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all’esperienza del protagonista del film Altered States di Ken Russell. Nello stesso romanzo entrano
in gioco le coppie oppositive latente/manifesto, in rapporto al sogno, e apparenza/realtà, che nella
prospettiva surrealista dell’autore vanno a costituire una forma di realtà diversa, alternativa,
surrealista per l’appunto 263 .
In un articolo scritto alla fine degli anni Sessanta, intitolato “Dreams and Surrealism”,
Ballard, citando Breton, ricorda come il Surrealismo si basi sulla fede nell’onnipotenza del sogno.
Più oltre cita i dipinti di Dalì come esempio di sogno freudiano, e quelli di Max Ernst come esempi
di sogno junghiano:
«Surrealism is based on a belief in the omnipotence of the dream», said Andre Breton […]. The most
important influence on the Surrealists was their discovery of psychoanalysis. Freud's emphasis on the
significance of random associations, his concepts of symbolism and repression, and above all the notion of
the unconscious as a narrative stage, provided the Surrealists with all the props and materials of a continuing
drama. Whatever the validity of its Freudian or Jungian underpinning, there is no doubt that the dreamimagery
of Surrealism has had an immense and sustained influence since its heyday in the 1930s, which one
can see in the cinema, science fiction, advertising and fashion photography. Surrealism has given us a
remarkable visual record of the inner world of our dreams, and the evidence for a positive logic other than
that provided by reason. […] Salvador Dali's work is consistently faithful to the codex of psychoanalysis.
[…] These are dreams of earliest childhood, of the irreconcilable melancholy of birth. They are populated by
Oedipal figures, cryptic governesses and marooned lovers. […] As if directly inspired by Jung's theories of
the collective unconscious, the paintings of Max Ernst are filled with archetypal forests, glowering suns and
strange hieratic figures, such as the mysterious bird-headed woman in The Robing of the Bride 264 .
In un’intervista di molti anni successiva Will Self chiede a Ballard, in riferimento al
surrealismo, in che misura si senta un freudiano ortodosso. La risposta è particolarmente
illuminante, perché da un lato si dimostra un freudiano poco ortodosso, affermando di non credere
che esista un istinto di morte, mentre dall’altro Ballard sottolinea un aspetto molto importante: il
legame tra arte e psicanalisi. Quest’ultima, lungi dall’essere uno strumento di cura per le patologie,
è piuttosto uno strumento d’indagine della psiche umana cui l’arte può attingere.
W.S.: «In one sense, surrealists are the most orthodox Freudians there can be. […] To what extent do
you view yourself as an orthodox Freudian?»
consciousness proves all the more powerful as it tends to erase the distinction between the real and the phantasmagoric,
just as the latent and manifest contents of the dreams themselves are confused. As Dr. Bodkin explains to Kerans, the
visions they experience while sleeping are in fact so many manifestations of “an ancient organic memory millions of
years old” [The Drowned World, p. 74]. Of all the members of the expedition, only practical-minded Colonel Riggs can
manage to resist the mesmerizing powers of the ‘deepdreams’ by holding on to reason and logic and obeying
instructions to the letter. As for Strangman, the Kurtz figure of the novel [Kerans corrisponde a Marlowe] – described
by Kerans as “a white devil out of a voodoo cult” [The Drowned World, p. 158] – he embodies the darker implications
of the pre-rational realm of the phantasmagoric jungle. Significantly, his moral corruption and primitive savagery is
associated with his attempts to pump out the lagoon and thereby reverse the ineluctable psycho-biological disruptions
announced by the ‘deepdreams’.» M. Delville, op. cit., p. 8.
263 «In taking Freud’s classic distinction between the latent and manifest content of the dream, between the apparent and
the real, and reapplying it to the ‘reality’ of the external world, Ballard creates a Surrealist space in which a radically
alternative reality is accessible.» Jeannette Baxter, J. G. Ballard’s Surrealist Imagination, op. cit., p. 22.
264 J. G. Ballard, “Dreams and Surrealism”, Sunday Times Magazine, 16/02/1969.
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