Religious Transgression Research Articles

Aslak Rostad. Human Transgression—Divine Retribution: A Study of Religious Transgressions and Punishments in Greek Cultic Regulation and Lydian-Phrygian Propitiatory Inscriptions (“Confession Inscriptions”)

Aslak Rostad. <i>Human Transgression—Divine Retribution: A Study of Religious Transgressions and Punishments in Greek Cultic Regulation and Lydian-Phrygian Propitiatory Inscriptions (“Confession Inscriptions”)</i>

ORIENTALIZING FEMININITY: NOTIONS OF IMPURITY IN UKRAINIAN MODERNIST LITERATURE

The paper examines the interconnectedness of feminity with ethnonational otherness in Ukrainian modernist literature in the context of European misogyny and ethnophobia. It demonstrates how the representation of female sinful otherness, impurity, and disloyalty was cemented in misogynistic imagery, in which women appeared as witches and heterodox temptresses through sexual and cultural differentiation. The otherizing of Orientalized ethnic groups in Eastern Europe — typically Jews, Roma, and Tatars — involved their conceptual feminization as well. Specifically, the paper analyzes the topic of the decay of the Slavic/Orthodox/masculine ‘race’ and the range of concomitant tropes and ideas found in Ukrainian modernist literature, such as castration, celibacy, and obsession with ‘tainted’ blood, which reflected ‘racial’ anxieties that went hand in hand with misogynistic ideas of the feminine role in spiritual and physical decline. The study performs close readings of works by Olha Kobylianska, Mykhailo Yatskiv, and Natalia Livytska-Kholodna, in which women appear as demonic-vampiric, heterodox seductresses and heresiarchesses, who threaten to ruin the ethno-androcentric culture of the modernist epoch. Orientalized femininity and the ambivalence it brought to Ukrainian modernism harbored the ethnoreligious fears and inherent sinfulness that encompassed traditional descriptions of the femme fatale, as well as such associated figures as the fallen angel and seductive adulteress – the initiatrix of moral, sexual, national, and religious transgression, which invariably alluded to a perceived crisis in patriarchy and reproductivity. The analysis focuses on the three thematic aspects of sin and sinfulness: temptation, heterodoxy, and betrayal.

ПРОБЛЕМЫ РЕЛИГИОЗНОЙ ТРАНСГРЕССИИ НА АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНЫХ ИНТЕРНЕТ-ФОРУМАХ

The subject of the article is the cases of a change of religion and the possibility of such a change, discussed on Internet forums. The article focuses on the definition of this phenomenon and the identification of its key characteristic features. At the same time, it is noted that within the framework of religious themes, forums now allow you to move from traditional means of providing information to building a vertical of communication between users. The situation with the discussion of such topics on foreign Internet forums is somewhat different from Russian trends and has its own characteristics. In foreign forums, the genre of "personal testimony" is increasingly used, which consists in detailed stories about how a person turned to another God or turned away from him altogether, thereby accomplishing a religious transgression. The main reason that sounded in the personal testimonies that prompted the transgression is that the person learned something that he did not know before, and that turned out to be incompatible with his religious picture of the world. Personal stories play an additional role - to cheer up those who have lost their faith, but do not dare to declare it openly. Statements of members of the forum confirm that Network atheism continues to gain momentum, revealing the conflict of the transition process

From appeal to transgression: problems of modern discourse of religious Transitions

Globalization processes, which are aimed at forming a single language of different cultures, raise problems of modern identity and its transformation. The process of self-identification is complex and depends on the existing worldview, so the transformation of identity entails a change in the worldview, and vice versa. In other words, such transformation can be seen as transgressive processes, which is clearly demonstrated in the example of religious practice.The religious worldview is rather stable, but significant changes are observed today. Influenced by syncretism fashion, new religious practices start blurring the boundaries of the world confessions that have been formed over the centuries, replacing the sacrament of conversion with an act of uncontrolled religious transgression, which is especially characteristic of believers who do not feel a special craving for integral system of dogmas.The authors used the term transgression to fix the phenomenon of crossing the impassable border between the possible and the impossible, leading in some cases to a breakthrough beyond the boundaries of everyday commonness and generally accepted norms. This process is both constructive and destructive, but it is destructive to social norms. Therefore, special attention is paid to the act of religious transgression related to the transition to another faith, which makes it necessary to study in the framework of the article bans and recommendations designed to create a limit of impassability on the borders of world confessions. Based on the comparative analysis of various rules and regulations adopted in Judaism, Islam and Christianity in order to regulate believers’ behavior, the social effect on the formation of the individual religious worldview is analyzed.

