The Seba library treats Provocation Hypothesis in 7 passages, across 2 authors (including Bulkeley, Kelly, Palmer, G. E. H. and Sherrard, Philip and Ware, Kallistos (trs.)).
the emergence of new ideas, possibilities, and energies into the individual's waking awareness (what I call the 'provocation hypothesis')
Bulkeley formally names and defines the provocation hypothesis as the view that dream discontinuities signal the irruption of genuinely new psychic content into waking life, distinct from mere reflection of existing concerns.
, The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation, 2009thesis
following the provocation hypothesis, the findings also illustrate how a focus on unusual elements and highly memorable dreams can further help in the identification of important religious and spiritual features of the individual's waking life
Bulkeley applies the provocation hypothesis empirically, arguing that anomalous and highly memorable dream elements function as markers for significant spiritual dimensions not captured by continuity-based analysis alone.
, The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation, 2009thesis
imagining to mental provocation, provocation to coupling with the thought provoked, and coupling to assent. Such assent to a diabolic provocation leads to actual sinning
The Philokalic tradition situates provocation as the inaugural stage in a precise sequence of interior temptation, prior to coupling and assent, representing the first moment of psychic disturbance that may or may not eventuate in moral failure.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
An intelligent person, aware of all this, will thus reject the initial malicious provocation, mother of all evil, so that he may cut off at one stroke all its pernicious consequences. But he is always ready to put the good provocation into effect
St. Peter of Damaskos distinguishes between malicious and good provocation, establishing that the term in the patristic system is morally dual — a threshold event requiring discernment rather than automatic rejection.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
PROVOCATION (προσβολή - prosvofi): see Temptation. REBUTTAL (ἀντιλογία – antilogia; ἀντίρρησις - antirrisis): the repulsing of a demon or demonic thought at the moment of provocation
The Philokalic glossary defines provocation as a technical term cross-referenced with temptation and rebuttal, indicating its systematic role as the initiating stage of a demonological-psychological sequence.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995supporting
thought is the impulse, non-visible in form, that provokes us to act at all, whatever the action may be
St. Gregory of Sinai frames the provoking thought as the immaterial precursor to all action, lending philosophical depth to the patristic conception of provocation as the invisible threshold of psychic causation.
, The Philokalia, Volume 4, 1995aside
More research is clearly needed to improve our understanding of the phenomenology of highly memorable, 'big' dreams
Bulkeley acknowledges the provisional nature of the provocation hypothesis as applied to highly memorable dreams, signalling the need for further empirical and phenomenological investigation.
, The Religious Content of Dreams: A New Scientific Foundation, 2009aside