Coming to Terms with Dreams in the Early Nineteenth Century

The clergyman Pehr Stenberg (1758–1824) in his autobiography frequently relates his and other people’s dreams and attempts to interpret them and makes possible connections to actual happenings. As a scholar he is sceptical about their knowledge value but cannot reject them entirely, so he goes into exploratory discussions of the relation between dreams and reality. In this article the use of dream narratives in social interaction, his use of dreams as a rhetorical device, his reactions to his dreams and reflections about his reactions are studied, besides his ways of discussing the ontology of dreams.