Medical
CASE I. Some years ago I treated a hysterical patient, exceedingly
erotic. She was at that time twenty-two years old, and on her father's
as well as on the mother's side, from a very degenerate family.
Alcoholism and epilepsy could be traced with certainty to the third
ascendant on both sides. The father's sister is mentally diseased, the
patient's mother was an enuretic in her earlier years and a sleep
walker. This mother, like her father when he was drunk, was markedly
cruel and given to blows, characteristics, which according to our
patient, sometimes almost deprived her of her senses and in her anger
bordered upon frenzy.
The patient herself had been as the youngest child the spoiled darling
of both parents and until her seventh year had been taken by them into
their bed in the morning to play. In her first three years she always
slept between the parents, preferably on the inner side of one of the
two beds and with her legs spread, so that, in her mother's words: "One
foot belongs to me and one to her father!" She was most strongly drawn,
however, to the mother, toward whom at an early age she was sexually
stimulated, already in her first year, if her statements can be relied
upon, when she sat upon her mother's lap while nursing.
The little one early learned also that, when one is sick, one receives
new playthings and especially much petting and tenderness, on account of
which she often pretended to be sick purposely or she phantasied about
dark forms and ugly faces, which of course she never saw, except to
compel the mother to stay with her and show her special love and
tenderness. Already in her second year she would go to bed most
dutifully, "right gladly" to please father and mother and gain sexual
pleasure thereby. The father then let her ride on his knee, stroked her
upon her buttocks and kissed her passionately upon the lips. The desire
after the mother became the stronger. When the latter had lain down and
the little one had been good, then the child would creep to the mother
under the feather bed and snuggle close to her body ("wind herself fast
like a serpent"). The mother's firm body gave her extraordinary
pleasure, yes, not infrequently it led to the expulsion of a secretion
from the cervix uteri. ("The good comes," as she expressed it.) I
mention convulsive attacks and enuresis nocturna, as pathological
affections of her childhood which belong to my theme. The patient had in
fact suffered in her first year a concussion of the brain, through being
thrown against a brick wall, with organic eclamptic attacks as a result.
The great love which she had experienced because of this led her also
later to imitate those attacks hysterically. In the fourth year, for
example, when she had to sleep in a child's crib, no longer between the
beloved parents, she immediately produced attacks of anxiety in which
she saw ugly faces and witches as in the beginning of the eclamptic
convulsions. Thereupon the frightened mother took her again into her own
bed. Later also she often began to moan and fret until the mother would
take her in her arms to ward off the threatened attacks, and thus she
could stimulate herself to her heart's content. As she reports, at the
height of the orgasm she expelled a secretion, her body began to writhe
convulsively, her face became red as fire, her eyes rolled about and she
almost lost herself in her great pleasure.
Concerning her enuresis, in its relation to urethral eroticism, the
patient relates the following: "When I pressed myself against my
mother's or brother's thigh, not only 'the good' came, but frequently
also urine with it. At about eight years old there was often a very
strong compulsion to urinate, especially at night, which would cause me
to wet my bed. This was however according to my wish to pass not urine
but that same secretion which I had voided at two or three years old,
when I became so wildly excited with my mother, that is when, lying in
bed with her, I pressed her thigh between mine. I could not stop it in
spite of all threats or punishments. Very curiously I usually awoke when
I voided urine, but I could not retain it in the face of the great
pleasure."
I lay emphasis upon a specially strong homosexual tendency[5] among her
various perversions, although she had the usual sex relations with a
legion of men with complete satisfaction. Furthermore, as
sadistic-masochistic traits, there was an abnormal pleasure in giving
and receiving blows and a passionate desire for blood. It was a sexual
excitement that occurred when she saw her own blood or that of others. I
have elsewhere[6] described this blood sadism and I will refer here to
only two features, which are of significance also in regard to her moon
walking. The first is her greatly exaggerated vaginal eroticism, which
at menstruation especially was abnormally pleasurably excited. The
second, on the other hand, was that our patient already at the age of
two years should have experienced sexual pleasure in the mother's
hemoptysis. Sitting on the mother's lap she stimulated herself upon the
latter's breast, when she began to scrape and then to cough up blood.
She reached after her bloody lips in order afterward to lick off her own
fingers. As a result of the sexual overexcitement which occurred then,
blood has afforded her enormous pleasure ever since, when she has looked
upon it.
[5] This homosexual tendency was first directed toward her own mother
in childhood and early puberty.
[6] "Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex," Jahrb. f. psychoanal.
Forsch., Vol. 5, pp. 224-230.
As for the rest of her life, I will refer to two other points only,
which are not without importance for our problem. First of all was the
change of dwelling after the father's death in our patient's seventh
year. The other is her burning desire, arising in her third or fourth
year, to play mother and most eagerly with a real live child. A baby
doll, of which she came into possession, was only a substitute, although
for want of something better she carried this around passionately and
did not once lay it out of her arms while asleep. At the age of eight it
was her greatest delight to trudge around with a small two year old girl
from the house and sing her to sleep as her mother had once done to her.
"Carrying that child around was my greatest delight until I was fourteen
years old."
I mentioned above that her mother had been sadistic and at the same time
a sleep walker. "Mother herself told me that she also rather frequently
walked at night. As a child she would wander around in her room without
being able to find her bed again. Over and over again she would pass it
without finding her way into it. Then she would begin to cry loudly with
fright for her bed until Grandmother awoke and lifted her into bed. In
the morning she remembered nothing at all about it.
"It was the same way with her desire to urinate. Every night she had a
frightful need to urinate and hunted for the chamber, but, although it
always stood in its accustomed place, she was not able to find it.
Meanwhile the desire grew more severe, so that she began moaning
fearfully in her sleep while hunting. She sought all over the room, even
crept around under the bed without touching or noticing the chamber,
which was there. Often she did not then return to her bed until
Grandmother was awakened by her moans, brought her what she wanted and
helped her to bed. It happened rather frequently that, because of the
very great need, she wet the bed or the room while on her search,
whereupon naturally a whipping followed. Sometimes she lay quite quiet
later on in her sleep, but when she could not find her bed, was obliged
to pass half the night in the cold room. Once when I myself wet my bed,
she struck me with the words: 'Every time that this happens you will be
whipped; my mother whipped me for this reason.' Although she knew from
her own experience that it could not be helped, yet she struck me.
"Besides the moon exercised a great power over my mother. Since the
house in which she lived was low and stood out in the open country, and
there were no window blinds, on bright moonlight nights the moon shone
into the farthest corner. In the corner stood a box, on which were a
number of flower pots, figures and glass covers. Upon this box she
climbed, after she had first taken down one object after another and
placed them on the floor without breaking anything. Then she began to
dance upon the top of the box, but only on bright moonlight nights.
Finally she put everything back in exactly the same place to a hair's
breadth and climbed out of the window, but not before she had removed
there a number of flower pots out of the way. From the window she
reached the court where she rambled about, climbed over the garden fence
and walked around at least an hour. Then she went back, arranged the
flowers on the window in exact order and--could not find her way to bed.
There was always a scene the next day if Grandmother had been wakened in
the night."
The most noteworthy feature in this statement, beside the phenomenon of
sadism, later taken over by the daughter, the urethral eroticism and the
susceptibility toward the moonlight, is the behavior of the mother while
walking in her sleep. She plainly has an idea where the flower pots
stand, which she removes from the box and the window, but on the other
hand she comes in contact neither with the bed nor the chamber, which
yet are in their usual places. We will also take note further on of the
dancing upon the box in the bright moonlight as well as the climbing out
of the window, climbing and walking about.
Before I go on with my patient's story, something should be said
concerning its origin. She had been undergoing psychoanalytic treatment
with me for nine months on account of various severe hysterical
symptoms, which I will not here touch upon further, when she one day
came out with the proposal that she write for me her autobiography. I
agreed to it and she brought me little by little about two hundred
fifty pages of folio, which she had prepared without any influence on my
part, except of course that she had, in those months of treatment, made
the technique of the analysis very much her own as far as it touched
upon her case. Practically nothing in our work together in solving her
difficulties was said of her sleep walking. I have also in no way
influenced or been able to influence her explanation. It originates
solely from the patient's associations and the employment of her newly
acquired knowledge of the unconscious in the interpretation of her
symptoms.
I find then in her account of her life some highly interesting points.
"Even at two or three years old Mother at my entreaties must soothe me
to sleep. As we lay together in bed I pretended often to be asleep and
reached as if 'in my sleep' after my mother's breast in order to revel
in sensation there. Also I often uncovered myself, again ostensibly in
my sleep, and laid myself down quite contentedly. Then I awoke my mother
by coughing, and when she awoke she stroked me and fondled me, and as
was her custom kissed me also upon the genitals. Frequently I stood up
in bed between my parents--a forerunner of my later sleep walking--and
laid myself down at my mother's feet, asleep as she thought, but in
reality awake only with eyes closed. Then I pulled the feather bed away
from Mother and blinked at her in order to see her naked body, which I
could do better from the foot than if I had lain near her.
