In a message dated 10/26/98 8:26:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

> Vunch has a point that dreams are "communications" sent by others to
>  yourself if, as F and Lacan would have it, "yourself" be understood as an
>  "other" and communication is to the other of yourself. Remember that
>  representations always involve three partites: the producer of the
>  representation, the recipient of the representation (which may well be the
>  same locus), and the representational matter.  Fr transposes
>  the positivist cartesian cogito that presumes self-identity to: I am not
>  where I am (what I do, what I say, etc.), b/c of the undermining work of
>  the unc.  Lacan views this in terms of linguistic enunciation: the subject
>  of the symblic order (subject merely by virtue of its place in
>  an enunciation, symbolic, represetnational, etc.) chain is split from its
>  biological locus.
>
>  But, on the other hand, I don't think Vunch has these ideas in mind when
>  speaking of dreams as communications from an other or from another scene?
>
Your notions of self as divided remind of anti-psychiatry, a movement headed
up by Laing and Szasz.  I wouldn't discount their views either.  I am
referring to an 'explanation' of communication which recognizes not merely the
signifier-signified relationship for any meaningful entity we experience,
which could, hypothetically, occur internally, that is, between split off
fragments of selves of the same selfand of other selves; but also, the
existence of a designator, an other, which designates the signifiers.
Otherwise, you have reduced meaning to its semantic-syntactic relations and
obscured the pragmatic dimension.  You would then have to presume that
everyone is a monadical mind, a closed up self.  This is preposterous.
Intrapersonal relations are the source of our thoughts which we need to
acknowledge through the determination of the source of a thought or feeling.
Others have intentionality, the intent to communicate, to manipulate, to
influence, to
do things, etc...  It is relevant to recognize whether someone else is
influencing us through subtle, subliminal, attitudinal dispositions or
otherwise and whether this constitutes the source of a dream, a thought, a
daydream, a feeling , etc...
Everything is communication.

Yes, some thoughts and feelings are authentically our own which we can partly
recognize when we cannot validly attribute it to our perception of another's
feeling or thought.  Empathic identification is a multiple endeavor, we are
empathizing with others as others empathize with each of us and others at the
same time.  Recognizing this, and that others are also attempting to influence
us in many different ways, some of which may be objectionable, but all of
which is within our evaluation, ideally; or practically, within our cognition.

I would agree that Freud's notion of a censor is absent moreso during our
sleep, and that, within certain states of mind, meditative perhaps, we
perceive internal images more vividly.
But, imagery is a relevant aspect of the sender-receiver notion of
communication (which I hope no one will pejoratively call projection-
introjection which refers to the attribution and perception of our own
misgivings and interests).  It seems to me that when we sleep we are more
susceptible to the 'sendings' of others, whereas, when we are awake, we are
enacting our own interests. (However, this could easily lead to a discussion
of conventional morality and legality, ideology, the nfluence of media, the
notion of authentic needs and false needs, etc...)  Likewise, when we sleep or
rest, we can more easily send and receive feelings and thought with others, as
in the notion of intimacy.

Fred Welfare
Teachers College, Columbia University