A History of Dreams and the Science of Dreams: Historiographical Questions

Abstract

This text is the introduction of a book entitled Nuits savantes. Une histoire des rêves (1800–1945) [Learned Nights. A History of Dreams (1800–1945)]. First, it proposes a reflection on the epistemology and historiography of dreams. Animals and men dream, but only human beings tell their dreams to other human beings and construct different dream cultures (religious, artistic, scientific etc.). This starting point enables us to propose a cultural, social and intellectual history reading dreams as narratives and highlighting their intertextuality. Scientists tested and illustrated their theories with the help of their own dreams, for during the nineteenth century the practice of scientific self-observation of dreams developed in a new way, giving rise to what I call “dreaming scientists.”

I would like to thank the Éditions de l’EHESS for authorising the publication of this text, which is a slightly modified and expanded extract from the introduction of my book, Nuits savantes. Une histoire des rêves (1800–1945), Paris, EHESS Éditions, 2012, and Ben Boswell for his acute translation of this text.

The table of contents from Nuits savantes includes the following chapters (translated from French): (1) “Physiology or Psychology. Record Our Dreams for Science?”; (2) “Dreams, Madness, and Somnambulism”; (3) “Alfred Maury’s Theatre of Contradictions”; (4) “The Magic Visions of Léon d’Hervey de Saint-Deny”; (5) “The Imaginative Dreams of Gabriel Tarde”; (6) “Joseph Delbœuf and Philippe Tissié. Between Dreams, Hypnotism, and Suggestion”; (7) “The Scientific Marvel of Dreams”; (8) “Interpretations of Dreams”; (9) “Observations, Literary Stories and Critical Narratives”; (10) “Unconscious, Subconscious, Sentiments. Sleep Without Dreams?”; (11) “Freud, Dreams, and French-Speaking Europe”; (12) “Two Dreamers During the Great War”; (13) “By Way of an Epilogue: Portrait of Maurice Halbwachs as an Erudite Dreamer.”