"If she awoke she took me up to my place, kissed me repeatedly over my
whole body and covered me up. I opened my eyes then as if just
awakening, she kissed me on the eyes and said I should go quietly to
sleep again, which I then did.
"Still earlier, at one or two years, I pretended to be asleep when my
parents went to bed, that I might obtain caresses, because Father and
Mother always said, 'See, how dear, what a little angel!' They kissed me
then and I opened my eyes as if waking from deep sleep. This was the
first time that I pretended to be asleep. I often lay thus for a long
time apparently asleep but really awake. For when the parents saw that I
was asleep, they told one another all sorts of things about us children.
Especially Mother often spoke of my fine traits, or that people praised
me and found me 'so dear' which she never said in my presence lest she
should make me vain."
Here is an early preceding period when the little one deliberately
pretends to be asleep in order to hear loving things, receive caresses
and experience sexual activity without having to be held accountable or
to be afraid of receiving punishment, because everything happens in
sleep. In the same way similar erotic motives and analogous behavior may
be found in the account of her other actions while asleep. As she began
to talk at two years old her parents begged her to tell everything that
had happened to her, for example in the absence of either of them. She
must tell to the minutest detail, when she awoke early lying between her
parents, what had happened to her during the day before, what she had
done with her brothers and sisters, what had taken place for her at
school, and so on. She responded so much the more gladly, because in
narrating all this she could excite herself more or less as well upon
the father's as upon the mother's body.
In fact, this was the very source of a direct compulsion to have to tell
things, from which she often had to suffer frightfully. The very bigoted
mother sent her regularly from her sixth year on with her sister to the
preaching services with the express injunction to report the sermons at
home. And although on account of her poor head she had to struggle
grievously with every poem or bit of lesson which she had to learn for
school, yet now at home she would seat herself upon a hassock, spread a
handkerchief over her shoulders and begin to drone out the whole sermon
as she had heard it in the church from the minister. And this all merely
out of love for her mother! Furthermore she was, according to her own
words, directly in love with her teacher in the school, who often struck
her on account of her inattentiveness and certainly did not treat her
otherwise with fondness. Here is a motive for the later learning,
singing and reciting of poetry during the sleep walking, while the
pleasure in being struck when at fault was increased by self reproach,
that she in spite of all her pains was so bad at learning.
"During my whole childhood," the patient states, "I talked a great deal
in my sleep. When I had a task to learn by heart, I said over the given
selection or the poem in my sleep. This happened the first time when I
was eight years old, on a bright moonlight night. I was sleeping at the
time in the bed with my sister and I arose in the night, recited a poem
and sang songs. At about the same period, standing on a chair or on the
bed, I repeated parts of sermons which I had heard the day before at
church. Besides I prattled about everything which I had done the
previous day or about my play. How often I was afraid that I would
divulge something from my sexual play with my brother! That must never
have happened, however, or mother would have mentioned it to me, for
she always told me everything that I said during the night." I might
perhaps sum up this activity in her sleep after this fashion: Day and
night she is studying for the beloved but unresponsive teacher and
strives to win and to keep her good will as well as that of the mother
through the repeating of sermons and relating of all the events of the
day.
"As for the talking in my sleep, I began at the age of two or three,
though awake, to pretend to be asleep and to speak out as if asleep. For
example I acted as if I were tormented with frightful dreams and cried
out with great terror, ostensibly in a dream: 'Mother, Mother, take me!'
or 'Stay with me!' or something of the sort. Then Mother took me, as I
had anticipated, under her feather bed and quieted me, but I naturally
became excited while I pressed my legs about her body presumably from
fear of witches and immediately there occurred a 'convulsive attack,'
that is I now experienced such lustful pleasure that 'the good' came."
Attention may further be called to the fact that she threw herself about
violently in her sleep, which caused her, as the daughter of so brutal a
mother, who was herself a sado-masochist, an excessive amount of
pleasurable sensation. When only two or three years old, as she lay
between the parents, she pushed them with hands and feet, of which she
was quite conscious, while they thought it happened in sleep. This
brought the advantage that she was not responsible for anything which
happened in sleep, for it occurred when she was in an unconscious
condition.
The changing of the home in her seventh year, after the death of the
father, led to her sharing the bed of her sister six years older than
she. "My sister had the habit of throwing off the covers in her sleep or
twisting her legs about mine. I, on the other hand, always hit her in my
sleep with hands or feet. Naturally I could not help it since it
actually happened while I was asleep, yet when my sister could stand it
no longer I had to go and lie with Mother. I also struck her in my
sleep. Besides I nestled up against her body, especially her buttocks,
and experienced very pleasurable excitement. For it was simply
impossible with her strong body and in the narrow bed to avoid touching
my mother. Only I did it to her quite consciously, but she was of the
impression that I pressed upon her in my sleep because I had no room in
bed. The reason that I as a small child pushed against my parents in bed
was simply the wish to be able to strike them once to my heart's desire,
and since this was impossible during the day, I did it while asleep,
when no one is responsible for what one does. Striking my sister then
actually in my sleep, when I was seven years old, was again the wish to
be able to excite myself pleasurably by the blows as when a smaller
child." Here her sadism again breaks through in this desire to strike
mother and sister according to her heart's desire and it especially
excited her because of her constitutionally exaggerated muscle erotic. I
have discussed this sadism at length elsewhere.[7]
[7] Cf. note 6, p. 163.
It can be affirmed, if we examine her behavior in sleep, that without
exception sexual wishes lay at the bottom of it, just as the dream also,
as is well known, always represents the fulfilment of infantile wishes.
The plainly erotic character is never wanting in an apparently asexual
action, if we penetrate it more deeply. So for example this patient
repeated the sermon at her mother's bidding in order to receive her love
and praise. Saying her lessons at night arose from her strong attachment
to her teacher, which again in turn was a stage of her love for her
mother. Naturally this was all concerned with wishes, which, strictly
tabooed when awake, could only be gratified in unconsciousness, somehow
carried out in sleep, or, as with the simulated convulsions, only in the
mother's bed. The behavior during sleep served especially well to grant
sexual pleasure but without guilt or liability to punishment.
It was quite in order further that a conscious activity preceded the
unconscious activity in sleep, that is, that for a time the patient
while awake, but with closed eyes and therefore apparently asleep, did
the very thing which later was done in actual unconsciousness. What then
impressed itself as an unconscious performance during sleep, had been
earlier done consciously, almost I might say as "a studied action." Only
in special cases is there any need for playing such a comedy, for the
direct demand of a beloved individual--"You must tell everything," "You
must learn diligently," "Repeat the sermon accurately,"--when the
eroticism is well concealed, permits of open action without more
hindrance. It may be noted further that the patient never betrayed in
the least in her sleep what she must have been at pains carefully to
conceal, as, for example, the sexual play with her brother. Finally the
striking participation of the muscle erotic at times in sleep must be
emphasized.
We have found already as roots and motives of her sleep activity sexual,
strongly forbidden wishes, which particularly could often be gratified
only in bed; the striving that she might commit misdemeanor without
being held guilty or answerable; further the practicing of these things
first while awake; and finally, as an organic root, at least the
pleasure in blows in sleep, the undeniably exaggerated muscle erotic.
Nearly everything takes place in bed, only occasionally outside it, and
then always near it. Complicated actions are completely wanting.
Likewise nothing was said of the influence of the light or of the moon.
Only in passing was it mentioned that the patient arose in the moonlight
for her first nightly recitation of lessons.
The group of phenomena which we will now take up displays complicated
performances and stands above all under the evident influence of the
light of the moon. "In my fourth year," the patient relates, "I was put
for the first time into a little bed of my own, so that my mother, who
the day before had begun to cough up blood, should have more rest. She
had closed the net of my crib and that I should not be frightened moved
the crib up to her large bed. I pretended to be asleep and as soon as my
parents had fallen asleep I climbed over the side but was so unfortunate
as to fall into my mother's bed. I was quickly laid back in my own bed,
without having seen the blood, which was my special longing. Often after
this, almost every night, I tried again to climb into Mother's bed, so
that finally she placed my bed by the wall in order to prevent my
climbing over to her. For some months I slept alone in my little bed.
She caught me one night, however, this time actually in my sleep, trying
to climb over the side but entangled in the net. Fortunately I did not
fall out but back into bed. At that time I produced also my pretended
convulsive attacks that I might be taken by Mother into her bed and be
able to excite myself upon her.
"Mother began raising blood again when I was ten years old and we had
already moved into the new home. That year she was seized twice with
such severe hemorrhages that for weeks she hovered between life and
death. Then in my eleventh year I began my sleep walking. What urged me
to it was again Mother's coughing of blood as well as the desire to see
her blood, both reasons why I had already at four years old pretended
sleep so that I could climb into Mother's bed."
