Giorgia Morgese

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MORGESE, GIORGIA

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Book Review: Clés des songes et sciences des rêves. De l'Antiquité à Freud

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Book Review: Clés des songes et sciences des rêves. De l'Antiquité à Freud

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BOOK REVIEW
published: 15 August 2016
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01172
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 August 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1172
Edited by:
Jennifer Michelle Windt,
Monash University, Australia
Reviewed by:
Alessio Bucci,
Formerly affiliated with University of
Edinburgh, UK
*Correspondence:
Giorgia Morgese
giorgia.morgese@uniroma1.it
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Theoretical and Philosophical
Psychology,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 23 June 2016
Accepted: 25 July 2016
Published: 15 August 2016
Citation:
Morgese G (2016) Book Review: Clés
des songes et sciences des rêves. De
l’Antiquité à Freud.
Front. Psychol. 7:1172.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01172
Book Review: Clés des songes et
sciences des rêves. De l’Antiquité à
Freud
Giorgia Morgese*
Department of Dynamic and Clinical Psychology, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
Keywords: Clés des songes, sciences des rêves, oneirocritica, interpretation of dream
A book review on
Clés des songes et sciences des rêves. De l’Antiquité à Freud
Edited by Jacqueline Carroy and Juliette Lancel, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2016
Clés des songes et sciences des rêves edited by Jacqueline Carroy and Juliette Lancel, explores the art
of interpreting dreams from Ancient times to Freud.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the western tradition of studying oneirocriticism: the book of
interpretation of dreams, clés des songes.
The authors have chosen to use the “longue durée” approach in their study of the history
of dream interpretation (“longue durée” is an expression used by the French Annales School of
historical writing to designate their approach to the study of history, which gives priority to long-
term historical structures over events). This approach involves analyzing human dreams from
case studies according to the intellectual, social, and historical contexts. Carroy and Lancel follow
the same approach used by Pick and Roper’s (2004) book, but with a focus on what they called
“genre littéraire d’écrit et de pratique bien particulier” (a very particular kind of literary writing
and practice) in Western history. So the book is probably one of the finest books dedicated to the
history of clés des songes putting emphasis on German and French context.
The book starts with a focus on how the first treatise devoted to oneirocritica, written by
Artemidorus, led to an important anachronistic paradox: the oneirocritica differentiates itself from
false divination, as well as from magical or religious approaches. In fact, during Ancient times,
dreams were regarded as messages from the gods to men, giving them a supernatural significance.
Vande Kemp (1981) refers to this as the transpersonal period. On the contrary Artemidorus, as
Julien du Bouchet shows in the second chapter, did not particularly emphasize the role of the gods
in dreams, and appears as a pragmatic practitioner to illustrate tools and skills for interpreting
dreams. According to the authors, this approach led to the survival and spread of clés des songes
from Ancient times up to now.
This book, with the contributions of expert researchers in this field, promotes the clés des songes
as a social and historical concept. In the French context, the words “songe” and “rêve” became
synonymous between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the Eighteenth century,
scholars used the word “rêve” to mean an internal physiological or psychological phenomena. It
was only after the nineteenth century that the clés des songes was taken into account, thanks to the
French translations of many books on the topic. The history of “longue durée” proposed in this
book, underlines how the historical trajectory is far from linear.
In the introduction, the authors highlight the work of Aristotle as the two different
representative points of view of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: dreams as a natural
phenomena and dreams as a sign or as having premonitory meaning. However, Freud changed
this perspective with the introduction of psychoanalysis.
Morgese Book Review: Clés des songes
In regards to interpreting dreams as signs or as having
premonitory meaning, Julien du Bouchet introduces
Artemidorus of Daldi, who wrote the Oneirocritica, the
first treatise about cle de songes written in the second century
AD. The title of this treatise literally means the interpretation of
dreams.
The following chapters deal with clés des songes in the
Byzantine context and during the Middle Ages. Andrei Timotin
highlights the aim of the Byzantine oneirocritica: to christianize
the pagan discipline illustrated in Artemidorus’ treatise (third
chapter). The Byzantine oneirocritica did not deal with
the method of interpretation, but rather, it dealt with the
hermeneutic procedures: the use of the analogy, the antinomy,
the word pun, the use of writing and deductive reasoning.
Thanks to Jean-Claude Schmitt, we also know the role of clés
des songes during theMiddle Ages, the period that introduced the
art of dream interpretation into Europe (fourth chapter). During
the Middle Ages, this technique was also spread in the popular
culture of modern Europe linked to diffusion of horoscopes.
In the fifth and sixth chapters, the authors, Claire Gantet
and Juliette Lancel, take into account the clés des songes in the
German and French contexts. The first German translation of
Artemidorus’ treatise was published in 1540 by the apothecary
Hermann Ryff (1500–1548). From 1551, Martin Luther’s
followers replied with more than 20 translations, but from 1814,
the clés des songes changed its perspective, promoting a new
road in dream interpretations, taking into account the role of
the soul.
Juliette Lancel introduces how the clés des songes arrived in
France. The Muslim oneiromancy was known in French thanks
to physician Pierre Vattier’s translation in 1664. Lancel highlights
the fact that Vattier is a physician and tries to find the reasons
why one physician would have translated an Arabic clé de songes.
His work introduces the problem of the opposition of biblical
authority.
On the other hand, Vincent Barras provides an overview of
the pioneers of the “science du rêve” who regarded dreams as
a natural phenomena and developed diverse theories ranging
from the physiological to the semiological. Thanks to these
