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Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series No. 31
SLEEP WALKING AND MOON WALKING
A MEDICO-LITERARY STUDY
BY
DR. J. SADGER
VIENNA
TRANSLATED BY
LOUISE BRINK
NEW YORK AND WASHINGTON
NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE PUBLISHING
COMPANY
1920
NERVOUS AND MENTAL DISEASE
MONOGRAPH SERIES
Edited by
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Copyright, 1920, by
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3617 10th St. N. W., Washington, D. C.
CONTENTS
Translator's Preface v
Introduction vii
PART I. Medical 1
PART II. Literary Section 45
Conclusion and Résumé 137
Index 139
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Psychoanalysis holds a key to the problem of sleep walking, which alone
has been able to unlock the mysteries of its causes and its
significance. This key is the principle of wish fulfilment, an
interpretative principle which explains the mechanisms of the psyche and
illuminates the mental content which underlies these. Sleep walking as a
method of wish fulfilment evidently lies close to the dream life, which
has become known through psychoanalysis. Most of us when we dream,
according to the words of Protagoras, "lie still, and do not stir." In
some persons there is however a special tendency to motor activity, in
itself a symptomatic manifestation, which necessitates the carrying out
of the dream wish through walking in the sleep. The existence of this
fact, together with the evidence of an influence of the shining of the
moon upon this tendency to sleep walking, give rise to certain questions
of importance to medical psychology. The author of this book has pursued
these questions in relation to cases which have come to him for
psychoanalysis, in the investigation of actual records of sleep walking
given in literature and in the study of rare instances where it has been
made the subject of a literary production or at least an episode in tale
or drama. In each case the association with moonlight or some other
light has been a distinct feature.
The author's application of psychoanalysis to these problems has the
directness and explicitness which we are accustomed to find in Freud's
own writings. This is as true in the literary portion of the work as in
the medical but it never intrudes to mar the intrinsic beauty of certain
of the selections nor the force of the intuitive revelations which the
writers of the preceding science have made in regard to sleep walking
and walking in the moonlight. Sadger has skilfully utilized these
revelations to convince us of the truth of the psychoanalytic
discoveries and has used the latter only to make still more explicitly
and scientifically clear the testimony of the poetic writers and to
point out the applicability of their material to medical problems. The
choice of this little understood and little studied subject and its
skilful presentation on the part of the author, as well as the
introduction to the reader of the literary productions of which use has
been made, give the book a peculiar interest and value. It is also of
especial service in its brief but profoundly suggestive study of the
psychic background of Shakespeare's creative work as illustrated in the
sleep walking of Lady Macbeth. The endeavor in the translation has been
to make accessible to our English readers the clear and direct
psychoanalysis of the author and the peculiar psychologic and literary
value of the book.
INTRODUCTION[1]
[1] Über Nachtwandeln und Mondsucht. Eine medizinisch-literarische
Studie, von Dr. J. Sadger, Nervenarzt in Wien; Schriften zur
angewandten Seelenkunde, Herausgegeben von Prof. Dr. Sigm. Freud,
Sechzehntes Heft, Leipzig und Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1914.
Sleep walking or night wandering, known also by its Latin name of
noctambulism, is a well-known phenomenon. Somnambulism is not so good a
term for it, since that signifies too many things. In sleep walking a
person rises from his bed in the night, apparently asleep, walks around
with closed or half opened eyes, but without perceiving anything, yet
performs all sorts of apparently purposeful and often quite complicated
actions and gives correct answers to questions, without afterward the
least knowledge of what he has said or done. If this all happens at the
very time and under the influence of the full moon, it is spoken of as
moon walking or being moonstruck.
Under the influence of this heavenly body the moonstruck individual is
actually enticed from his bed, often gazes fixedly at the moon, stands
at the window or climbs out of it, "with the surefootedness of the sleep
walker," climbs up upon the roof and walks about there or, without
stumbling, goes into the open. In short, he carries out all sorts of
complex actions. Only it would be dangerous to call the wanderer by
name, for then he would not only waken where he was, but he would
collapse frequently and fall headlong with fright if he found himself on
a height.
Besides there is absolute amnesia succeeding this. Upon persistent
questioning there is an attempt to fill in the gaps in memory by
confabulation, like the effort to explain posthypnotic action.
Furthermore, it is asserted that a specially deep sleep always ushers in
night wandering, that indeed the latter in general is only possible in
this condition. It is more frequent with children up to puberty and
throughout that period than with adults. At the same time the first
outbreak of sleep walking occurs often at the first appearance of sexual
maturity. According to a widespread folk belief sleep walking will cease
in a girl when she becomes pregnant with her first child.
