© The Author(s) 2018
Marlon XavierSubjectivity, the Unconscious and Consumerismhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96824-7_1

1. Introduction

Marlon Xavier1  
(1)
University of Caxias do Sul, Caxias do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
 
 
Marlon Xavier

This study is basically an exploration of what (night) dreams can express about aspects of contemporary consumerism and its social imaginary, being a subject in it, and how it conditions and institutes such being—from the perspective of C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology, in terms of theoretical framework and hermeneutics. To introduce it, let me first tell the reader a bit about my trajectory, how the object of study, the problem, and the research focus were defined, their cultural context, and how and why I propose to investigate the problem through dreams.

1.1 Defining the Object of Study: A Trajectory

1.1.1 First Moment: Capitalism, Consumerism, and the Subject

One of the main reasons for my wanting to study such themes, or research subjects, was simply the initial context of my doctorate at the UAB: I was part of a research group called coLABORando, coordinated by my doctoral supervisor, that studied contemporary capitalism and its colonization of institutions, practices, and subjectivity, in an international research called Kofarips.1 More specifically, the study centered on organizational capitalism2 and sought to research how it conditions work and work-subjectivity (subjetividad laboral) (Blanch & Stecher, 2009). Although I struggled to collaborate and propose and do research in accordance with such focuses, my interest was at once much more general (the theme of subjectivity) and specific (the unconscious aspects of subjectivity). A broad perspective emphasized in Kofarips eventually became central for this work: its proposition that capitalism’s logic of commodification and market ethos not merely affect and shape subjectivity, but represent a mode of production of “psychological life” in general (Blanch & Cantera, 2007b, p. 12).

In lieu of organizational capitalism, I gradually became more interested in defining consumerism as the general cultural context of this work, focusing on what Allott (2002) broadly called its psychic ethos, that is, its (socio)psychological dimensions. Consumerism represents the fundamental doctrine of contemporary capitalism: a cultural ideology founded on the idea and the imperative of consumption (in its common significance, but also and crucially in the sense of “using up entirely, disposing of, wasting, destroying”: consumere3). As such, it seems to define more accurately the profound sociocultural changes effected by capitalism today. Indeed, consumption has arguably become the main definer of our culture, the chief basis of the social order (Baudrillard, 1968/1996; Poster, 2001); rather than being merely an aspect or part of our lives, of our milieu, we all become creatures defined by the “age of consumption” (Baudrillard, 1970/1998, p. 191 ). As a socioeconomic system, consumerism seeks to produce and shape its subjects according to its logic and needs. If industrialism was rooted in production (and its subject was thus defined by work or ownership of means of production), then such emphasis has been displaced and shifted toward consumption and disposal, and, presently and most importantly, to the production of consumers.4 The result is that, in our global culture , being a consumer is what ultimately defines the subject (Baudrillard , 1970/1998; Bauman, 2007a; Dufour, 2008; Gottdiener, 1996).

1.1.2 Logic of Colonization and Total Capitalism

What the Kofarips project studied as the capitalist logic of colonization interested me more under two of its facets: the tendency of capitalism (and consumerism) to total colonization, and its colonization of subjectivity. As regards the first, Marx (1858/1978), in the Grundrisse, had already pointed that a totalizing imperative is characteristic of capitalism: the “development to its totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself” (p. 278; e.a.). For Lukács (1923/1971) and Castoriadis (1997), capitalism’s orientation toward progressive conquest of the whole of society, effected through its logic of reification and commodification, is one of its most conspicuous specificities. Contemporarily, the actualization of such orientation appears as the relentless colonization of social and psychological forces, of life realms, or reality itself, by the capitalist ethos,5 and the totalizing (or even totalitarian) aspects of capitalism have been pointed out by many scholars (e.g., Clarke, 2005; Fairclough & Graham, 2002; Gare, 2008; Graham, 2006; Jha, 2006; Lacher, 2005; Lebowitz, 2003; Leys, 2007; Liodakis, 2010; Radice, 2005).

Although such processes of colonization by capital obviously occur in multiple and complex forms and ways, under consumerism its colonizing force might be summarized (for the purposes of this work) under one principle or common denominator : commodification.6 This new colonial order whose fundamental drive is consumption strives to establish and impose the commodity as the only referent: the imperative is that everything must become a commodity, be represented, signified, and function as a commodity, and hence follow commodity logic and market logic, be governed by commodity exchange, have a certain market value, be consumed and disposed of, and so on. Such imperative is perhaps what best defines consumerism: “a culture of commodification” (Giroux & Pollock, 2011).

Therefore, the theoretical and political perspective on contemporary consumer capitalism (and its imaginary) that informs this work is that its telos is one of total colonization through total commodification: it represents a totalizing system. Such perspective can be summarized through the concept of total capitalism (Dufour, 2003, 2005, 2008; Leys, 2007). Dufour (2001) underlines two main aspects of this “last stage of capitalism” that are central for this work: a transformation of minds by the ideologies of neoliberalism and consumerism through education, mass media, and culture, and the collapse of transcendental values and the symbolic world. The transformation of minds means a psychological colonization of subjectivity, which, according to Dufour (2008), represents an anthropological mutation. Under consumerism, commodification is not restricted to labor power, as in capitalism; it aims at the total commodification of the whole being.7 According to Bauman (2007a, p. 12), that has become “The most prominent feature of the society of consumers (…) the transformation of consumers into commodities”—the mass production of commodity -subjects.

