The article examines the sense of the approximation between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis made by Merleau-Ponty. It discusses the Freudian Unconscious and the Metapsychology of the Overdetermination, and analyzes the critics to the unconscious and to Freud's causationism in the explanation of dreams. Following, it examines the Merleau-Ponty's unconscious conception based on intentionality, and shows the temporality as the most original intentionality, ground of the presence field, whose multiple intentional branches constitute, for Merleau-Ponty, the source of the meaning of phenomena such as dreams. It concludes for the impossibility in reconciling doctrines with different foundations, but questions the existence of an evolutionist presupposition common to both, and the possibility of Freud's philosophical eclecticism to justify readings as the one of Merleau-Ponty. It suggests the need of further examination of such foundations.
intentionality; psychoanalysis; phenomenology
