C.A. Meier

 

Healing Dream

and

Ritual

 

 

Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy

 

 

DAIMON

VERLAG

 

This book is an English translation of the German language work, Der Traum als Medizin (Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln, 1985), which itself grew out of an earlier work by C.A. Meier entitled, Antike Inkubation und moderne Psychotherapie (Rascher, Zürich, 1949). This earlier German language work appeared in English translation in 1967 under the title, Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy (Northwestern University Press). The author was ably assisted in the work of translating and editing by David Roscoe, Gary Massey, John Peck, Liza Burr and Robert Hinshaw. Mr. George Page is also hereby acknowledged with gratitude for helping to make this publication possible.

 

Copyright © 2020, 2003, 1989 by Daimon Verlag

Am Klosterplatz, CH-8840 Einsiedeln, Switzerland

 

ISBN 978-3-85630-912-1

 

Cover image: Asclepius, by Joel T. Miskin

Cover design: Joel T. Miskin, assisted by Hanspeter Kälin

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the publisher.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter I – The Divine Sickness

Chapter II – Epidaurus

Chapter III – Asclepius

Chapter IV – Serapis

Chapter V – Incubation Ritual in the Sanctuaries of Asclepius

Chapter VI – The Tholos

Chapter VII – Incubation at the Oracle of Trophonius

Chapter VIII – The Mystery of Healing

Epilogue – The Dream in Ancient Greece

Epicrisis – For the Thinking Reader

About the Author

List of Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

 

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. Herzog1 spent many years studying Epidaurus and, more particularly, Cos. He has cleared up many points. Alice Walton2 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 Reitzenstein5 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. Büchsenschütz9 has carefully 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 Aristotle12 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 elsewhere15 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

 

 

 

 

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