1.1.3 Second Moment: Consumerist Colonization, Subject, and the Unconscious

It follows logically that, for such production of commodity-subjects, it is fundamental to command organization, configuration, and functioning of the subject’s psyche.8 At this point, my focuses of research became centered on such psychological dimensions: on the one hand, the subject’s mind or mentality, her/his psychic subjectivity (which is social by definition) assailed by commodification; on the other hand, the social world in its psychic dimension, its psychic ethos: consumerism as a totalizing ideology or regime of signification, what I would later call a totalizing imaginary. More specifically, I wanted to study the processes of psychic colonization by capitalism-consumerism, and how the subject is formed, affected, conditioned by them—but with a focus on the irrational, imaginary, unconscious aspects of such processes. Such desire was connected to my struggle to find a space for dialog in academia, endeavoring to discuss such themes (capitalism, consumerism) in the context of social psychology from the perspective of analytical psychology and its concept of unconscious, and to what I envisaged as a valuable contribution to social psychology resulting from such discussion. Then the dilemma I was faced with was, how to study the unconscious aspects of subjectivity under (total) consumerism? Influenced by the Jungian tradition of seeing dreams as a precious way of assessing the unconscious, and because of my relatively long experience working with dreams both clinically and theoretically, and of the possible originality that a research on dreams and capitalism promised, the idea of using night dreams as empirical material eventually became central for this research proposal.

1.1.4 Third and Final Moment: Consumption Dreams, or sueños de consumo

The reader can probably imagine that such proposal was beset with difficulties. After many different attempts and turns (some of which I discuss briefly in the chapter on Method), my supervisor came up with a suggestion that would define the theme and outlook of this work: to study “consumption dreams”. The expression is very common in Portuguese (sonhos de consumo) and a bit less in Spanish (sueños de consumo), though fairly uncommon in English,9 and can be defined as the desires, fantasies , and ideals about goods and experiences—and, in fact, life in general—that have consumption as their underlying idea or motif. The concept follows what seems to be a general transformation of the meaning or in fact of the very idea of dream: from night dream (an autonomous, mysterious, irrational experience that happens to us and can be fantastic but also terrible) to dream as personal desire, image of the future, main goal, the “good life”, and so on.

Although I later decided not to take this concept or idea of “consumption dream” as an empirical object of study, it provided a form of looking at or approaching consumerism theoretically: through its relation with dream, fantasy, and imagination, it condenses the role of the imaginary in consumption and consumerism—that is, their psychic, and unconscious, irrational aspects. At the same time, it immediately reminded me of a night dream that I was told a long time ago, which would be a perfect prototype for the empirical research object of this thesis: I called it the prototype dream. I discuss briefly both themes in what follows.

1.1.5 Consumption as Imaginary: Consumption Dreams

Here “consumption as imaginary” is meant in a double sense: how consumption is based on imagination and imaginary things, and the crucial role that images play in it. The first sense refers to the notion that consumerism is founded on the consumption of the object10 not for its materiality or use-value, nor for what it is or does in any concrete sense (Tomlison, 1990), but for what it signifies. And it signifies through an image or representation: what is consumed is the commodity-image. That is connected to the fundamental role of image for postmodernity and mass consumer society (Baudrillard, 1983a, 1983b; Jameson, 1984a, 1984b, 1991), whose dynamis consists essentially in the endless production, proliferation, and consumption of a liquid “surfeit of signs and images” (Featherstone, 2007, p. xiv ). Such signs and images, as commodities , are endowed with socially perceived meanings, values, differences11: the irrational, immaterial, artificial fetish manufactured and attached to the commodity is what is most desired and dreamed about. Hence what is consumed is essentially the promise that a dream will be fulfilled by the commodity and/or the act of consuming. From this viewpoint, contemporary consumerism is largely sustained by the immaterial, the fictional, the imaginary: it consists fundamentally in “marketing dreams ” (Ewen, 1990), consumption dreams; it depends on the consumption of dreams.

1.1.6 Imaginary of Consumerism: ImCon

As delineated above, the concept of imaginary of consumerism represents this study’s theoretical outlook in relation to contemporary consumerism. To employ the concept of imaginary seemed the most adequate manner12 of looking (theoria) at such cultural context, for it allowed for focusing on consumerism’s imaginary and irrational aspects—its elements, forces, dynamics related to the unconscious and to image, symbol, and representation; to dream, fantasy, and imagination—all the aspects I yearned to study through the empirical object, night dreams (which are also imaginary and unconscious products). There were also some practical reasons for choosing such theoretical approach. As the themes of this work are considerably vast, a theory that was ample enough to cover them and their interrelationships was needed; and indeed, the concept of “imaginary” fulfills that need.13 Moreover, its tradition of studies finds many of its origins in Jung’s analytical psychology, and—especially in Michel Maffesoli and his school—includes a strong focus on key elements of consumer society (advertising, mass media, communication, etc.); in the work of Marc Augé (1999), it incorporates a focus on the colonization effected by imaginaries, and their relation with night dreams.

Henceforth the consumerist imaginary will be called ImCon, for short—and to give it an Orwellian touch. “ImCon” can be read as both imaginary “of consumption” and “of consumerism”, and that is on purpose: I think both meanings are important. “Consumerism” is broadly defined above as the social system and the ideology that define our present ethos. As for “consumption”, it is seen as the supraordinate idea in the system that defines its ideology, the idea to which all the system’s constituents are connected, refer, and function according: its main social categorical imperative, or absolute principle (Baudrillard, 1970 /1998). It would correspond to the main archetype of such imaginary, were “consumption” an archetype. To sum up: the ImCon is fundamentally a semiotic14 imaginary constituted of signs and consumption dreams, whose idée fixe is consumption.

1.1.7 The Prototype Dream

As mentioned, this night dream was recalled in connection with the idea of researching “consumption dreams”. I saw it then as a prototypical empirical object for this study; in fact it later originated the study’s research problem and further defined its theme. It illustrates its empirical object—night dreams related to the ImCon—and the approach used to understand them. The dreamer, a young female patient, told it to me more than ten years ago. In the dream, a church—old, menaced by the environment, falling into disrepair, yet still solid, functioning: inside, rites were being celebrated by serious, dignified elderly people—is about to be transformed (by the dreamer) into a McDonald’s franchise.

