“There
are a few people who fear the light of the day – for whom the sun is the enemy
and who will not emerge from their houses until the man-made lights are lit.
But the almost universal fear of the dark is intensified in hundreds of
individuals into a real phobia. For them a dark room is actually filled with
spectres ready to mutilate, to rape, and to slay. The victim of this phobia
probably suffers from an inner conviction of guilt, a conviction that he has
sinned in thought and word and deed; it is punishment that he fears, and yet
desires because it will make him clean again. In this common and comparatively
mild form of phobia is clearly demonstrated the conflict (between the victim’s
terror of retribution for his self-confessed transgressions and his longing for
the expiation that will liberate him), which is characteristic of so many of
the more complicated forms.
“We
have long had our childhood and adolescent fear of the dark explained to us by
parents and teachers as a result of dimly remembered bedtime stories about
tigers who roam in deep jungles; or else as a racial inheritance of our
ancestor the caveman’s dread of the very real perils he constantly endured. But
this theory, while it undoubtedly explains a great deal, can be made to explain
too much. Some people shun the dark for actual and personal reasons. In their
twisted minds they are guilty of sin, and the formless blackness, that to the
normal mind is only absence of light, is transformed into a perilous
other-world when conscience and nature are at odds.”
John Vassos
New York City
May 25th, 1931
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