Dreamwork and the Subject

Abstract. Dreams are one of the most degraded phenomena of experience in modern Western societies. Both objectivist science and subjectivist art see dreams either as irrelevant or servile to waking life. However, following the radical surrealist theory of Georges Bataille the Freudian idea of "dreamwork" can be given a interpretation in which the dream does not "work", but rather the opposite; it expends. This interpretation opens up a possibility for a subjective sovereign dream experience that dissolves the technological subject constructed in waking life. The interpretation can also be supported by some recent findings in cognitive neuroscience.

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”[...] people are starting to behave as though it was nothing at all, as though nothing had happened, as though taking into account the event of psychoanalysis, a logic of the unconscious, of ‘unconscious concepts’, even, were no longer de rigueur, no longer even had a place in something like the history of reason: as if one could calmly continue the good old discourse of the Enlightenment, return to Kant, call us back to the ethical or juridical or political responsibility of the subject by restoring the authority of consciousness, of the ego, of the reflexive cogito, of an ‘I think’ without pain or paradox; as if, in this moment of philosophical restoration that is in the air - for what is on the agenda, the agenda’s moral agenda, is a sort of shameful, botched restoration - as if it were a matter of flattening supposed demands of reason into a discourse that is purely communicative, informational, smooth; as though, finally, it were again legitimate to accuse of obscurity or irrationalism anyone who complicates things a little by wondering about the reason of reason, about the history of the principle of reason or about the event - perhaps a traumatic one - constituted by something like psychoanalysis in reason’s relation to itself.” (Jacques Derrida, ”Let Us Not Forget - Psychoanalysis”, Oxford Literary Review, 12/1990, p.4).

Metaphysics of subjectivity

It is well known that while realism and other forms of metaphysics of subjectivity rely on certain dualities - like that between subject and object, or truth and falsity - so-called post-modern discussions often end at dissoluting or reinscribing these dualities by way of deconstructing them. Another example of such duality is the polarity between dream and waking. For the metaphysical realist the waking life, at least in some of its ideal or normal mode, gives the subject a more or less reliable access to objective (subject-independent or intersubjective) reality, while dreams are "subjective" in the sense of being detached from objective reality. The role of the terms "subject" and "subjective" in this context is extremely important. An examination of what is involved in the use of those words will also lead to the topic of dream/waking-duality.

The metaphysics of subjectivity can be briefly characterised as a view in which human subjectivity is held central, for instance as a system of representation or information processing that gathers beliefs and knowledge of a objective reality independent and outside itself. This kind of subject is thought to have a more or less defined structure that is common to all subjects. On this view, subjects might have some peripheral individual differences, but the defining essential structure does not vary from subject to subject. On the contrary, what makes a subject a subject is some universal and essential characteristic, such as rationality, representational structure, a definite functional or neural mechanism, soul, or whatever. For example, Husserl's theory of the intentionality of mind in terms of a transcendental ego can be seen as a paradigm case of such subjectivity. This meaning of the term "subject" (subject as a universal structure) is to an extent opposite to the term "subjective" as used in connection to different points of view, or "perspectivity", as for example when referring to the "subjective" or idiosyncratic nature of dreams. In the metaphysical sense, however, everything that is subjective, must be available to all subjects that share the defining structure, and thus "subjective" can not in any genuine sense be idiosyncratic or unique. The whole point of supposing some universal subject-structure is precisely the predictability and repeatability that such structure makes possible. The structure in question has had many interpretations in the philosophical tradition, such as Kant’s reason, Husserl's intentionality or the more modern functionalist-representational picture of the mind, but the basic constraint of some structure with universal and lasting identity has withstood all these different interpretations. This means that the term "subjective" as alluding to a common structure that defines "humanity", "rationality", "cognition" or the like, is highly metaphysical in the sense that it serves as a guarantee and a basis for the metaphysical yearning for identity, calculability and predictability that are removed from the instability encountered in the experienced world. Therefore it is this sense of the term "subject" that is most readily recognised as the target of attack when postphenomenological or post-modern philosophers argue against "a metaphysics of subjectivity."

