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ABSTRACT

 From Erotic Dream to Nightmare: Early Christian Evidence

Charles Stewart, DPhil. Charles Stewart is Reader in Social Anthropology at University College London specializing in the anthropology of Greece. He is the author of Demons and the Devil (Princeton, 1991), a study of local religion in Greece. He is currently writing a book about dreaming in Greece that combines historical and anthropological data.

4. Summary: In ancient Greece erotic dreams were not necessarily problematic. The early monks and ascetics sought to eradicate such dreams. This paper considers the writings of Evagrius of Pontus and John Cassian which present exceptional, psychologically detailed accounts of how erotic dreams came to be experienced as demonic nightmares.

5. Learning Objectives: a) To explore the early history of dreams in the West; b) To examine a critical moment in the formation of the nightmare; c) To consider the role played by philosophy, medicine and religion in the formation of popular, and still current, ideas about dreams

8. Abstract: This paper explores the changing ways in which erotic dreams were viewed from antiquity to the early Christian period. Erotic dreams were not in themselves problematic for the ancient Greeks unless they took on a compulsive form. The ancient doctors dismissed nocturnal emissions as normal. In the Hellenistic period Stoicism developed the idea that all emotions (pathe) were the results of judgements and could be controlled or avoided. The early Christians seemed to draw on this idea and applied it to the exclusion of erotic impulses in waking and in sleeping. The various deadly sins, such as concupiscence, were conceptualized as demons, which stirred up evil passions in the monks, either by activating memories or fabricating >phantasms=. The ascetics were particularly vulnerable while asleep as their usual faculty of discernment was less operative. The late fourth century writings of Evagrius and Cassian give detailed psychological insight into the battle with demons in dreams. This material sheds light on the early history of the nightmare and the conversion of erotic dreams into nightmarish experiences. Much later Ernest Jones would argue that demonic nightmares arose out of the repression of Oedipal wishes, the erotic overtones of which were blotted out by sheer horror and terror. The early Christian writings considered here reveal a similar connection between eros and the nightmare.