The patient proved herself such an ideal nurse on the occasion of the
mother's severe hemorrhage that the mother would have no one else. She
watched tirelessly day and night together with her sisters, changing
every few minutes the icebags which had been ordered. "Scarcely a moment
did I tear myself away from my mother's bedside and, if one of my
sisters relieved me, I often could hardly move, undress myself and lie
down for an hour. If I did lie down, I threw myself about restlessly,
torn with anxiety, and was only happy again when I sat by my mother's
bed." This fearful anxiety was not however merely fear for the precious
life of the mother, but still more, repressed libido. In spite of all
her concern for the mother's suffering she could not prevent the
strongest sexual pleasurable sensations at the sight of the mother's
snow white breast in putting on the applications or when she raised
blood. This intensive nursing lasted four weeks until finally a nursing
Sister came to assist.
"As I now for the first time could enjoy a full night's rest, I fell
into a deep sleep, as from this time on I always did before every sleep
walking. Near my bed stood the table with Mother's medicine and on the
window ledge, behind the curtain, a lamp, which threw its light upon my
bed. Suddenly I arose in my sleep, went to my mother's bed, bent over
her. Mother opened her eyes but did not rouse herself. Then the Sister,
who was dozing on the sofa near Mother's bed, awoke and rushed forward
frightened as she saw me there in my nightgown. She thought something
had happened to Mother, but the latter motioned with her hand to leave
me alone and to keep still. I kissed Mother and changed the icebag,
apparently in order to see her breast. I could see no blood this time,
so without a sound I moved away and went to the table, where I put all
the medicines carefully together to make a place and then went out into
the pitch dark kitchen without stumbling against anything. There I took
from the kitchen dresser a bowl with a saucer and a spoon and came back
again to the room. Next I seized a glass of water which stood there and
poured the water carefully into the bowl without spilling more than a
drop. With this I spoke out half aloud to myself: 'Now Emil (my
brother-in-law, who had for a long time taken his breakfast with us) can
come to his breakfast without disturbing Mother, who had always prepared
it for him.' Then I went to bed and slept soundly for some hours, as I
sleep only at my periods of sleep walking, without crying out. All that
I have described the Sister of Charity told me afterward. Naturally I
did everything with closed eyes, without knowing it, and moved about as
securely in the darkness as if it had been bright day. The next morning
they told me about it and laughed over it."
This is what she has to say of the influence of the light upon her sleep
walking. "Here also Mother's coughing was the external cause as it had
been when I was four years old. When Mother was ill, the lamp was left
upon the window sill behind the curtain, burning brightly so that she
would not be afraid. Now also, at the time of my first complicated sleep
walking, such a light was burning behind the curtain throwing its light
upon my bed and the wall. Mother had always left the light burning in
order to see me at once, after I had sometimes climbed over the side of
my crib at the age of four, when she was ill. The light however made me
climb over to her, because in the dark no blood could be seen. Also when
I began to moan, during my convulsive attacks, she made a light and came
to my bed. Or she said, when my bed was pushed close to hers: 'Wait a
moment; I will make a light and take you or you can climb over to me.'
Next day I laughed with my parents over my visit at night, without
suspecting that I would soon be repeating it actually in my sleep. And
it was only for this, that I might, as at the very first time, enjoy the
sight of Mother's blood. Now, when she had a light burning during her
illness, this allured me in my sleep to climb out to her, as at that
first time when she had made a light especially for me to climb over to
her."
The following memory leads still deeper into the etiology: "Mother
always had the habit of going from bed to bed, when we children were
asleep, and lighting us with her lamp to make sure that we were asleep.
I perceived the light in my sleep, which called me to Mother. She had
lighted me that first time so that I might climb into bed with her. Now
I thought in my sleep, when I saw the light, that she was calling me
again and she found me often at the very point of climbing over to her.
I see myself yet today with one foot over the bars, almost in a riding
position. Yet nothing ever happened to me. A complete change took place
within me when the light of a candle or a lamp fell upon my face. I
might almost say that I experienced a great feeling of pleasure. I
seemed to myself in my sleep to be a supernatural being. I immediately
perceived the light even when I lay in deepest sleep. There was however
no sign of waking. This must represent a second form of consciousness,
which possessed me at such times. I often asked my mother all sorts of
things while wandering about, always knew to whom I spoke although I did
not see the person and before I heard anyone speak I already mentioned
the person's name. My orientation in sleep walking was so exact that I
never once stubbed my toe against anything. It was just so with
urination, which was probably connected with the moon or with a night
light accidentally falling upon me. As soon as I pressed out secretion
or the urine came, I found myself in a half sleep without being able to
prevent an excessive feeling of pleasure. Then first I came to myself.
This seems to me to go back to the fact that Mother often awoke me on
special occasions in the night, holding a lamp or a candle in her hand
to set me on the chamber, especially when she heard me moaning in my
sleep and suspected a convulsive attack."
In what follows a complete identification with the mother is reported in
detail. That has come in part to our notice in the first sleep walking,
when our patient prepares the breakfast for her brother-in-law. "After
that first sleep walking when Mother was having hemorrhages, they took
place now rather frequently, when the least glimmer of light fell upon
me, when Mother, for instance, lighted a candle at night to take some
drops for her cough. Thus it happened that almost every night, as long
as our beds stood together, I acted this little part. Often my family
did not awaken and yet we knew the next day, when something was missing,
that I had been the culprit in my sleep, as the next little example will
show.
"My greatest wish at that time, at ten years old, was to be 'Mother' and
have a child that I might bring up as I pleased. One morning when Mother
got up and wished to dress herself she did not find her underclothing.
We sisters were still fast asleep and Mother did not wish to waken us.
She could remember exactly that she had laid her clothing as she always
did on the chair near her bed. When she saw that search was in vain she
put on fresh linen. Fully an hour later I awoke and was completely
astonished to find myself dressed and in Mother's clothing. The puzzle
was now solved. The putting on of Mother's clothing during the sleep
walking had plainly been merely my wish to put myself into the mother's
place and also to play mother, as I did with the children day after day.
It was just at this time that I was always seeking to trail around all
day with children, whom I tormented, treated cruelly, often even struck
them for no cause whatever, always with a great feeling of pleasure, as
I myself fared at my mother's hands. It was very frequently the case
that I spread the table for a meal, in Mother's place, or put on her
linen or outer clothing. This happened most often when she was ill again
with her cough or the light shone upon me in my sleep. The light of the
candle was sufficient for this."
At thirteen years she began to be directly affected by the moonlight.
"At that time I had to sleep in a small room which my brother had
occupied before this. This room looked out upon the court and was,
especially on the nights when the moon was full, as bright as if a lamp
were burning in the room. I was very much afraid to sleep alone in a
room. This was the first time in my life that it had happened. I feared
that in every corner some one might be standing and suddenly step forth
or might lie hidden behind the bed and although I first let the candle
light shine over everything, I had no rest but was in continual fear. I
slept here perhaps only fourteen days in all, but it was full moon just
at this time and rather bright in the small room.
"Before going to sleep I always barred the door of the room, which near
the other door of our house opened upon a small passage. On account of
the shop we lived on an upper floor. When I lay in bed I was always
thinking that I had not bolted the door well and every night I arose
three or four times before going to sleep in order to make sure whether
I had actually bolted the door carefully. This I did while awake.
Finally I fell asleep. I knew nothing in the morning of what happened in
the night. Yet for several days, when I arose in the morning, I found
the door which led out of my room upon the passage standing open. I must
also have gone about the house during the night, at least have been in
the passage. It alarmed Mother and, when early the next day the door was
once more open, she said that I need never sleep alone again. I had not
had the remotest thought that she would watch me the next night. As
usual she could, when I talked in my sleep, ask me about everything and
obtain correct answers without wakening me. If however she called my
name in fright, when I was walking, as in the scene about to be
described, then I awoke. Some nights apparently I roamed about in the
house, God knows where, in the moonlight, without any one noticing it.
Now it was the window in the passage, which looked into the court and
was always closed at night, that was left open. What took place there I
cannot say, since no one observed me. I can however describe clearly
what my mother saw happen and which she told me afterward.
"Before I lay down I tried the door several times to see if it were
securely bolted, then slept until about twelve o'clock. Between twelve
and one o'clock, when I as a child had always been most afraid because
this was a ghostly hour, my mother, who compelled herself this night to
remain awake, heard my door creak slightly. She watched and saw the
following: I went out in my nightgown softly to the door and to the
window on the passage, which I opened. I swung myself upon that rather
high window and remained there a while without moving, sitting there
while I gazed straight at the moon. Then--it seemed to my mother like an
eternity--I climbed down softly and went quietly along the passage into
the first story. Half way along however I considered, turned back and
went into my room. Having reached the door I turned once again and went
along the passage to the door of the court. This was fastened. Again I
turned and now went to the house gate. There I remained standing. I even
tried to open it, as if I heard my name called. Then I was frightened,
looked about me and was awake. Shaking with cold, for I was there half
naked, I could scarcely orient myself. Then I crept to my bed and slept
without waking.
