effectively present has a hyletic core in which foreground or relief (Relief) and background are distinguished (Hua XI: 167 [215]). The foreground is made up of data or groups of data that stand out from the background and “stimulate” the I so that it may turn toward them and grasp them attentionally. We remark that in this context Husserl uses expressions like “being-awake,” to be “awake,” and “awakened” in a clearly metaphorical sense, in order to indicate the transit from being affected by the data to giving an answer to their call (Husserl 1964: 83 [79]). Affection designates this standing out from an environment that is passively present that gives rise to a response of the I; the prominent data in the field have an affective power on the I (Husserl 1964: 80 [60]). More precisely, it is

[…] the allure given to consciousness, the peculiar pull <Zug> that an object given to consciousness exercises on the ego; it is a pull that is relaxed <sich entspannt> when the ego turns toward it attentively, and progresses from here, striving toward self-giving intuition, disclosing more and more of the self of the object (Hua XI, 148–149 [196]).

This presupposes, from a genetic point of view, that hyletic data are not formless stuff, as they were considered in the static analysis of Ideas I, but a field endowed with a pre-objective intentional organization, capable of setting in motion this interplay between stimulus and answer (Hua IX: 163 [125]). Hence, Husserl can write that “affection is noetically a mode of constitutive intentionality and noematically a mode of intentional unity or of the object, which, given the case, is conscious as existent in a mode of being” (Hua Mat VIII: 193).

The intentional organization of the hyletic field shows a complex structure of synthetic achievements. The first synthesis of unity is due to temporality, from which the universal form of order in succession and coexistence results. On its basis, material syntheses are built, which account for the formation of the fore- and background fields which are, in turn, responsible for the I’s being affected (Hua XI: 160 [208]). They are associative syntheses, which in their lowest level include homogeneity or affinity and heterogeneity or strangeness (Husserl 1964: 76 [74]). A hyletic field in the living present is a unity because it is homogeneous in contrast to other fields that are heterogeneous to it. Thus, the visual field is a unity of visual data, which are similar to one another and differ, i.e., from the data of the tactile field. Again, within a single field a singular datum may also stand out in virtue of a contrast, so i.e., a group of red patches against a white background. The prominent datum has an effect on the I, it affects it, exercises an allure on it, while the background has no affective force, it is for the I the field of the non-living (Hua XI: 168 [217]). In fact, since standing out from the background admits degrees, there is also correlatively a grading of affection (Hua XI: 163 [211]), that is, there is a continuous field of progressive weakening of the affective power between the poles of full affection and complete absence of affective power or force (Kraft).

Now we can take up the issue of the sinking of consciousness into unconsciousness during sleep and dreaming again. Husserl primarily thinks of the unconscious in terms of affection. The unconscious appears as the reverse of affection. In contrast to Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical approach, Husserl does not consider it as totally other than consciousness, as something disconnected from it, but as that mode of consciousness which trespasses the threshold of zero-affection, and whose function is to passively preserve the conscious contents once they have left the field of the living present. From the standpoint of the I, the unconscious is the lower limit of affection, the complete absence of affective relief and of a subjective answer. But such a limit does not mean an annihilation since, in the continuous retentional process, the contents undergo a progressive loss of affective power, but their intentions are preserved in the manner of emptiness that Husserl terms as sedimentation (Hua XLII: 36). As he suggests at one point in a late manuscript, sedimentation is a kind of horizon, and more precisely a horizon of latency (Hua Mat 8: 35, footnote 1), whereas the sedimented is what is flowing constituted below the zero-limit (Hua Mat 8: 376). It bears effects on both poles of the intentional correlation: contents—hyletic and noematic—are sedimented, but so are, too, the acts and even the I: “the sedimentation of all living temporalization includes, of course, the temporalization of the I and also of its acts” (Hua Mat 8: 202).^[8] Even the own body is a sedimentation of its capacities (Hua Mat 8: 345). That which leaves the field of living presence enters the “reservoir of the sedimented” (Hua XLII: 63). In this way, protoimpressions, retentions, and protentions have their “constant environment of the night of the sedimented” (Hua XLII: 62). As its reverse, the sedimented can be brought back to perception by being awakened through associations invoked by the daytime perceptual situation, thus giving rise to a sense-bestowing in the form of a de-sedimentation (Ent-Sedimentierung) (Hua XLII: 37). Briefly put, the horizons of latency can be brought back to patency.

