French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Lahire, La part rêvée (L’interprétation sociologique des rêves, vol. 2)
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
La part rêvée
L’interprétation sociologique des rêves, volume 2
Bernard Lahire
La Découverte publ.
Series: SH / Laboratoire des sciences sociales
Published: 07/01/2021 — ISBN: 9782348058141
What are our dreams trying to tell us, and why do their contents baffle us so? In L’Interprétation sociologique des rêves, Bernard Lahire developed a general framework for analyzing dream expression, drawing on insights from all the disciplines that have grappled with this enigma. The dream space emerges here as a site of implicit, largely uncensored self-communication, transfiguring existential issues deeply structured by the dreamers' social experiences.
This second volume deploys this model and method, putting them to work on unprecedented corpora of dream accounts. By connecting the threads of four women's and four men's nocturnal imaginations to recent or distant life experiences, Bernard Lahire decodes the concerns that their dreams stage. Beneath the apparent strangeness or incoherence of these dream puzzles built night after night, he brings into sharp focus the underlying picture: the ordeal of male domination, the aftermath of sexual abuse, the trials of class uprooting, the friction of academic competition, difficult relationships with family heritage, the consequences of physical or symbolic parental violence, the effects of an all-encompassing religious morality, or the repercussions of paternal abandonment.
Masterfully tackling a subject traditionally deemed outside the scope of sociology, Bernard Lahire does not merely dismantle the myth of an interiority untouched by social influence; he provides us with the tools to access the dreamed dimension of our lives with greater lucidity.
View the book on the publisher's website…
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An article about this work can be read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"A Sociologist in Terra Onirica", by Benjamin Tainturier (online August 25, 2021)
Three years after the publication of the first volume of L’interprétation sociologique des rêves, this second volume, La part rêvée, completes a groundbreaking diptych in the history of sociology. Laura, Solal, Louise, Tom, Charlotte, Clément, Lydie, and Gérard form the eight case studies for the dream analysis model that Bernard Lahire meticulously constructed in the first volume (published in paperback by La Découverte). The sociologist thus demonstrates through concrete examples that sociology would benefit from incorporating more dream narratives into its research materials—provided that the forms of dream expression are properly characterized and their boundaries clearly defined.
Within the broader landscape of the social sciences and sociological methodology, the sociological study of dreams remains an unconventional and ambitious undertaking. While psychoanalysis and depth psychology have historically dominated the interpretation of oneiroic material, sociological inquiry has largely steered clear of nocturnal mental life. By examining how individual psychic spaces intersect with collective structures, this volume contributes to ongoing discussions concerning the porous boundaries between intimate interiority and social conditioning. The work builds upon a sustained intellectual tradition that seeks to account for the totality of human experience, including its most seemingly private and enigmatic manifestations. Readers interested in the intersection of sociology, psychoanalysis, and the study of subjective experience may find this volume relevant.