Sleeping with the Enemy: The Devil in Dreams in Early Modern Spain

On January 17, 1897, a young and as yet unknown Viennese physician wrote a colleague about a potentially disturbing fact: that the psychiatric problem on which they were working had been thoroughly researched and even published long before their efforts. Those responsible for the scoop were medieval Inquisitors. By developing the doctrine of demonic possession, the Church's judges had anticipated the “theory of a foreign body and the splitting of consciousness” the two medical men had located in cases of hysteria. The Viennese doctor was, of course, Sigmund Freud, and the recipient of his letter was his closest friend, the Berlin physician Wilhelm Fliess (Freud, 1985, pp. 224-226). Their correspondence is well known as one of the best sources for the reconstruction of the early phase of psychoanalysis. Freud's letter on the parallels between demonic possession and hysteria—and for that matter between the analyst and the inquisitor—is also interesting for another reason: it contains the first mention of the devil in his work.

Freud's next letter, dated January 24, moves the subject of the demonic one step further. This time he mentions witches, as well as their judges, whose “harsh therapy” he claims to “understand.” Not only does Freud bring up the notion of a “primeval devil religion with rites that are carried on secretly,” but he also links stories told by certain of his patients to the confessions of witches. In his view, details of witch mythology