Sedimentation below the zero-point of affection accounts for the possibility of preserving and re-activating latent intentions. To some extent, this also applies to sleep, which “is certainly the powerlessness of reliefs” (Schlaf ist ja Kraftlosigkeit der Abhebungen) (Ms. D 14: 15). However, there are significant differences, too. On the one hand, whereas a “struggle” (Kampf) takes continuously place among rival affective data within the hyletic field, in sleep, there is no struggle at all. There is nothing like the I’s turning-toward (Zuwendungen) which is characteristic of the I’s answering to the attraction of salient data (Ms. D 14: 16). On the other hand, “waking up” a sedimented content during the perceptual process in wakeful life and “waking up” from sleep is not the same. What is common between them is the absence of affective power. Waking up within perception means to passively associate the present hyletic situation with a sedimented unity, in a process resembling that of recollection. The sedimented is a background that can come to the fore, a latency within patency at large. By contrast, in sleep “perception itself is not-awaken <unwach>:” waking up from the unconscious sleep is rather a progressive coming-back-to-light of the entire hyletic sphere (Ms. D 14: 14). Here the whole of wakeful fore- and background, i.e., patency in its entirety, emerges from unconscious latency (Ms. D 14: 13). Since it is a process related to affective power, sinking down and emerging can also show differences of intensity, of “depth,” The same degree or “distance” (Abständigkeit) of affective power may or may not wake up the I: a relatively high clarity or a loud noise probably does not wake up a deep sleeper, but a dim light or a weak noise is sufficient for awakening a light sleeper (Ms. D 14: 11–12).^[9]

§ 4. Dreaming

It is worth noting that the very transition from wakefulness to sleep and vice versa allows us, directly though marginally, to consciously experience the phenomenon of dreaming. During the process of falling asleep, when we are still awake and thus aware of the surrounding world, it is not unusual that we begin to experience images. Such images do not come from the perceptual world, nor do they fall under our control as in daytime imagination.^[10] The inception of the dream precedes, as it were, the I’s complete sunkenness into the unconscious. Correspondingly, as we are coming back to our senses, the dream may still go on for some time, merging with the progressive awareness of the surrounding world. Nevertheless, if we set these vivid yet rather marginal experiences aside, the most common and direct way of accessing the dreaming world is the daytime recollection of night dreams. The act of recollection is direct because there is no image or representation between the recollective experiencing and the remembered object (Embree 2011: 130). There are of course indirect experiences of dreams, as we said before, which can be very useful to help to explore the eidetic structures of dreaming. Indirect experiences of this kind can be either pictorial—think, e.g., of Henry Fuseli’s painting “The Nightmare,” or Francisco Goya’s etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters”—or linguistic—think, for instance, of narrations—, be they veridical or fictional, scientific accounts like those provided by Sigmund Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams, or stories passed down from generation to generation—like myths and folktales. They can even be produced by philosophers, like Cicero’s Dream of Scipio. This, however, is not the case with simple recollection, which, like expectation and imagination, is a modification of perception. It has in common with expectation and daytime imagination that it does not present something (or some event) in person (leibhaftig), but it presentifies it, that is, it makes it appear “as if” it was present. In contrast to imagination, recollection and expectation are bound to world-time, either past or future. Yet, the memory of a dream is a peculiar act because it is not the retrieval of something that actually happened in world-time, nor a presentification of any previously lived perceptual experience.

