On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears

by Asma, Stephen T.

  The Cerberus-visages of dogs we see,

  And images of people gone before—

  Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago;

  Because the images of every kind

  Are everywhere about us borne—in part

  Those which are gendered in the very air

  Of own accord, in part those others which

  From divers things do part away, and those

  Which are compounded, made from out their shapes.

  For truly from no living Centaur is

  That phantom gendered, since no breed of beast

  Like him was ever; but, when images

  Of horse and man by chance have come together,

  They easily cohere, as aforesaid,

  At once, through subtle nature and fabric thin.

  In the same fashion others of this ilk

  Are created. And when they’re quickly borne

  In their exceeding lightness, easily

  (As earlier I showed) one subtle image,

  Compounded, moves by its one stroke the mind,

  Itself so subtle and so strangely quick.27

  In one deft move Lucretius and the atomists were able to eliminate the superstitions of belief in monsters and portentous dreams, but also acknowledge their real experiential basis. Confused phantom images (hybridized creatures, dead people, etc.) were actually entering our senses (because the air is thick with a metaphysical mist of images), but people were misinterpreting these as objectively real. Like Aristotle, however, Lucretius failed to have much impact (despite turning atomism into a poem) on the everyday culture of the ancient world. Shortly after Lucretius, Livy was still giving great weight to omens, dreams, and monsters, and this trend continued right through to the fourth century CE in the form of popular books of omens.28

  4

  Monstrous Desire

  A multitudinous, many-headed monster.

  PLATO

  WHILE HIKING THE BANKS OF THE ILISSUS RIVER, Socrates discussed the monstrous side of human desire with his friend Phaedrus.1 It was a regular topic for Plato and for many Greek artists and intellectuals. Classicism is usually characterized by cool-headed reason, symmetry, and order, but just beneath this calm surface is a writhing mess of Dionysian reality.

  In the dialogue named for him, Phaedrus asks Socrates if he believes in mythical tales of Gorgons, hippocentaurs, and so on, and the sage holds forth on the various debates and disputations surrounding the credibility of myths. Ultimately he says, “I have no leisure for such enquiries; shall I tell you why? I must first know myself, as the Delphian inscription says; to be curious about that which is not my concern, while I am still in ignorance of my own self, would be ridiculous.”

  Unlike the scientifically minded ancients discussed earlier, Socrates had no interest in debunking myths, monsters, dreams, or gods. He was not even concerned enough with these things to qualify as a skeptic. He was simply fascinated by other things, particularly the human psyche. Redirecting the monster question inward, Socrates says, “I bid farewell to all this [mythology]; the common opinion is enough for me. For, as I was saying, I want to know not about this, but about myself: am I a monster more complicated and swollen with passion than the serpent Typho, or a creature of a gentler and simpler sort, to whom Nature has given a diviner and lowlier destiny?”

  The answer to this last question turns out to be both—and then some. Plato is a careful observer of the conflicted inner agencies at work inside each human being. While he is famous for giving us an allegory of rational enlightenment, the well-known myth of the cave, he is also willing to dig below the surface to plumb the subterranean gutters of human craving. In a less well-known passage of the Republic, for example, he builds a monster.2

  PLATO’S MONSTER

  “Let us make an image of the psyche,” Socrates explains. “An ideal image of the psyche, like the composite creations of ancient mythology, such as the Chimera, or Scylla, or Cerberus, and there are many others in which two or more different natures are said to grow into one.” He asks his friends to compose in their mind’s eye a writhing mass of arms, legs, heads, teeth, and claws, all capable of shape-shifting and mutating into new hideous forms: in short, a “multitudinous, many-headed monster,” as he calls it. Next he asks his friends to imagine a lion, and finally a rather small man. These are the three ingredients of his mongrel composition, and Socrates says, “Now join them, and let the three grow into one.” “Next,” he says, “fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer hull, may believe the beast to be a single human creature.” At this point we have arrived at a hybrid monster, one part multiheaded fiend, one part lion, and one part man, but they are all hidden within a normal-looking human figure. This creature is actually a symbolic culmination of Plato’s entire argument in the Republic. It is necessary to analyze the meaning of this symbol in order to grasp ancient ideas about frightening internal monsters (alien parts of the human psyche), the damage they can do, and the proposed cures or solutions for such miasmas.

  The human psyche, according to Socrates and many of his Greek contemporaries, is made up of three basic functions: reasoning power (logis-tikon), emotional conviction (thumos), and appetite or desire (epithymia). We can refer to these as “faculties” or aspects of the soul—simply stated: reason, emotion, and appetite.

