Western Rationality and the Angel of Dreams: Self, Psyche, Dreaming

Throughout recorded time people have been fascinated by dreams and their meanings. Tribal societies valorize knowledge obtained from dreams and respect possession as a channel for revelation. In contrast, implicit in Western intellectual thought is an image of the human as a non-social atom with a unitary and rational mind, which turns dreaming into an epiphenomenom or, for Freud, a neurosis in miniature. Integrating materials from anthropology, post-Freudian psychoanalysis, social evolution, and the social psychology of Mead, Cooley, James, and Sullivan, this book offers a view of the self and the psyche that provides meaning to the views of traditional peoples on dreams, possession, and the loss of self.