The art of dreaming.Comments on

Simon Morgan Wortham’s paper

Ferenc Hörcher

L’Homme qui rêveUniversité Catholique Pázmány Péter

Connexion française (Budapest) & RETINA International (AIAC Paris 8)

17 ‒ 18 avril 2015Colloque international interdisciplinaire

Plan of the talk1.Theories of sleeping and dreaming

in SMW’s paper1.1. Hegel1.2. Freud1.3. A Hegel-Freud mental landscape1.4. Cross-checking in the secondary literature

2. The art on dreaming 2.1. In Hegel’s 2.2. in Freud’s time

1. Theories of sleeping and dreaming in SMW’s paper

1.1. Hegel

SMW on Hegel• Illness or disorder may be due to an inherent imbalance in sleep, and instead Hegel seeks to draw our eye with the idea that sleep is nothing but the true expression of nature, order, proper measure.

SMW on Hegel 2.• Hegel deliberates the dialectical relation of sleep to waking, in terms of a movement towards a ‚concrete unity’ that transcends their separate determinations. Such a unity is, however, ‚always only striven for’…

• In the depth of the (soul’s) sleep we find nature’s substance rather than unnatural sickness.

SMW on Hegel 3.• Hegel argues that the soul in fact joins together with itself ‚after dividing itself in awakening’

• (Hegel’s) strange legacy to thought – in the very attempt to rationalize sleep in terms of a harmonious relationship to waking life or ‚being-for-itself’ a certain supplement is unleashed – even if it is subsequently re-settled – one that we might call somnambulence…”

1. Theories of sleeping and dreaming in SMW’s paper1.2. Freud

SMW on Freud• For Freudian psychoanalysis, sleep is therefore something of a double agent. It faces two ways… during slumber itself, the capacity to hold down repressed material is reduced by a certain, inevitable relaxation of energy.

• In his essay ‚On Narcissism’ - A striking analogy between illness and sleep which in fact presents the latter as less dysfunctional than one might initially expect.

• the egoism of dreams• Assertion of dreaming as both an unrestrained flight into pure narcissism and a reaction to narcissism’s limits

• The dream sees narcissism defending itself against its own interests.

1.3. A Hegel-Freud mental landscape

Kant Hegel Bergson Jean-Luc Nancy

Aristotle Freud Jacqueline Rose

Wilhelm FlissJosef Breuer

Cross-Checking• Now while Hegel anticipates Freud’s view that sleep is a necessary „rehabilitation” for the turmoil of life, madness is a desperate attempt to heal the wounds of alienation by a permanent withdrawal into the world of sleep: madness is a dreaming while awake (PM § 408 Z).

• Daniel Berthold-Bond: Hegel’s Theory of Madness, 1995. p. 44.

Cross-Checking 2.• As Darrel Christensen says: „/Hegel/, like Freud, holds that dreams and symptoms are to be understood in their own language as exhibiting contents of the mind below the level of conscious awareness.”

• Quoted by Daniel Berthold-Bond: Hegel’s Theory of Madness, p. 44.

Cross-Checking 3.• Hegel’s remarks on dreams often are very close in spirit to Freudian insights, and more strongly, … Freud’s definition of neurosis is a very close echo of Hegel’s view of madness. Just as Hegel emphasizes a regressive withdrawal or „sinking back” of the developed mind into a more primitive sphere of mental life, Freud speaks of the „path of regression” taken by the libido which has been „repulsed by reality” and must seek satisfaction through a „withdrawal from the ego and its laws”.

• And just as Hegel stresses the separation of the mind from ‚contact with actuality’, Freud repeatedly refers to „the low valuation of reality, the neglect of the distinction between /reality/ and fantasy”.

• Daniel Berthold-Bond: Hegel’s Theory of Madness, p. 100.

Cross-Checking 4.• The place to which the mind retreats in madness is also the same in Hegel’s and Freud’s theories, what Hegel calls the ‚life of feeling’ (Gefühlsleben), the domain of the unconscious, the body, nature, and instinct, a domain in which a fundamentally new form of discourse obtains, displacing the language of the ‚waking’ mind by a more archaic language characteristic of dreams and fantasy.”

• Daniel Berthold-Bond: Hegel’s Theory of Madness, p. 100.