However, when we take a closer look, the term "subjective" in the second sense, as alluding to perspectiveness of a person, is no less metaphysical than the term ”subject”. To see this we may take as an example the "subjective” nature of art or of dreams. It is often said, for instance, that modern art is characterised by its lack of objectivity or intersubjectivity. What is characteristic of artistic creation is rather ”subjectivity” in the sense of perspectivity and idiosyncrasy. What is celebrated is the subjective genius of individuals like Picasso, Dali or Warhol. Their greatness lies in their power to create perspectives that are somehow immediately recognisable as great, at least by those with the proper training and background. However, the greatness of a great artist or work of art is thought to be something universal, something that every subject can or even should, in principle, entertain. For instance, the traditions of fine art museums and art history emphasize art as a series of movements with a direction, or at least as stages that react to previous stages. This means that there is a common denominator to art and especially to great or good art, even though there might be different interpretations of what is the criterion for ”good”. Such a common denominator is inevitably tied to the idea that there is some core that all humans share ("humanism") and through which art can enter and influence us. Thus the universality of metaphysical subjectivity is only emphasized by this seemingly different use of the term "subjective". The same goes for most modern accounts of dreams and dreaming. Even in the case of dreams, the subjective element is thought to rise on account of some features of the subject's history or structure, particularly in the interaction between the subject and its environment, and in a realist-metaphysical view both the subject and the outside world do have a definite nature even if that nature may be partly unknown. Therefore the subjective, genial or idiosyncratic aspects of dreams of art can in principle be intersubjectively corrected and controlled, and used in enriching and enlightening the common subjectual universality. Such is the case, for instance, in the Freudian psychoanalytic tradition.

Another characteristic feature of the metaphysics of subjectivity - a feature that has been emphasized in the surrealist critique - is the servility included in the notion of subject. To see this we first have to observe how the subject arises out of something that is not the subject. For the surrealists, the discovery of the genesis of the subject was not only a result of paying attention to certain poets and writers, but also the import of Freud's scientific psychology. Freud's theory of the unconscious was understood as showing how subjectivity, reason and logic float on an ocean of asubjectivity, unreason and illogic, and how the psyche is driven by certain irresistible energetic flows. Similarly, some forms of what may be called postphenomenological philosophy have arrived at asubjective views of the mind that attempt to hear the subject and object as relatively late and parasitic effects of a more primordial asubjective and aobjective process. In these kind of broadly energetic-Freudian or asubjectivistic views, the subject is seen as a control structure repressing and covering-up other possible elements of experience. Moreover, the subject is felt as a structure of servile work, of serving some universal structural principles or constraints of subjectivity. To work in this sense means to satisfy the demands of some principles or categories in a productive, useful and computable manner. In this sense work and consumption are not direct opposites but rather the expression of the same subjectivistic urge for utility and identity. Thus working (and consuming) and the metaphysical constitution of the subject are intimately tied in servility, and find their ametaphysical release in the freedom of useless waste or expenditure. Subjectual servitude seals the unholy trinity of usefulness, survival and "good", so that asubjective thinking has to deny that the subject with its servitude is co-terminous with survival or life. In philosophy, Foucault's work has been outstanding in its attempt to show how these constraints of subjectivity are created. For the surrealists, this creation was self-evident and they concentrated in identifying and destroying the link these constraints have to the ever expanding and all-eating petit-bourgeoisie life form of the West. The subject as a metaphysical structure is universal and can not but serve the constraints of its own structure to remain a subject. Anything asubjective is either foreign or threatening from the viewpoint of the subject; this, in general, is the root for the horror and laughter evoked by the unconscious or surrealist art.

