Le narrazioni impossibili: sogni, confabulazioni e deliri / Impossible narratives: dreams, confabulations and delusions

Abstract

Our species seems to have a special need to tell stories (GOTTSCHALL 2012), a need which is evident also when the narrative seems impossible for a number of reasons. This paper aims to explore three different cases of impossible narratives: dreams, confabulations and delusions. In dreams, the contents show peculiar characteristics, such as contradictions, incongruities, nonsenses, that seem impossible to be told in a coherent way. When we try to recall the dream and we translate it into a story, we deal with a case of impossible narrative, that transforms a contradictory and illogic content into a coherent narration. In my analysis, I will treat the way we recall a dream as a special case of linguistic game (WITTGENSTEIN 1958), where the meaning of the dream lies in the way we use it, recalling it or telling it to someone else. The second case of impossible narrative is confabulation, or the spontaneous production of false memories. For example, amnesic patient who are asked to talk of something they can’t recall because of their amnesia produce completely false narrations, full of invented details, which they seem to believe in. In my view, confabulations appear as attempts to narrate oneself even when anomalous experiences threaten the sense of cohesion and unity of the self itself. Finally, the third case of impossible narrative I’ll deal with is delusion. Present in very different mental disorders, the delusion is a false belief firmly held by the subject, who defends it against every contrary evidence (APA 2013). I will try to show that the delusion is a form of paradoxical narrative, where the patient, who has completely lost his autonomy, is totally trapped in without any possibility to escape