Abstract
This chapter analyzes dreams related to shopping malls, comparing them with the symbolism in the movie Metropolis, ending with a series of dreams from the same person. It shows that dreams can reveal a deep, objective critique of sociocultural reality: the consumerist imaginary engenders a massive colonization of symbolic imaginaries, replacing their symbols with fabricated signs and simulacra. Its semiotic imagery appears as a totalizing ideology that simulates archaic représentations collectives and a mythic imaginary or regime. Dreams represented such imaginary as producing the commodification of psychological factors that are definers of subjective identity, especially irrational factors such as desires, emotions, imagination, and instincts. This process of colonization was understood as participation mystique, an archaic unconscious identity that underlies the colonization of the subjects’ unconscious.
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- 1.
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One recurrent dream with shopping malls illustrates this idea symbolically: “The mall always has everything included and commonly I will actually live or work in the mall.” This same dream-image appeared in other dreams as well (but usually with more emotional, even frightening tones).
- 3.
This dreamer was rather knowledgeable about dream interpretation (he did not provide any interpretation for this particular dream, though).
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I quote Jung (CW9ii, §§351–352) in order to explain this point in detail: he mentions some of “the facts that led psychologists to conjecture an archetype of wholeness, i.e., the self. These are in the first place dreams and visions (…) in which symbols of wholeness appear. The most important of these are geometrical structures containing elements of the circle and quaternity; namely, circular and spherical forms on the one hand, which can be represented either purely geometrically or as objects; and, on the other hand, quadratic figures divided into four or in the form of a cross. From [this] circle and quaternity motif (…) analogy formation leads on to the city, castle, church” (as possible symbols of the Self).
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Personal information on the dreamer confirmed that this interpretation was correct at the time; interestingly, he mentioned a preoccupation with developing a “more spiritual focus” in life in a “Christian sense” (which fits the cathedral symbol) together with a sort of religious philosophy of life that resembled Buddhist traditions (which would explain why the “cathedral” appears as a non-denominational building).
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Incidentally, this dream follows faithfully a drama structure (but closes without a solution—a lysis).
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Jung (CW7, CW8) borrowed the term from the Elgonyi tribes of Africa to refer to dreams that often present a numinous quality (Jung, CW9i) and strange, fascinating imagery, wisdom, or horror (Jung, CW17). Being archetypal, Big Dreams were formative of the primitive social imaginaries.
- 8.
In my experience, that is not uncommon. In fact, seen historically, eliciting dreams is a common practice. Meier (1983/2003) demonstrated that the whole realm of medicine, in Ancient Greece, belonged to the cult of Asclepius, the kernel of which consisted in the appearance of a dream propitiated (or “triggered”) by the ritual of incubation.
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Suffering, miserable automata, who still expressed emotionally their loss of humanity, however Taylorized it had been. The dream, by contrast, depicts the automation effected by consumerism: hungry, curious, energetic consumers, desiring hedonist machines, whose very emotions and affects replicate the imaginary.
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And its hubris: like Walt Disney, he represents the capitalist’s dream of becoming a demiurge, a demigod, of fashioning a world and a being according to his image. Rotwang symbolizes the mad hubris of science, which is analogous. In fact the motif of hubris is symbolized as the main “tall building” of Metropolis, the Tower of Babel built to reach heaven.
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Etymology expresses this idea very well: the Greek daimon, the autonomous spiritual principle, connected to individuality (i.e., to the Self), became demon under Christianity.
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Naturally the Nazis were fascinated by the film, and Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang’s wife and writer of Metropolis, later became a devoted Nazi (see Minden & Bachman, 2002).
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In fact the whole movie is permeated by religious allusions and archetypal imagery.
- 14.
For an extensive amplification of the key symbol that is in line with this interpretation, see Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1969/1997, pp. 564–566). Because they represent the power to open and shut entrances, to accede to places, to reveal “closed” things, etc., keys are “symbols of power and authority”, and symbolize “chiefs, rulers and mystagogues who possess decision-making powers and responsibility” (pp. 564–565).
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See, e.g., Jung (CW12), and Chevalier and Gheerbrant (1969/1990, pp. 369–372), entry “Droite (gauche)”, for extensive amplification. The left as a symbol of the unconscious psyche is an archetypal motif; it is the sinister unknown side: la siniestra (Spanish), la sinistra (Italian), sinister (Latin).
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Jung points up a typical pattern of the child symbol that is in line with this interpretation: “In the manifold phenomenology of the ‘child’ we have to distinguish between the unity and plurality of its respective manifestations. Where (…) numerous (…) boys [or children] appear, having no individual characteristics at all, there is the probability of a dissociation. Such forms are therefore found especially in schizophrenia, which is essentially a fragmentation of personality. The many children then represent the products of its dissolution” (CW9, §279). Of course such dissociation cannot be ascribed only to consumerism, and identification with it; but in this dream consumerism clearly stands for the main etiological factor.
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This interpretation was also confirmed by other dreams in which the symbol of the jewel appeared with the same meanings.
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Jung was referring to the evils of totalitarianism.
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In this sense, Barney would represent an analogous image to Hobbes’s Leviathan: it is the way the social order of consumerism subjugates the lupus side of human nature.
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“It is like that famous dream of Hannibal before he went to Rome: he saw himself with his hosts conquering cities and fighting battles, but then he turned around and saw a huge monster crawling behind him, eating up all the countries and towns” (Jung, SNZ, p. 1296).
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“The larger an organization the lower its morality. (…) the largest organized groups are from a psychological point of view clumsy, stupid, and amoral monsters like those huge saurians with an incredibly small brain. (…) they are childish and moody, helpless victims of their emotions [and] stupid to an amazing degree” (Jung, CW18, §§1315–1316). Barney fits this description perfectly.
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This dream-image is reminiscent of the last one in the “reoccurring nightmare”, in which the Disney ImCon’s phantasmagoric face is revealed, and also of the zombie-moms in Disneyland .
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Considering also the symbols that appeared before: the black snake and Barney, which point to the primitive instincts.
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Tyrannosaurus = from Greek turannos (tyrant) + sauros (lizard). Rex = king (replaced by Führer, Great Leader).
- 25.
There are many other psychological elements related to this image and the dynamics it symbolizes—e.g., Hitler, being a man, can be seen as an animus figure: the embodiment of the collective unconscious in the woman, her “masculine” psyche, with its characteristic effects and dynamics. However, as in other dreams, interpretation had to leave these more clinical considerations aside.
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“When Nietzsche wrote his prophetic masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, he certainly had not the faintest notion that the superman [Übermensch] he had created out of his personal misery and inefficiency would become a prophetic anticipation of a Führer or Duce” (Jung, CW18, §1333).
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“New Berlin” is a shopping mall that appears first in the dream with the black snake, and then in many other dreams of hers.
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Xavier, M. (2018). Dreaming in the Temples of Consumption: Shopping Malls and Department Stores Dreams. In: Subjectivity, the Unconscious and Consumerism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96824-7_11
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