First of all, let me state clearly an important thing: a dream ought to be seen as a possibility, not as a deterministic decree; it usually shows a picture of the psychic situation, a tendency—and often in an exaggerated, dramatized way. But what can this dream possibly mean? Seen from the perspective of analytical psychology,15 it is an illustration of how the unconscious, through dreams, autonomously portrays and criticizes the colonization of the very foundations of both the individual and culture by the ImCon . But what is colonized? If we read the dream on a subjective level (i.e., all the dream elements refer to the dreamer’s psyche), it is her church, her (inner) imaginary. As a parcel of her psychic system, it represents her own symbolic, imaginary function (a religious function), the very source of imagination and representation. Broadly, it means what in her and for her (still) functions as mythic and religious, what she holds sacred: a regime of signification connected to a traditional (Catholic) social imaginary that shapes the way she imagines, signifies, and experiences the world. That is about to be transformed into a church of consumerism, that is, to be replaced by the ImCon in her psychic system: what becomes sacred then is consumption and commodity, and that defines her as a subject, her being and existence: she becomes a faithful devotee, a consumer.

Let us look at the dream on an objective level (i.e., the dream elements also represent concrete and social factors: the dream is seen culturally). Previous cultures and ages lived under and through myths, rites, religions, and their imagery—imaginaries, religious-symbolic systems that signified and organized experience, inserted the individual into community and social life, and distinctly characterized the culture in its specificity. The church was the symbol and edifice of the Christian imaginary that defined our Western culture. If we understand McDonald’s as a symbol for consumerism and its imaginary, her dream hints at the possibility that the ImCon takes over the old religious imaginaries and comes to command our lives, to define existence, in the same way: it becomes the new religion, as totalizing as the symbolic imaginaries of old, aimed at organizing and signifying—colonizing—the whole of experience and life. In that case, the dream would be revealing not merely a subjective mutation, but a historical and cultural one: the dreamer was following a cultural tendency, a trend that defines our contemporary imaginary.

It is not by chance that the dream (i.e., the unconscious) chose McDonald’s as a symbol for such colonizing trend. In sociology, one can find a related concept in which McDonald’s defines a form of global colonization by consumerism-capitalism : McDonaldization16 (Ritzer, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2002), or , as Barber (1995) put radically, the McWorld. The prototype dream therefore hinted at the possibility of investigating such forms of colonization in dialog with sociological theories on them—but through night dreams. However, the dream introduces a novelty and a form of critique that go far beyond what Ritzer described as McDonaldization: on the one hand, it shows that the colonizing forces of consumerism and its icons encroach upon the deepest recesses of the psyche, in the subject’s own dreams. On the other hand, if the “church” symbolized the old symbolic, sacred imaginary, what the dream expressed as McDonaldization was its (possible) complete substitution by the ImCon : the dream hints at a mutation or colonization of imaginaries.17 Therefore, McDonald’s appears in the dream as what Augé (1999) described as the new regime of the imaginary which nowadays touches social life, contaminating and penetrating it [colonizing it!] to the point where we mistrust it, its reality, meaning and the categories (identity, otherness) which shape and define it” (pp. 2–3; e.a.). The result is that “We all have the feeling that we are being colonised but we don’t exactly know who by; the enemy is not easily identifiable” (p. 6). However, the dream reveals and identifies precisely the “enemy” that colonizes us: the ImCon , a new colonial order of imagination.

That was the trajectory that led me to propose this study. In presenting it, together with the prototypic oneiric narrative that originated it, I hope to have elicited the reader’s curiosity and interest for the dreams presented in this work. Before we delve into such oneiric worlds, however, given the general unfamiliarity with night dreams and lack of studies on them that characterize our scientific field, perhaps the reader would welcome a more detailed justification of their use as empirical material, of why certain specific dreams (dreams with Dream-worlds of consumption) were selected for such, and how the theoretical perspective chosen here considers them.

1.2 Justification

1.2.1 Why Dreams? Justification and Outlook

The way “dream” (as both concept and empirical material) is seen here is based on Jung’s concept of unconscious, which will be discussed later on. For now, let it suffice to say that the dream, being an embodiment of the unconscious psyche, its natural product, carries all its qualities. It thus represents a spontaneous, autonomous, objective fact, neither created nor directed by the human will or intention (Bergson, 1919; Jung , CW11, CW18, SCD), which presents the unconscious discourse on, or reaction to, the individual’s psychological situation, that is, the dreamer’s subjectivity. As each individual is by definition a social being, thereby embedded in a cultural setting, dreams can also reveal the unconscious critical discourse and reactions in relation to the dreamer’s sociocultural reality—which, in this work, is seen through a focus upon its social imaginary (ImCon ). The night dream, however, is seen as a representation of the natural symbolic imaginary, the nocturnal imaginary: the unconscious.

Historically, such concepts of dream and imaginary stand in opposition to our modern and postmodern views. It might be affirmed that one of the defining traits of modernity—and its exaltation of science, instrumental rationality, and calculability: what defined old capitalism—was that it was founded upon the irreconcilable opposition between dreams (as the imaginary, the fantasy, the irrational: the suprasensory) and reality. Such idea is found in Descartes, who saw dreams and reality as antithetical. His philosophy, which arguably defined modernity and the modern Weltanschauung, originated from the fear, nay the nightmare that reality could be nothing but a dream-delusion produced by an evil genius.18 Spectacularly enough, under postmodern consumerism reality progressively becomes a “dream-delusion”19: the hyperreal imaginary of a dream-world of consumption made of commodity-signs and simulacra. One of its main characteristics is the effacement of the distinction reality/dream, or reality/imaginary; everything becomes dreamy images to be consumed and discarded fast. Furthermore, the very concept of “dream” is colonized, as “dream” comes to mean “consumption dream”. What was once seen as “dream” and “imaginary”—now produced artificially and circulated globally—come once more to define “reality”. Descartes’ nightmare has, to a large extent, become hyperreal.

However, prior to the advent of modernity, historically the dream had always been seen in a different way across cultures: as the representation or manifestation of irrational, transcendent, superior (or chthonic) forces and knowledge. Dreams were the symbolic bridges with the sacred, mythic world. As the “messengers of the gods”, they were the foundation of the symbolic imaginary, the myths that defined culture and social and individual life.

What we have under contemporary consumerism, then, is a mutation of dream: from “messenger of the gods” to “consumption dreams”—which parallels and mirrors the mutation of the imaginary, from a symbolic, mythical, transcendental one, to the semiotic, hyperreal consumerist imaginary. If that represents an ontological cultural and anthropological mutation, then it must underlie all the processes of psychological colonization by consumerism.

