Dreaming the social: Disavowal and reparation in the age of environmental and social disasters

Amid escalating ecological crises and global unrest, this paper explores whether dreaming—traditionally viewed as private and introspective—can be reimagined as a form of ethical and political engagement. While dreams have long been valued in psychoanalysis for their revelatory nature, they also serve 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 mental residues but fundamentally political and relational acts. We introduce the concept of oneiricopolitics—the transformative and political potential of dream life in an era of planetary precarity and psychic disavowal. Far from escapism, dreaming emerges as symbolic resistance, a gesture of love, and a form of ecological reparation that sustains the symbolic life of the world, restoring meaning, care, and transformation. The paper unfolds in three sections. First, it examines psychic mechanisms underlying environmental denial and trauma disavowal, drawing on Ferenczi’s theory of trauma as relational rupture and symbolization as a path to healing. Second, it revisits the notion of regression through Ferenczi’s thalassal metaphor and Neumann’s uroboric consciousness, framing these as symbolic movements essential for ecological reattunement and human evolution. Lastly, it articulates dreams as part of the “language of the soul,” combining Jungian and post- Jungian thought with the notion of a cosmic unconscious. The paper concludes by framing oneiricopolitics as a psychopolitical insurgency—an ethical, imaginative force animated by the sacred eros of hope and ecological care.