Literature has always been a sensitive barometer of human consciousness. Writers—sometimes intuitively, sometimes deliberately—have used dreams, trance states, hallucinations, and other altered modes of perception to explore the edges of human experience. These episodes serve not merely as decorative devices but as tools for probing what happens to the self when logic gives way to the subconscious. In the works of Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Herta Müller, altered states of consciousness become keys to expressing what cannot be conveyed otherwise: anxiety, existential fragmentation, the struggle with memory, and the weight of collective trauma.
These states seem, at first glance, to detach a person from reality—but in literature they often do the opposite, clarifying it. Through dreams and hallucinations, authors illuminate the hidden movements of the psyche and reveal how the mind constructs parallel worlds that may be as truthful as observable facts. The depiction of altered consciousness is not an escape into mysticism; it is a method of analysis—one of the oldest and deepest available to storytelling.
Dream as a Space of Truth: From the Kafkaesque to Latin American Metaphysics
Dreams are among the oldest literary devices. But in Kafka’s works, they cease to be simple “pictures of the subconscious” and become metaphors for the absurdity of existence. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa awakens to find himself transformed into an insect—an impossible event described with calm precision, as if it were merely one more dream fragment. Gregor’s attempts to stand up, balance, and understand his new body echo the disorientation of nightmares. And yet, the most disturbing detail is that no one else questions the nature of the transformation. This “normality of the impossible” creates the dreamlike atmosphere: an unsettling space where absurdity does not provoke disbelief.
Psychologically, Kafka’s dream-world points to something deeper. His characters inhabit environments where rules fail and logic collapses. This resembles hypnopompic states—moments upon waking when reality feels familiar yet fundamentally wrong. For Kafka, dreams reveal the emotional truth of life under pressure: guilt, powerlessness, and alienation that resist rational explanation.
For Borges, however, the dream is not just an image but a philosophical structure. He writes about “eternal dreams,” about life as a dream, about dreamers who create worlds. His protagonists wander through labyrinths where space behaves like a dream: cycles, mirrors, infinite corridors. Borges uses dreams to probe metaphysical questions: Does reality exist independently of our perception? Or does consciousness generate the world?
This approach resonates with modern theories of perception that view the mind as a predictive model-builder, always creating the most plausible version of the world from incomplete signals. In both dreaming and waking states, consciousness acts as a simulator. For Borges, therefore, the dream is not an escape but a doorway into the mechanics of reality.
Table: Functions of Dreams in the Works of Different Authors
| Author | How Dreams Function | Psychological Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Franz Kafka | Dream as metaphor of absurdity; sense of “partial awakening” | Anxiety, guilt, alienation |
| Jorge Luis Borges | Dream as philosophical model of reality; cycles and labyrinths | Blurred boundaries of reality; mind as creator |
| Herta Müller | Dreamlike distortions of memory; fragmented perception | Trauma, dissociation, psychic protection |
Hallucination as a Reflection of Trauma: Müller’s Fragmented Reality
Altered consciousness in Herta Müller’s prose is neither fantasy nor symbolism but a way of representing life under totalitarianism—fear, surveillance, and psychological fragmentation. Her narrators encounter a world where objects acquire threatening features, spaces deform, and colors appear painfully vivid or impossibly dull.
These distortions echo dissociative states, common among individuals who have experienced long-term trauma. In such states, the self feels detached from the world, from memory, and even from the body. Müller’s hallucinatory images are not signs of madness but manifestations of a psyche struggling to process brutality.
Her recurring motif of “stopped time”—broken clocks, frozen moments, suspended objects—matches accounts from trauma survivors, for whom time genuinely loses its continuity. Hallucinations in Müller’s writing thus become a language through which wounded memory speaks.
Crucially, Müller reverses the usual interpretation: it is not the mind that distorts reality, but reality—shaped by oppression and fear—that appears distorted. Hallucination becomes an entry point into truth, revealing what direct description cannot.
Trance and Threshold States as Pathways to the Subconscious
Dreams and hallucinations are not the only altered states that literature deploys. Trance, automatic writing, and meditative focus also play significant roles in modernist and postmodernist narrative practices.
Kafka’s diaries contain descriptions of writing “on the edge of sleep,” when the hand moved almost independently and consciousness felt distant. This resembles what neuroscientists now call reduced prefrontal control, a state in which creativity expands as self-monitoring diminishes. Kafka used this state intentionally, believing it allowed access to the subconscious.
Borges approaches trance differently. His stories use cyclical structures, mirrors, and doubles that create a hypnotic rhythm. Reading Borges often feels like entering a meditative loop—by design. His worldview treats consciousness as a continuous flow of perception that can be shifted, deepened, or disrupted.
In Müller’s work, trance appears in depictions of fear. During acute stress, attention narrows, and perception becomes tunnel-like. Her characters often describe a world reduced to fragments and details—an accurate representation of the psychological state induced by threat. Here, trance is not a mystical experience but a survival mechanism.
Across these authors, trance marks a boundary: the point where the conscious mind loosens its control and allows deeper forces to emerge. Altered consciousness becomes a tool not only for exploring the self but also for analyzing the social and historical conditions in which that self exists.
Conclusion: Altered States as Mirrors of the Human Psyche
Literature that engages with dreams, trances, and hallucinations does not turn away from reality; it brings us closer to its psychological core.
Kafka uses dreams to express helplessness before an incomprehensible world.
Borges uses them to question the nature of reality itself.
Müller uses trauma-formed distortions to reveal the inner life of people living under oppression.
Together, they show that altered states are not flaws of perception but opportunities to see more clearly. What seems unreal often reveals the truest emotional reality.
Dreams, hallucinations, and trance are instruments that allow writers to articulate what logic cannot capture. They create narrative spaces in which consciousness steps beyond its ordinary boundaries and displays its hidden architecture.
The psychology of altered states in literature is ultimately a conversation about the human being who continuously balances between the visible and the invisible. And the deeper writers venture into these liminal realms, the more clearly we understand that perception is not a transparent window but a complex, ever-shifting system that constructs reality from what we are capable of enduring.