Yet, the objectivity of night dreams can unveil and illuminate such colonizing power of the ImCon : they are its opposite. Moreover, they are possibly one of the most real, convincing means for such illumination—precisely because they are objective, emotionally engaging facts, obviously not produced by the person’s consciousness, nor by “social agencies”, nor much less by a “censor”. In this age of consumption and radical alienation , Baudrillard (1970/1998) affirmed that the individual is no longer confronted with her own split image, with the contradiction within being—ever. As this work will show, dreams confront the dreamers precisely with that: their alienation, commodification, and contradictions—with themselves and with culture. Providing an objective perspective on both the individual and the social, night dreams can reveal the functioning and impact of the consumerist regimes of signification, their imaginaries, and their colonization of subjectivity. Furthermore, they reveal a confrontation, or sort of clash, of the consumerist imaginary with the natural, unconscious imaginary function. That clash, seen in the symbolic oneiric reactions, unveils the logic and dehumanizing effects of consumerism with almost incredible acumen, deep irony, and at times profound emotionality. To understand the origins of such knowledge implies rescuing the concept of dream as a “messenger of the gods”, the purest expression and origin of the truly symbolic imaginary, buried by signs in our culture. Against the dissolution of all symbols into commodity-signs, in dreams the psyche still produces symbols, unimpeded by the colonialist ImCon ; for dreams are the connecting channels to our lost symbolizing faculty,20 expressions of the very foundations of the psyche. From Jung’s viewpoint—based on an age-old, ubiquitous tradition—the dream theoretically allows one to know what Arendt (1958, p. ix) called the “subterranean stream”, not of tradition, but of the psyche.

1.2.2 Why Night Dreams with McDonald’s, Disney, and Shopping Malls?

The night dreams used as empirical data had to focus on certain scenarios, or what I called dreamscapes of consumerism. Based on the prototype dream, and also for a number of other reasons which are discussed at length in the chapter on Method, such scenarios were eventually reduced to three types of dreamscapes: McDonald’s, Disneyland and Disney parks,21 and shopping malls and other iconic department stores. They appear in all the night dreams analyzed here.22 The fundamental reason for such choice is that such scenarios represent and signify dream-worlds of consumption23 (Benjamin, 1999; Buck-Morss, 1989, 2000; Williams, 1991) made of consumption dreams: they appear as symbols of the ImCon globally and, as in the prototype dream, also in night dreams spontaneously produced by the unconscious.

What characterizes them—to varying degrees, Disney and Disneyland probably being the apex, the most radical instance—in general is: they are producers, circulators, and embodiments of regimes of signification that form the ImCon ; they represent the signifying structures of consumption society and its totalizing imaginary, its temples of consumption.24 Disney and McDonald’s being among the most influential and powerful global megacorporations, and shopping centers being the defining edifices of consumer society, they are seen worldwide as the great icons of consumerism, condensing its ideology, functioning, and logic—so much so as to have been studied sociologically as its typical forms of colonization: under McDonaldization, and also Disneyization (Bryman, 1999, 2003, 2004a; Cypher & Riggs, 2001; Ross, 2004; Wasko, 2001). Albeit seen as forms of globalitarian (Virilio, 2001) colonization, they are typically American in origin25 (which is an important fact for, apart from the prototype dream’s dreamer, a Brazilian, all the other dreams studied in this work came from American dreamers).

Most importantly for this work—and most radically in the case of Disneyland—such dreamscapes are cultural icons and embodiments of a totalizing imaginary: a hyperreality of consumption which progressively becomes the hegemonic form of imagination, apperception of world and self, and experience, and as such strives for hegemony in the production and control of subjectivity itself. They are the actualization (either concrete or virtual, imaginary) of a commodified culture within commodified, self-contained environments: commercial worlds made of consumption dreams, the dream-worlds of consumption. And are so perceived by the unconscious, in the night dreams it produces.

1.3 Research Question and Aims

The research problem, formulated as a question, would be:

How do the night dreams represent the colonization of subjectivity by the imaginary of consumerism?

Given the general panorama of the themes of study under consideration presented above, the peculiarities of this study’s empirical object, and its exploratory character, thus its main objective consists in exploring how night dreams represent the colonization of subjectivity by the imaginary of consumerism.

Such general exploration is informed by, and aims at fulfilling, a set of specific objectives centered upon hermeneutic-interpretative procedures. Thus the specific aims consist in identifying, interpreting, and understanding patterns in meaning in the night dreams, regarding:
  1. 1.

    which psychological factors, domains, or realms are colonized;

     
  2. 2.

    how such colonization is effectuated; and

     
  3. 3.

    the effects brought about by such colonization.

     
These central aims, focused upon the empirical material, imply three further specific objectives of a more theoretical and epistemological character:
  1. 4.

    To advance theoretical propositions, informed by a theoretical framework, so as to understand the patterns in meaning identified;

     
  2. 5.

    To recover the importance of dreams for psychosocial analyses of reality and subjectivity;

     
  3. 6.

    To illustrate how the Jungian symbolic-hermeneutic method, applied to dreams, can be valuable for psychosocial analyses, and to indicate further possible research.

     

Meeting such objectives entailed the development of an eminently qualitative and exploratory methodological design, consisting in a multiple-case study whose empirical data were night dreams. The dreams were collected from various sources (but mainly volunteered on the internet, as dream series, to non-clinical settings) and selected according to their relevance, meaningfulness, and information-richness (Patton, 1990). Each dream was considered as a case study, or “critical case” (Putney, 2010), and interpreted through Jungian symbolic hermeneutics. The process of interpretation and theory-generation followed a hypothetico-deductive approach.

1.4 Risks, Brief Literature Review, and Relevance

The main fact underlying the discussion of possible risks, limitations, and relevance of this work is that, to my knowledge, there seems to be no other previous study like it in the literature. That makes this work original, yet also risky and necessarily preliminary and exploratory. Broadly speaking, perhaps the greatest risk derives from the fact that I could not possibly follow a model previously done, and so had to build new arguments, procedures, and structures for this work. In what follows I briefly discuss some other risks and present a very short literature review, discussing some studies that are close to this work in their thematic focuses of research but also dissimilar in important aspects (their theoretical and/or empirical approaches); the objective is to place this study in the context of other works and highlight its original features.

