Conceptions of Dreaming from Homer to 1800

G. W. Pigman Iii

Description

An intellectual history of European theories of dreaming.

Byron’s designation of the dream as ‘the mystical usurper of the mind’ captures two aspects of its perennial fascination. Dreams are mysterious and they take possession of our minds as if they had an irresistible power of their own. The usurpation of the mind by dreams has contributed to the belief that they accurately and supernaturally predict the future, reveal things unknown in the present or warn the dreamer to do or not to do something. This kind of dream goes by many names – admonitory, divinatory, precognitive, veridical, and prophetic – and even today most people believe in it. ‘Conceptions of Dreaming from Homer to 1800’ presents the history of conceptions of dreaming in Europe from Homer to the turn of the nineteenth century, the long period in which the admonitory dream was the centre of learned and popular interest.

By the end of the eighteenth century many researchers were interested in the dream as a psychological event rather than as a portent of the future. More of them were ceasing to ask what dreams are and how they work and asking instead which dreams reveal the future, how and their interpretation. In broader terms, western European thinking about dreams up to 1800 was primarily concerned with what they might mean or reveal. Although revelation of the future was the most common kind of significance, dreams were also thought to reveal the health of the dreamer, their wishes, character and daily pursuits. Hence the overwhelming concern with classifying dreams as significant (requiring attention) or insignificant (safe to ignore). Since the second half of the eighteenth century witnessed an important shift in the study of dreams, the period from Homer to the turn of the nineteenth century should be taken as a whole – the period of the admonitory dream. During this period the admonitory dream was accepted, questioned or rejected. But it was rarely ignored or simply mentioned as a historical curiosity, as increasingly happened in nineteenth-century scholarly and scientific discourse.

‘Conceptions of Dreaming from Homer to 1800’ traces the history of ideas about dreaming during the period in which the admonitory dream was the main focus of learned interest – from the Homeric epics through the Renaissance – and the period in which it begins to become a secondary focus – the eighteenth century. The book also considers the two most important dream theorists at the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud and Sante de Sanctis. While Freud is concerned with the old questions of what a dream means and how to interpret it, De Sanctis offers a synthesis of nineteenth-century research into what a dream is and represents the Enlightenment transition from particular facts to general laws.

Acknowledgements; Introduction: The Period of the Admonitory Dream; 1. The Ancient World; 2. The Middle Ages; 3. The Early Modern Period; Epilogue: Freud and De Sanctis; Bibliography.; Index.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• General officer
• General
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 31 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783088904
• Langue: English