Adolescent self-harm in Ghana: a qualitative interview-based study of first-hand accounts

BackgroundRecent prevalence studies suggest that self-harm among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa is as common as it is in high income countries. However, very few qualitative studies exploring first-person accounts of adolescent self-harm are available from sub-Saharan Africa. We sought to explore the experiences and first-person perspectives of Ghanaian adolescents reporting self-harm - for deeper reflections on the interpretive repertoires available in their cultural context for making sense of self-harm in adolescents.MethodsGuided by a semi-structured interview protocol, we interviewed one-to-one 36 adolescents (24 in-school adolescents and 12 street-connected adolescents) on their experiences of self-harm. We applied experiential thematic analysis to the data.ResultsAdolescents’ description of the background to their self-harm identified powerlessness in the family context and unwanted adultification in the family as key factors leading up to self-harm among both in-school and street-connected adolescents. Adolescents’ explanatory accounts identified the contradictory role of adultification as a protective factor against self-harm among street-connected adolescents. Self-harm among in-school adolescents was identified as a means of “enactment of tabooed emotions and contestations”, as a “selfish act and social injury”, as “religious transgression”, while it was also seen as improving social relations.ConclusionsThe first-person accounts of adolescents in this study implicate familial relational problems and interpersonal difficulties as proximally leading to self-harm in adolescents. Self-harm in adolescents is interpreted as an understandable response, and as a strong communicative signal in response to powerlessness and family relationship difficulties. These findings need to be taken into consideration in the planning of services in Ghana and are likely to be generalisable to many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Causes and Mechanisms of Religious Transgression among Students of the North of Caspian Sea Region

Causes and Mechanisms of Religious Transgression among Students of the North of Caspian Sea Region

Public Penance of Heretics: its Forms and Functions

The Polish version of the article was published in “Roczniki Humanistyczne,” vol. 59 (2011), issue 2.&#x0D; The article discusses the origins of public penance for heresy in the early Christian tradition as well as examining its application in the penitential practice of the medieval Church. It demonstrates how public penance for mortal sins, which took shape in Late Antiquity, was later adopted and developed within the system of Medieval Inquisition. In the medieval collections of canon law, heresy was qualified as a religious crime which required special public penance. Following the guidelines set up in the ancient Church, any heretic who declared his or her intention to renounce their wrongs was to be interrogated by a bishop, who would grant them absolution of sins and prescribed due penance. An important aspect of penance for heresy was public solemn penitence, which took place on Sundays and feast days and included a number of rituals. The penitent heretic had to appear in a special garment with his or her hair cut off and barefoot. The ritual of solemn public penitence for mortal sins was formed in Late Antiquity and as such was later incorporated into medieval pontificals.&#x0D; The rise of Medieval Inquisition, which was used as an efficient weapon against popular heresy, stimulated the development of penitential discipline for heretics. Papal Inquisitors, who came to be appointed as extraordinary judges in heresy trials since the 1230s, were particularly inventive in the way how public penance might be employed to fight heretics. Medieval registers of heresy trials, carried out by Papal Inquisitors and bishops, are still the main source of information about penalties imposed on heretics who were sentenced for their errors. The public announcement of a sentence and penalty was the final act of the inquisitorial procedure. The charter of penalties (littera penitentialis), which was first read publicly and later handed over to the penitent heretic, listed various forms of penitence which he had to fulfil. In the inquisitorial strategy of penance, which started to be used in the first half of the thirteenth century, a solemn public penitence of heretics became commonplace. The inquisitorial registers and manuals for inquisitors described in detail the ritual of public penance and its functions. The penance imposed on heretics offered them a chance to repent publicly for their public crimes and to give satisfaction to society which had been disturbed by their deeds. That is why solemn public penance usually took place in a cathedral or central market square on feast days to be attended and witnessed by the local community. Through his special appearance and penitential garment with two cross signs, the heretic was highly visible and could not be anonymous. The whole society was responsible for supervising the penance of heretics and controlling their religious and moral conduct. Any act of religious transgression or misconduct was to be reported to the ecclesiastical authorities. Of course, public penitence was aimed at teaching a lesson to all the faithful and preventing them from falling into heresy.