1.4.1 Risks

First of all, regarding the empirical procedures and data, researching night dreams with a deeply qualitative, hermeneutic approach involves many difficulties and risks. A discussion on this work’s methodological and empirical (practical) difficulties and limitations can be found in the chapter on Method. Dreams, by their very nature,26 can be exceedingly complex and ample in their themes and meanings, elusive and ambiguous in their discourse, and seem utterly alien to most readers. Understanding them in depth, or even proposing cogent interpretations, depends on a multiplicity of factors and often represents a quite difficult task. Due to their symbolic nature, it is often rather difficult to delimit very clearly, in terms of strictly defined concepts, what subjective factors and realms the dreams are alluding to. This is one of the main reasons for formulating the more empirical specific aims of this study with the expression “patterns in meaning”—because dreams usually do not refer directly to the dreamer’s “unconscious psyche” or “personal identity”, for instance; these are interpretations and translations of symbolic images (such as “the underground” or “what is hidden and buried”, and “house”, respectively) into psychological concepts, translations that, by definition (traduttori traditori!), should be viewed as somewhat forced and incomplete in relation to the original dream symbol, but which are necessary for discussing the dreams rationally. Furthermore, the interpretations proposed for the dreams are always hypothetical (though far from arbitrary) and not exhaustive. Although I have tried to select the dream-specimens that seemed most clear, meaningful, and representative of the phenomena studied here, and to interpret them in depth and in a clear manner, there remains the risk that such selection and interpretations could be problematic, or inappropriate, or incomplete. That risk also refers to another context: the majority of dreams analyzed here were selected because of their typical (at times archetypical) images, rather than due to their detailed portrayal of the dreamer’s subjectivity. Quite the opposite: although “subjectivity” is one of the main themes of this work, the dreams that could be interpreted without mentioning many personal details from the dreamers were preferred. Thus the focus of analysis is the dream and what it represents (in terms of subjectivity, colonization, etc.), rather than the individual dreamer. Accordingly, some dreams were chosen because of their cultural critique on colonization (and consumerism); their main focus was not on subjectivity per se.

Regarding theory-building and theoretical discussions of subjectivity, clearly, the more theoretical themes of this work (consumerism, imaginary, and subjectivity) are exceedingly broad in scope and complexity, which makes it risky to interrelate them in a concise manner while at the same time connecting them to the other research subjects (dreams, night dreams, unconscious, symbol, etc.). Also, it is always difficult to discuss subjectivity, this all-encompassing, elusive and (in our postmodern mass society) contradictory, controversial, salable concept—and even more so if one attempts to discuss it from the perspective of night dreams. As mentioned above, as the focus of analysis is the dream, the reader will notice that often there are only a few mentions to personal, individual aspects of the dreamer’s life and its subjective details. This was done on purpose; discussion in depth of such details would require clinical cases and long elaborations, which was not possible within the limits of this work. Moreover, this proposal is complicated further by the fact that, strictly speaking, the findings cannot be compared with previous studies (only with other studies that have utilized night dreams to research subjectivity, and more generally with theory and research on subjectivity under contemporary consumerism). Considering such difficulties, this work runs the risk of being considered simplistic or superficial, given the amplitude of its subjects, and controversial or debatable, given the concise and general way it discusses subjectivity.

Another problem is the sociocultural context of the dreamers, which is, of course, of the utmost importance regarding both their subjectivities and the dreams they produced. As mentioned, all empirical dreams studied in this work were reported by dreamers from the United States, with the exception of the prototype dream, by a Brazilian. Unfortunately, it was not possible to develop extensive theoretical discussions of specific American (or Brazilian) consumerist imaginaries due to the limits of this work. However, as this research proposes to study both subjectivity and the ImCon (in whatever forms it may assume) through night dreams, the theoretical discussion offered on both themes is indeed general and based on what the dreams presented. Furthermore, this work does not claim any kind of statistical generalizability; generalization is limited to the theoretical level.27 Therefore, if it is probably true that the United States represents the most “consumer-oriented society in the world” (Schor, 2004, p. 9), the reader should bear in mind that the majority of the dreams presented here come from such society. Nevertheless, the reader should also consider the perspective that the ImCon—like (and through) globalized capital and media—is increasingly global and total, that is, whether American in origin or not, it represents a global sociocultural context that is increasingly homogeneous, and that the dreamscapes studied here (McDonald’s, Disney , shopping malls) are obviously global. Moreover, some dreams from dreamers coming from (in principle) different sociocultural contexts (United States, Brazil, Finland, Italy) portrayed and criticized colonization by the ImCon with great similitude. That the colonizing force of consumerism appeared in more or less the same ways in the dreams (whatever the more specific sociocultural conditions of the dreamers) gives support to the view that consumerism and its imaginary are essentially a global and increasingly homogeneous force, and that, for the purposes of this work, particular sociocultural contexts can be disregarded.

1.4.2 Brief Literature Review

Consumption dreams: There is some volume of literature (e.g., Bryce & Olney, 1991; D’Astous & Deschênes, 2005; Fournier & Guiry, 1993; Gabriel & Lang, 2006; McCracken, 1988) that theorized on and/or investigated “consumption dreams”, predominantly from the (uncritical) perspective of consumer research.28 In it, “consumption dreams” refer variously to fantasies , desires, daydreams, the “ideal life”: the “dreams” consumers have about goods and experiences, and their relations with or foundation upon the imagination (Belk, Ger, & Askergaard, 1996, 2003; Christensen, 2002).

