Toward an Intellectual History of Dreams and Dreaming

This paper asks: As dreams have long been a resource in human beings’ meaning making, how should they figure into the way intellectual historians narrate history? What should an intellectual history of dreams and dreaming look like?  What theoretical and methodological work should it do?  This paper begins to answer these questions by examining how 20^th-century thinkers sought to make a space for dreams and dreaming in modern intellectual life.  Rather than see dreams as caught in misty webs of obfuscation  and otherworldliness, or simply as confessions of singular historical figures’ innermost psyches, a variety of 20^th-century transatlantic psychologists, anthropologists, and mythologists argued that dreams are deeply social and historical, and therefore can serve as “texts,” which professional social scientists and humanists can utilize.  This paper will touch on some of the main themes in mid- to late-20^th century transatlantic “dream studies,” approaching them as a kind of Jamesian romantic science which sought to meld “tender-minded” and “tough-minded” approaches to truth and evidence.  In addition, it will explore authors’ modes of legitimizing dreams as moral resources and dreaming itself as a crucial intellectual practice, while also inquiring how historians today can incorporate dreams and dreaming in historical scholarship.