The subject of this thesis is a critical edition of the Middle French Exposicions et significacions des songes contained in MS Paris, Bib1iotheque Nationa1e, fonds francais, 1317, which is a translation from the Latin of the Greek dream-book commonly known as Achmet. I have established that the Latin model is the late twelfth-century version by the Pisan Leo Tuscus. The French translation is anonYTI10US but it has been suggested that its author was the fourteenth-century Carmelite Jean Golein. Notes are provided to establish the relationship of our text with Tuscus's version, and with the Greek original whenever the latter differs widely from the former. To fill the gaps in the text, I have quoted a different vernacular rendering of Tuscus's Achmet preserved in two fourteenth-century copies, Anglo-Norman and Continental French, contained respectively in MS Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek, Lat. quo 70 and MS Paris, BN, f. fro 24432. These probably derive from a much earlier French archetype, which means that the translator of our basic text was not the first in the field. His translation shows elegance and an interest in the material, but it is not entirely reliable. Errors result mainly from obvious misreadings of the script of the model. The great number of these misreadings and also the ingenuity with which the translator preserves the coherence of his French version reach an idiosyncratic level. His use of language is typical of lIe de France Middle French. I have attempted a brief ordered revision of the critical work hitherto done on the possible sources of the Greek treatise and on conjectures regarding the identity of its author. This is accompanied by a tentative study of the method of interpretation of the dreams and by an examination of the Christian elements in the book.

The aim of this thesis was to critically evaluate Hall and Van de Castle's (1966) content analysis system (HVCAS), which has become the dominant method of researching dream report content. In keeping with their idea of 'Normative' dream report content statistics were for UK-based dreamers were developed. The conclusion of this study was that dream emotion was not adequately accounted for, and that when the dominant emotion in dreams was used as an Independent variable, many of the socalled ubiquitous sex differences reported in normal dream report content were unsupported. Rather what determined many of the finding was whether the dream was predominantly pleasant or unpleasant.