In Brazil, there seems to be a variety of studies on “sonhos de consumo” from diverse perspectives and scientific fields (probably because in Brazil such expression is very common—it is an important part of the imaginary, of collective consciousness). Particularly relevant for this work is a line of research on consumerism and its imaginary that is more critical and draws from the more contemporary French sociological tradition (Baudrillard , Maffesoli , etc.) and anthropology. For instance, Piedras (2006, 2007) and Rocha (1990, 1995, 2006) discussed the consumer imaginary focusing on its “consumption dreams”, their mythic, mystic character, and their fabrication by the advertising industry and mass media—through concepts such as “dream society” (a concept analogous to what I call ImCon), “magic capitalism”, “the mythology of consumption”. However, none of these studies on “consumption dreams” researched night dreams.

Night dreams: Although there are some (relatively scarce) publications and studies on night dreams that employed hermeneutics29 and/or the perspective of analytical psychology,30 the vast majority of literature is dominated by neurobiological and psychiatric perspectives (which almost never employ symbolic-hermeneutic approaches), followed by psychoanalysis under its many schools and methods. For comprehensible reviews on the study of dreams in psychiatry, see Hebbrecht (2007) and Reiser (2001); for a review on the contemporary psychoanalytic approaches to dream, see Flanders (1993); for an extensive review on multiple contemporary approaches to dream, see Shafton (1995). However, as regards proximity in terms of method and approach toward night dreams, some anthropological studies are more relevant for this work. Two of them seem indeed closer to what is proposed in this study. One work that deserves to be highlighted is the classic one by Duvignaud, Duvignaud, and Corbeau (1981), who proposed to revisit what they called the infinite world of the imaginary through dreams, trying to search for and give voice to such “lost languages” in an extensive research. In order to understand the dreams, they utilized a double focus that prioritized and converged in the majoritarian role of the social: how the social acts in the dream and gives meaning and logic to it; and how the dream is a (meaningful) part of the social imaginary. In Brazil, a similar approach appears in a number of studies on the oneiric imaginary organized by Martins (1996). Again, these studies did not employ symbolic interpretations, but rather a sociological approach focusing on the concepts of “daily life” and the city (which often did not really apply, empirically, to the dreams31). In my opinion, both works, albeit interesting and valuable, fall short in their task of deeply understanding the dreams, mainly because they do not employ a truly symbolic-hermeneutic approach in conjunction with a consistent theory on the unconscious; the result is that they often forcefully reduce the dreams to their presumable “social” aspects and meanings.

Night dreams and the imaginary: After searching for a long time, I found one doctoral dissertation that closely resembled the present one in its proposal: it researched the sociocultural imaginary, in relation to its religious aspects, through the night dreams of university students. Espinosa (2009) reached some results that were similar to the ones found in this work; for instance, “although now one would think that myth is no longer dreamed, on the contrary, it keeps manifesting itself in the nocturnal imagination under many guises, one of which seems to be totally approached by the media” (p. 89; i.e., by the ImCon through mass media). However, his analysis is limited to a content analysis of the dreams, restricted to describing their recurrent images in a non-symbolic way.

Night dreams and colonization: Marc Augé’s (1999) The war of dreams is without a doubt the work that is closest to this study, especially as regards to Augé’s themes (the interrelations between night dreams, imaginary, colonization, and contemporaneity) and his critical view. Augé argues that, historically, processes of colonization have always involved and required struggles for the conquest and domination of the imaginary (of the colonized); through “cultural contact”, anthropologists have observed

how confrontations of the imaginary accompanied the clash of nations, conquests and colonisations , and how resistances, withdrawals and hopes took shape in the imagination of the vanquished for all that it was lastingly affected by, and in the strict sense imprinted with, that of the victors. (p. 5; e.a.)

In that, Augé draws from the work of Gruzinski (1990), who convincingly showed that, from the sixteenth century onwards, Catholic and European brutal colonizing efforts toward indigenous populations were inevitably accompanied by the colonization of their imaginaries (Gruzinski, 1988), a battle for the conquest of their mentalities in a war of images.

Augé (1999) demonstrates that, in our contemporaneity, what he calls a war of dreams is a crucial part of such battles for the colonization of imagination: through ethnographic materials, he shows how dreams revealed the people’s colonization and domination by the foreign colonial power’s imaginary. Dreams thereby signaled that the intermingled processes of colonization (of the people and of their dreams) represented the threat of effacement of the people’s imaginary, which could actually mean their very extinction as a people. However, although he considers the dream as a form of individual imagination (p. 6), Augé deals with and speaks in terms of peoples, of collective imagination, and unfortunately does not employ a systematic, hermeneutic interpretation of dreams. My proposal here is to use such method to investigate essentially the same phenomena Augé describes anthropologically—but in the individual nocturnal imaginary, in the pure autonomous productions of the subject’s unconscious psyche: the dream, and its resistances, its confrontation, its clashes with the overwhelming global colonization effected by the ImCon.

Apropos of historical colonization of peoples, of their imaginaries, and dreams, Jung (CW10) also mentioned phenomena similar to those related by Augé. Speaking of African primitives (the Elgonyi, ruled by British colonizers) who he had visited in the 1920s, Jung reported how the dominating power (the British) depended on colonization and conquest of the Elgonyi’s culture and knowledge, and therefore of the imaginary that sustained both. In the case of the Elgonyi, such colonization was not merely of their dreams, but of their very capability of dreaming32: their unconscious psyche had been colonized.

Night dreams and consumerism: Empirical explorations of night dreams in relation to consumerism are noticeably lacking. I found only one academic work similar to what I propose here: Valtonen (2011) set out to study dreaming in consumer culture, but from a completely opposite viewpoint in relation to mine. He posits the existence of what is hereby called “colonization” of dreams (and subjectivity) by the ImCon as a fact, but naturalizes it altogether. In his view, market discourses and practices govern also the sleeping life of consumers, the world of dreams: “both the content of dreams and the way dreams are conceived are shaped and structured by the practices, values, and symbols offered by the globalized media and consumer culture” (p. 93). Although the dreams he studied clearly reveal the criticism of the unconscious,33 he invariably overlooks it. Mirroring and affirming the ideology of consumerism, he inverts the relationship proposed here and takes total colonization (of subject, psyche, and dreams) for granted: it is not that consumption is sold as and through (artificial) dreams, but that the dream itself is a form of consumption (which he calls “dreamtertainment”): “a set of images, thoughts, sounds, emotions, illusions, fantasies , memories, and irrational experiences pass through consumers’ minds having the power to bewilder, frighten, enchant, and amuse them—just like many other forms of consumption” (p. 94, e.a.). In fact, the title of his study says it all: “We dream as we live—Consuming”: we really ought to be consumers 24-7 in a “New Sleep Order”.