"This happened in the second week. Every morning my door was open so
that I had to sleep again in Mother's room. The moon never shone in
there and the night light was covered. Nevertheless the sleep walking
began also in this room in two weeks, if only the light of the candle
fell upon me in my sleep. More often I lighted the candle myself in my
sleep and went around in the room and the kitchen. Sometimes Mother
found me standing by the door of the shop apparently about to open it
and walk out. Now I have frequently, when I am lying in bed, the desire
to spring out of the window, or to open both casements to get air for I
am often afraid of choking. Mother had often felt this way in her
illness. It also happened that Mother found me sitting by my chest,
where I was looking for something which I had needed the day before and
intended looking for the next day. I had laid out all my possessions
about me. If Mother called me by name, I awoke; if she did not call me
but only spoke in a certain way to me, I answered her everything without
waking. I got up in my sleep, put on my mother's clothes, put on a cape
and a nightcap, bade farewell to the children, to whom I wanted to be
the mother, charged them to be brave and promised to bring them
something. Then I took a piece of wood in my hand for an umbrella and
walked about the room as if holding it opened out over my head because
the sun shone. In reality it was the shining of the lamp. Mother's
clothes were long and yet I wore the train beautifully and gracefully,
without stepping on the skirt. My mother doubled herself with laughter
when she saw such a caricature. Mostly I played the mother. Often I
carried a small piece of wood wrapped in a cloth as a child in my arm
and laid it on my breast. I sang songs, hushed at the same time other
children--and knew nothing at all of it next day. Mother laughed most
over this, that when I dressed myself, I first turned everything wrong
side out. This goes back to the fact that Mother sometimes, when she had
to get up in the night on my account and was half asleep, slipped her
robe on twisted and wrong side out. These things lasted until my
seventeenth year, when Mother was sick and I, as related above, made
coffee in the presence of the Sister of Mercy.[8]
[8] I have here given word for word what the patient wrote down. When
I then pointed out to her the evident contradiction, that she had
misplaced something into the seventeenth year, which according to an
earlier statement must have happened in the eleventh year, she
answered that here was in fact an earlier mistake, since her
brother-in-law Emil had first taken breakfast with her mother in her
seventeenth year. The facts were these: She had walked a great deal in
her sleep from her eleventh to her seventeenth year, for her mother
had always suffered from hemoptysis, with occasional intermissions,
and on this account had a nurse at various times. She had in fact
at eleven years done everything which she has described above, only
the making of the coffee for the brother-in-law happened in the
seventeenth year. Besides, all the other actions performed in sleep
are correctly given. On being questioned, she stated that her menses
occurred first between her thirteenth and fourteenth years and at the
time of menstruation particularly she had walked a great deal. She
was always very much excited sexually before her period, slept very
restlessly and had always at that time arisen in her sleep. Blood
always excited her excessively sexually, as has been already mentioned
in the text. I will add just at this place that her exact dates, when
an event appears in the very first years of her life, must be taken
with a grain of salt, because falsification of memory is always to be
found there. This, however, is not of great importance because the
facts are authentically correct and at least agree approximately with
the times specified, as I have convinced myself through questioning
her relatives.
"Mother was rather often ill, so that beside the care of her, in which
later a nurse assisted us, the shop had also to be looked after, which
always demanded one person during the day. If I lay down upon my bed
after two or three weeks of nursing, I fell into a deep sleep. This
never hindered me however from being in my place to the minute, when my
mother's medicine was to be taken. My mother could have anything from
me, although I lay in a deep sleep. She did not need to speak, and if
she wanted anything, she spoke it half aloud. The Sister, over weary
from night watching, slept lightly, but if Mother needed anything, it
was sufficient for her to breathe my name and I was awake, although
otherwise I did not hear well and must always be aroused for some time
before I was fully awake.
"In reality I merely imitated my mother in my sleep walking. In the
first place it was my wish to hold some object in my arms during the
night, or lay it near me, as if it were my child, to have one that I
might play with it sexually. In the second place this went back to my
early childhood when I lay near my mother and she played thus with me.
In the third place it referred to a later time when I felt as a mother
toward my doll, and never allowed it out of my lap by day nor out of my
arms at night. When Mother wished to quiet me if I was suddenly afraid
of ugly creatures at night, she had to make a light as quickly as
possible. Then she took me upon her arm or laid me close to her. The
light must however remain burning until I had fallen asleep so that the
horrible faces could not torture me. As a child I often cried only for
the light; it was the light that first completely quieted me. I longed
indeed for the light that I might see the blood, and at the same time
excite myself upon my mother."
The patient proceeds in her story: "This continued until the seventeenth
year. At eighteen I had to go into the country because of a nervous
trouble. There I was quite alone and also had to sleep alone in a room.
I always went to sleep very late and once--my small room was bright with
moonlight--I arose, went into the small passageway, which opened into
the court, and was going out of the courtyard gate. I was obliged to
turn back, however, because this was fastened. Yet instead of going back
to my room, I went into the sleeping room of my landlady, who was
sleeping there with her daughter, a girl of about twenty-six years. The
moon was also shining into this room and I slowly opened the door. Both
of them then awoke and were, as they told me next day, frightened to
death. It affected the daughter especially, so that she was terrified
and at once sought refuge in her mother's bed. I went back. What
happened further I cannot say, for the daughter had immediately bolted
the door behind me. I had made it impossible for me to stay longer in
the little country village, and although I had paid for my room for a
month I preferred to go away two days later. All the people avoided me
and looked at me askance. Most of all the people with whom I was
stopping! I saw that a stone rolled from their hearts when I departed."
At my question, whether she perhaps had been especially attracted by her
landlady, she answered: "No, but in fact with another woman of the
village. And it seems that I at that time wished to go to this woman in
my sleep walking. At least the landlady's room, into which I went, after
I found the gate of the courtyard fastened, lay in the direction of the
house where she lived.
"From this time nothing is known of my walking in my sleep even on
moonlight nights. Only I have sometimes since that time put on my
underclothes in the night, but always my own. That is I have often
discovered in the morning, up till quite recently, that I had on my
linen or my stockings. Besides I often dressed my hair during the night,
and if I had had my hair, for example, braided or loose when I went to
sleep, I would awaken in the morning with my hair put upon my head. This
unconscious hair dressing happened most frequently before menstruation
and was then an absolute sign that this would take place very soon. This
has the following connection. Mother never went to sleep with her hair
done up, but when in bed had it always hanging down in a braid. Only,
when she was suffering from the hemorrhages--at the time of menstruation
I also lost a good deal of blood--she did not have the braid hanging
down but put up upon her head. Before the appearance of menstruation
this braid hanging down annoyed me very much. Furthermore, the doing of
my hair in my sleep, which occurred a few days before, is only the wish
again to see blood, for which reason it appears only usually before
menstruation." I will add to complete this that the ceasing of her sleep
walking at her eighteenth year was contemporaneous with her taking up
regular sexual relations with different men.
The patient gives still other important illustrations of her awaking at
the calling of her name by her mother, and of staring into the light,
particularly the moon. "In school my thoughts were always on the sexual
and therefore I heard nothing when an example was explained. I often
resolved to listen attentively, but in a few minutes I was again
occupied with sexual phantasies. Then if I heard my name called I woke
up suddenly but had first to orient myself and think where I was. This
awaking at the calling of my name at school was exactly like that when
my mother called me by name during my sleep walking. Both times I was
startled and awoke as if from a heavy dream. That excessive dreaming
while awake goes back however to my earliest childhood, when I sat
evenings on my mother's lap, while my parents were talking together, and
excited myself with her. Oh, what wonderful things I dreamed! I always
revelled then in sexual phantasies, and, completely lost in them, forgot
entirely where I was until I suddenly heard my name called, when I
started up frightened and had first to orient myself. Mother always
called my name softly and usually added, when I began to yawn, 'the
pillow is calling you,' and imitating a wee voice, 'You ought to come to
it in bed.'"
Once more: "When evenings I began to dream on mother's lap, I was
compelled to look directly into the flame of the lamp. I looked
straight into it and was as if hypnotized. I laid both hands upon my
mother's breasts and traced their form. Besides I had my braid lying
upon her left breast, which I liked very much, because it lay as softly
as upon a pillow. I was also compelled to look into the light, gazed
steadily at the flame until my eyes were closed. Then I lay in a half
sleep, in which I heard the voices of the family without understanding
what was said. Thus I could dream best, until my mother called my name
and I awoke.
"Every day I took delight in this sleep by the light of the lamp and the
pleasure experienced upon my mother's lap. I lay quietly and with eyes
closed so that they all thought I was fast asleep. Yet I knew indeed
that it was no ordinary sleep, but merely a 'daydream,' from which I
only awoke when Mother called me by name. When she did not do this, but
quietly undressed me and put me into bed, I began to be restless. I
stood up in bed, lay down at their feet and took care to cry out and
throw myself about until Mother, quite alarmed, called me by name and
quieted me. I believe that in these experiences lies another root for my
staring at the moon when sleep walking, as well as for the dreamy state
occasioned by the fixed gazing at the light."
