The Case of the Dream Maker: Perec, Pontalis, and Dream Writing

This article examines Georges Perec's La Boutique obscure as a literary experiment in dream writing, contrasting it with French Freudian psychoanalysis, particularly the work of J.-B. Pontalis, Perec's analyst. Pontalis described a patient type called the "dream maker" that provoked counter-transference and required new therapeutic methods, and he and literary critics doubted the authenticity of Perec's dream journal. The article argues that Perec drew on non-psychoanalytic traditions like dream journals and dream sociology, undercutting symbolic readings. It focuses on the journal's attempt to experience and write about concentration camp dreams, where lucid dreaming becomes a ludic space for confronting unexperiencable historical horrors.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article considers Georges Perec’s La Boutique obscure as a literary experiment in dream writing, by putting it in dialogue with French Freudianism, notably the clinical papers of J.-B. Pontalis, Perec’s long-time psychoanalyst. Pontalis describes a patient type, the "dream maker,” who provokes an extreme case of counter-transference and requires new methods in dream therapy. Pontalis, like many of Perec’s literary critics, was suspicious of the authenticity of Perec's dream journal and denied it both therapeutic and literary status. This article reinserts La Boutique obscure into Perec’s literary program. Through a discussion of the text's formal attributes and its sociological context of production, the article demonstrates that Perec drew on non-psychoanalytic traditions of dreams, like dream journals and dream sociology, and continuously undercut any symbolic readings of his text. Most importantly, the article investigates the journal’s most fraught endeavor: experiencing and writing the concentration camp in dreams. Lucid dreaming becomes a ludic space for experiencing the unexperiencable horrors of history.