1.4.3 Relevance

As delineated above, through the brief literature review, one of the main sources of relevance for this work is that it is probably unique (at least in some regards). Some main aspects related to the relevance of studying dreams were discussed above, together with the justifications for their study. It seems clear that studies on night dreams, and even on dreams in general (including consumption dreams), are lacking in social psychology. Therefore this work can also be relevant in that it calls attention to a rather unexplored subject (and field of studies). Also, this study combines an interdisciplinary theoretical approach with a symbolic-hermeneutic perspective and method, which seems uncommon in social psychology. All of such possible relevant features—dreams, interdisciplinarity, symbolic-hermeneutic approach—coalesce in the centrality of Jung’s analytical psychology for this work; it is the common source for all of them. Its possible relevance is discussed in what follows.

Relevance of employing analytical psychology as theoretical framework: One reason for its relevance is that, in social psychology and in the social sciences in general, studies using the perspective of analytical psychology are rather rare. Another reason refers to the unique perspective it provides for the study of the imaginary, dreams, subjectivity, and consumer culture.

From such perspective, the “imaginary” is the condensation of forms—images, representations, symbols—through which we imagine, fantasize about, perceive, represent, make sense of, and signify ourselves and the world (i.e., both the inner and the outer world). It corresponds to our psychic reality. In Jung, the primordial forms of imagination configure symbolic thought, which is the imaginary function par excellence. It has its roots in the unconscious, which is the rhizome of everything psychological. Dreams are seen as the primordial and purest expressions of symbolic thought, and hence of the unconscious. Therefore, analyzing dreams means rescuing and trying to understand what such historical roots express symbolically about the subject’s psyche in a contemporary consumerist world characterized by relentless colonization of everything that is symbolic and psychological—that is, by the colonization of the rhizome itself, in every individual. If such colonization characterizes a cultural and anthropological mutation—a new regime of the imaginary and a new subject—in order to illuminate it, we need a theoretical perspective that is founded on such rhizome; a psychology that is characterized by the consideration, import, and value it gives to the symbolic, oneiric, and religious factors—the imaginary—in understanding culture, psychic functioning, and subjectivity. Moreover, in order to interpret and understand the dreams, we need a hermeneutic-symbolic approach based precisely on a truly symbolic psychology. We find such perspective and approach in Jung’s analytical psychology, its hermeneutics, and in the vast interdisciplinary dialogs that it offers.

Jungian theory on the unconscious and subjectivity therefore underlies the whole theoretical outlook of this work, and furnishes its hermeneutics. The main relevance of such proposal consists in an attempt at rescuing for (and applying in) social psychology an original depth psychology and a concept of unconscious that are truly humanistic and symbolic. Put very concisely, and to situate it within the tradition of social psychology, such depth psychology consists in a kind of complex symbolic interactionism—one that at once expands and integrates the two main paradigmatic tendencies of such perspective, the schools of Chicago and Iowa. Herbert Blumer, the main exponent of the Chicago school, represents a phenomenological approach that focuses more on the role of the subject as a symbolizing actor—on his/her interpretative processes and interaction with other social actors—and less on the social macrostructures. The Iowa school, whose main representative is Sheldon Stryker, represents a structural symbolic interactionism that privileges the more objective macrostructures of social reality and the external processes of signification within which the self, or subjectivity, is built (Álvaro & Garrido, 2003; Álvaro, Garrido, Schweiger, & Torregrosa, 2007; Blanch, 1982; Carvalho, Borges, & Rêgo, 2010). Thus, Jungian depth psychology may be understood firstly as a reunion of such paradigmatic tendencies, in a dialectical perspective that gives equal importance to the structuring force of the social (viewed as collective consciousness) and to the subjective (and individual) interpretative and meaning-creating capabilities for the construction of subjectivity. Secondly, and most importantly, what differentiates such perspective is its humanist concept of unconscious: within the dialectics between the subject and the sociocultural realm is inserted an objective factor, the unconscious psyche, which is seen as the original foundation and common denominator of both. Moreover, such foundation is the very historical matrix that produces symbols—and thus signification—autonomously in each person. Therefore, and to use a Bakhtinian term, such depth psychology postulates that the psyche is dialogical: in relation to both the social, “external” relationships, and to the inner psychic world, to the relations with one’s own unconscious contents—to the historical Others, as it were, within one’s own psyche. It represents a radical symbolic interactionism in which the symbol is the very definer of what is human.

Finally, such depth psychology also represented one of the main basis and impulses for the development of the whole school of the imaginary—from the early beginnings, with G. Durand, reaching today, with Maffesoli and others. However, in my opinion, Jung’s analytical psychology has been misunderstood and/or misrepresented to a large extent.34 That is why I propose to discuss his contributions through his original works (and of close collaborators) and with extensive quotations, in order to convey his original thought and, whenever possible and convenient, to rescue theories and authors that formed his thought and have been forgotten by official, mainstream psychology.

To return to the import of dreams: this proposal to study night dreams in social psychology can also be seen as subversive—it means trying to study the social in a moment that is almost entirely personal, private, individual, when the person is “alone with herself” (and alone with her self); it is a completely imaginary moment, when psychic life naturally flows unimpeded and unmediated. In fact, the dream itself is by nature subversive and opposed to any domination: “by definition it eludes the control of the dreamers and a fortiori the control of those who are officially responsible for their souls” (Augé, 1999, p. 59)—or of those who want to buy and sell our souls. Researching dreams also represents a much-needed complementation for the current hegemony of studies on “everyday life”, which is increasingly organized and ruled by the consumerist ethos—a complementation reached through a shift to researching what we may call the every night, unconscious life, the “nocturnal depth of our being” (Von Schubert, 1814).35

In uniting the perspective of a deep psychology of the unconscious with a psychosociological critique of capitalism, this work attempts to deepen our understanding of the relationship between consumer capitalism and psychology—though not in the sense of criticizing psychology as a dispositive of power (as in Parker, 2007; Roberts, 2015) or “psychological governance” (Pykett, Jones, & Whitehead, 2017). Rather, it strives to illuminate the profound colonization of our (unconscious) psyches effected by consumerism and to reveal that such colonization is simply the basis upon which the latter is founded. In that regard, this work also tries to revitalize and see anew that old bridge between sociology and psychology—notably in considering how relationships between the unconscious, the symbolic realm, and social and economic structures and institutions are constituted under consumerism.

But perhaps all the possibly relevant aspects of this work and their relation with our society can be summarized through a comparison with a quote. In it, Mark Featherstone (2010) expressed perfectly the context of contemporary consumerism and one of the main challenges it poses us:

[W]e must seek out the fragments of human significance able to escape from the logic of commodification, and the black hole of the market, and try to save them for some future reconstruction project that, similar to Walter Benjamin (1999), who engaged in the construction of what the Frankfurt critical theorists called a thought-image of modern consumer capitalism, may enable us to piece together a serious critical theory of post-modern global capitalism and the horrendous post-political situation we currently occupy. (…) The problem of critical theory today, then, revolves around the problem of the totalitarian or globalitarian nature of neoliberal capitalism and the omnipotence of the logic of commodification which has effectively colonized the space of critique and critical thought. (p. 141)

What I propose is that such “fragments of human significance” can be found in the dreams. In our present dream-world of consumption, where everything seems to be unreal or more-than-real and devoid of value, the night dream is precisely the living element that presents real significance and value. Dreams not only escape but denounce such “omnipotent logic of commodification”, reveal how its colonization is effected, and therefore constitute the expression of a psychic domain that refuses to be colonized—and for such reasons they must be rescued and understood. For that, I have attempted to present a modest composite of dream-images (Traumbilder) of total consumer capitalism, a small anthropology of the dreams and “nightmares that haunt Homo consumens” (Bauman, 2007a, p. 99). So let us look at what the subterranean stream of these persons’ psyches has to tell us….

1.5 Book Overview

The structure of this work reflects the theoretical expectation, derived from what the night dreams revealed, that the imaginary of consumerism represents a historical mutation and a colonizing force (in relation to other imaginaries, subjectivity, and dreams); therefore it conflates and compares two imaginaries and two concepts of dream. The argument is: if there is colonization—or a mutation—then we need two distinct historical and cultural perspectives, so as to distinguish or point at differences, at what is/has been colonized. Or, in more simple terms, how it is “without”, or before, colonization, and after, under colonization.

Thus the Part I of this study, presenting its theoretical framework, consists of two blocks. The first block, comprising the first two chapters, offers a general theoretical basis for the whole dissertation, which is grounded on C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology. It explores the idea of social imaginaries (Durand, 1963, 1994, 1996, 2004; Taylor, 2004) as being historically and culturally symbolic, originally founded upon the unconscious psyche, and naturally connected to the world of dreams. The discussion aims at situating the reader in relation to analytical psychology and its concepts, yet it also draws upon anthropological, sociological, and ethnological arguments and literature. Chapter 2 explores the concept of symbolic imaginaries, a psychology of the unconscious and its symbolic and imaginative function, and their relations with subjectivity. Chapter 3 provides a general theoretical discussion on dreams and their relations with the symbolic imaginary, and on how both dreams and imaginary are related to and configure subjectivity.

The second block consists of Chaps. 46 and provides theoretical reflections on the concepts of imaginary of consumption ( ImCon) and consumption dreams and their relations with subjectivity and its colonization. It shall clarify the ethico-political stance assumed by this work. While drawing from a broad array of authors from distinct fields of academia, its main theoretical reference is Jean Baudrillard’s work on consumer society and consumption. Thus this block is aimed at presenting these authors’ main contributions on such themes, but seen from and adapted to the viewpoint of the concept of social imaginary, and in dialog with the psychological perspective outlined in the first block. An important warning for the reader is that this whole second block (but especially Chap. 5) should be viewed in the tradition of ideal type36 theoretical discussions: as ideal models that describe not only facts, but also possibilities and tendencies.

Chapter 4 focuses on the discussion of the ImCon as a semiotic imaginary, its logic and characteristics, and its difference in relation to symbolic imaginaries. Consumption logic and a theory on the commodity-sign as the main concepts for the understanding of consumerism are presented. Consumerism and its social imaginary are analyzed through the concept of dream, focusing on the idea of consumption dreams. Finally, the chapter discusses how the ImCon and its dreams define and colonize subjectivity, and the possible effects of such processes.

Chapter 5 discusses the idea that the ImCon may function as a simulacrum of symbolico-religious imaginary, a totalizing ideology. Walter Benjamin’s concept of dream-world of consumption is employed to discuss the ImCon as a hyperreality. The chapter closes with the discussion of a possible colonization of the unconscious psyche by the imaginary, and how it seeks to institute the subject as a commodity.

Finally, Chap. 6 explores the dreamscapes—the scenarios of the night dreams interpreted in this research—as dream-worlds of consumption, discussing how they symbolize particular aspects of the ImCon and its typical forms of colonization of culture and subjectivity, in a dialog with the sociological theories of McDonaldization and Disneyization.

Part II is dedicated to the empirical section of this work and comprises Chaps. 711. Chapter 7, on Method, describes the qualitative design and methodology employed in this research, and offers a general discussion on Jungian symbolic hermeneutics, which grounded its processes of interpretation and theory-generation. Chapters 811 are dedicated to presenting the findings of this study through the interpretation and discussion of its empirical material: the night dreams, focusing on how subjectivity appears colonized in them, how consumer culture seems to be criticized by them, and the general implications that they seem to show in relation to both subjects and culture.

Finally, the book closes with the Conclusions of this study, which present a condensation and articulation of its major findings in relation to the main research aims proposed and discuss some of their main implications. The chapter is concluded with a discussion of the limitations of this work and offers brief recommendations and suggestions for future research.