Dream Processes, Sound, and Cognition

Sigmund Freud’s seminal book Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901/1990) was a great step in normalizing apparently abnormal behaviour. This close connection between the unconscious and normality is brought to a higher level by Lacan, who explicitly forced the Saussurian thesis of the arbitrary sign in his understanding of the unconscious. In addition, Lacan’s contact with Roman Jakobson broadened the understanding of the role of language as a way of understanding connections between the unconscious, thinking, and abnormal, as well as normal, uses of language. This chapter aims to study to what extent a psychoanalytic understanding of dreaming can explain the processes that govern normal cognition. This is done by analysing an anonymous painting from a psychoanalytic perspective. The painting depicts a dream about a concert with a symphony orchestra. Thus, the painting introduces a discussion about the role of sound in dreams and cognition, which is compared with Lacan’s emphasis on the signifier and Jakobson’s phonological analyses but also Vygotsky’s radical distinction between thinking and speech. The chapter concludes that the aspect of sound seems to be a fundamental factor in dream processes as well as in thinking and our everyday use of language.