Theodor W. Adorno 
Dream Notes 

‘Dreams are as black as death.’

–Theodor W. Adorno



Adorno was fascinated by his dreams and wrote them down
throughout his life. He envisaged publishing a collection of them
although in the event no more than a few appeared in his
lifetime.

Dream Notes offers a selection of Adornos writings on
dreams that span the last twenty-five years of his life. Readers of
Adorno who are accustomed to high-powered reflections on
philosophy, music and culture may well find them disconcerting:
they provide an amazingly frank and uninhibited account of his
inner desires, guilt feelings and anxieties. Brothel scenes,
torture and executions figure prominently. They are presented
straightforwardly, at face value. No attempt is made to interpret
them, to relate them to the events of his life, to psychoanalyse
them, or to establish any connections with the principal themes of
his philosophy.

Are they fiction, autobiography or an attempt to capture a
pre-rational, quasi-mythic state of consciousness? No clear answer
can be given. Taken together they provide a highly consistent
picture of a dimension of experience that is normally ignored, one
that rounds out and deepens our knowledge of Adorno while retaining
something of the enigmatic quality that energized his own
thought.

Table of Content

Dream Notes

Editorial postscript

Afterword

About the author

T. Adorno, Frankfurt School