Nightmares Human Conflict

In Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares, John H. Matsui argues that the political ideology and racial views of American Protestants during the Civil War mirrored their religious optimism or pessimism regarding human nature, perfectibility, and the millennium. While previous historians have commented on the role of antebellum eschatology in political alignment, none have delved deeply into how religious views complicate the standard narrative of the North versus the South. Moving beyond the traditional optimism/pessimism dichotomy, Matsui divides American Protestants of the Civil War era into “premillenarian” and “postmillenarian” camps. Both postmillenarian and premillenarian Christians held that the return of Christ would inaugurate the arrival of heaven on earth, but they disagreed over its timing. This disagreement was key to their disparate political stances. Postmillenarians argued that God expected good Christians to actively perfect the world via moral reform—of self and society—and free-labor ideology, whereas premillenarians defended hierarchy or racial mastery (or both). Northern Democrats were generally comfortable with antebellum racial norms and were cynical regarding human nature; they therefore opposed Republicans’ utopian plans to reform the South. Southern Democrats, who held premillenarian views like their northern counterparts, pressed for or at least acquiesced in the secession of slaveholding states to preserve white supremacy. Most crucially, enslaved African American Protestants sought freedom, a postmillenarian societal change requiring nothing less than a major revolution and the reconstruction of southern society. Millenarian Dreams and Racial Nightmares adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Civil War as it reveals the wartime marriage of political and racial ideology to religious speculation. As Matsui argues, the postmillenarian ideology came to dominate the northern states during the war years and the nation as a whole following the Union victory in 1865.

Anyone who is plagued by nightmares night after night knows what a heavy burden these nocturnal apparitions represent: one is unable to resume sleep, often lies awake for a long time, and feels fearful, irritable or depressed the next day. What can help to take the fear out of the night? Understanding the message of nightmares is a first step toward relief. These energy-laden images can represent urgent questions stemming from the depth of the psyche. In this book, experienced Jungian analyst Renate Daniel demonstrates how one can succeed in finding appropriate answers to help understand and cope with nightmares. Renate Daniel, M.D., a specialist in psychiatry, psychotherapy and psychoanalysis and Director of Programs at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zürich, has been a psychotherapist in private practice for many years. She is the ­author of Nur Mut! Die Kunst, schwierige Situationen zu meistern (2011) as well as numerous published articles. Contents: 1. What are Dreams? The Waking, Sleeping and Dreaming Worlds 2. Why do we Dream – and What for? Dreams and Mental Health 3. What are Nightmares? Ancient Myths and Neurobiological Insights 4. Dealing with Nightmares: Discovering, Exploring and Understanding Yourself 5. Nature as a Nightmare Motif: Natural Forces, Dangerous Animals and Plant Life 6. Human Beings as a Nightmare Motif: Aggressive People and Vulnerable People 7. Nightmare Motifs from Culture and Technology: When Objects Become Broken or Dangerous

This book studies the treatment of science and technology from ancient myths to current works, demonstrating the importance of science to human civilization as evidenced in literature. Works studied include the Bible, Greek mythology, tales from the Middle Ages (including those about the Golem and Dr. Faustus), Gulliver's Travels, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and works by Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, and Aldous Huxley, among others.

This wide-ranging exploration of the spiritual and scientific dimensions of dreaming offers new connections between the ancient wisdom of the world's religious traditions, which have always taught that dreams reveal divine truths, and the recent findings of modern psychological research. Drawing upon philosophy, anthropology, sociology, neurology, literature, and film criticism, the book offers a better understanding of the mysterious complexity and startling creative powers of human dreaming experience. For those interested in gaining new perspectives on dreaming, the powers of the imagination, and the newest frontiers in the dialogue between religion and science, Visions of the Night promises to be a welcome resource.

An illuminating look at interpreting, understanding, and learning to stop nightmares! You’re chased. You fall. You get shot. You’re attacked. You’re paralyzed or trapped. A loved one dies. You die!! You wake up in a cold sweat, wondering what it meant. Going beyond simple explanations, Nightmares: Your Guide to Interpreting Your Darkest Dreams helps you understand why you have nightmares and what they mean. This informative book looks at the meaning of common symbols and themes in nightmares and dark dreams. It will teach you not only how to interpret the content of nightmares but also why you have them in the first place and how to stop them. The gritty details of each nightmare are often personal and unique, but through examples and easy-to-follow explanations, best-selling author and dream interpretation expert J. M. DeBord guides you through interpretations and demystifies the dark side of dreaming. He explores the reasons for nightmares, some as simple as bad digestion and illness. Some are caused by shocking events or chronic situations, while others are more existential, challenging a person to break a pattern or habitual response, or to break out of their shell and claim their greater power. He even shares his own worst reoccurring nightmare, its meaning, and how he overcame it. Exploring the messages delivered by the unconscious mind during sleep, Nightmares: Your Guide to Interpreting Your Darkest Dreams provides the tools you need to sort through possible connections and to make sense of your nightmares. Also included are a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to the book’s usefulness.

From a Coast to Coast AM insider, a mind-expanding exploration of sleep disorders and unusual dream states--the scientific explanations and the paranormal possibilities. The sleeping mind is a mysterious backdrop that science is just beginning to shed light on. It was only some sixty years ago that researchers discovered REM, the rapid-eye-movement cycle that's associated with dreams. In Nightmareland, Lex "Lonehood" Nover travels into the eerie borderlands where the unconscious, dreams, and strange entities intermingle under the cover of night, revealing wider and hidden aspects of ourselves, from the savage and frightening to the astounding and sublime. Encompassing accepted medical phenomena such as sleep paralysis, parasomnias, and Ambien "zombies," and the true-crime casebook of those who kill while sleepwalking, to supernatural elements such as the incubus, alien abduction, and psychic attacks, Nover brings readers on an extraordinary journey through history, folklore, and science, to help us understand what happens when we sleep.

The Believer is the weird and chilling true story of Dr. John Mack. This eminent Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer risked his career to investigate the phenomenon of human encounters with aliens and to give credibility to the stupefying tales shared by people who were utterly convinced they had happened. Nothing in Mack’s four decades of psychiatry had prepared him for the otherworldly accounts of a cross section of humanity including young children who reported being taken against their wills by alien beings. Over the course of his career his interest in alien abduction grew from curiosity to wonder, ultimately developing into a limitless, unwavering passion. Based on exclusive access to Mack’s archives, journals, and psychiatric notes and interviews with his family and closest associates, The Believer reveals the life and work of a man who explored the deepest of scientific conundrums and further leads us to the hidden dimensions and alternate realities that captivated Mack until the end of his life.