The Dark Space of the Sleeping Body: The Syncretic Space of Dreams and the Unconscious

Abstract

Space is neither a concept nor an issue of direct interest within psychoanalysis itself.1 Nevertheless, this does not mean that we cannot make use of it as a means of analysis for studying the phenomena described by psychoanalysis to gain new insights into such descriptions. In this regard, we want to formulate the hypothesis that the primary spatial structure of subjectivity serves as a guiding thread for a deeper understanding of the relations between dream and unconscious, between the conscious and unconscious systems and between the unconscious and the body from a phenomenological perspective. Indeed, phenomenology provides interesting conceptual and methodological tools for approaching the question of spatiality from a subjective point of view, as well as for articulating such a matter with the study of dreams and the unconscious. Within phenomenological tradition, we find authors who have dealt with classical phenomena discussed by psychoanalysis; as it is, for instance, in the case of Sartre’s studies on dreams (Sartre, 1940) and Merleau-Ponty’s elaborations in his course at the Collège de France (1954–1955) on passivity, memory, dream and the unconscious (Merleau-Ponty, 1954–1955/2017). Within the framework of this course, Merleau-Ponty sets the symbolism of dreams and the unconscious against the background of his developments on the body and the problem of passive dimensions of subjective experience, which are presupposed by active and waking consciousness. And it is Merleau-Ponty whom we draw on in the present chapter in order to discuss the question of the primary spatial structure of subjectivity as a thread for analysing the inner relation between body, dream and the unconscious, and so to support the thesis that the structural relation between them is owed to their common spatial (de-differentiated and syncretic) organization.