Extrait

Conceptions of Dreaming from Homer to 1800
Conceptions of Dreaming from Homer to 1800
G. W. Pigman III
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2019
by ANTHEM PRESS
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Copyright © G. W. Pigman III 2019
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78308-888-1 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78308-888-5 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e-book.
For SAK
Y pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello que podemos.
—Íñigo López de Mendoza, primero marqués de Santillana
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
The Period of the Admonitory Dream
Chapter One
The Ancient World
Messenger Dreams
Homeric Messenger Dreams
Journeys of the Soul
Psychology and Allegory to the Late Fifth Century
Dream Interpretation and Medicine
Plato, Wish Fulfillment and the Soul
Aristotle: Naturalism and Illusion
Epicurean and Ciceronian Skepticism: Pursuits of the Day
Systems of Classification
Imagination and Memory in Late Antiquity
Character, Morality, Wet Dreams and Nocturnal Emissions
The Purpose of Dreams
Chapter Two
The Middle Ages
Demonic Dreams
Classifications: Gregory I and Beyond
Aristotle Arabicus: The Symbolizing Imagination
The Synthesis of Albertus Magnus
Witchcraft: Transvection and Incubi
Chapter Three
The Early Modern Period
Early Modern Aristotelianism
Wolff’s Innovations
The Embarrassment of Supernatural Dreams
Beyond Admonition: “From Particular Facts to General Laws”
Epilogue
Freud and De Sanctis
Freud: The Essential Nature of the Dream
De Sanctis: Methods, Facts and Theory
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have worked on this book for so long that I am afraid I may have forgotten some of the people who have helped me over the years. If I have, I hope they will accept my apologies. For help of various kinds I thank John Brewer, Kelly Bulkeley, Owen Flanagan, Renato Foschi, Stefan Goldmann, W. V. Harris, Kristine Haugen, John Kerrigan, Stephanie Kovalchik, Giovanni Pietro Lombardo, Gideon Manning, Giorgia Morgese and John Sutherland. I would also like to thank the staff at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the National Library of Medicine and, in particular, the Caltech Library.
Some of the epilogue was originally published in “The Dark Forest of Authors: Freud and Nineteenth-Century Dream Theory,” Psychoanalysis & History 4 (2002), 141–65. An early version of part of the first chapter was presented at a conference on “Ancient Dreams in their Social and Intellectual Contexts” at the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia University, April 2004.
INTRODUCTION: THE PERIOD OF THE ADMONITORY DREAM
Byron ’s designation of the dream as “The mystical Usurper of the mind” ( Don Juan 4.30.4) captures two aspects of its perennial fascination. Dreams are mysterious, and they take possession of our minds as if they had an irresistible power of their own. After more than two millennia of research and theorizing, even defining dreaming remains nontrivial and controversial. By adopting “the most broad, general, and indisputable definition of dreaming: mental activity occurring in sleep” (Hobson 2002 , 7), one excludes phenomena often not distinguished from dreams in the past—waking visions . In accounts from antiquity and the Middle Ages one sometimes cannot tell whether uisio refers to a waking vision or a dream, and sometimes waking visions are included in classifications of dreams. In 1999, a task force of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies failed to agree upon a definition of dreaming , and some contemporary scientists argue that dreams from REM sleep should be distinguished from the “dream-like mentation” of NREM sleep (Wamsley and Stickgold 2013 , 132).
The mystery of dreaming extends beyond problems of definition. The question that has preoccupied people since Homer—“What do dreams mean?”—has yet to be answered to general satisfaction. Since the discovery of REM sleep by Aserinsky and Kleitman ( 1953 ), scientists have learned a good deal about the physiology of sleep—for example, which areas of the brain are active in different stages of sleep, or which neurotransmitters are performing which functions—but no one has come up with a persuasive theory of the function or significance of dreams. 1 Hobson states a widely held suspicion: “dreaming itself could be an epiphenomenon without any direct effect on normal or abnormal cognition” ( 2009 , 805). Solms concludes a recent survey of the neurobiology and neurology of dreaming: “An adaptive function for dreaming has, however, not been empirically demonstrated” ( 2011 , 540). In fact, today there is less of a consensus on the relation of REM sleep to dreaming than a couple of decades ago because dreams also occur in NREM sleep, although not as frequently and, more controversially, are not of the same character as in REM. 2 Consequently, a history of conceptions of dreams cannot be written as a series of approaches to and deviations from an accepted theory. 3 The debate about the significance or insignificance of dreams continues, often in terms familiar to one who knows the history of dream theory.
The usurpation of the mind by dreams has contributed to the belief that they accurately and supernaturally predict the future, reveal things unknown in the present or warn the dreamer to do or not to do something. This kind of dream goes by many names—admonitory, divinatory, precognitive, veridical and prophetic—and even today, most people believe in it. 4 “Admonitory dream” might be the single most inclusive designation, since some dreams deemed supernatural are not strictly speaking predictions but rather warnings or commands, but dreams that predict the future are usually regarded as admonitions. The main part of this book presents the history of conceptions of dreaming from Homer to the turn of the nineteenth century, the period in which the admonitory dream was the center of learned and popular interest. Although the center of interest, however, the admonitory dream was never the only kind of dream regarded as meaningful, so I consider all of the prominent kinds of dream—whether meaningful or not.
Toward the end of this period, Konrad Philipp Dieffenbach , the son of an evangelical minister and a teacher at the Collegium Fridericianum in Köngisberg, denied any significance to dreams and dismissed relying upon them as the mental weakness of the dumb and ignorant, since the fulfillment of a dream might be coincidental. Divine providence has given the wise man a different kind of prophetic power than dream interpretation: clear-seeing reason and strong judgment that allow him to predict in accordance with the usual connection of things. 5 Dieffenbach roundly condemned dream interpreters: “Today in enlightened lands one seeks to prevent these apostles of superstition from spreading their follies—one puts them in prisons or madhouses” ( 1789 , 899). Although unusually uncompromising and contemptuous, by the second half of the eighteenth century Dieffenbach is by no means alone in rejecting the persistence of admonitory dreams. Scholars (e.g., MacKenzie 1965 , 83) used to take this kind of Enlightenment self-congratulation at face value but more recently regard the triumph of Enlightenment rationalism over superstition as an exaggeration (Engel 1998b , 101–2; 2003b , 42–3; Sawicki 2003 ; Gantet 2010 , 432–44).
Nevertheless, there is something more than wish fulfillment in positions such as Dieffenbach ’s. By the end of the eighteenth century, many researchers were interested in the dream as a psychological event rather than as a portent of the future. More of them were ceasing to ask, “Which dreams reveal the future, how do they do it, and how can we interpret them?”, and were asking instead, “What are dreams, and how do they work?” In broader terms, Western European thinking about dreams up to 1800 was primarily concerned with what they might mean or reveal. Although revelation of the future was the most common kind of significance, dreams were also thought to reveal the health or illness of the dreamer’s body, his wishes, character and daily pursuits . Such dreams might also reveal the future, especially the development of an illness that has yet to produce waking symptoms, or might reveal nothing out of the ordinary, as when Theocritus’ s fisherman dreams of fishing. Hence the overwhelming concern with classifying dreams as significant (requiring attention) or insignificant (safe to ignore). Very few dream theorists—Sigmund Freud is the most notable exception—have thought that all dreams are significant.
Since the second half of the eighteenth century witnessed an important shift in the study of dreams, it makes sense to consider the period from Homer to the turn of the nineteenth century as a whole—the period of the ad