In conclusion there are still some less important psychic
overdeterminations. "I often had the desire, when looking at the moon at
the age of four or five, to climb over the houses into the moon. I knew
nothing at that time of sleep walkers. About the same time my sisters
often sang the well-known song: 'What sort of a wry face are you making,
oh Moon?' I stared immovably also at the moon, when I had the
opportunity to look at it once from my window, in order that I might
discover its face and eyes. Then, too, my eyes grew weary and began to
close. Later, when nine or ten years old, I heard other children say
that people dwelt in the moon. I would have given anything to know how
these people looked, and whenever it was full moon, I gazed fixedly at
it. I had understood that another people dwelt there of a different
race. I wished to have another race of men. Perhaps they had other
customs, thought differently, ran about naked as in Paradise and there I
wished to go, and lead a free life with boys as with girls. Even as a
child I seemed to myself quite different from the rest of humankind on
account of my sexual concerns and sexual phantasies in school. I always
believed that I was something peculiar and for that reason belonged not
on the earth but upon the moon. Once when I heard the word 'mooncalf'
and asked what it meant, some one at home told me that mooncalves were
deformed children.
"I thought however that they did not understand; the children were quite
differently formed, just as were all the people in the moon, so that
their feelings were altogether different and they led a sexual life of a
quite different kind. I thought they were kind to both sexes, because
Mother always said, 'You must not be alone with boys!' and that in the
moon this was permitted, for there no distinction was made between the
sexes in play."
I asked her more particularly in conclusion whether her explanation for
staring at the moon, that she identified moon and lamplight, was all
there was of it. She answered immediately that another explanation had
pressed itself upon her earlier, which she had rejected as "too
foolish." "The moon's shining disk reminded me in fact of a woman's
smooth body, the abdomen and most of all the buttocks. It excited me
very greatly if I saw a woman from behind. Whenever I am fondling any
one erotically and have my hand on the buttocks--I always think then of
a woman--the moon always occurs to me but in the thought of a woman's
body."
According to this explanation the sleep walker would have also stared at
the planet, because the round sphere awoke sexual childhood memories of
the woman's body, or, as I learned from another source, of the woman's
breast, most frequently however of her buttocks. It is moreover
noteworthy that it was always only the full moon that worked thus
attractively, not by chance the half moon or the sickle. An everyday
experience agrees very well with this. Children, when they see the full
moon or their attention is called to it, begin to snigger. Every one
familiar with the child psyche knows that such giggling is based on
sexual meaning, because the little ones usually think of the nates. Not
infrequently will children, when they are placed on the chamber, pull
away their nightclothes with the words, "Now the full moon is up,"
likewise when a child accidentally or intentionally bares himself at
that spot.
We have now the explanation, if we put together that which has just been
told us, why our sleep walker wakes up on the spot and comes to herself
as soon as she is called by name. This corresponds to her starting awake
when in school she was recalled from her sexual daydreams and the
earlier being startled when the mother called her out of similar sexual
phantasies to go to sleep. The inference may be drawn from this however
that one is startled from sexual dreaming also when the name is called
during sleep walking, or going a step further, that sexual phantasies
are at the bottom of sleep walking in the moonlight and first find their
fulfilment here.
Could the interpretation of our patient be generalized, it might be said
that the sleep walker climbs upon the roofs as a fulfilment of a
childish wish to climb up into the very moon. It is of significance also
how far we may consider universal her infantile belief that everything
sexual is permitted upon the moon, that what was strongly forbidden her
upon earth was there allowed to other children, and further the opinion
that she was quite different because of her sexual phantasying and did
not after all belong upon the earth but on the moon. At any rate the two
motives introduced for staring at the moon's disk may be frequently met,
are perhaps constantly present, that is the similarity of the moonlight
and lamplight and the comparison of the moon's disk to the human body,
especially the nates.
Let us attempt to realize now what this case before us may have to
teach, the first and so far the only one of its kind to be submitted to
a careful analysis. It must naturally be candidly confessed from the
start that from a single case history, be it ever so clearly and fully
set forth, no general conclusions may be drawn. Moreover certain factors
resist generalization because they are of a more specialized character
and at most will only occasionally reappear, as for example, the strong
sadistic note, the desire for blood, the hemoptysis of the beloved
mother. More frequently, also with the female sex, there may be the wish
to climb into bed with the parents or their substitutes, to play the
rôle of mother or father, out of love for them, and finally in general
homosexuality may be a driving factor.
It is the sexual coloring and motivation of the sleep walking,
especially by the light of the moon, which gives throughout the
strongest tone to our case. This is something which the scientific
authors have so far as good as completely overlooked, even where it has
forced itself into view, as in a series of cases cited by
Krafft-Ebing.[9] We shall hear, in discussing the works of the poets,
that they and the folk place this very motive before all others, indeed
often take it as the only one. We have here once more before us, if this
opinion be correct, a scientific erotophobia, that is the dread--mostly
among physicians and psychologists--of sexuality, although this is at
least one of the chief driving instincts of human life.
[9] _E. g._, "A monk of a melancholy disposition and known to be a
sleep walker, betook himself one evening to the room of his prior,
who, as it happened, had not yet gone to bed, but sat at his work
table. The monk had a knife in his hand, his eyes were open and
without swerving he made straight at the bed of the prior without
looking at him or the light burning in the room. He felt in the bed
for the body, stuck it three times with the knife and turned with a
satisfied countenance back to his cell, the door of which he closed.
In the morning he told the horrified prior that he had dreamed that
the latter had murdered his mother, and that her bloody shadow had
appeared to him to summon him to avenge her. He had hastened to arise
and had stabbed the prior. Immediately he had awakened in his bed,
bathed in perspiration, and had thanked God that it had been only a
frightful dream. The monk was horrified when the prior told him what
had taken place." The following cases besides: "A shoemaker's
apprentice, tortured for a long time with jealousy, climbed in his
sleep over the roof to his beloved, stabbed her and went back to bed."
Another, "A sleep walker in Naples stabbed his wife because of an idea
in a dream that she was untrue to him!" We may conclude, on the ground
of our analytical experiences, that the untrue maiden always
represents the mother of the sleep walker, who has been faithless to
him with the father. The hatred thoughts toward this rival lead in the
first dream to the reverse Hamlet motive, the mother has demanded that
the son take revenge upon the father. Finally Krafft-Ebing gives still
other cases: "A pastor, who would have been removed from his post on
account of the pregnancy of a girl, was acquitted because he proved
that he was a sleep walker and made it appear that in this condition (?)
the forbidden relationship had taken place." Also, "The case of a girl
who was sexually mishandled in the somnambulistic condition. Only in
the attacks had she consciousness of having submitted to sexual
relations, but not in the free intervals."
There exists a better agreement of opinion over the relationship between
sleep walking and the dream. Sleep walking, analogously to the latter,
fulfills also wishes of the day, behind which stand always wishes from
childhood. Only it must also be emphasized that the old, like the recent
wishes, are exclusively or predominantly of a sexual nature. Because
however that sexual desire is forbidden in the waking life, it must even
as in the dream take refuge in the sleeping state, where it can be
gratified unconsciously and therefore without guilt or punishment. Most
of the sleep activities of our patient were performed originally in a
state of apparent sleep, that is actually practiced in the conscious
state until later they were carried out quite unconsciously. She would
never then betray what when feigning sleep she had to conceal as causes.
Finally the directly precipitating causes in her erotic nature for the
sleep walking and moon walking seem especially to have been light and
the shining of the moon, her puberty and her mother's sickness.
All of our patient's sleep walking, in accordance with the etiology and
interpretation, since it goes back to infantile sexuality, is half
sexual, half outspokenly infantile. It reaches the greatest degree,
indeed the moon walking sets in just at the time of sexual maturity and
leads to the most complicated actions before the menses, that is at the
time of the greatest sexual excitement. And this activity in sleep and
the moon walking too almost cease when the patient enters upon regular
sexual intercourse. The shining of every light stimulates her sexually,
especially that of the moon. The wandering about in her nightgown or in
the scantiest clothing is plainly erotically conditioned (exhibition),
but also the going about in the ghostly hours (see later), finally the
being wakened through the softest calling of her name by the mother,
with whom alone she stands in a contact like that of hypnotic
somnambulism.
Purely childish moreover is the clever technique of disguise. First she
simulates illness or fear in order to be taken into the mother's bed.
