THE PROBLEMATIC OF DREAM INTERPRETATION IN THE DISCONTINUITY OF HISTORY

Abstract

Since ancient times, there have been several records of the practice of interpreting
dreams. In the Holy Bible, we come across the dreams of Jacob and Joseph. At the beginning of the
Christian Era, we find a manual that was frequently used throughout the history of Western thought. In
fact, On the Interpretation of Dreams, by Artemidorus, reappears in the Renaissance – cited by Rabelais,
for example –, in Freud's classic work – The Interpretation of Dreams – and in Foucault's History of
Sexuality 3. In this sense, this article revisits the issue of dreams to understand the way in which
Archeogenealogy uses Artemidorus' text to interpret socio-historical aspects surrounding sexuality in
the transition from the pre-Christian to the Christian Era. Indeed, if, in the use of pleasures, we infer the
idea of aphrodisia as a set of practices articulated in the form of the desire-act-pleasure continuity, in
self-care, Foucault shows how they were already prepared, in the second century AD, the bases for the
experience of the flesh, that is, the Christian conception of sexuality.