It seems to me that practically no scientific treatment of this problem
exists. Modern psychiatry, so far as it takes a sort of general notice
of it, contents itself, as Krafft-Ebing does, with calling night
wandering "a nervous disease," "apparently a symptomatic manifestation
of other neuroses, epilepsy, hysteria, status nervosus."[2] The older
literature is more explicit. It produces not only a full casuistic but
seeks to give some explanation aside from a reference to neurology.[3]
So, for example, the safety in climbing upon dangerous places finds this
explanation, that the sleep walker goes there with closed eyes and in
this way does not see the danger, knows no giddiness and above all is in
possession of a specially keen muscular sense.
[2] Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie.
[3] I introduce as the most important sources Peter Jessen: "Versuch
einer wissenschaftlichen Begründung der Psychologie," Berlin, 1855
(with many examples); Heinrich Spitta: "Die Schlaf- und Traumzustände
der menschlichen Seele," 2d edition, 1882 (with abundant casuistic and
literature); finally based upon these L. Löwenfeld: "Somnambulismus
und Spiritismus," Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens, Vol. I,
1900.
The phenomena of sleep walking and moon walking must be acknowledged, as
far as I can see, almost entirely as pathological yet connected or
identical with analogous manifestations of normal profound sleep. The
dreams in such sleep, in contrast with those of light sleep, are
characterized by movements. These often amount merely to speaking out,
laughing, weeping, smacking, throwing oneself about and so on, or
occasionally to complicated actions, which begin with leaving the bed.
Further comparison shows the night wandering as symptomatically similar
to hysterical and hypnotic somnambulism. This interpretation might be
objected to upon the ground that unfortunately we know nothing of the
origin of the motor phenomena of the dream and that understanding of the
hysterical and hypnotic somnambulism is deplorably lacking. Still less
has science to say about the influence of the moon upon night wandering.
The authors extricate themselves from the difficulty by simply denying
its influence. They bring forward as their chief argument for this that
many sleep walkers are subject to their attacks as frequently in dark as
in moonlight nights and when sleeping in rooms into which no beam of
moonlight can penetrate. Spitta indeed explains it thus: "The much
discussed and romantically treated 'moon walking' is a legend which
stands in contradiction to hitherto observed facts. That the phantasy of
the German folk mind drew to itself the pale ghostly light of the moon
and could reckon from it all sorts of wonderful things, proves nothing
to us." I can only say here that ten negative cases signify nothing in
the face of a single positive one and a thousand-fold experience
undoubtedly represents a certain connection between the light of the
full moon and the most complicated forms of sleep walking.
Not merely does science avoid these things on account of their
strangeness, but also the poets best informed in the things of the soul,
whom the problems of night wandering and moon walking should stimulate.
From the entire province of artistic literature I can mention only
Shakespeare's "Macbeth," Kleist's "Prinz von Homburg," the novel "Maria"
by Otto Ludwig, "Das Sündkind" by Anzengruber, "Jörn Uhl" by Gustav
Frenssen and "Aebelö" by Sophus Michaelis.[4] Finally Ludwig Ganghofer
has briefly sketched his own sleep walking in his autobiographical
"Lebenslauf eines Optimisten," and Ludwig Tieck has given unrestrained
expression to his passionate love toward this heavenly body in different
portions of his works.
[4] The text of Bellini's "Nachtwandlerin" could hardly be called
literature, nor Theodor Mundt's fabulous novel, "Lebensmagie,
Wirklichkeit und Traum." The latter I will mention later in the text.
Only in "Maria" and in "Aebelö" however do these themes play an
important part, while in the other works mentioned they serve properly
only as adornment and episodic ornament. I am not able to explain this
unusual restraint, unless we accept the fact that our best poets shrink
from touching upon questions which they themselves can so little
understand.
It has been expected that the psychoanalytic method, which casts such
light upon the unconscious, might do much to advance the understanding
of the problems of sleep walking and moon walking. But unfortunately no
one undergoes such an expensive and time-consuming treatment as
psychoanalysis for moon walking, so that the hoped for illumination can
come at the best only as a by-product in the psychoanalysis of
neurotics. That has in fact been my good fortune twice, where I have
been able to lift the curtain, though only a little, in two cases among
my patients and also in individuals who were otherwise healthy. What I
discovered there, I will relate in detail in what follows.
One point of view I will first set forth. Two questions appear to me to
stand out among those closely bound with our theme. First on the motor
side. Why does not the sleep walker, who is enjoying apparently a
specially deep slumber, sleep on quietly and work out the complexes of
his unconscious somehow in a dream, even though with speech or movement
there? Why instead is he urged forth and driven to wander about and
engage in all sorts of complicated acts? It is one of the most important
functions of the dream to prolong sleep quietly. And then in the second
place, What value and significance must be attributed to the moon and
its light? These two chief questions must be answered by any theory that
would do justice to the question of sleep walking and moon walking.