Dreaming Man in the Phenomenology of Madness by Michel Foucault
Ideas and Ideals March 25, 2022 O. Tsvetkova
This article analyzes how Michel Foucault, in his early works, transformed Ludwig Binswanger's Dasein-analysis to conceive of humans as fundamentally dreaming beings, with dreaming activity predominant over conscious, rational activity. Foucault argues that psychoanalysis inadequately interprets dream images; instead, a dream should be understood as a pure potentiality of being that constructs either normal or pathological worlds. The article traces the influence of Sigmund Freud and Binswanger on Foucault, noting that Freud first opened a dialogue with madness by recognizing dreams' meaning, while Binswanger developed Dasein-analysis to understand the pathological worlds of the mentally ill. The article contends that a positivist psychiatric approach is inadequate for understanding madness and emphasizes studying madness for a holistic understanding of human phenomena and socio-cultural processes where demarcating norm from pathology is difficult.