|
|||
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
ABSTRACT Psychology at the Edge? Exploring Mark Blechner's The Dream Frontier Patricia A. Kilroe, Ph.D. Patricia Kilroe, Ph.D. teaches language and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and is interested in the role of language in dreaming.
Summary of Presentation This paper reviews aspects of Mark Blechner's 2001 book, The Dream
Frontier. A brief overview of the central themes of this groundbreaking
work is followed by a close analysis of Blechner's characterization of the
dream and on what he has to say about language in dreams.
Evaluation questions:
Abstract Psychology at the Edge? Exploring Mark Blechner’s The Dream Frontier In explaining the title of his 2001 book, The Dream Frontier, Mark Blechner names dreams as the frontier of human knowledge, imagination and creativity. The dream frontier, for Blechner, also refers to the state of dream studies following a century of psychoanalysis and a half century of sleep research. Four main topics are covered: the theory of dream formation, the meaning of dreams, the clinical use of dreams, and the implications of dream phenomena for our understanding of the brain. The present paper focuses on what The Dream Frontier has to say, directly or indirectly, about the role of language in dreaming. Blechner proposes, contra Freud, that the dream is not exclusively the transformation of latent verbal thoughts but can also be an alternative to verbal thoughts, representing what the thinking mind is capable of when it is not concerned with communicability. Dreaming allows extralinguistic thinking, thinking that extends beyond the bounds of language, with fewer constraints than most waking thought. Dreams are extralinguistic in that they can create objects for which we have no name, and they can also create new metaphors or extend and combine familiar metaphors in new ways. For Blechner the essence of the dream is "meaning without communicability". Dreams "speak their own language, which is designed to be meaningful without necessarily being communicative." Explored in this paper are the implications of this statement. What precisely, for example, is the language of dreams? And what is the evolutionary point of meaningfulness without communication? In Chapter 8, "Dreams and the Language of Thought", Blechner proposes a new understanding of dreaming based on Vygotsky’s theory of inner speech, claiming that "with the exception of reliance on words, the properties of inner speech are close to the properties of dreams." In both, subjects, being understood, are omitted. Hence dreams as private and not meant for communication. "Dreams are subjectless predicates" and the task of dream interpretation is to provide the subject of which the dream is the psychological predicate. The present paper considers the analogy of dreams with inner speech more closely, beginning with the observation that in the latter, unlike in the former, the thinker is aware of what the understood subject is. Blechner conceives of dreams as on the far end of a continuum, with inner speech in the middle somewhere and intelligible speech on the opposite end. This paper discusses this notion as problematic, because while Blechner readily admits to the occurrence of language and wordplay in dreams, he places dreams in opposition to speech, and neglects to address the question of what kind of linguistic mental processes might be active during dreaming. The position taken in the present paper is that the possibility that inner speech continues during sleep and takes an active role in dream formation merits serious consideration.
Reference Blechner, Mark J. 2001. The Dream Frontier. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.
|
|||
|
|