Psychometric characteristics of the Reasons for Death Fear Scale among Iranian nurses

ObjectivesDeath fear is the main subject in thanatology. Several researchers have defined different reasons for fear of death. This study aimed to explore the performance of the Farsi version of the Reasons for Death Fear Scale (RDFS) among a convenience sample of Iranian nurses (n = 106). MethodsThe nurses were selected by the convenience sampling method and were asked to complete the RDFS, Death Concern Scale, Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale, Death Anxiety Scale, Death Depression Scale, and Death Obsession Scale. ResultsFor the RDFS, the Cronbach's a coefficient was 0.90, and the 2-week test–retest reliability was 0.64. The RDFS was correlated at 0.34, 0.39, 0.50, 0.35, and 0.39 to the above-mentioned five scales, indicating its good construct and criterion-related validity. Based on the exploratory factor analysis, the RDFS-identified four factors accounted for 66.20% of the variance and were labeled as “Fear of Pain and Punishment,” “Fear of Losing Worldly Involvements,” “Religious Transgressions and Failures,” and “Parting from Loved Ones.” ConclusionsThe RDFS presents good validity and reliability and can be used in clinical and research settings in Iran.

“Santísima Muerte, Vístete de Negro, Santísima Muerte, Vístete de Blanco”: La Santa Muerte’s Illegal Marginalizations

La Santísima Muerte, the death saint patron of the marginalized and dispossessed in Mexico, the United States, and beyond, is especially favored by devotees who identify with her duality between dark and light, and good and evil. Most of Santa Muerte’s devotees understand that good and evil coexist in her, and they often simultaneously appeal to both. At the same time, illegality and marginalization, which are generally associated with the saint’s “dark” or “evil” sides, take on multiple, diverse forms, encompassing criminalized activity such as narcotrafficking, religious transgressions that reflect unorthodox spiritual practices such as witchcraft, and most contentiously of all, the very conditions of poverty and racialization in Mexico. Nevertheless, cultural representations of Santa Muerte often resist such diversity and persist in opposing her dark and light sides. Films such as Eva Aridjis’s La Santa Muerte and Pável Valenzuela Arámburo’s La Santísima Muerte aim to represent all Santa Muerte in all of her multiplicity and to correct stereotypical representations of the death saint in general. But perhaps inadvertently, Aridjis’s film reinforces the contrast, rather than the intersections, between “light” and “dark”. However, in La Santísima Muerte, Valenzuela Arámburo deliberately embraces the saint’s contradictory duality to provide a different perspective on illegality and criminality, simultaneously accepting such illegality as a dark menace in the vein of Santa Muerte’s typical detractors, and rearticulating it as a necessary aspect of the saint’s holy works. Valenzuela Arámburo’s film not only emphasizes that the very same devotees invoke Santa Muerte for her powers of “good” as well as for those of “evil”, it demonstrates that these devotees incorporate the saint’s dark side as they see fit not as a consequence of their marginalized status, but as a means to resist it. Thus, while both films underscore that marginalized populations are just as nuanced and contradictory as their patroness of death is, Valenzuela Arámburo’s film grounds itself in Santa Muerte’s duality in order to demonstrate how her seemingly contradictory aspects construct and shape each other. As such, the film combats the representation of marginalization and criminality in Mexico and beyond, highlighting the extent to which her devotees appeal to both her dark and light sides precisely because they are simultaneously victims of marginalization and agents of resistance.

Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right

Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right

ВЛИЯНИЕ ПОСТМОДЕРНА НА РАЗВИТИЕ РЕЛИГИОЗНОЙ ТРАНСГРЕССИИ

ВЛИЯНИЕ ПОСТМОДЕРНА НА РАЗВИТИЕ РЕЛИГИОЗНОЙ ТРАНСГРЕССИИ

Rekonstruksi Fiqh Jinayah terhadap Perda Syariat Islam

This paper poses a question whether Syari’ah can be adopted as a regional/provincial law in Indonesia or not? The question has many sides. First, the many provinces in Indonesia have different religious and cultural setting, making them varied in their reception not only to Syari’ah but also to Islam itself. Even the province where Muslims are majority, Syari’ah is not always ready to apply. Second, the formalization of Syari’ah has provoked an uneasy response from many non-Muslims and also from many Muslims who are not happy with the formalization of Syari’ah. Third, the provincial law has thus far been good in some provinces, giving no chance for the Syari’ah law to interfere. It is these problems that this paper is concerned with. Some aspects of the Syari’ah criminal law that many have attempted to be formalized will be discussed here such as the law of fornication, of drugs and beer, of prostitution, and of religious transgression.

