We've all had strange dreams. I've had many in my twenty-two years of life. One of the first that I can remember goes as far back as my preschool years. It involved sinister clowns, who were cartoonish and colorless, popping out the wall and attacking me - forever giving me anxiety over my house's framework. For years after, I was too afraid to sleep facing near the wall. Even now I have the habit of falling asleep on the very edge of the bed, subconsciously on the lookout for any demented drolls.Today, my dreams have become a little more sophisticated. Some still have serious concerns, such as course grades, pregnancy, and euthanasia... But most of them are just so over the top bizarre that I worry that I could be mad.
In my French class this semester, we are looking at "dreams and madness" in modern French literature. To distinguish some of the characteristics of either topic, I am going to translate some of the definitions we've been given:
dream:
1. series of images, representations that cross through the mind, with the characteristic of an illusionary conscience such that we are conscious of the dream, without actually being conscious
2. psychic activity during sleep; a "second life"
3. expression of the unconscious, of the mental life
madness:
1. trouble of comportment and/or the mind, considered like the effect of a sickness altering the mental faculties of someone
2. disorder or the fault with the ordinary impressions; a disarrangement of nervous functions
I'm not sure if I really trust these definitions. Nor do I think the two can really be defined. Now I ask you, dear reader, what is the difference between dreams and madness?
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