Then she pretends to be asleep, talks in her sleep, throws herself about
in her sleep, that she may be able to do everything without punishment
and without being blamed, finally plays the mother in a manner which
corresponds completely to child's play. Also later, before and after
wandering in the bright moonlight, she produces specially deep sleep and
first as if in an obsession tries the door repeatedly to see if it is
closed. I see in this, naturally apart from possible organic causes of
profound sleep, an unconscious purpose, which plainly insists: "Just
see, how sound-asleep I am (we are reminded of the earlier pretending to
be asleep) and how afraid I am that the door might be left open! Whoever
has to walk about in spite of such sound sleep and such precaution, and
even perhaps do certain things which might be sexually interpreted, he
plainly is not to blame for it!"
We might add from knowledge of the neuroses that the fear that some one
might be hiding in the room signifies the wish that this might be so in
order that the subject might be sexually gratified. There was one
circumstance most convincing in regard to this, which I will now add.
Even during the time of her psychoanalytic treatment, when she did not
wander at night any more nor perform complicated acts in her sleep, she
had a number of times in the country carefully locked the door of her
room in the evening, only to find it open again in the morning. To be
sure, her lover of that period slept under the same roof, though at some
distance from her.
Before I go more closely into the question as to what share the light
had upon the sleep walking of our patient, I will recall once more that
her actions during sleep were at first but few and had nothing to do
with the light. As the years went by they became more complicated and
finally took place only under the influence of the light, whether it was
artificial or natural, that is of the moon. More extended walks were in
general possible only in the light of the moon, which as a heavenly body
shining everywhere threw its brightness over every thing, in the court,
garden and over the street, while candles or lamps at the best lighted
one or two rooms. The patient, given to sleep walking or moon walking,
went after the light, which meanwhile represented to her from childhood
on a symbol of the parents' love and gave hope of sexual enjoyment.
It was also bound inseparably within with motor activities of an erotic
nature. When her mother approached her bed with the light it was a
reminder to the child, Now you must go upon the chamber and you can pass
"the good," or, when she sat on the mother's lap and gazed into the
lamplight, Now you may stimulate yourself according to your heart's
desire. Then the lamp was shining when the little one wished to climb
into bed with the mother in order that, while exhibiting herself, she
might see her as scantily covered as possible. And finally the striking
of the light announced, "the mother is sick, in nursing her you will
have the opportunity to see her bared breasts and her blood." Evidently
the light thus led, when she climbed after it, to the greatest
experience of sexual pleasure of her earliest childhood. On account of
this strong libido possession the memory of the light was kept alive in
the unconscious and it needed only that the light of the lamp or the
candle should fall upon the face of the wanderer to permit her to
experience in the most profound sleep the same pleasure, the unconscious
was set into activity and everything was accomplished most manifestly
according to the purpose that served her strong libido.
It is remarkable that our patient distinguished immediately a strong
feeling of pleasure by the shining of every light, that moreover she
seemed to herself as a supernatural being (glorification through the
sexual feeling of pleasure[10]), that she herself imagined it must
represent a second sort of consciousness, and finally that she stood in
such contact with the beloved person as that of a hypnotized
subject--somnambulist--with her hypnotist. For she perceived also the
mother's lightest word when most soundly asleep, in spite of her
difficulty in hearing at other times.
[10] One thinks of the halo in religious pictures, which indeed is
nothing else than the shining of the light about the head.
What was the patient's intention in her longer walks under the moon's
influence, that she, for instance, climbed to the first story, reflected
for a moment and then started to go out at the gate? That becomes
comprehensible when it is remembered that she once opened the door in
her sleep for her lover in the country and furthermore in her first
complicated sleep walking. The purpose of the latter has been stated, to
climb into her mother's bed in order to obtain the greatest sexual
pleasure. I do not believe I am far astray when I assume that this
erotic desire of the child lies also essentially at the basis of her
more extensive wandering in the moonlight. She simply wishes each time
to go to the bed of some beloved one, which, as we shall hear later, is
accepted by poets and the folk mind as a chief motive, and a fundamental
one for many instances of sleep walking, especially with maidens.
It becomes clear now, likewise, why the patient climbs into the first
story, then recollects herself and seeks to go out at the gate. In her
seventh year she and her family had changed their abode and this had
been before in the first story but was now on an upper floor. She is
trying yet to climb into the mother's bed, this still remaining as a
fundamental motive. Only she is not seeking the bed where it stands at
the present time but where it stood in childhood, in the first story and
in another house. She goes, therefore, downstairs but remembers,
unconsciously of course, that this is not the right floor and wants now
to go out at the gate to find the home of her childhood. Later in the
country when she so thoroughly frightens her landlady and her daughter,
there she is also going to a woman she loves and she leaves the house
for this purpose and goes at least into the room that lies in the
direction of the house where the beloved lies. Later still she opens the
door wide in her sleep so that her lover can have free entrance.
We might also explain now in great part the sleep walking of the mother.
As far as I can discover, the mother also as a very small child lived in
another home than the one in which her sleep walking began. She ran
about her room at night and could not find her bed and felt around in
distress without coming upon the chamber, both of which stood in the
usual places. This may be explained by the fact that in phantasy she was
seeking the bed and chamber of her earliest childhood, which of course
stood elsewhere. Moreover she attained by her moaning the fulfilment of
her unconscious wish to be set by her mother upon the chamber and then
lifted into bed. The wanderings in the moonlight, after which likewise
she could not find her way back to bed, may be similarly explained,
though I learned only this much about her dancing in the moonlight,
that in her childhood she was very fond of dancing, which is also the
case with our patient. Perhaps she wished also to play elves in the
moonlight, according to poems or fairy tales or had, like her daughter,
earned the special love of her parents through her skill in dancing.
We are now at the chief problem. How is it then that the night's rest,
the guarding of which is always the goal of the dream, is motorially
broken through in sleep walking? There is first a special organic
disposition, which is absent from no sleep walker, a heightened motor
stimulability[11]. This appears clearly with children, and so for
example with our patient as a tendency to convulsive attacks, pavor
nocturnus and terrifying dreams, from which she starts up.
[11] Cf. with this Krafft-Ebing, _l. c._ "Slight convulsions or
cataleptic muscular rigidity sometimes precede the attacks."
As far as my observations go, it seems to me that there is a special
disposition to sleep walking in the descendants of alcoholics and
epileptics, of individuals with a distinctively sadistic character,
finally of hysterics, whose motor activity is strongly affected, who
also suffer with convulsions, tremor, paralyses or contractures. It
should be merely briefly mentioned that the heightened motor
excitability also establishes a disposition to a special muscle erotic,
which in fact was easily demonstrable in every one of the cases of sleep
walking and moon walking which have become known to me. The disturbance
of the night's rest was made desirable through the satisfaction of the
muscle erotic to every one for whom the excessive muscular activity
offered an entirely specialized pleasure, even sexual enjoyment.
Moreover in our case a series of features besides those already
mentioned bear undoubted testimony to the abnormally increased muscle
erotic. I have already elsewhere discussed them in detail[12] and will
here merely name briefly the chief factors. The patient had an epileptic
alcoholic grandfather on the mother's side, who was notorious when under
the influence of alcohol for his cruelty and pleasure in whipping. She
had, besides a strongly sadistic mother, two older brothers, of whom the
elder was frightfully violent and brutal, often choking his brothers and
sisters, while the other found an actually diabolical pleasure in
destroying and demolishing everything. Our patient exhibited already at
two years old as well as through her whole life a pleasure in striking
blows, and also conversely a special pleasure in receiving them,
further at four years old an intensive delight in dancing, an enjoyment
that was unmistakably sexual. We have learned above how she delighted to
press herself upon her mother's body or twine herself about her legs.
Moreover, finally, one of her very earliest hysterical symptoms was a
paralysis of the arm.
[12] Cf. note 6, p. 163.
More difficult seems to me the answer to the second main question: What
influence does the moon exercise upon the sleeper? It was earlier
discussed, along with the various psychical overdeterminations, that the
moonlight awoke first the infantile pleasure memories, among other
things that that light shining everywhere lighted the way which led to
the house and the dwelling of the earliest childhood. Mention was made
of the infantile comparison of the moon's disk with the childish nates
and perhaps the gazing upon the nightly orb, which seems besides most
like a hypnotic fixation, may be also referred back to the same. Since
we know today that the love transference constitutes the essential
character of hypnotism, that symptom brings us once more to the
eroticism. Beside there was not wanting with our patient a grossly
sensual relationship. Finally there is also the infantile desire to
climb over the houses into the moon, realizing itself in part at least
in the moon-inspired climbing upon the roof.
Yet the second leading problem appears to me, in spite of all this, not
completely exhausted. It might not thus be absolutely ruled out that
more than a mere superstition lurks behind the folk belief which
conceives of a "magnetic" influence by which the moon attracts the
sleeper. Such a relationship is indeed conceivable when we consider the
motor overexcitability of all sleep walkers and the effecting of ebb and
flow through the influence of the moon. Furthermore no one, in an epoch
which brings fresh knowledge each year of known and unknown rays, can
deny without question any influence to the rays of moonlight. Perhaps in
time the physicist and the astronomer will clear up the matter for us.
