The dimensions of the dream

In 1976, a French TV science program hosted by Igor Barrère and Étienne Lalou featured a long interview with Élie Humbert, on the subject of the dream. The article, based on this interview, outlines Humbert’s original ideas. Élie Humbert begins by noting the uniqueness of dream imagery: each individual has his own vocabulary. Moreover, the dream is an experience, rather than an object. As a result, any search for the meaning of a dream should involve its dynamic: the dream as a whole, rather than discrete elements. Interpretation also depends on timing; the moment when a dream occurs is “essential information.” Analysis must also consider the fact that a dream is a paradoxical mixture of memory and anticipation, past and future. Élie Humbert concludes that the dream stimulates our perplexity, because it establishes “a relationship with something it is impossible to name, the very movement of life.”