  The multiheaded monster represents the appetites, the lion signifies the emotions, and the small homunculus is reason, all melded together into one creature. To have a healthy psychology (soul), we must organize this creature in just the right way. We must, according to Socrates, cultivate an inner life where our goals are set by the “smart” part of our psyche (reason), while our convictions (“emotions” that are guided by our rationality) drive us to overcome hardships and challenges and our instinctual drives (the appetites) get pressed into moderate forms by the “higher” parts of the soul. This harmonic relation—reason ruling over emotion (thumos) and both reason and emotion ruling over the fiery appetites (epithymia)—is the condition of the healthy psyche. It turns out that this natural division of labor is precisely the harmonious relationship that we refer to as justice in the state, whereby the wise rule over the courageous warrior class, and together they rule over the temperate craftsmen class. Thus, reaching the culmination of the Republic, Socrates is finally able to say what justice is: the harmony of reason over emotion over appetite. But now, why be just?

  A gangster, criminal, or unjust person, while appearing successful with his lavish stuff and beautiful sycophants, is ultimately the most miserable of people. He seems to be the free-wheeling big shot everybody respects but is really a slave to his appetites whom everybody fears. Socrates explains that the psyche of the gangster personality (the tyrant) becomes “either by nature or by habits or both” like a drunkard’s (or a junkie’s) psyche. The harmony of reason over emotion over appetite has become unbalanced, and the lowest part of the soul (the appetites) has become the ruling part of the soul.3 Here then is the response that Socrates can finally offer to the pessimists. Justice is not a set of actions or behaviors that pay off in some future consequences. Justice is the psychological peace of mind that comes from a fully integrated rational psyche. According to Socrates, nothing can be more intrinsically worthwhile than this harmony.4

  The overriding metaphor of the Republic is the equation of justice with the healthy condition of an organism and injustice with the diseased condition. But more than merely asserting the analogy, Plato sets out to show the diseased nature of an immoral person by showing the tyrant mind as a state of inner slavery. The fascinating thing about the ethical theory of the Republic is its developmental approach. People aren’t born saints or born criminals, they are made that way through bad nurturing and personal habits of indulging the wrong appetites. Plato is telling us how normal people can become monstrous over time.

  When he and his friends have assembled their tripartit
e symbolic monster, Socrates uses it to demonstrate the unfortunate consequences of the pessimist’s pursuit of unjust hedonism:

  And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for the human creature to be unjust, and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize them with one another—he ought rather to suffer them to fight, and bite and devour one another.

  Instead of this chaos, in which the internal parts are warring with and even devouring each other, we should ally the more human parts (rationality in particular) against the more monstrous (desires): “He should watch over the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering and cultivating the gentle qualities, and preventing the wild ones from growing; he should be making the lion-heart his ally, and in common care of them all should be uniting the several parts with one another and with himself.” If the lion (thumos) rises to the ruling position without the guidance of reason, then hot-headed, overly aggressive, and passionate “animals” result.

  A recent headline in a Chicago newspaper reported that a man who became angry with his cab driver dragged the cabbie from the taxi, got behind the wheel, and then repeatedly drove over the cabbie, killing him. This is a frightening case of immoderate thumos, unguided by reason and self-control. If the multiheaded desires (epithymia) rise to the dominant position (above reason and thumos), addictive hedonism tortures the individual with terminal unfulfillment and also tortures his or her immediate social circle with crime, betrayal, and treachery.

  Plato gives us a theory about how human monsters, of the psychological variety, actually emerge and evolve, and how they can be prevented. At the beginning of book IX of the Republic he says that all human beings have lawless desires within them. The evidence is provided by our own dream life: when we go to sleep our reason slumbers with us, and the beastly and savage parts of us awake in search of gratification. “You know that there is nothing it [epithymia] won’t dare to do at such a time, free of all control by shame or reason. It doesn’t shrink from trying to have sex with a mother, as it supposes, or with anyone else at all, whether man, god, or beast.” The Freudian aspects of Plato’s theory give it a very modern-sounding ring, but it is only evidence that the Greeks were more subtle psychologists than sometimes granted.

  With Plato’s dreams of bestiality and incest we have certainly arrived at the gutter of human desires. But even normal erotic love has the potential (perhaps the inevitability) to go seriously sour. In the remainder of Socrates’ discussion with Phaedrus he details how erotic attraction to another is very much like “being possessed”: it is a kind of madness that comes over you and forces you to do incredibly stupid things. Of course, anyone who has ever been infatuated with another person knows exactly what he’s talking about. But this small-scale common neurosis can grow, if unchecked, into monstrous proportions.5 Which leads us to look briefly at a famous monster of ancient culture, Medea.