Meanwhile the question is raised and can be answered only with an
hypothesis.
In conclusion I have in mind a last final connection which the spell of
the moon bears to belief in spirits and ghosts. It is established
through many analyses that the visits of the mother by night form the
basis of the latter, when she comes with the light in her hand and
scantily clothed in white garments, nightgown, or chemise and petticoat,
to see if the children are asleep or, if they are, to set a child upon
the chamber. The so often mentioned "woman in white" may also be the
maiden in her nightgown, who thus exhibits herself in her night garment
to her parents as she climbs into their bed, later also eventually to
her lover. The choice of the hour between twelve and one, which came to
be called the ghostly hour, may perhaps be referred to the fact that at
this time sleep was most profound and therefore there was least danger
of discovery.
CASE 2. I introduce here a second case, in which to be sure the
influence of the moon represented only an episode and therefore received
also but a brief analysis. It is that of a twenty-eight year old
forester, who came under psychoanalytic treatment on account of severe
hysterical cardiac distress. The cause of this was a damming up of his
feelings toward his mother, for whom he longed in the unconscious. His
condition of anxiety broke out when he went to live with his mother
after the death of his father and slept in the next room. He admitted
that his father drank. Every Sunday he was somewhat drunk. Likewise the
mother, who kept a public house, was in no way disinclined toward
alcohol. He himself had consumed more beer especially in his high school
days than was good for him. I would emphasize in his sexual life, as
belonging to our theme, his strong urethral erotic, which made him a bed
wetter in childhood, led in later years to frequent micturition at night
and caused a serious dysuria psychica. His muscle erotic finally drove
him to the calling of a forester.
Only the portions of his psychoanalysis, which lasted for eight weeks,
which have to do with his sleep activities and his response to the moon
will be brought forward. Thus he relates at one time: "At thirteen years
old, when I was in a lodging house kept by a woman, I arose one morning
with the dark suspicion that I had done something in the night. What I
did not remember. I merely felt stupefied. Suddenly the boys who slept
with me began to laugh, for from under my bed ran a stream of urine. In
the night the full moon had shone upon my bed. We fellows had no vessel
there but had to go outside, which with my frequent need for urination
during the night was very unpleasant. Now there stood under my bed a
square box for hats and neckties, which I, as I got up in the night half
intoxicated with sleep, had taken for a chamber and I had urinated in
it. This was repeated. Another time, also at full moon, I wet a
colleague's shoe. They all said that I must be a little loony. When the
full moon came, I was always afraid that I might do this again, an
anxiety which remained long with me. I never dared sleep, for example,
so that the full moon could shine directly upon me. Yes; still
something else. Two or three years later the following happened, only I
do not know whether there was moonlight. I was sleeping with several
colleagues in a room adjoining that of the lodging house keepers, the
man and his wife. I must have gone into them at night and done something
sexual. Either I wished to climb into bed with the wife or I had
masturbated, I do not know which. I had at any rate the next day the
suspicion that something of the kind had happened. The landlord and
landlady laughed so oddly, but they said nothing to me."
"Did your mother perhaps in your childhood come to look after you with
the light?"--"Yes; that is so. My mother always stayed up for a long
time and came in regularly late at night with the light to go to bed. My
father was obliged to go early to bed because of his work and had to get
up at midnight, when he always made a light." Here he suddenly broke
off: "Perhaps it is for this reason that I have an anxiety in an
entirely dark room. If there is not at least a bit of light I can not
perform coitus."--"How is that?"--"I have remonstrated rather seriously
with myself that the sexual act could be performed only with a
light."--Then at a later hour of analysis: "When my father went away at
night, I came repeatedly into my mother's bed. I lay down in my father's
bed, also in a certain measure put myself into his place."--"Did your
mother call you, or did you come of yourself?"--"I believe that my
mother invited me to her. Now something occurs to me: The moonlight
awoke me as my father woke me when he struck a light as he was going
out. Then it was time to go into bed with my mother, for the father was
gone, which always gave me a feeling of reassurance."--"Yes, when he was
gone he could do nothing more to the mother. And then you could take his
place with her."
Two months later came the following to supplement this: "Already in the
grammar school I was always afraid someone might attack me in the night,
because of which I always double locked the room and looked under the
bed and in every chest. In childhood Mother came in fact to look after
me and set me on the chamber."--"Then your neurotic anxiety presumably
signifies the opposite, the wish that your mother shall come to you
again."--"Or rather, I bolt the door so that my father cannot come to my
mother. I followed in this also a command of my mother, 'Lock yourself
in well!' She always had a fear of burglars. Now even since I have been
living with my mother she has said to me more than once, that I should
lock myself in well. But I thought to myself, 'What, bolt myself
in!'"--"That would mean also that if the mother wants to come, only she
should come."--"That is just what I thought to myself, when Mother woke
me early, that she need not knock but come right in. In the daytime I
lay in my mother's bed because her room was warmer than mine. I was
feeling very wretchedly at that time and my mother said in the evening,
'Stay there where you are; I will sleep in the little room next. Leave
the door open.' In the night I know I was very restless."--"Did you not
perhaps have the wish that your mother should look at her sick child in
the night, as she once did when you were younger?"--"Yes, to be sure.
This wish pursued me and therefore I slept badly. I would have carried
the thing out further if my dysuria had not hindered me. If I had arisen
in the night or the morning, then Mother would at once have heard me in
her light sleep and I would not have been able to urinate. One time I
crept out of bed very quietly so that she did not hear me, and yet it
held back a long time until I couldn't stand it any longer. It was just
the same at the time when I was in the grammar and the high school, if
Mother asked me to sleep near her and Father was not there. Then also I
could urinate only with great difficulty. And now when I was living with
my mother, I had the most severe excited attacks. There was no other
reason for I was neither a loafer nor a drunkard. I have laid myself
down in my mother's bed and been unwilling to get out. That is very
significant. And if at any time I went away from home I at once felt so
miserable that I must go back. I was immediately better when once
there."
This case, when we consider it, is plain in its relationships. The
excessive love for the mother is a decisive factor as well as the desire
to play the rôle of the father with her. Therefore the fear of burglars
at night, behind which hides in part the anxiety that the father would
have sexual relations with the mother and in part the wish that the
latter might herself come to him. Joined to this is the desire for all
sorts of infantile experiences, such as the mother's placing him every
night upon the chamber because of his bed wetting. In the later
repression the pleasure in the enuresis as well as in the being taken up
by the mother becomes a dysuria psychica. Naturally to the urethral
eroticist in childhood, and also later unconsciously, micturition is
analogous to the sexual act. In puberty the moonlight awakens him as in
childhood the mother's light or that of the father. So on the one hand
the memory of the former is awakened, who with the light in her hand
reminded him to go to the chamber,[13] and on the other hand the memory
of the going out of the father, which was a signal to him to go to his
mother. He arises and carries out with her symbolically the sexual act,
for he urinates into a vaginal symbol (box or shoe-vagina). Also the
fact that he got up once by the light of the full moon and wanted to
climb into the bed of the landlady, likewise a mother substitute, is all
of a piece. This case here before us, as may be seen, confirms what the
first has already taught us.
[13] In Rumania the folk belief prevails that children readily wet
themselves in full moonlight. (Told by a patient.)
CASES 3, 4, and 5.--I wish to give further a brief report of three cases
of walking by moonlight, which I regret to say I could only briefly
outline in passing, not being able to submit them to an exhaustive
analysis. In everything they confirm every detail of our previous
conclusions.
The first case is that of an unmarried woman of twenty-eight, who walked
in her sleep first in her sixth year and the second time when she was
nine years old. "I got up when the full moon was shining, climbed over a
chair upon the piano and intended to go to the window to unfasten it.
Just then my father awoke and struck me hard on my buttocks, upon which
I went back and again fell asleep. I often arose, went to each bed, that
of the parents and those of the brothers and sisters, looked at them and
went back again. Between sixteen and seventeen years old, when my
periods first occurred, the sleep walking stopped." She adds later: "I
frequently as a child spoke out in my sleep. My nose began to bleed when
I was walking on the street and the sun shone upon me. After this the
sleep walking improved. I always clung affectionately to my parents and
brothers and sisters, and never received a blow except in that one
instance by my father."--"Which you took rather as a caress, than as a
blow for punishment."
In this case also the sleep walker plays sometimes the rôle of the
mother, who satisfies herself that her dear ones are asleep. Moreover a
period of talking in the sleep precedes the wandering by moonlight. It
is noteworthy that the sleep walking is intercepted by a caressing blow
from the father and ceases altogether when menstruation sets in. Also
earlier nosebleed had a beneficial effect.