dream theories, the process of the secularization of dreams
began in the Western tradition (Carroy et al., 2006; Carroy,
2012). The physiological perspective in the study of dreams is
also linked to the role of the Church against the spread of cle
de songes, which Guillaume Garnier underlines in the seventh
chapter. In 1709, during the Enlightenment, the Roman Church
condemned the clés des songes. The struggle against the cle de
songes gave a new perspective: the importance of the physiology
of dreams associated with the medicine of sleep. According to
this perspective pastor Samuel Formey and abbot Jérome Richard
proposed that dreaming is a natural phenomena and linked
dreaming to sleep phenomena. During this time, the theory of
fiber tension for understanding sleep phenomena was spread and
thanks to this perspective Formey and Richard were able to put
forward their proposal to clés des songes. According to this theory
the imagination can not have a role in predicting the future but
it can be considered only in a physiological way. Nevertheless, it
seems important to analyze the other contexts, such as the Italian
context, in order to better explore the important connection
between the role of the Church and the role of the clés des songes.
Therefore, more studies are needed.
This approach was also being introduced in France during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as Carroy shows. In fact, in
the ninth chapter, Carroy mentions the main French scholars
who tried to overcome the supernatural conception of dreams.
This is what Pigman (2002) and Lombardo and Foschi (2008)
called the “dark forest”: the huge number of scientific studies of
dreams that existed before Freud but that have been neglected in
contemporary literature (see Foschi et al., 2015).
Meanwhile, the clairvoyance resume the cle de songes linked
with astrology, as Nicole Edelman described in the eighth
chapter. Madame de Thèbes [Anne-Victorine Savigny (1844–
1916)], a well-known clairvoyant, published L’énigme du rêve,
translated as explication de songes, in 1908.
The final chapter was written by Andreas Mayer, addressing
Freud. The literary translation of Traumdeutung seems refer to
clés de songes. Freud considered Artemidorus to be the precursor
of the psychoanalytic theory: according to the author the reason
for this statement is linked to the origin of the psychoanalytic
method that seems to swing between a new therapeutic method
of interpretation and a hermeneutic practice derived from magic
and superstition. This issue identifies the question of whether or
not Freud’s theory should be defined as scientific. Even if Freud
quoted Artemidorus many times in his work, and considered
his Traumdeutung as a return to the past, in contrast to those
who, during this same period, used the statistical method to study
dreams, he refused the symbolic reading of dreams in favor of the
psychoanalytic method.
The complex issue of the relationship between “rêves” as a
scientific object and “songes” as an object for interpretation must
be studied in depth.
This book begins by analyzing this epistemological question,
focusing on the historical course of the development of
“songe.” The authors, in showing how the many translations
of Artemidorus’ treatise and the Byzantine and Muslim cle
de songes differ across several periods and in several contexts
according to socio-cultural change, propose the hypothesis of
the continuity between oneirocriticism and clés des songes as
interpretive practices that have persisted from Ancient time to
the present. The authors follow the chronological presentation
of the development of the cle de songes exploring the medical,
prophetic, esoteric, religious, and ludic role of this art. The idea
that some dreams can be signs and causes of the future has
indeed moved to the border of legitimate science and clés des
songes has been rejected in the field of popular superstitions.
But oneirocriticism was simultaneously, partially rehabilitated by
Freud, who wanted to develop a new practice and new knowledge
which would make the meaning of dreams contingent on the past
experiences of the dreamer, not on the future. The investigation
of this particular corpus, which has never been done for longue
durée, highlights differences and innovations through the ages,
and also the geographical areas and cultures.
Through historicizing clés des songes from Ancient times
to present, with the synergy between specialists from different
periods, we could better understand the practices and the beliefs
of different positions that have affected and still affect dreams,
from Artemidorus to Freud.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 August 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1172
Morgese Book Review: Clés des songes
For that reason the book Clés des songes et sciences des rêves
has the merit of having reevaluated the art of clés de songes and
its connection to scientific knowledge about dreams and their
interpretation.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and
approved it for publication.
REFERENCES
Carroy, J. (2012). Nuits Savantes [Learned Night: A History of Dreams]. Paris:
EHESS.
Carroy, J., Ohayon, A., and Plas, R. (2006). Histoire de la Psychologie en France
[History of Psychology in France]. Paris: La Découverte.
Foschi, R., Lombardo, G. P., and Morgese, G. (2015). Sante De Sanctis
(1862–1935), a forerunner of the 20th century psychophysiology of sleep and
dreaming. Sleep Med. 16, 197–201. doi: 10.1016/j.sleep.2014.08.015
Lombardo, G. P., and Foschi, R. (2008). Escape from the dark forest: the
experimentalist standpoint of the Sante De Sanctis dreaming psychology. Hist.
Hum. Sci. 21, 45–69. doi: 10.1177/0952695108093953
Pick, D., and Roper, L. (2004). Dreams and History. The Interpretation of Dreams
from Ancient Greece to Modern Psychoanalysis. London; New York, NY:
Brunner-Routledge.
Pigman, G. W. (2002). The dark forest of authors: Freud and nineteenth-century
dream theory. Psychoanal. Hist. 4, 141–165. doi: 10.3366/pah.2002.4.2.141
Vande Kemp, H. (1981). The dream in periodical literature: 1860–1910. J. Hist.
Behav. Sci. 17, 88–113.
Conflict of Interest Statement: The author declares that the research was
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Copyright © 2016 Morgese. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or
reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor
are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance
with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted
which does not comply with these terms.
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 3 August 2016 | Volume 7 | Article 1172


http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01172

Book Review: Clés des songes et sciences des rêves. De l'Antiquité à Freud

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