Dream Narration and Mental Arithmetic in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

Does a dream narration request a private language ? This is a question one could ask Wittgenstein even if one knows he objects to the very possibility of a private language. That private language is in actuality shared collectively, equipped with a grammar. Any language is deeply social and implies possible interlocutors. One could be tempted to make of dream narration a prototype of private language, but whenever there is narration, though, there is language, that is to say a social one, as one can narrate one’s dreams, as did Margarethe who underwent a therapy with Freud. According to Wittgenstein, the narration of dream is not a private language, but is meant for an interlocutor enticed to decipher it. Moreover, the issue raised by dream narration may be close to the issue of mental arithmetic, which cannot be narrated in detail by the individual calculating, and who cannot remember the details and the steps in case it were a complex calculation.