  MONSTROUS MOTHER

  Medea, a mother who kills her own children, may be one of the most chilling characters of all time.6 The most famous version of Medea comes from Greek tragedian Euripides (480–406 BCE), but Seneca also contemplated the ancient infanticide and versions of the tragedy have echoed down to become contemporary narratives as well.7

  Medea is the daughter of Aeetes, king of Colchis. Aeetes possesses the famous Golden Fleece that Jason and the Argonauts are trying to acquire, and Medea falls in love with Jason, aiding him in his capture of the precious fleece. She uses her exceptional arts as an herbalist to drug Jason’s foes and flees the island with him, her father in hot pursuit. She unambiguously demonstrates her willingness to sink low by chopping up her brother, who is unlucky enough to have joined her on Jason’s boat, and dumping him overboard piecemeal so that her grieving father will have to collect the bits for a proper burial. All this is backstory to Euripides’ Medea, which begins sometime later in Corinth, after Jason and Medea have produced two boys.

  Jason betrays Medea, setting out to climb the political ladder by proposing marriage to the daughter of Creon, the king of Corinth. Medea is devastated and vows revenge. Euripides’ play is a surprising tour of the interior emotional, psychological torment of a scorned lover. Medea herself understands that she has become a new kind of person. “In other things,” she says, “a woman may be timid—in watching battles or seeing steel, but when she’s hurt in love, her marriage violated, there’s no heart more desperate for blood than hers.”8 Before she sinks to this monstrous echelon of infanticide Medea wrestles with the virtual devil and angel on her shoulders, briefly contemplating an exile for her sons rather than death. But finally she succumbs to the lust for vengeance by saying, “The evil done to me has won the day. I understand too well the dreadful act I’m going to commit, but my judgment can’t check my anger, and that incites the greatest evils human beings do.”9

  The philosophical Chorus of the play articulates the crux of the trouble when they chant, “Love with too much passion brings with it no fine reputation, brings nothing virtuous to men. But if Aphrodite comes in smaller doses, no other god is so desirable.” Overwhelmed by a seemingly toxic dose of Aphrodite, Medea designs a reprisal that is both shocking in its brutality and amazing in its comprehensiveness. She creates a poison-soaked cloak for Jason’s new bride, which manages to melt first the bride and then her father, Creon, who embraces her in desperation over his loss. Then she murders her own two boys in a scene that has them crying out in pain and surprise, begging for mercy from the woman who bore them.

  Medea, pictured here in Lars von Trier’s film version of the play, getting ready to hang her own son. From Lars von Trier’s 1988 television film Medea (Danmarks Radio, Denmark). Courtesy of Photofest.

  When Jason learns that his children have been murdered, he explicitly demotes Medea from the normal human status of woman. In a passage that tellingly synthesizes her foreign, non-Greek ethnicity with her abominable actions, he says, “When you married me and bore my children, in your lust for sex and our marriage bed, you killed them. No woman from Greece would dare to do this, but I chose you as my wife above them all, and that has proved to be a hateful marriage—it has destroyed me. You’re not a woman. You’re a she-lion. Your nature is more bestial than Scylla, the Tuscan monster.”10

  One of the central themes of the play is the idea that forces exist within us that are fundamental to our psyche but also alien to our rational self-identity. The classicist E. R. Dodds argues that the ancients understood this uncontrollable internal force as a literal demonic spirit, and it only slowly came to be identified with natural rather than supernatural emotions. Just as in my earlier discussion of morphological monsters, however, the sequence of beliefs did not traverse a simple upward path of antisuper-stitious enlightenment. Rather, belief in demon possession alternated in seriousness from one age to the next. Dodds points out, for example, that “people in the Odyssey … attribute many events in their lives, both mental and physical, to the agency of anonymous daemons; we get the impression, however, that they do not always mean it very seriously.”11 But then the much later Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus (525–456 BCE) is populated by a more abundant and seemingly literal host of meddling demons, “more persistent, more insidious, more sinister.” By the time we get to Euripides’ Medea we have a pluralistic expression of natural and supernatural demons at work within the human breast. The Greek mind allows for the possibility, at this time, that a demon can actually use Medea’s thumos to kill her children: the literal and figurative expressions of thumos are not mutually exclusive. It is like the case of the hermaphrodite or the abnormal ram’s horn: they may be both natural results of “too much matter” (or developmental blockages or what have you) and also portents or messages with more cosmic meaning.
Socrates championed antisuperstitious rationalism on most issues, but also claimed to have regular consultations with an internal helpful demon (daimon). During these episodes of possession, he would stand quite motionless and seem altogether absent, leaving modern scholars to speculate about the possibility of epilepsy.

  Much later Freud would offer a psychological bridge in the form of projection to connect the mysterious external world of spirits with the mysterious internal world of passions. In Totem and Taboo Freud claims that “spirits and demons were nothing but the projections of primitive man’s emotional impulses; he personified the things he endowed with affects, populated the world with them and then rediscovered his inner psychic processes outside himself.”12 In an important sense the objectification of volitions is entirely understandable when the boundaries of inner and outer have not yet been defined.