Restoring the Dreamer

Abstract

The dubious relation of “subjective” experience to “objective” reality finds its correlate in the opposition we often suppose between culture and nature. Twentieth century theorists, most notably Freud, have claimed various methods for interpreting the illusions of one realm that hide the truths of the other. Ricœur has famously called the psychoanalytic method of dream interpretation a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” which he sees as a threat to the “mytho-poetic core of imagination.” John Dewey regarded the binary opposition between culture/nature as particularly dubious, preferring to see them as reciprocal phases of a continuous process; if cultural life is an interpretation of the biophysical environment, that environment surely has its say. However, in the century since Freud, the tactics of suspicion have proven themselves to be indispensable for developing of critiques that reveal the subtle operations of anti-democratic ideologies, perhaps at the expense of democratic faith. This paper considers if there are less suspicious, more Deweyan possibilities for the interpreting and sharing of dreams, not for the benefit of the psychic health of the individual dreamer, but for the sake of a recovery of democratic life.