Inter-Organizational Knowledge Transfer - An International Halal-Based Network Experience

This study presents an inter-organizational knowledge exchange network, driven by religious precepts. Its distinction is based on an asymmetry, where the firm that detains a specific knowledge willingly transfers it to another firm, with no foreseeable returns – be it profit, power, influence, or other. In this case Firm A does not seek competitive advantage based on its superior knowledge. Its main interest resides on perpetrating knowledge of a set of procedures on Halal food preparation - an important element of Islamic faith. Knowledge transfer is facilitated by a common religious background and community sense, despite country differences such as culture, language, and geographical distance. The commitment of both firms to avoid religious transgression ensures facilitates knowledge transfer and focus receptor’s learning. Then apply these concepts extending our research to the Brazilian poultry export Halal network, which had a substantial improvement in the past decade. Finally, to achieve a better understanding of the knowledge transfer in this religious background we propose a conceptual framework based on four categories: Technical- procedural, Religious-procedural, Socio-technical, and Religious values.

Polish Decadence: Leopold Staff's &lt;i&gt;Igrzysko&lt;/i&gt; in the European Context

Decadent authors writing about the past share a common artistic practice: revisionist creativity. I argue in my Zoom sur les décadents that this particular type of creativity uses as its main device recombination of legends, myths, and historical events. Historical, cultural or religious figures are reexamined and shown in a new unexpected light. I show in my book how Villiers de Isle-Adam conflates two crucial battles of the Ancient world: Marathon (490 BC) and Thermopiles (480 BC) in ashort story called "Impatience de la foule." The final result of Villiers's telescoping of separate historical events is a seamless narrative. In Hugues Rebell's "Une Saison à Baia," Saint Paul attempts to convert Roman patricians who mock his incoherent speeches. In "La Gloire de Judas," Bernard Lazare departs from the Gospels and tells the tragic story of Judas whose betrayal made the salvation of the human race possible. In Lazare's short story, Judas is a self-effacing figure who doesn't act on his own but on Jesus Christ's specific order, who sworns him into secrecy.Common in French decadent fiction, religious revisionism was largely tolerated in the secular Third Republic. Whereas censorship was quick to punish naturalist authors writing about debauched clergy in contemporary France (e.g. Louis Deprez and Henry Fèvre's Autour d'un clocher) decadent authors reinventing ancient religious stories and retelling the life of catholic saints enjoyed a relative freedom ofexpression.It is my hypothesis that taken out of its secular context, religious revisionism of the kind practiced by French decadents may be seen as shocking transgression in a fiercely catholic country like Poland. In the country that lost its independence in 1794 and was ever since seeking to regain it, Catholic Church was perceived as an essential ally in the struggle against main occupying powers: Orthodox Russia, and Protestant Prussia. In the course of the 19th century Catholicism and patriotism had been effectively fused in Polish national conscience. In this charged political context a Polish author revisiting Church dogma or tradition was at risk of being perceived not only as a religious outcast but also as a traitor to the cause of Polish independence.To test my hypothesis I propose to examine Igrzysko (Game), a forgotten play by Leopold Staff. Admired today chiefly as a poet, the young Staff wrote Igrzysko in Poland after a long sojourn in Paris where he had lived among the international crowd of fin de siècle writers and artists. The play was first produced in Lemberg in 1909 and after a few performances vanished forever from Polish theatrical repertoire.Leopold Staff's play is set in ancient Rome and depicts tribulations of an actor who, while impersonating a Christian awaiting crucifixion, converts to Christianity. In his play, Staff revives the legend of Saint Genesius, an actor in Arles who died a martyr's death in 286 under Diocletian. In Spain, Saint Genesius's legend inspired Lope de Vega who wrote Acting is Believing (Lo fingido verdadero, 1607). In France, it was the source for Jean Rotrou's Saint Genest (1646). All told, the legend of Genesius is a popular theme for artists who wish to explore the distinction between art and life. An important addition to this old tradition, Staff's play contains, however, a decadent and potentially scandalous twist. Unlike in Acting is Believing and Saint Genest, the protagonist's conversion is very short lived in Igrzysko. Fearing pain, Staff's character commits suicide and is, therefore, condemned for eternity. In my paper, I will discuss the significance of Staff's religious transgression in the context of the turn of the century arch-catholic and patriotic Poland.