2.1. The art on dreaming in Hegel’s Time

Henry Fuseli (Füssli): The Nightmare, 1781

• Fuseli wrote of his fantasies to Lavater in 1779:

• Last night I had her in bed with me—tossed my bedclothes hugger-mugger—wound my hot and tight-clasped hands about her—fused her body and soul together with my own—poured into her my spirit, breath and strength. Anyone who touches her now commits adultery and incest! She is mine, and I am hers. And have her I will.

Dream figures• The incubus„The figure that sits upon the woman’s chest is often described as an imp or an incubus, a type of spirit said to lie atop people in their sleep or even to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women. Fuseli’s painting is suggestive but not explicit, leaving open the possibility that the woman is simply dreaming. ”• The horse„in the now obsolete definition of the term, a mare is an evil spirit that tortures humans while they sleep. As Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) defined it, a mare or “mara, [is] a spirit that, in heathen mythology, was related to torment or to suffocate sleepers. A morbid oppression in the night resembling the pressure of weight upon the breast.” The Nightmare became an icon of Romanticism and a defining image of Gothic horror, inspiring the poet Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather) and the writers Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe among many others.  Noelle Paulson, at Khan Academy,

Francisco Goya: The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,1798

• "Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels."

Hegel and the Owl• Hegel writes:

'The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.’(PREFACE TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT )

• He meant that philosophy understands reality only after the event. It cannot prescribe how the world ought to be.

• Fantasy and reason to create art: see Kant’s views on the role of reason and imagination in his Critique of Judgement:'If we wish to discern whether something is beautiful or

not, we do not relate the representation of it to its object by means of rational understanding. Instead, we relate the representation though imagination (acting perhaps in conjunction with reason) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or displeasure. The judgment of taste, therefore, is not a cognitive judgment, is not logical, but is aesthetic’ (DIVISION I ANALYTIC OF AESTHETIC JUDGMENT, BOOK I, ANALYTIC OF THE BEAUTIFUL)

Antonio Canova: Sleeping Endymion, 1822.• "to sleep the sleep of

Endymion"

Sir James George Frazer, ed. Apollodorus, Library and Epitome

Young lad, liked by the Goddess of the Moon, Selene, kissed by her to let him sleep forever

Endymion and Selene. Panel of a marble sarcophagus, early 3rd century AD. Found in 1806 at Saint-Médard

d'Eyrans, France. • "Not I alone then stray

to the Latinian cave, nor do I alone burn with love for fair Endymion; oft times with thoughts of love have I been driven away by thy crafty spells, in order that in the darkness of night thou mightest work thy sorcery at ease, even the deeds dear to thee.

• THE ARGONAUTICA• by Apollonius Rhodius

Rodin. The Dream. The Angel’s Kiss, 1911

Rodin’s kisses• Rodin’s kisses can be– Erotic and/or metaphysical

– Active and/or passive (in sleep)

– Taken from a man and/or a God(like creature)

Lajos Gulácsy: The opium Smoker’s

dream, 1918

Gulacsy’s imaginary world of the good and the evil

• Az ország létrejöttét Gulácsy így meséli el: a Föld szelleme (a fordított világképre jellemzően a kezdetet nem a görög ábécé első betűje, hanem az utolsó nevével jelzi), Omega átadja a megteremtett Földet Hygilindának, a fényesség tündérének, aki Danielával, a sötétség tündérével küzd meg a Földért. .. a történet 1750-ben kezdődik, az alkimista Bumburin varázsló működésének idején, aki több ezer évet előre repülve uszítja egymásra a Gonosz és a Jó erőit

• Szepes Erika: Ezredvégi menekülések - utópiák, mítoszok, nosztalgiák. 1.

• (részlet)• Na'Conxypan születése

René Magritte: Key to Dreams, 1935

Magritte’s teaching• Magritte teaching lessons about

– the mechanism of the irrational– The opposition between image and word

– The distinction between reality and imagination (dreams)

– the association of ideas

Instead of a conclusion• “story … if you could finish it … you could rest … you could sleep … not before … oh I know … the ones I’ve finished … thousands and one … all I ever did … in my life … with my life … saying to myself … finish this one … it’s the right one … then rest …”