Descartes’ dreams

Abstract

This article, published in French in 1989 in the proceedings of the “Psycho-analysis and Literature” colloquium, focuses on a series of three dreams that Descartes had on the night of November 10, 1619. Defying the Freudian warning, the author ven-tures into a possible analysis of these dream stories collected by Baillet, the first biogra-pher of Descartes, in an attempt to (re)construct the plot of unconscious identifications that would be expressed in the dream testimony of the philosopher. This work of in-estimable historical, philosophical and psychoanalytic value, unpublished until now in Spanish language, provides inescapable material to continue exploring the interweaving between dream elaboration, psychoanalysis and the dawn of modern Western philosophy.