Now the next question concerns the dream taken in itself. What kind of intentional accomplishment is dreaming? In the few passages where Husserl addresses this topic, he seems to oscillate between considering it a presentation and a presentification. He writes, for example, that dreaming is “an anomalous mode of wakefulness” consisting in a suspension (Enthebung) of the “real” surrounding world. But, in the same line he observes that, in contrast with dreamless sleep, this suspension is not merely a sinking but a “dreaming-fantasizing” (träumend-fantasierend) sinking. (Hua XXIX: 336) Absorbed in the dream, I find myself in a quasi-world with regard to which I have quasi-interests as modifications of the worldly interests of daytime life. (Hua XXIX: 336) This comes closer to considering the dream a presentification. In a letter written in response to Jean Hering, who had asked him about the role of intersubjectivity in dreams, Husserl points out that here we have a “pseudo-intersubjectivity” because it occurs in the dream-world, which is a “pseudo-world”, whereas the dream’s I is also a “pseudo-I”. He then adds: “‘Pseudo-’ means here just the sense of a presentification (Vergegenwärtigung)” (Hua Dok III, vol. III: 120). As Hans-Rainer Sepp remarks, a paradoxical situation arises here because the dreamt I seems to be a pseudo-I, an invention of the dreaming I, that is, a presentification, but at the same time, it is a perceiving subject (2010: 75). Eugen Fink tackles this paradox in his dissertation on Presentification and Image. He emphasizes that “dream is nothing else but a versunkene Phantasie”. The difference between dreaming and other kinds of fantasies is that its condition of possibility is the most extreme sunkenness or absorption (versunkener) of the dreaming I. It is an absorbed fantasy which can “only take place in that mode of the presence of the dreaming I that we call sleep” (Fink 1966: 63). With regard to wakeful life, the I is submerged in the most extreme passivity. Nevertheless, within this passive underworld there is activity—“quasi”-activity. At this point, Fink also points out the objection that if this is so, the intentional correlation would be suppressed: dreaming would not be an intentive act because it would not be included in the temporal flow of consciousness; it would rather be a “temporal missing phase within the unitary process of the constitution of world,” an “incomprehensible irrational break” a “dark pause of experiencing life” (Fink 2016: 183 [1966: 64]). Correlatively, there would not be a world either. Now such objections dissolve, Fink goes on, when one reflects upon the meaning of this talk of “worldlessness” (Weltlosigkeit) as a characterization of the sleeper and her dreams. It is not merely a chasm, a nothing, a having-no-world (Weltlossein), but a specific mode of “having-the-world” (Welthabe), the mode of having-the-world in the extreme mode of absorption (Fink 2016: 184 [1966: 64]). It is by means of this peculiar mode that the dreamworld’s I (Traumwelt-Ich) can constitute a “dream-world” (Traumwelt).

This is a remarkable feature of dreams: whether perception or imagination, they preserve the intentive correlation, even if it does so in a modified way, in the way of the “as-if” (or “pseudo-”). A dream can be incoherent or even meaningless, as Lohmar points out, but only with regard to its concrete contents, i.e., to its dream-plot. Reflection reveals that nighttime dreaming shares the same intentional structures as daytime life. On the one hand, a dream is never just a set of images passing by like a movie in a theater. There is always a “who” and not only a “what,” that is, it is always I the one who dreams. Furthermore, this dreaming I has encounterings, it performs acts: it perceives, but it is also capable—within the dream—of remembering, of expecting events, it can even be surprised or disappointed by something. The dreaming I has sensations. It can sense the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet, it can feel good or bad, pleased or annoyed. Moreover, it can love or hate, it can act bravely or cowardly, it can be generous or mean. It can think and judge, and of course, it can speak, even to itself, as Husserl describes in the eighth paragraph of the first Logical Investigation. In sum, it can perform all the kinds of acts Lester Embree has charted in his Reflective Analysis. On the other hand, this dreaming I has, as we already mentioned, a correlative world in front of it. This world contains things, objects, equipment, and situations just like those we may find in the real, daytime world. Moreover, things in the dreamt world are given in adumbrations, they are located in both the dream-space and in the dream-time, and they interact with one another and with the dreaming I in many ways. Not only mere natural things but also animates are present in the dream-world: plants, persons, animals, as well as anomalous creatures like the monsters of nightmares.