Of course, Freud himself might not have taken as revolutionary steps as some of his followers on the account of his theories. Freud, after all, as a psychotherapist was explicitly taking the side of love and work, of sanity and order, which quite easily - but not necessarily - tips the balance towards subjectual notions. In fact, they lead to subjectual notions only if the unholy trinity of servitude is accepted. In Freud there is also a characteristic insistence on the universality of the structures (ego, id, symbolic structures in dreams, etc.) that are postulated in the theory. This universality may work directly in the hands of metaphysics and humanism by giving a lively and sophisticated account of what all human subjects are. The surrealist genius-cult invented and upheld by Dali paid more or less ironical heed to this kind of scientific-mythical humanism. Thus, far from being the enemies of metaphysics of subjectivity, Freudian and modernist artistic schools of thought might enforce the belief in universal subjectual structures and the universal acceptance of certain values that go with these structures (This kind of falling into metaphysics and servility was, incidentally, what Breton suggested had happened to Dali, and both Bataille and Dali suggested had happened to Breton; for one side of the issue see Bataille 1994). All of this does not mean that all surrealism was necessarily ineffectual in its criticism and that it in the end played in the hands of the bourgeoisie metaphysics. There is a crucial difference, after all, between the Freudian undermining of reason and the surrealistic active destruction of reason. In this connection it might be good to mention that the metaphysics of subjectivity finds its most modern counterpart in objectivist science (as Freud's idea of "scientific psychology" already illustrates.) In objectivist science humans are treated as neural objects, and the alleged universality is found not in any "inner" subjectivity, but rather in the "outer" or "real" object. This "metaphysics of objectivity" has all the characteristics of metaphysics of subjectivity, even in a more sinister manner, as neuroscience undermines the possibility of freedom by explaining the subject away as a more or less mechanical object. It is easy to see why this kind of undermining of reason and subjectivity does not pave the way for asubjective or surrealistic notions, but rather for ultra-objectivistic and servile forms of life.

The unbalance in favour of reason, i.e., the idea that health equals reason, and against asubjective and irrational forms of experience can be discerned from the Freudian idea of "dreamwork"[i] Through dreamwork dreams are seen as an attempt to work through the residual or left-over meanings of waking life encounters with subject-independent reality. The dream gives the left-over meanings new symbolic guises that help the dreamer to attain given goals of his/her particular psychodynamic situation. In this sense the manifest dream is a second-hand version of the primary goals set in waking consciousness, even if the dream might have ways of its own - subjective ways - in accessing these goals. So despite its "wildness", ”smoothness” and "idiosyncrasy" the dream can be seen as an impoverished form of waking life meanings mutated by the symbolic transformations of the dreamwork. (This is, of course, a caricature. But a glance at the literature of consciousness studies and studies of dreams confirms the ubiquity of this realistic-metaphysical view; for an overwiev see Globus 1987.)

The realistic interpretation implies that the dream "works", i.e., that it is servile to the subjectual conflicts, meanings and goals of waking life. The dream works in the purpose of benefiting the primary waking consciousness, its task is implicated in the tasks of the waking consciousness and in the relation that the waking consciousness has to the consciousness-independent world. Secondly, the dream works through symbolic transformations of meanings. All of this happens under the hold of the psychodynamical harmony-constraint of the subject (or a "objective" neural mechanism, or whatever). In order for the interpretation of the dream to help the subject, the symbolic language of the dream has to be re-transformed so that its meaning is disclosed to the conscious part of the subject. In this way the dream may submit a message from one part of the experiencing self to another part. The partition itself, however, does not radically undermine the fundamental unity or centrality of the wakeful conscious subject, because the dreamwork can be used to serve its purposes (such as unity and centrality), at least under careful psychoanalytical interpretation.

These two characteristics of dreams, namely that they work and that they are symbolic (contain symbols or symbolise waking-life meanings), are the ones that an asubjective story of the mind or consciousness has to view with caution. The connection between dream and work is by no means innocent or accidental. The connecting link is precisely a metaphysical notion of a permanent subject or self. Work is a means of production, of producing as stable and secure conditions for the permanence of the self as possible (or for the biological-objective survival of the brain, as modern theories would have it). Now, if dreams along with the unconscious are seen as threats to the self-identical and permanent identity of the self and its rational rule, then what better way to domesticate the dream than to put it to work?

