I arrived at the end of this article with a distinct feeling of "Totally, yes, this seems like a good synthesis of the three major psychoanalytic dialectics being juxtaposed." AND, I found myself thinking, BUT, would this track across other cultures, types of ability, cognitive developments, etc.?
Both Wilson and Hewitson discuss the unconscious as processes and systems of processes and entanglements and engagements and of things which don't simply add on top of one another but combine and synthesize into entirely new realities/sciences/dialectics. This makes sense in the language we share, but I can't help thinking about how this would translate (or more likely not translate) into differently arranged cognitive, linguistic, developmental, and cultural systems.
For example, the idea of consciousness as topographical or economic, place-based or exchange-based, may not work in cultures which see place in an entirely different fashion, e.g. as parts of their shared biology (water as part of the same 'us' our bodies and trees and spirits occupy). Or in which the conception of 'things' is continuous, rather than discrete, such as the Pirãha tribe who treat both color and number as continuous, relational concepts which cannot be separated or disarticulated as a red scarf or three horses. Similarly, would this model work for someone who is blind and dreams without image, or someone who is deaf and dreams without sound? For infants or people with developmental differences who operate without language, with or without a sense of separateness of 'I' from 'Other', or in a culture in which meanings are rigidly fixed, where no meaning is ever fixed and in which every thing is relational already?
Fundamentally, I think I agree with the final (dis/re)articulation of the unconscious in Hewitson's five clear arguments, especially to the nature of the unconscious as a different reality, subject to its own rules and writing, but I simply don't agree with the lack of intentionality. I think both of these articles would have benefitted from the discussion of affect and sensation - of how one feels sensationally and emotively about a dream, how the dream itself felt. So many of my own dreams go the same way - mazelike buildings, trying to accomplish something but coming up against roadblocks every few steps, grand architecture to explore - but the feeling tends to tell me more about the dream than the content. Sometimes these journeys feel exploratory, evocative of awe, and sometimes they are stressful, sometimes frightening, occasionally resulting in a cold sweat, bolt out of bed awakening. This, to me, says more about the dream than whether I was navigating a literal maze, a maze of people, a confusing building, etc.
This brings me back to the question of how people of other types of cognition and culture might experience the unconconscious, and whether more could be determined from the feeling of dreams than from the interpretation of the signifier-signified process/relationship/system.