At the same time, of course, intentiveness in normal, daytime experience differs from intentiveness in dreams as far as in the latter the two poles display a certain unreality. As we saw before, the I is here a “quasi”-I, an I-as-if, whereas the dreamt world is a “quasi”-world, a world-as-if. As with daytime presentification, a certain “neutralization” of both I and world occurs here, a bracketing that “disconnects” the dreaming-I from the hyletic flowing of reality. Precisely this is Fink’s point when he claims that dreams are presentifications (1966: 63). Furthermore, it entails, as Julia Iribarne has pointed out, a disconnection from the body as a sensing and moving organ of the I (2002: 389). By this untying itself from the bodily hyletic-kinesthetic conditions of daytime experience, the dreaming I gains, in turn, a freedom that allows it to let a whole new world appear, a world in which it can do things like flying without wings or aircrafts, falling into deep pits without being injured, and so on. In this “quasi”-world events can happen that would never take place in the real world: the deformation and transformation of things, persons, and events, or the showing up of absurd or impossible things, creatures, and events. Again, there is also a certain paradox here, since this I’s freedom is not voluntary, it is caught up in its dreams.

Now with reference to the I’s freedom, another problem arises here that deserves some attention. Daytime presentification of this kind of imagination always offers a certain tension or “struggle” with perceptual consciousness. It is over against “sunken” perception, that is, in connection with the perceptual field’s receding into the background, that imagination can stand out in order to get the I’s attraction. Clearly, this is not the case with dreams. One reason why Husserl hesitates considering dreaming a presentification is precisely this: when the I is absorbed, sunken into the unconscious, there is no contrast whatsoever between the dream world and the perceptual world (Zippel 2016: 184). However, for Fink it is precisely this feature that allows to settle the question: the development of an alternative world to current reality as a whole is made possible by this complete absorption, this being totally detached from the daytime perceptual world. This situation is also associated with the degree of egologic freedom: “while the imagination-world is the free creation of the imagining ego, totally at her disposal, with the increasing degree of absorption the staging freedom decreases” (Fink 1966: 65, quoted by Zippel 2016: 184). He adds: “The absorbed ego, deprived of her own will, produces in hidden passivity” (Fink 1966: 65, quoted by Zippel 2016: 184). Zippel comments here that “dreaming unifies possibility and passivity,” which thus represents a sui generis presentification (2016: 185). It is the creation of a space wherein the co-existence of reality and unreality is made possible (2016: 185). Thus, for the dreaming-I its dreamt world is a “real world”, and this is also why we can describe the dreaming-I as perceiving (Fink 2016: 185 [1966: 66]). Moreover, the dream elapses in pure passivity, in a “hidden passivity,” as Fink puts it. Husserl agrees with Fink on this point; he wonders whether dreams are a “dream play” (Traumspiel) whereby the worldly apperception of daytime life is neutralized and left “without a ground” (bodenloses) (Hua XLII: 500).^[11] He then comments: “when I dream, I give in to the play of associative effects and fulfilling fantasy images, which in parts cohere, then disintegrate, again in parts […]” (Hua XLII: 500). Here, the passive syntheses undergo a change since they are not committed to the apperception of the real world. However, the resulting Bodenlosigkeit appears to the dreaming I nonetheless as a sort of “ground,” a quasi-ground, which is associated with a quasi-Earth, both having a certain validity, a quasi-validity (Hua XLII: 500). This specifies what Fink meant when he described the worldlessness of the dream-world. As he points out, the “quasi” feature makes it fathomable why this dreaming-I may perform the same kinds of acts as in waking life. Husserl similarly remarks: “all the types of acts that this I performs: its perceptions, recollections, expectations, but also its affective and volitional acts, are acts in the mode of the as-if” (Hua XLII: 501).

§ 5. The role of the body in dreaming

After having considered the intentive correlation with respect to dreaming, there is still another relevant issue in this same connection. Although the actual body is disconnected from its wakeful functions during sleep, and even though Husserl does sometimes refer to the content of the dreams as “images” (Bilder), it is for the most part just a façon de parler. Indeed, the experience of dreams implies the entire correlation in the mode of the “quasi,” and in this sense, not only subjectivity with the I and her noeses, and objectivity as a noematic quasi-world, but by the same token, the own body. The dreaming-I is in no way a disembodied I, just as the dreamt noema is not merely a sequence of “frames,” like a motion picture.

