Historically, dreams have been the object of study in all possible branches of psychology: from psychoanalysis to cognitive psychology, including neuropsychiatry. Sociology, on the other hand, has been one of the great absentees in the analysis of this human expression that is both seductive and disturbing.
With The Sociological Interpretation of Dreams, Bernard Lahire seeks to fill this gap and lay the foundations for what he himself calls a general formula for the interpretation of dreams. To this end, Lahire not only points out the errors and limitations of psychoanalysis and takes up the scientific advances achieved since the appearance of The Interpretation of Dreams, but also enters into the very logic of dream production and relates them to the experiences that individuals have in social reality.
In this way, Lahire extends the field of study of sociology to a, until now, terra incognita, and contributes to the transformation and advancement of this social discipline by giving it new objectives and providing it with new working tools.