The idea that the dream works may take different forms in current theoretical pictures of the mind. One form is the thought that dreams are the idlings of a computational system when it is deprived of input. The system works, and as it has nothing (nothing sensory, that is) to chew on, it produces fantastic and irrelevant side-effects. Here dreamwork is about the same as the afterglow of a heated owen. Another view holds that the noise produced in the idling computation system during dreams is somehow healthy for the system. Here the dream "works" by increasing the vitality and eventually survival ability of the organism as an object - and the subject. The latter idea has a myriad variations, of which the Freudian caricature presented above is one. What is common to these views is the downgrading of the dream. In the extreme this is seen in the view that the dream is nothing but an uninteresting epiphenomenon of the idle running of the representational system or that the dream is a training-venue where past or future scenes may be exercised (while the idling or training may serve some, e.g., survivalistic purpose, the dream content as such does not). The situation is not much better in the views that along the Freudian ones see the dream as a secondary help-maiden of the conscious waking experience serving the tasks that waking consciousness has set for itself, the main one being establishing a ”healthy relationship” to the outside world.

This downgrading view of the dream can be challenged in at least two different ways. First, we may introduce reasons for believing that the distinction between dream and waking is not that sharp, after all. If the distinction can not be maintained, the non-neutral attitude taken towards the dream in these metaphysical-humanistic views is seen in a new perspective: it is a device of socio-economic control. Secondly we can start from an account of human experience that does not favour the underlying humanistic subject-object distinction and which in this manner promises a genuine (primary) existence for the dream.

Scepticism with regard to the realist-metaphysical distinction

As is well known from the methodological scepticism of Descartes, the dream may be so convincing that telling it apart form the waking consciousness is extremely hard if not impossible. Several criteria for making out the distinction have been proposed. Many of the criteria typically for realist-metaphysical arguments move in a circular manner by already presupposing a subject-independent reality in terms of which waking contact with that world is distinguished from the supposedly mind-dependent dream. The idea in all these distinctions is that there is some reliable part in waking consciousness - such as sensation or reflection - that can be trusted while telling waking apart from dreaming. Freud's idea of unconscious motives behind conscious thoughts of course puts the reliability of all such reliabilities into question (compare also the famous experiments on unconscious initiative of action in Libet 1985 and the research on false memories). So the deconstruction of the dream/waking-duality can proceed also from discrediting any putative beyond-doubt reliable part of the conscious subject. What could such reliability be, if its is not the metaphysical one already indicated by Descartes in terms of an ego or subject (or the more contemporary one in terms of a scientific object)?

One naive criteria for the distinction is that in waking we are in contact with outside world through the senses whereas in the dream we encounter a world which is our own making. This is a typically circular criterion. We presuppose the subject and the object, the mind and the world, and presuppose a link of sensation between them. It helps, of course, with regard to subjectivistic criteria: but what about asubjective experience, in which there is no such distinction? Furthermore, the criterion of sensation is not able to make a clear-cut distinction, only a gradual transition from acute sensation to less acute. The same goes for reflection, or the idea that in waking we can reflect on our mental states. Reflection also leaks from both ends: weak and lazy reflection as well as extremely intensive reflection are inseparable from dreaming. Same goes for "objective" criteria of neuroscience: in the absence of metaphysics (the subject-object distinction) they do not suggest a clear distinction between the "state" or "function" of waking and dreaming (see Llinas and Paré, 1991). These criteria are, then, matters of degree, of gradually creating the distinction between subject and object, mind and world, dream and waking. They are not criteria of absolute boundaries, which was what the surrealists were suspecting from the start. It is not the case, that dream and waking consciousness are sharply separate modes of contact with the world. They are rather different poles of a inseparable and anti-realist experience, out of which ”the world” as well as ”the subject” are under some conditions thematised, whether that be in ”dream” or in ”waking”. (Incidentally, it might even be the case that the subjectivity of the subject is best experienced and thematised in dreams, namely in so-called lucid dreams.)

There is furthermore a general consideration for doubting all of these criteria. It can be claimed that it is not the case that as human beings we encounter a ready-made outside world with objects. Rather, we are constructors of that world, of how it appears to us. This antirealist line of thinking is exhibited for instance in the phenomenological-existential tradition, where the basic starting point is the way in which human being existentially opens up the world in which we live, so that the constitution of the world is made up by the way in which humans exist. In this view, the dream can be seen as a primordial way of existing, of world-building, in the absence of the immediate intersubjective field (see Foucault 1993). If we along this phenomenological idea think that both the waking world as well as the dreaming world are existential ways of being, then the possibility for a first-hand account of the dream as experience opens up itself. We can dispense with the dualistic assumption that dreams are something that happen to us (as objects of neuroscience), or something that we as subjects see. It is rather the case that we are our dreams, that our dreams are us, which implicates a dissolution of the subject-object distinction.