Muslim Women and Sport (review)

Reviewed by: Muslim Women and Sport Christina Kwauk (bio) Muslim Women and Sport edited by Tansin Benn, Gertrud Pfister, and Haifaa Jawad. London: Routledge, 2010, 296 pp., $168.00 hardcover. Sport, usually described as a male preserve, has become a yardstick of gender equality and an arena in which women’s rights are championed and challenged. Often though, (Western) advocates, fans, and feminist scholars assume sport to be an endeavor pursued by women with shared gold-medal dreams and common gender-based sociocultural obstacles to overcome; differences in religious identity and cultural values are ignored in favor of the view that sportswomen share a universal sport agenda. The increased visibility of elite Muslim sportswomen wearing the hijab in international sport competitions reminds us, however, of the nonuniversality of women’s experiences and values. The topic of religion, women, and sport, therefore, opens up a unique area for expanding discussions on gender equality, women’s empowerment, and social change by challenging scholars and popular audiences to question deeply held assumptions about women’s identities, bodies, and public roles in society. Expanding this discussion, Muslim Women and Sport, edited by Tansin Benn, Gertrud Pfister, and Haifaa Jawad, is a timely collection of sixteen essays that highlights the diverse experiences and realities of Muslim women participating in sport. The volume is a product of an international meeting on the sporting opportunities of Muslim women held in Oman in 2008, and it represents the diverse perspectives, experiences, and research of its twenty-three contributing Muslim and non-Muslim authors. Muslim Women and Sport makes three important contributions to scholarship in this area: first, it gives voice to Muslim women athletes, coaches, teachers, and leaders who have been silenced, marginalized, or gone unseen in physical education and sport studies—a field dominated by non-Muslim Western researchers; second, the volume challenges negative stereotypes and assumptions about Islam, Muslim women, and sport by offering alternative, “woman-friendly” (32) interpretations of Islam, and by making a compelling case for the compatibility of Islam and women’s sport; and third, Muslim Women and Sport expands the analytical potential of gender analysis by recognizing the significance of religious identity and embodied faith as factors shaping the choices, values, and experiences of Muslim women participating in sport. Specifically, Pfister’s chapter aptly employs Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to frame a theoretical discussion on the sociological and political significance of different “body projects” and body practices for women who have been socialized in Muslim cultural practices, and the chapters on the Muslim diaspora make insightful contributions to understanding how central women’s bodies, and the control of these bodies, are in mediating the complex relationship among Islam, women, and sport. [End Page 186] The book is organized into four parts, with part 1 (chapters 1–3) providing a comprehensive overview of the underlying concepts and debates framing the entire volume. It also introduces the “Accept and Respect Declaration” (the first product of the Oman meeting), which states that “Islam is an enabling religion that endorses women’s participation in physical activity.” The declaration also recommends that “people working in the sport and education systems accept and respect the diverse ways in which Muslim women and girls practise their religion and participate in sport and physical activity,” including their “choices of activity, dress and gender grouping” (5). These points inform the foundational assumptions held by the authors in the remainder of the book—namely, that the religious values of Muslim girls and women must be respected, and that inclusive sporting environments can be created without religious transgression. The remaining three sections provide an encyclopedic representation of the history and contemporary status of Muslim women in sport in thirteen Muslim and non-Muslim societies. Muslim-majority nations in the Middle East serve as the sociocultural and political context for most of the volume, including Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. Branching out to other Muslim-majority countries in southeastern Europe and North Africa, two chapters provide snapshots of Muslim sportswomen in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Morocco, respectively. Finally, three chapters cover the Muslim diaspora in Denmark, Germany, and South Africa. It should be noted that...

