Abstract

This paper presents the place of dreaming in Merleau-Ponty’s thought. It elicits the view of dreaming developed in three seminal texts:Phenomenology of Perception, the passivity fragment from the Themes from the Lectures at the College de France, and The Visible and the Invisible. In each of these texts, Merleau-Ponty releases dreaming from the secondary status conventionally granted to it in relation to waking perception, and maintains, instead, the integrity of the phenomenon as an authentic mode of experience. At the same time, he insists upon the interrelatedness of dreaming and waking by positing for both the lived body as a common ground that precludes dichotomization. Merleau-Ponty’s elevation of the imaginary in general, and dreaming in particular, is especially relevant to contemporary psychology in its quest for theoretical foundations that will accommodate the full spectrum of psychological phenomena.