Asubjectivity (and aobjectivity)

The term asubjective is intended to describe forms of experience in which a distinction between the subject and objects does not exist. If we strongly believe in the metaphysical-realist view of the human mind, then it might seem impossible that there are forms of experience which are not ”subjective” experience in either of the senses of the word. Actually, this might be a genuine experiental possibility: it may be possible that in some cases the experiental centre called the subject is so well defined and so well in control that indeed any other form of experience is strictly impossible or at least disregarded as something less than experience. The experience of the subject is purified in the sense that anything not subjectually controlled is removed away, sterilised, homogenised. If this is the case, then the possibility of asubjective experience is based on the (temporary) dissolution of the subjectual borders and control-mechanisms and becomes quite an extreme experience: anxiety, panic, nearness of death. In some cases where the subject is less defined and more diffuse it is possible to imagine less extreme and less subject-threatening forms of asubjective experience, e.g., in the case of quite young or very old people, in experiences of art, love, in intense reflection, meditation or physical exercise, in hunting, and so on. These experiences are characterised not only by the absence of a clear subject-object distinction but also by their uselessness and irrationality.

Servitude to the utilitarian principles of reason and the subject is something that is under threat in asubjective modes of experience. Whereas the subject is characterised by useful servitude - meaning production in the service of reason (=usefulness=survival) -, asubjective modes develop a form of useless waste or expenditure. The uselessness with regard to reason (though a ‘rational’ justification might after the fact be invented in order to domesticate these experiences) can be seen from such modes of conscious experience as religion, war, the enrapture in art or nature, a practice of eroticism, or, indeed, dreaming. These serve no rational utility, but rather waste or expend the subjectual self in order to give way to asubjectivistic experience. The possibility of work is based on the allocation of temporal and spatial resources to principled and reasonable aims that serve the calculative interests of the subject. These interest are non-neutral in the sense that they strongly favour the metaphysical tendency to attain the One and the Same through the eternal preservation of the Subject. The expenditure in asubjective experiences is based on the irrational, unproductive and irreversible (and thus unique) waste of the resources. The waste is typically intensified by the fact that in asubjective experience - as in dreams - temporality and spatiality assume forms that are different compared to the realistically accepted ones.

This notion of expenditure can be given an energetic-economical-mythical interpretation along the lines of the surrealist thinker Georges Bataille (see, e.g., Bataille 1994). Life on earth is based on the useless expenditure of energy that the sun makes of itself. Life-forms are temporary basins of energy, pools dammed out of the ever entropifying energy-flow. Now the subject is one such pool-and-dam, in fact one that tries to make the dam not only certain and everlasting, but also through useful work to ever enlarge the pool and not to waste any of it. In these subjectual terms also the outside world becomes to be seen as a standing reserve or resource well (Heidegger’s Bestand) for the needs of useful work or technology. In precisely this sense the subject is co-terminous with one understanding of the Judaeo-Christian God, who promises eternal life that will not go to waste if it is used in the service of Him. This attempt at eternal Oneness and Sameness also produces the need for clear-cut distinctions such as life-death, subject-object, dream-waking. What goes wrong with this damming-work of the subject is the idea that life and utility are completely moved to the side of calculation and certainty. This is also the reason why asubjective forms of experience are virtually forced near death and sickness. The subject becomes the machine. It is only through asubjective experience that does not allow a distinction between the subject and the object, that we are parts of the continuity of the energy-flow. In this sense asubjective experience is continuos with the experience of other centres of experience, whereas the subject is always closed inside the walls of its dams and lives in a state of constant nostalgia and yearning.