Editor's Column: Literature in the Ages of Wood, Tallow, Coal, Whale Oil, Gasoline, Atomic Power, and Other Energy Sources

This fountain of overwriting in Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep captures the incommensurability between the frail human form and the power of electricity. After connecting himself to the rail powering trains that run through New York’s Lower East Side slums, Roth’s tenyearold protagonist, David, veers between life and death. His electrocution is selfinflicted and deliberate. Earlier in the novel David longs for the source of this “searing spray,” for the fantasied angelcoal that burned the prophet Isaiah clean: “where could you get angelcoal? Mr. Iceman, give me a pail of angelcoal. Hee! Hee! In a cellar is coal. But other kind, black coal, not angel coal. Only God had angelcoal. Where is God’s cellar I wonder. How light it must be there” (231). Although David also associates cellar coal with a promising disobedience, with sexual and religious transgression, Roth is more skeptical; he explores modernity’s coalmade economy as a dark power tarnishing America’s promise as di goldene medine (the golden land). In a country that offers opportunity, but at the cost of language loss and hard labor, survival demands a constant entanglement with dirty energy. This Editor’s Column peruses the relation between energy resources and literature. Instead of divvying up literary works into hundredyear intervals (or elastic variants like the long eighteenth or twentieth century) or categories harnessing the history of ideas (Romanticism, Enlightenment), what happens if we sort texts according to the energy sources that made them possible? This would mean aligning Roth’s immigrant meditations on power with Henry Adams’s 1 2 6 . 2 ]

“To Lose One’s Soul”: Blasphemy and Slavery in New Spain, 1596-1669

“To Lose One’s Soul”: Blasphemy and Slavery in New Spain, 1596-1669

Women, the state, and political liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African experiences

Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences, by Laurie A. Brand. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. xviii + 264 pages. Notes to p. 291. Interviews to p. 296. Bibl. to p. 305. Index to p. 320. $50 cloth; $18.50 paper. Reviewed by Donna R. Divine There is a deeply ingrained belief that the liberalization of autocratic regimes brings benefits to all sectors of society and the same measure of freedom to everyone. Across countries and continents, women march alongside their male comrades to challenge dictatorships and to press for the institution of democratic polities which will grant them equal opportunities and full access to society's prized resources. But the outcomes of such efforts generally do not match expectations. Women may risk their lives in the street during a revolution only to find themselves locked in their houses by the post-revolutionary rulers. Historical change is a wonderfully complex and uneven process, and is most decisively affected by gender. Seizing upon this complexity, Laurie Brand examines the relationship forged between women and the state in the context of policies aimed at liberalizing the political system. Brand is interested in periods when significant sectors of Middle Eastern society have expanded their opportunities to express ideas freely, have formed organizations in opposition to the ruling establishment and have exercised influence over the direction of policy-making. Do such perestroikatype experiments improve the lives of women? For the answer, Brand turns her scholarly attention to recent political developments in Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia-three countries which, at various times, flirted with political reform, but not with radical transformation. Regardless of the form of government, the rulers of these countries felt compelled to institute reforms, either as a result of regional or international events or in deference to domestic pressures to broaden channels for political expression. They thus created political space for many groups, including those which tried to set a new course for women. Into this breach, however, marched those groups which considered any change in the status of women to be a religious transgression. Why do so many reformers committed to democracy take such strong exception to widening the ambit of freedom for women? Brand locates the reasons for the many difficulties encountered by women in the very nature of political change. Political transitions introduce sustained periods of uncertainty which impose risks on everyone. She writes, The fact that in each of the three cases examined here women-appeared to have been spared or overcome challenges to their rights that emerged with the beginning of the liberalization does not change the fact that at various points during the transitions-they felt or knew themselves to be under siege (p. …

Dhat Syndrome and Dream in Transcultural Sexology

Dhat syndrome is a modemhdian name for various symptoms including anxiety that, in accordance with the very ancient teachings of Ayurvedic medicine, the sufferer attributes to depletion of semen. The syndrome is common in India and nearby regions. In a case report dhat syndrome is associated with a recurrent wet dream, the content of which became terrifying. The cultural and religious transgressions of the patient's dream-provided fuel not only for erotic pleasure but also for erotic terror. An association between semen depletion and dream imagery is found also in some patients who experience premature ejaculation.