C.A. Meier – Healing Dream and Ritual Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy
Introduction
[The doctor] ought to be able to bring about love and reconciliation
between the most antithetic elements in the body…. Our ancestor
Asclepius knew how to bring love and concord to these opposites, and he
it was, as poets say and I believe, who founded our art.
Plato, Symposium 186 D
OVER FIFTY YEARS AGO, while working in a psychiatric clinic, I became
convinced of the need to study incubation in the ancient world. Material
produced by psychotic patients seemed to contain symbols and motifs
familiar to me from my scanty studies of ancient literature. Yet the content of this material showed quite plainly that, even in psychosis, which medical
science usually approached in a defeatist spirit, there was a factor at work that we call today, rather inadequately, the “self-healing tendency of the psyche.”
I found in C.G. Jung’s analytical psychology a method by which I could
observe those spontaneous healing processes at work. This is possible,
however, only if the observer adopts a waiting attitude, letting the process
happen, listening to it, as it were, and following it in all humility.
This, in our modern therapeutic situation, would represent the genius loci. Further, analytical psychology, with its theory and the wealth of parallels it has collected from the history of religion and folk psychology, is an instrument that grants us deep insight into the psyche of sick mankind; with it, too, we can form a truer idea of the developmental processes in those whom we call healthy. Analytical psychology (research workers have already proven its usefulness in many studies in widely separated disciplines) can help us understand historical material previously misinterpreted or poorly explained.
Analytical psychology can help us, for example, to understand the
problems a study of incubation raises.
The ancient sources are available to us today, but the psychological aspect has been neglected.
This is indeed regrettable, since Karl Kerényi’s work has shown that the psychological approach is extremely fruitful when applied to Greek mythology and ritual
Here I wish to acknowledge my gratitude for the guidance gleaned from
Kerényi’s work and how stimulating his frequent and friendly conversations
with me have been.
R.
Herzog[1] spent many years studying Epidaurus and, more particularly, Cos.
He has cleared up many points. Alice Walton[2] published a detailed
study of Asclepius in 1894.
Yet a more recent work on the subject, by the Edelsteins,[3] reveals the complete neglect of the psychological and, even more, comparative standpoint that has characterized all these works.
Since the incubation motif is eternal and ubiquitous, I shall confine myself
in this study to material from classical antiquity.
The material there is probably the least known, but that period offers everything necessary to an understanding of this subject.
It is true that parallels to the healing miracles of Asclepius may be seen in the miraculous cures of the Church right down to the present day.
This material, however, contains nothing that cannot be found in the ancient world. Indeed, it may even be more controversial.
All that is important from our point of view is to note here that the Church
follows very ancient paths and is continuing a great tradition.
One thing more should be pointed out: the many similarities in the records of pagan and Christian miraculous cures are not due to imitation.
This is sufficiently shown by the striking Indian parallels noted by Weinreich.[4] Other similarities are dealt with by Reitzenstein[5] and Deubner.[6]
According to the Samkhya doctrine, all the world’s sickness and suffering
are due to the body’s contamination of the soul.
These ills will therefore only disappear when “discriminating knowledge” – liberation of the soul from the physical world – is attained.[7] Thus, for example, we should not be surprised to find, in the final initiation rites of some Tibetan monks, a striking similarity to those employed in consulting the Trophonius oracle.[8]
As I have said, I shall, in this work, omit discussing these matters in detail,
since the highly developed ancient rite and the discoveries of modern
psychology alone enable us to understand incubation.
These modern psychological discoveries are to be found in the works of C.G. Jung, so I shall avoid complicating this study by continual references to them.
The general attitude of mind toward dreams prevalent in the ancient world
requires some explanation. Incubation’s effectiveness is very closely bound
up with the importance accorded to dreams.
Only when dreams are very highly valued can they exert great influence. Büchsenschütz[9] has carefully assembled assembled the source material concerning the opinions held on dreams in antiquity. Therefore, I need not try to assess them here.
Only one last point need be emphasized: the Greeks, especially in the early period, regarded the dream as something that really happened; for them it was not, as it was in later times and to “modern man” in particular, an imaginary experience.[10]
The natural consequence of this attitude was that people felt it necessary to
create the conditions that caused dreams to happen. Incubation rites induced a mantikē atechnos (prophecy without system), an artificial mania, in which the soul spoke directly, or, in Latin, divinat.[11] In modern analytical psychology, too, we find what might be described as a method for
constellating the natural “soothsaying” of the psyche.
If, as we put it today, the unconscious is to speak, the conscious must be
silent. In antiquity the blind seer – Tiresias is the best known – was the fit
embodiment of this idea.
The autonomous factor in the psyche revealed in such images and healing
dreams surely merits our highest respect. Thus Aristotle[12] refers to incubation as a therapeutic method. In the book On Diet (Parva Naturalia),[13] Part IV, he develops a theory on the dream sent by a god.
The Stoa developed this idea still further, and regarded healing dreams as an expression of divine pronoia (“foresight”).
The later Academy and the Epicureans violently criticized this view, but with the Neo-Pythagoreans and the Neo-Platonists it was soon to
reach a still higher culmination.
Studying the sources, we see at once that incubation is for the cure of
bodily illnesses alone.
You might then ask what it has to do with psychotherapy.
In the first place, the sources constantly emphasize that Asclepius cares for sōma kai psychē, both body and mind – “body and soul” is the corresponding Christian term; and second, bodily sickness and psychic
defect were for the ancient world an inseparable unity.
The saying mens sana in corpore sano, which is often misunderstood today, is a later formulation of this idea.
Thus in antiquity the “symptom” is an expression of the sympatheia,[14] the consensus, the cognatio or coniunctio naturae, the point of correspondence between the outer and the inner. Stoic doctrine understood the concept in a very broad sense; it means the natural coincidence of particular phenomena, perhaps even in different parts of the world; thus it corresponds to C.G. Jung’s notion of synchronicity
When, later, especially in the Empire, the incubants’ dreams become
healing oracles, which prescribe for the illness, the original concept of
incubation begins to decay.
The dream itself is no longer the cure.
I have shown elsewhere[15] that this phenomenon of prescription by dream sometimes occurs even today; it, too, is psychologically interesting in connection herewith.
In what follows the reader should bear in mind one important archetypal
theme constantly, namely, the myth of the night-sea-journey, first presented in complete form by Frobenius.[16]
The links are particularly striking in connection with the oracle of Trophonius.
Here a remark of Paracelsus may be apt; he says that in the belly of the whale Jonah saw the great mysteries.[17]
One other significant fact should be rescued from oblivion.
The doctors of Attica were required to sacrifice publicly twice a year to
Asclepius and Hygieia for themselves and their patients.[18]
Although it will be obvious to anyone acquainted with C.G. Jung’s work
how much his discoveries influence this study, I wish to emphasize it once
again and express my deep gratitude to him.
C. A. MEIER
Rome
May 1948
Zürich
Fall 1988 ~
C.A. Meier – Healing Dream and Ritual Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy, Page 5-8
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