Philosophy of dreams

Christoph Türcke, Susan H. Gillespie (Trans.), Yale University Press, 2013, 304 pp., $30.00, ISBN: 978-0300188400

Christoph Türcke, one of Germany’s leading contemporary intellectuals, is well known for his work in philosophy and the theory of religion, as well as for his presence in interdisciplinary academic and public discourse. In recent years, his publications have enjoyed broad attention from the media and academics alike.

Philosophy of Dreams is written from the perspective of a philosopher and scientist of religion who knows his psychoanalytic theory as well. In this study, Türcke develops what he calls a “mental archaeology” in which he attempts to reconstruct both the historical process of civilization and the process of imagination. In other words, he endeavors to understand the genesis of culture as well as the genesis of the mind. Türcke’s project is to grasp what makes our “iconic age” so necessary: his starting point is the description of the omnipresence of pictures, movies and images and their connection with computers, smart-phones and other enhancements. These tools mediate modern life, and in order to understand how and why contemporary life has evolved in this manner, Türcke goes back to the prehistory of our modernity. In arguing that high technologies lead straight back to the “Paleolithic age” – at least as far as the structure of the human mind is concerned – Türcke’s thesis is that both civilization and mental processes are results of a “traumatic compulsion to repeat”.

According to Türcke, the earliest history of humans is still present; it is concealed underground in the depths of the human mind, where prehistory and our earliest history are deposited or “sedimented”. But how can we understand the prehistory that might enable us to analyze the present? In this context, Türcke borrows a concept from Derrida to speak of a process of “de-sedimentation” brought about by the rhythms of the Industrial Revolution, during which the repetitive operat