Metaphors in Dreams: Where Cognitive Linguistics meets Psychoanalysis

Marianna Bolognesi,Roberto Bicisecchi

doi:10.7565/landp.2014.001

Abstract

This article approaches the study of metaphors in dreams from an interdisciplinary perspective, which aims at bringing together the psychoanalytic tradition, and the main views that constitute what is commonly known as the contemporary cognitive theory of metaphor. Our perspective aims at showing how these approaches can (and need) to be integrated, and suggests why in this endeavour it is necessary to consider the personal background of the dreamer and her need to re-establish/confirm her identity within each metaphor.

Highlights

The most acclaimed contemporary theory of metaphor today is the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), fathered by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) and already anticipated in Ortony’s collection (1979)
The focus on social, communicative, and cognitive functions of metaphors has recently prompted a new wave of enthusiasm and scientific study. Within this complex and lively framework of discussion, we propose to address the analysis of the metaphors that emerge in the mind from a deep, pre-linguistic dimension, where the communicative function of metaphor is taken to an extreme border: the activity of dreaming
Emotions here are not explicitly explained by the metaphor, but they are implicitly triggered by the alignment of two concepts, behaving as conceptual mappings. This aspect, we believe, plays a crucial role when we look at converging insights across cognitive linguistics and psychoanalysis

Summary

Introduction

The most acclaimed contemporary theory of metaphor today is the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), fathered by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) and already anticipated in Ortony’s collection (1979). Another crucial debate raised by CMT is whether an alignment between two concepts (or two domains), always stimulates us to map exclusively features belonging to the source domain onto the target domain, or whether it pushes us to construct a new mental space where features from both domains are merged. As we will see, metaphors that appear in dreams are a form of communication whose main objective is to implicitly carry specific emotions by means of cross-domain conceptual mappings, and in this way communicating them to the dreamer

Unconscious Thought in Psychoanalysis

Metaphors in Cognitive Linguistics

Metaphor and Identity

Conclusions