We explain what something dreamlike is and how it has been interpreted by religions and by psychoanalysis. Also, what is oneirism.
What is something dreamlike?
The oneiric is something that seems to be taken from a dream, or directly that it is something related to the world of night dreams. It's about a adjective from the Greek word óneiros, "Dreams", and that is usually used in different areas of knowledge, such as art and the psychology, interested in the dream experience.
That is why it is possible to find the dream term as part of various expressions, since the phenomenon of sleep has intrigued and disturbed the human being from its most remote times. In ancient traditions, which sometimes survive to this day, what is experienced in dreams is interpreted as a sign, an announcement or a message, coming from different origins: God, the afterlife or the most secret corners of the mind itself.
Thus, for example, dreaming is called the divinatory art of reading dreams, seeing in them premonitions or previews of what will happen in real life. There are multiple cases of this in traditional accounts, and even in the Bible: in the Old Testament, Joseph must use his wisdom to predict Pharaoh's disturbing dreams.
Similarly, although modern, psychoanalysis and psychology try to decipher the so-called dream language, that is, to translate dreams into some form of coherent meaning that allows us to recognize the deep and unspeakable drives of the human being: that which only when consciousness sleeps is capable of expressing, even if he does not do so in a logic Y grammaticalbut rather chaotic and symbolic.
The famous German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) devoted much of his attention to this matter, as evidenced by his book The interpretation of dreams .
On the other hand, dream art is one that tries to reproduce the illogical and fantastic environment of dreams, through whatever techniques, with all its wonderful, terrible or liberating content. The dream can be identified both in plastic arts like in literature, and even in music It is possible to find your own way of expressing the sensations of the dream.
Finally, we must mention oneirism: a mental syndrome that manifests itself in constant confusion, visual hallucinations and partial or complete disconnection from the real world, typical of certain forms of psychosis or psychiatric illness. This type of episodes can manifest in epileptic patients, drug addicts, poisonings and different neurological or brain disorders.