In the asubjective experience the distinction between dream and waking is as secondary and artificial as that between the subject and object (Foucault writes, for instance, that in dreaming the subject of the dream is the whole dream, 1993, p.59). If we allow for the genuinely unpredictable asubjectivistic experience, then certainty and control are not anymore synonymous with life and health. This also means that not only those functions that serve the calculative rationality of the subject are able to promote survival or enrich life, but also those functions that the subject would term ”death” or ”sickness” have their ineliminable role in engendering pleasure; if not else then at least through the destruction of the subject that is a necessary condition for the possibility of asubjective experience. Similarly, the dream is a genuine form of experience that does not stand in need for any ”external” support or role in a working scheme of the waking consciousness. The ”health” promised through the dream is not one of hygienic or explanatory relief for the subject, but an existential mode of being in itself. The existential world engendered in the dream is not a distorted or fanciful copy of the ”real” world, but rather a sovereign experiental actuality in itself. The dream is not a second hand or auxiliary tool of calculative survival, it is rather a door out of calculative survival. Moreover, if the subject-object distinction is dissoluted, then the dream can not work as a via regia to any knowledge about the subject or its psychological condition.

In sum, then, if we set out from an anti-realist and asubjective view of experience, then there is no need to downgrade dream as a second-hand mode of experience. The second-handness emerges only from the subjectivist-metaphysical viewpoint. There is a double-strategy involved in the subjectivistic idea of dream-work. From the point of view of the subject, any form and amount of asubjective experience is threatening. The subject is a supposedly universal structure of control and prediction, of calculation and utility, and thus the genuine unpredictability and holism of asubjective experience is threatening to the subject. Dreams, in particular, are forms of experience where many of the subjectual strategies are undermined. In dreams we may experience the loss of subjectivity and the connected holism of asubjective experience in a convincing and lasting way. In view of this threat, the subject employs the double strategy. First, the dream is termed second-hand, deprived of its originality, so that its role in the general economy of the subject may be belittled and eventually covered-up or forgotten. Second, the dream is harnessed by a role in the work of the subject, a role of servitude, of enslavement to the subjectual waking consciousness. This double-strategy serves to domesticate the impact that dreams have on the purified, reasonable and useful waking consciousness. There is maybe no good reason to attribute this domesticative attempt to the historical figure "Freud", for his theory is, after all, open to and suggestive of an energetic interpretation. In contrast, the domestication attempt is glaringly evident in the scientific-objective accounts on dreams.

From the asubjective and antirealist perspective, then, it is not the case that dreams are a derivative second-hand way of symbolically working through the meanings and experiences of the waking consciousness. If in dreams there is seen the possibility of sovereign asubjective experience, then it seems that rather the opposite is the case. The impoverished and purified waking consciousness of the identity-preserving subject (dealing with objects) is a derivative second-hand way of servile toiling that receives most of its energy and intensity out of the asubjective dream experience. We must add the words ”possibility of” in front of the expression ”sovereign asubjective experience”, because if there is no clear-cut boundary between dream and waking, then there is no reason why the subject could not in principle corrupt dream experience into a subjective work-force, too. Similarly, if there is no absolute boundary, then there is no a priori reason why waking life could not be saturated by asubjective experience. However, this saturation is harder to achieve, because the notion of self-identical consciousness as technology-in-us supports and reproduces a metaphysical understanding of experience. Only through a metaphysical understanding can dreaming be seen as the subject fulfilling its dreams (this wish-fulfilling dreaming is the case for which Foucault reserves the word ”imagination”, to be distinguished from the existential mode of ”dreaming”, see Foucault 1993). The corruption of dreaming into imagination is indeed possible, but there are reasons for doubting that the corruption will be total, the main reason being that dreams are wonderfully resistant to the servitude assigned to them. The nature of dreams like the nature of memories is to betray the subject. Both are based on a form of selective presence, presenting something on the cost of absenting or withdrawing something else. From an ultra-rational subjective perspective this kind of selective truth or trace is identical with lies.

So we can in conclusion suspect that the idea of dreamwork is doubly wrong. First, the dream does not necessarily work, but does just the opposite, namely it wastes and expends uselessly. Second, the dream is not a symbolic and subjective second hand version of the world of the waking subject, but rather asubjective dreaming as experience is the energetic ground out of which the subject as well as the objective world are built up in a process of purification and enslavement. It is said that if blindness develops late in life, one still dreams with vivid visual imagery, but returns to blindness while awake (Llinas and Paré, 1991, p.525). Analogously, it may be the case that if it is too late for asubjective dream experience, then the idea of dreamwork comes in handy as a waking-life return to blindness.

Notes