Nightmares, Dreams and Traps as
Visual Culture
Louise Milne studies the representation of dreams and
nightmares across media in cultural history and the visual arts.
Educated at Cambridge in Archaeology, Anthropology and Literature,
she took her PhD in Art History at Boston University and lectures
on Critical Theory at Napier University and Edinburgh College of
Art, Scotland.
Abstract
The nightmare is a
“self-shattering” experience: a dream where the dreamer feels
under threat of dissolution. This syndrome is physiologically and
culturally “hard-wired” – it is related to conditions such as
night-terrors and sleep-paralysis, and to delirium,
hallucinations, diabolic visions etc. What can the typical
structure and imagery of modern nightmares tell us about how
changing cultural forms shape the basic physiology of such dreams?
The first part of the paper sets out some terms:
EVERY ENTITY YOU SEE IN YOUR
DREAMS IS YOU
DREAMS ARE (FICTIONAL) MEMORIES -
dreams are texts
DREAMS ARE ARTEFACTS OF
REPRESENTATION
A NIGHTMARE IS A DREAM IN THE
FORM OF A TRAP
Using materials from historical
dream-accounts, Outsider art and ethnography, I then examine the
key similarities and differences between pre-modern and
contemporary nightmares. Some core visual forms remain the same
over millennia: examples are given from ancient Greece, 13th
century demonology, 18th century painting, 20th
century Newfoundland folklore. Then I discuss changes: how, for
example, post-Renaissance and post-filmic visual culture imposes
the idea of the perspectival frame or stage on the dream-memory,
and determines the nature of the encounter with the dream-monster.
The body of the paper focuses on
the dream-experiences of three 20th century groups
(asylum, psychoanalytic and L-Dopa patients). I then apply an
anthropological analysis of traps as psychological artefacts to
illuminate these materials, arguing that phenomena of
ego-splitting and ego-alienation are key structures in the
production of dreams generally and affect-laden dreams such as the
nightmare in particular. Finally, I suggest future directions for
research, which would take more informed account of the subtle and
profound connections between cultural context and individual
dream-text construction.
Indicative references:
David J. Hufford, The terror that
comes in the night: an experience-centered study of supernatural
assault traditions (University of Pennsylvania Press:
Philadelphia, 1982)
C. Bearden, "The Nightmare:
Biological and Psychological Origins," Dreaming 4(2), (1994),
142ff
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A Pathological-mythological Treatise on the Nightmare in Classical
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1972), 45-46
A. Geels, "Mystical Experience
and the Emergence of Creativity", in N. G. Holm, ed., Religious
Ecstasy (Stockholm, 1982)
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(1913); trans. J. Strachey (1925); Collected Papers IV (London,
1948), 236-43
Oliver Sacks, Awakenings (1973;
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Hayward Gallery cat., Beyond
Reason, Art & Psychosis: works from the Prinzhorn collection
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and Language: Surface and Depth in Lewis Carroll and Antonin
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in Post-Structuralist Criticism (Ithaca, NY., 1979), 277-295
D. Battaglia et al., "Temporal
reference of the mnemonic sources of dreams," Perceptual and Motor
Skills 64 (1987), 979; see also ff 979-973
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Meier, Den Traumen auf der Spur: Ergebnisse der experimentellen
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preliminary study of the personality of the nightmare sufferer:
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multiplicity of dreams: cognitive-affective correlates of lucid,
archetypal, and nightmare dreaming", Perceptual and Motor Skills
(1990), 641 Mauro Mancia (1988)
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Conclusions," in B. Babcock, ed., The Reversible World (Ithaca,
1977)
Leo Bersani, "Representation and
its discontents", in S. Greenblatt, ed., Allegory and
Representation (Ithaca, NY, 1983)
