Somnio, ergo sum


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Somnio, ergo sum

Donald Challenger

Medieval dreaming

Steven Kruger observes in Dreaming in the Middle Ages (11) that the reception and interpretation of dreams in the late medieval period tended to rest on themes of what (the presciently named) Thomas of Froidmont called deceptorium and vanum -- deception and vanity, or what we would term, after Freud, delusion and wish fulfillment -- but that they could occasionally be vehicles for divine revelation. Kruger emphasizes the evolving nature of dream interpretation during the Middle Ages, reflecting contemporary scholarship that tends to find cultural distinctions and gradations across the centuries rather than a static, monolithic medieval "character." But there is also substantial evidence in his book that the European understanding of dreams in the centuries preceding the seventeenth does not undergo radical transformation. Rather, it triangulates a fairly stable field of interpretation in place since Aristotle: that dreams may be rooted in the physiology, the personality, and the divine/demonic.

"All dreams of the same night belong, in respect of their content, to the same whole; their division into several parts, their grouping and number, are all full of meaning and may be regarded as pieces of information about the latent dream-thoughts. In the interpretation of dreams consisting of several main sections, or of dreams belonging to the same night, we must not overlook the possibility that these different and successive dreams mean the same thing, expressing the same impulses in different material. That one of these homologous dreams which comes first in time is usually the most distorted and most bashful, while the next dream is bolder and more distinct."

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams