Oneiric symbolism and multipolar subjectivity in M. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological ontology

In the lecture course of 1954–1955, dealing with the issue of “passivity” in phenomenological philosophy, M. Merleau-Ponty pays much attention to the “unconscious” as “Freud’s discovery”. The philosopher finds approaches to the unconscious by analysing the phenomena of dreaming, memory, etc. on the basis of Freud’s descriptions and offering his own terminology and interpretations of psychoanalytic observations. Merleau-Ponty sets out to overcome the limitations of the original readings of psychoanalytic discovery due, among other things, to the reliance of Freud’s theoretical models on the classical Cartesian concept of subjectivity. In this article, we will consider the theory of “oneiric symbolism”: an area of “mythical” sense-formation, which very phenomenal existence – at the boundary between unconscious and consciousness, activity and passivity, subject and world – pushes Merleau-Ponty to revise classical ontological models. We will show for what fundamental issues of phenomenological ontology Merleau-Ponty uses the concept of “oneiric symbolism” and what conclusions he manages to reach with its help, and briefly characterise the mutual relation between the models of subjectivity offered by phenomenological ontology and Freudian psychoanalysis.

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