Thus, we can say that a “quasi”-body is necessarily implied in dreaming. We have already mentioned that in daytime life the body is the site of sensing and moving. Now, if the dream is not just a movie being displayed on a screen for no-body, it is precisely some-body who must play the main role, and it is precisely through its body that the I interacts with the dream-world’s events and creatures. Again, there can be many divergences in the behavior of this quasi-body with respect to normal daytime intentiveness, but such disagreements are held against the backdrop of that normal body.

More precisely, the dreaming-I’s own body is implied in a way that reiterates in the “quasi”-mode the features that it has in wakeful life. It functions as a material thing (Körper) that can produce causal (“quasi-causal”) effects on the dream-world, and that also suffers effects (“quasi-effects”) from things and events (it can, for instance, push something or being pushed by something, etc.). Moreover, it has a certain location, first, as zero-point of the oneiric world, and then, as a spatial and temporal thing within that world. Yet, as a living body (Leib), it also retains its two most remarkable dimensions. On the one hand, it is a feeling body, a body that is affected by the sensible quasi-stimuli that the dreamt scene displays. On the other hand, as a moving body, it is capable of acting and effecting on the dream-world. A passage from Ideas II confirms this: “in dreaming we have courses of heteroaesthetic lived experiences which are not inserted into the real world” (Hua IV: 336 [347]). An interesting question in this respect concerns hyletic data. Can we speak of a “quasi”-hyle in the case of the dream’s “quasi”-perceptual presentation? Or, are all such data just a peculiar sort of “orthoaesthetic” experiences? We cannot address this important topic here.

§ 6. An attempt at an eidetic typology of dreams

In this final section, we would like to sketch a typology of dreams on the basis of six major criteria: (6.1) the logical coherence of dreams; (6.2) the kind of unity of dreams as a whole; (6.3) the dreamt content; (6.4) the dreamt temporality; (6.5) the role of the body in dreaming; (6.6) the dreaming I and the dreamt I.^[12] I would like to briefly comment on each type and provide some typical examples as well.

6.1. The logical coherence of dreams

As we have mentioned, dreams do not always cohere into a meaningful whole. This feature allows distinguishing in the genus two major species: coherent and non-coherent dreams. While the latter is indeed the favorite target of criticisms directed against the possibility of a phenomenological analysis of dreams, the former is not only within the reach of reflection, but can also be subjected to classification according to eidetic criteria. Incoherence may result from the absence of personal identity, be it of the dreamer herself or of the dreamt persons, and/or from the absence of logical consistency among the parts that comprise the dream-plot. By contrast, coherence in dreams involves identity of the dreamer or of the dreamt persons, and/or inner consistency among the parts. Coherence may extend to other dreams and even to wakeful life. Since we are dealing with non-exact or morphological essences, there can also be combinations of partial coherence and incoherence.

6.2. The kind of unity of dreams as a whole

a. Simple dreams. Those which are dreamt only once. They usually display a plot in a more or less loose way.

b. Recurring dreams. Those that come repeatedly, either in identical or similar form. Classic examples include dreams of being chased by someone, dreams of guilt or staged in places that recur, like Jorge Luis Borges’ labyrinths, tigers, and mirrors.

c. Iterative dreams. Dreams within other dreams. This case is taken into account by Fink. He explains: “provided that the dream is a presentification and not a presentation, we have the possibility of iteration” (Fink 1966: 65). Such a possibility, he further adds, is, like daytime fantasy, twofold, since it can be genuine or non-genuine. A memory within a dream can be an actual memory of some previous moment within the same dream or the memory of another dream. However, it is also possible to wake up from a dream within another dream. Fink observes that in the latter case iteration is not genuine because the two “dreams” do not stand in a proper founding relation (as it would be the case, e.g., of a wish founded on a perception of the wished object) (Fink 1966: 66).