En 1967, dans la revue Diogène, Roger Caillois écrivit un article sur le prestige et les problèmes du rêve. Il écrivit que, par le passé, dans un monde qui lui accordait un crédit démesuré, il y avait une correspondance entre le rêve et le sentiment quotidien que tout, même les choses les plus intimes, peut être éprouvé en commun. Mais l’intuition que plusieurs rêves se vérifient ou se contrôlent mutuellement était une manière de civiliser le rêve. Inversement, aujourd’hui, dans un monde où il n’est plus une source de pouvoir politique, où il ne constitue plus un témoignage authentique, considéré comme un phénomène étanche, rétif à tout partage, dont le rêveur seul peut se souvenir, le rêve porte cette nostalgie communautaire. La même année, Roger Bastide réfléchit à ce que serait une sociologie du rêve, une étude du rêve comme phénomène social. Il pensait que la sociologie ne s’intéressait qu’à l’homme éveillé, comme si l’homme endormi était un homme mort. Il se demandait si la sociologie pouvait ignorer cet homme couché et rêvant. Cette thèse se propose de penser le quotidien à partir de l’intuition de Roger Caillois, qui cherche moins à penser l’homme couché et rêvant que l’homme debout, dans son quotidien, son travail, sa famille, son rapport aux objets de tous les jours, empreinte à ce tiers de sa vie où il dort. Il ne s’agit cependant pas de faire l’interprétation de rêves, ou d’en tirer les contenus latents. Leur contenu n’est pas le terrain de cette thèse. Chaque fois, la visée est de savoir comment le rêve est-il vécu en tant que mythe, c’est-à-dire dans quelle mesure l’attention que le rêveur a prêtée à la structure étrange du rêve, ou à son contenu, a influencé sa relation à la communauté ; comment le phénomène du rêve est-il utilisé comme clef de lecture pour donner du sens à la quotidienneté de l’homme au sein de la société. En un mot : comment le rêve se déverse et contamine le réel. La magie et la métaphore seraient deux expressions de la manière dont le rêve se répand dans la vie quotidienne. La magie, comme lecture sociale des phénomènes dans lesquels la cause est sans relation apparente à la conséquence, cependant que les phénomènes étudiés ont une efficace propre : cette relation sans cause et qui pourtant rassemble deux termes distincts du paysage est l’un des fondements essentiels de la pensée symbolique. La métaphore, enfin, qui est l’expression littéraire et linguistique où deux symboles que rien de connecte cohabitent néanmoins harmonieusement, une stratégie de discours par laquelle le langage se dépouille de sa fonction de description directe pour accéder au niveau mythique. Cela est une proposition : alimenter une sociologie de l’homme éveillé, comme voulait l’appeler Bastide, qui ne rechigne pas à voir que « les états crépusculaires » et « la moitié obscure et sombre de l’homme prolongent le social », une sociologie qui ne peine pas à accepter que nombre des moteurs qui président aux comportement des sociétés humaines trouvent leur source dans les mêmes logiques saltatoires, ou acausales, en toutes les manières dénuées du lignage et des filiations déterministes, que l’on retrouve dans le rêve, dans la magie et dans la métaphore. Une sociologie qui s’autorise à penser que le lien social visible, quotidien, structurant des civilisations, puisse être atteint par une transformation profonde de la manière dont nous envisageons le lien en général. Une sociologie qui se propose de questionner l’inconséquence de l’invisible. / In 1967, in the review Diogène, Roger Caillois wrote an article on the prestige and the problems of dreams. He wrote that, in the past, in a world where dreams had excessive credit, there was a connection between the act of dreaming and the everyday feeling that all things, even intimate ones, could be experienced collectively. Yet, quite ironically, the intuition that dreams could cross-verify, or control one another, acted as a way to civilise them. Conversely, nowadays, in a world where they are no longer source of political power, where they can’t be taken as authentic testimonies, where they are considered impervious phenomena, reticent to be shared, dreams carry a sort of community nostalgia. On the same year, Roger Bastide gave a thought about what a sociology of dreams would be. A study of dreams as social phenomena. He thought that sociology had only interest for the awaken Man, as if the Man asleep were a dead man. He wondered how sociology could ignore this lying, dreaming man. The present thesis offers a framework to think the everyday life through this intuition of Roger Caillois. Consider Men in society not as occasional lying, dreaming bodies. But look at the structures of work, family, and the realm of objects throughout the ways this third of our life we spend sleeping affect them. The interpretation of dreams is not the subject of this thesis, nor is the “latent contents” they might hold. Our purpose is to find out how dreams are experienced and lived as myths. That is to wonder: to which extend the attention given by the dreamer to the weird structure of his dreams, or to its content, have positively influenced his relationship to the community. How does the phenomenon of dreaming can be used as a key to read and make sense out of the everyday life of Men in society. In a word: how dreams overflow and contaminate reality. Magic and the metaphors could be two expressions of this contamination. Magic as a social interpretation of phenomena in which causes remain in seemingly decorrelation with their consequences, whereas the studied phenomena have an effectiveness of their own. This relationship without determinism which yet connect two distinct terms is an essential core of symbolical thinking. The metaphor, finally, the literary and linguistic expression where two symbols that nothing links, nevertheless cohabit harmoniously. A strategy of discourse through which language strips of of its descriptive function, to reach a mythical aspect. This would be the thesis: contribute to a sociology of the awaken Man, as Bastide wanted to call it. A human science which wouldn’t turn its back to the fact that “twilight states of mind” and “an obscure, sombre, half of Man extends the social life”. A sociology that wouldn’t disregard the many drivers of humain societies relying on saltatory logics, indirect causality, and all the human ways escaping determinism, all of which could be found in dreams magic and the metaphor. A sociology which would consider that the invisible, everyday link that structures civilisations, could benefit from an inquiry on the very way we think of the social link in general. A sociology which would question the inconsequence of what is not visible.

A dream can impact a person so profoundly that it may permanently alter his or her life, beliefs, or behaviour. Most of the time, these gifts of insight happen to only a rare few and usually occur without intention. These life-altering dreams are spontaneous and unpredictable. While most studies focus on the content or meaning of dreams after they occur, this study explores the possibility of using dreams to influence behavioural changes in the waking world. This study examined three of the dream elements associated with profound dreams that could potentially be used to develop a systematic method of using dreams to create behavioural changes. The three elements are (a) Emotion: the ability to generate high-emotion states within a dream; (b) Narrative: the formation of narratives within a dream; and (c) Reality: the ability of the dreamer to perceive and accept the dream as reality. This study was conducted using a qualitative research design with a narrative analysis approach in order to explore and understand the subjective experiences of two participants. Data were collected through the participants‘ interviews and dream journals to help determine themes emerging from each of the participants‘ individual experiences. The themes were then analysed for any information regarding the three elements of dreaming as well as the dreams‘ personal significance to the dreamer. Further analysis explored whether lucid or non-lucid dreaming was able to intentionally produce an experientially-based shift in a specific target behaviour. The results of this research study suggest that there is potential for using dreams to induce behavioural change. The research provided a preliminary inquiry into this new field of dream therapy. This exploration of key elements to a potential dream method may prove essential to defining a basic framework and the tools that may be required to implement a new dream method. Future studies are necessary to uncover the correct combination of elements that will produce profound dream experiences at will. / Psychology / Ph. D. (Psychology)