Content area
Full text
JEANNETTE MARIE MAGEO (ed.), Dreaming and the Self: New Perspectives on Subjectivity, Identity, and Emotion. New York: State University of New York Press, 2003, 234 p.
This fascinating collection of ten chapters by eight authors explores the varied roles of dreams and their interpretations in dialogical relationships between cultures and in negotiations of self-identities. Dream interpretation is viewed as contributing to, while drawing from, cultural parameters and social discourse and behaviour. In the introduction, Mageo outlines diverse theoretical approaches to the psychoanalytic and anthropological study of dreams and their interpretations, with examples drawn from chapters in this volume. Ethnographic research has been influenced by and critical of psychoanalytic theory, contributing to a more holistic recognition of the synthesis and instabilities of individual, social and cultural selves. Enculturation in many societies includes learning a "cultural thesaurus" that facilitates a naturalized "pre-interpretation" of dreams, as their phenomenological and pragmatic knowledge is essential.
In Chapter 2, Mageo discusses theoretical perspectives in more depth, specifically as applied in the following chapters. Her description of reflexivity between the "pre-objectivity" of dreams and the objectivity of social and cultural realities is informative. Although not her intention, emphasizing culture as framing practically all conscious social thought, including reflection and introspection, may create an impression of dreaming as a rather too singular means to imagine and realize alternate cultural patterns. The effect is to minimize the role of historically ever-present, cross-cultural influences and conscious manipulation of dream interpretation to...