Dreaming the Social: Disavowal and reparation in the age of enviromental and social disasters

Amid intensifying ecological crises and global unrest, this paper examines whether dreaming can be reimagined as an ethical and political act. While psychoanalysis has long valued dreams for their revelatory power, they also function as symbolic vessels through which the collective unconscious expresses grief, hope, and resistance. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, analytical psychology, philosophy, and ecocriticism, we argue that dreams are not merely personal residues but inherently political and relational phenomena. We introduce oneiricopolitics, the transformative and political potential of dream life in an era marked by planetary precarity and widespread psychic disavowal. Dreaming becomes symbolic resistance, a gesture of love, and a form of ecological reparation. The paper develops in three parts. First, it explores psychic mechanisms underlying environmental denial and trauma disavowal, drawing on Ferenczi’s view of trauma as relational rupture and on symbolization as a path to healing. Second, it reinterprets regression through Ferenczi’s thalassal metaphor and Neumann’s uroboric consciousness, presenting these as symbolic movements vital to ecological reattunement. Finally, it situates dreams within the “language of the soul,” integrating Jungian and post-Jungian thought with the notion of a cosmic unconscious. The paper concludes by proposing oneiricopolitics as a psychopolitical insurgency animated by hope and ecological care.