In this discussion, Patrick McNamara, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology, shares insights about the role of nightmares in our lives. He explains how nightmares serve as a form of emotional regulation, providing a way to process trauma through REM sleep. McNamara explores the historical significance of nightmares, which were viewed as spiritual challenges to be conquered. He also delves into the connection between persistent nightmares and feelings of demonic possession, highlighting the psychological and spiritual dimensions of our sleep experiences.
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insights INSIGHT
REM's Role In Mind And Disorder
REM sleep supports religious consciousness and creative capacities but can cause disorders when dysregulated.
Disinhibited REM neurobiology lets REM content leak into wakefulness and increases daytime dissociation and nightmares.
insights INSIGHT
Supernatural Figures Escalate In Nightmares
Nightmares frequently feature supernatural agents, especially demonic figures for religious individuals.
These agents can escalate across repeated nightmares toward closer intrusion and attempted possession of consciousness.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Progression From Demon Sighting To Possession
A common pattern shows a demon first appearing at a distance, then moving closer in repeated nightmares until it threatens possession.
Case studies report final possession-like awakenings that sometimes require exorcism rituals to resolve.
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This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation.
What are nightmares, and why do we have them? Patrick McNamara, an experimental neuroscientist who studies the neurobiology of sleep, dreams, and religion, believes nightmares have both important spiritual and emotional functions for our minds.
While nightmares can be deeply unpleasant, they have been experienced and recorded by humans for thousands of years, and historically those who were able to withstand and control their nightmares were held in high societal regard — appointed as spiritual guides, or shamans.
Beyond the spiritual, McNamara explains that nightmares can provide insights into the neurobiology of our REM sleep, where we can confront and process trauma. Nightmares can create a kind of exposure therapy, assisting emotional regulation and helping to maintain healthy emotional responses to the environment. That’s why REM sleep is crucial for processing emotional trauma: it allows us to integrate traumatic experiences into our long-term memory stores.
0:00 When REM sleep goes off the rails
0:30 Your brain on nightmares
1:33 Investigating religious nightmares & demonic possession
3:52 Those who conquer demons
4:45 REM neurobiology: Trauma processing
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About Patrick McNamara:
Patrick McNamara is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northcentral University. He also holds appointments in the departments of Neurology at the University of Minnesota and Boston University School of Medicine. He is a founding editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior, the flagship journal for the emerging field of neuroscience of religion. McNamara's current research centers on the evolution of the frontal lobes, the evolution of the two mammalian sleep states (REM and NREM), and the evolution of religion in human cultures.
McNamara is the editor of Where God and Science Meet and Science and World Religions, and the author of The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press), Religion, Neuroscience and the Self: A New Personalism (Routledge), and numerous publications on the neurology and psychology of religion. McNamara is a John Templeton Foundation award recipient for his research project The Neurology of Religious Cognition.
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