Pasche, one of France's most important psychoanalytic theoreticians, seems to lose his perspective when he turns to discussions of philosophy. He has long propounded the view that metaphysics is an enterprise only a slight remove from the naked unconscious. Here, he focuses on Descartes' dreams, in connection with two of Descartes' works, The World or the Treatise on Light and the Meditations. The result is a facile and glib array of hypotheses about the unconscious origins of Cartesianism, with, apparently, little appreciation of the philosophical problems Descartes was attempting to clarify. For Pasche, all philosophy is an intellectual defense against the irrationalism of the unconscious elements involved in the philosophical discussion. Philosophy, especially metaphysical thought, derives from the most primitive experiences of man, with the accessory and collusive participation of secondary elaboration. The article ends with a naïve attempt to equate Freud's "border concept" of instinct with the Cartesian discussion of the relationship of mind and body.