6.3. The dreamt content

a. Productive or creative dreams. They can either present a new situation or insert some real (daytime) event into the dream-plot. A famous example is provided by Robert L. Stevenson, who writes:

I can but give an instance or so of what part is done sleeping and what part awake […] and to do this I will first take […] Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had long been trying to write a story on this subject. […] For two days I went about wracking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously (Stevenson, quoted by Brook 2002: 138).

b. Reproductive dreams. They can either reproduce something that originated in the awakened past, that is, imaginative evocations of daytime events, or reproduce another dream. Sartre has pointed out that in the former case, the reproduced is not properly speaking a recollection, for this would imply bringing wakeful life into the dream, thus destroying the dream itself, and causing the I’s awakening (Sartre 2004: 168). It is rather an imaginative evocation of daytime events.^[13] The latter can, in turn, be iterative, as we saw above, or not.

c. Thought or language dreams. Even though it may be contended that many types of dreams do not seem to necessarily deal with language, some are unquestionably linguistic. A typical case is provided by examination dreams, and more generally by those dreams that pursue a line of thought that has been carried out in the previous wakeful period.^[14] Again, the fact that dreams may be related to language does not mean that their inner structure should be linguistic either (Botz-Bornstein 2003: 74 ff.). However, it is a relevant question whether non-linguistic dreams share the structure of normal daytime perception, namely, to be “mute” or “dumb,” as the Cartesian Meditations say (stumme Erfahrung), and thus in need of being “made to utter its own sense” (Hua I: 77 [38]).^[15]

6.4. The dreamt temporality

We have seen that recollection of previous periods of wakefulness makes the continuity of consciousness possible in spite of the gaps of sleep. This holds for dreamless as well as for dreamful sleep. Now taken in itself, the dream displays a temporality, which does not fit daytime consistent continuity. This notwithstanding, we may consider it with regard to coherent dreams, so that the following possibilities obtain:

a. Dreams of the past, in a way similar to the reminiscences of (real) past events. This is typically the case when one is dreaming about shocking experiences that have produced a strong emotional impact, as it occurs to war veterans who bring back and relive their traumas in their dreams.

b. Dreams that continue our experiences from daytime. It is a very common experience that dreams continue activities that have been taking place in wakeful life. This type should not be confused with desire-fulfilling dreams.

c. Dreams of the future. They can be either simple future dreams, or premonitory, including prophetic dreams. Examples of the former are found, precisely, in the fulfilling of desires, and in the accomplishment of decisions. As to the latter, they vividly anticipate future events in wakeful life.^[16]

d. Counterfactual dreams. They occur in a hypothetical time under a condition that has not been fulfilled. They can happen either in the past or in the future.

6.5. The role of the body in dreaming

Sometimes Husserl refers to dreams in terms of “images” (Bilder), but it seems clear that the dream experience includes not only subjectivity as egoic and noetic, but also the own Body, as we saw above. Generally speaking, all dreams involve the body, but there are some kinds that bear a special relation to it:

a. Dreams of fulfillment of desires. Desires can be of intellectual nature, but a lot are directly related to bodily needs.^[17] A quite common case is being hungry or thirsty and then dreaming of having something to eat or to drink.

b. Erotic dreams. A very popular kind since Antiquity.^[18] Although they may overlap to some extent with desire-fulfilling dreams, both should not be confused.

c. Kinetic dreams. i.e., those directly and prominently related to movement, like dreams of flying, as in Terry Gilliam’s movie Brazil.

d. Dreams of anxiety. They may include very popular examples like examination dreams, but of course also nightmares.

e. Dreams of physical damage, like dreams of falling or aggression.

f. Sleepwalking.^[19]

g. Dreams of dead people. The dead can be oneself or another person. Classic examples are offered by Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis, and of course by the ghost of Hamlet’s father in Shakespeare’s play.

6.6. The dreaming I and the dreamt I

a. Absorbed dreams. The vast majority of dreams fall into this type. The dreaming-I is not aware of it being dreaming, but it is entirely sunken into the dream scenery and plot.

b. Lucid dreams, that is, those in which the I is aware that it is dreaming. It is worth noting that they are already described by Aristotle (De insomnis, 462 a 4).

c. Induced dreams, whereby the awaken I has an express purpose of dreaming. They aim at experiencing lucid dreams.

References

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Brook, Stephen. 2002. The Oxford Book of Dreams. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cicero. 2004. Somnium Scipionis. Trans. William Wynn Westcott. Ontario: Sovereign Sanctuary Press.

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