What do Women Dream About? The Interpretation of Dreams in Idilio magazine

Abstract

Between 1948 and 1951, the Argentine sociologist Gino Germani operated with the pseudonym Richard Rest as analyst of dreams in the section “Psychoanalysis will help you” of the women maga­zine Idilio. The section invited women to tell their nocturne dreams in order to liberate themselves and be happier. Following the logic of a problem page, but invested with psychoanalytic language, Germani organized the dreams of the readers, which were provided with a photomontage of the avant-garde artist Grete Stern. This article puts Germani’s section in relation to the diverse forms in which psychoanalytic discourses circulated in the first half of 20th century in the culture of Buenos Aires, including less orthodox receptions and resignifications. By doing this, what shows is not only a strong presence in Argentine urban culture of the so called, psi discourses, but also the dialogues with gender discourses. Being Idilio a magazine for house wives with predominantly conservative images of femininity, in the psychoanalytic section this traditional propagation appears intertwined with more subversive role models of women. The Unconscious revealed by Germani’s analysis of dreams shows itself both as an instance of conservation and of rupture with the dominant gender imagery.