The second case is that of a forty-year-old hysteric, who in her
marriage remained completely anesthetic sexually, although her husband
was thoroughly sympathetic to her and very potent. Her father's favorite
child, she strove in vain in early childhood for the affection of the
mother, who on her part also suffered severely from hysteria, with
screaming fits, incessant tremor of the head and hands and a host of
nervous afflictions. This mother's daughters had all of them always an
extraordinary passion for muscular activity with apparently great
satisfaction in it. They were among other things distinguished swimmers
and enthusiastic dancers. My patient besides could never tire of walking
for hours at a time.
In our discussion she related the following to me concerning her sleep
walking: "I got up once in the night when I was about ten years old. I
had dreamed that I was playing the piano. I found myself however not in
bed but standing between a chest and a desk scratching upon the latter
with my nails, as if playing the piano, which finally awoke me. There
was also a paper basket there which either I had stepped over or there
was a space through which I could slip, at any rate the way there was
not quite free. I stood in this narrow space and dreamed I was playing
the piano. Suddenly I heard my mother's voice, 'Mizzi, where are you?'
She called me several times before I finally awoke. Without it was not
yet growing daylight, but the moon shone brightly within. I recollected
myself immediately, realizing where I was, and went back to bed. I told
my mother, as an excuse, that I had to go to the chamber." "Had you at
that time a great desire to play the piano?"--"Three years later it made
me sick that I had not had to learn, but then I had as yet no desire for
music. We had no piano at that time. Yet among my earliest memories is
that of the way in which my mother played the piano. As a woman I wished
that I could express my joy and sorrow in music. I would mention further
that my brother and my uncle on the mother's side[14] are both sleep
walkers. The former always wants to come into my bed in the night when
he walks in his sleep. I must emphasize that he is especially fond of
me.
[14] They are both passionately devoted to sports, thus also endowed
with a heightened muscle erotic.
"The following often happened to me after I was married but never in my
maidenhood. I awoke in the night, sat up in bed and did not know what
was the matter with me. I could not think consciously, I was quite
incapable of thought. I knew neither where I was nor what was happening
to me; I could remember nothing. I did not know whether I was Jew or
Christian, man or woman, a human being or a beast, only stared straight
ahead into the next room, at a point of light. That was the only thing
that appeared clear to me. I held myself to it to regain clearness. I
always said to myself: 'What, what then? Where, how and why?' My powers
of thought went no further. I was like a newborn child. I stared fixedly
at this point of light because I unconsciously thought I would obtain
clearness there for everywhere else it was dark. This lasted for a long
time until through the light I could distinguish what it was that caused
the light. It was from a street lamp, so apparently before midnight, and
the lamp lighted a bit of the wall in the next room. After I had said to
myself for a long time 'What, what?' and stared straight at that light,
I learned gradually to distinguish what made the light, that is to
recognize, That there above, is a bit of lamplight; again after some
time; That is my lamp. Upon this I recollected my home and then for the
first time everything else. When I had made out the outlines of things
around me, then returned the consciousness that I was a human being and
was married. Of all that I had not before been aware. I do not remember
that I had dreamed anything before this came on, or that anything had
excited me, nor that anything special had happened beforehand. Beside
nothing like it has ever happened to me when I have been greatly
excited. At the most, after my marriage I led a life of strain. I was
tied to a shop which was damp, unwholesome and full of bad air, and I am
a friend of fresh air. I suffered very much mentally under these
conditions, because I love light and air."--"Did you think that you were
indeed not a human being?"--"No; only that with God's help I would
endure this life." I will add here that her second sister also
manifested similar disturbances of consciousness.
We find first in the foreground a family disposition to sleep walking
and moon influence. The brother significantly always wants in his
wanderings to get into the sister's bed, while our patient herself
openly plays the part of mother, especially the mother of the earliest
childhood. It is interesting also that when in her married life she had
to give up her pleasure in light and air, the disturbances of
consciousness set in, from which she could free herself only through
fixing her attention upon a point of light. She had the distinct feeling
that from this point of light things would become clear to her. One can
easily think of occasions of being dazed by sleep when perhaps the
mother came with the candle in her hand to see whether her child was
asleep and the child awoke. The whole remarkable occurrence would then
be simply a desire for the mother's love, which she all her life long so
sorely missed.
Now for the last case, a twenty-three year old married woman suffering
from a severe hysteria, who clung with great tenderness to her parents,
but received a reciprocal love only from her father, while the mother
preferred her sister. The patient told me of her moon walking: "I always
wanted to sleep by the open blinds so that the moon could shine upon me.
My oldest brother walked about in the night, drank water, went to the
window and looked out, all of course in his sleep, then he went back to
bed and slept on. At the same time he spoke very loudly, but quite
unintelligible things and one could actually observe that the moon
exercised an attraction over him. My younger healthy brother said that
it was frightful, the many things that he uttered in the night. I also
climbed out of bed one night when sixteen or seventeen years old,
because I could not find the moon, and sought it and met my moon haunted
brother. I immediately disappeared again going back to my bed and he did
not see me.
"I was ill once, about the same time, with influenza, and continually
repeated in my feverish phantasies that they should take down some one
who was hanged and not punish him; he could not help it. There was
moonlight at that time and moreover a light burned in the room. I took
this for the moon, which I could not see but wanted to see. I strove
only all the time to see the moon. The windows must be closed because I
was afraid, but the blinds must remain open so that I could see the
moon. Some one roused me then from my phantasies and there I saw that my
cousin sat near me. He was not however the one hanged, it was some one
who was first dragged out by another man, a warden in the prison. The
face of the one who was hanging I did not see, only his body."--"Of whom
did he remind you?"--"I do not know definitely and yet it was the cousin
who sat near me. And as I awoke, apparently I called his name for
he answered me, 'Yes, here I am!'"--"What about the warden of the
prison?"--"A man is first locked up before he is hanged."--"Do you see
also in phantasy something that hangs down?"--"Yes; when with my cousin
I always had the desire to see his membrum stiff, as it could be felt
and noticed outlined through his clothing." I will add likewise that
behind the cousin and her sexual wishes toward him analogous phantasies
toward the father were hidden. That which hangs down (pendens, penis) is
also the phallus. Her adjuration that the hanged person should not be
punished, he could not help it, is a demand for mercy for sexual sins
(see also later).
"Upon the wedding journey my husband did not want to sleep by the open
blinds, and I wanted to sleep nowhere else so that the moon could shine
upon me. I could never sleep otherwise, was very restless and it was
always as if I wanted to creep into the moon. I wanted, so to speak, to
creep into the moon out of sight.[15] Recently I was out in the country
with my sister and slept by the open blinds. The light from the heavens,
to be sure not the moonlight, forced its way in and I had the feeling as
if something pierced me,[16] in fact it pierced me somehow in the small
of my back, and I arose with my eyes closed and changed the position of
the bed, upon which I slept well. I knew nothing of it that I had
arisen, but something must have happened because I now could lie
comfortably.
[15] Phantasy of the mother's body? The moon's disk = the woman's
body?
[16] A clear coitus phantasy.
"Something else still. About two years ago I observed the moon in the
country, as it was reflected in the water, and I could not tear myself
from this spectacle until I was suddenly awakened by my husband and
cried out. Five or six years ago I went out in a boat upon the Wolfgang
lake. The moon was reflected in the water and I sat there very still.
Suddenly my brother, the one who is well, with whom I do not have much
to do, asked, 'What are you thinking of?'--'Nothing at all.'--'It must
be something.'--'No, nothing!' As we climbed out, I was still quite
absent minded. Also at night I always had the moon before me and spoke
with it."--"Consciously or in a dream?"--"I believe I was more asleep
than awake. For if any one had come upon me then I should have felt it
very painfully. I have incidentally noted the words: 'Oh moon with thy
white face, thou knowest I am in love only with thee. Come down to me. I
languish in torture, let me only comfort myself upon thy face. Thou
enticing, beautiful, lovely spirit, thou torturest me to death, my
suffering rends me, thou beautiful Moon, thou sweet one, mine, I implore
thee, release me from this pain, I can bear it no longer. Ah, what avail
my words and my complainings! Be thou my happiness, take me with thee,
_only pleasure of the senses do I desire for myself_. Thou Moon, most
beautiful and best, _save me, take my maidenhood, I am not evil to
thee_. Draw me mightily to thyself, do not leave off, thy kisses have
been so good to me.'" As may be seen, she loved the moon like a lover to
whom she would yield herself entirely. The grossly sexual relationship
is evident. It is after this fragment doubly regrettable that a
penetrating psychoanalysis was not here possible.
The early sexual content of the moon desire and its connection with the
parent complex is shown by her further statement: "Last summer in the
country I had only my mother-in-law with whom I could talk. It was the
time of the new moon and I could not bear complete darkness in my room.
It was frightfully lonely to me thus and I could not sleep. I had the
idea that in the lonely darkness someone was coming to me and I was
afraid."
It soon came to light that she and her sister in their early childhood
and again between the ages of eight and thirteen shared the parents'
sleeping room and had repeatedly spied upon their sexual intercourse.
Her present fear is also evidently the wish to put herself in the place
of the mother, to whom the father comes. She recalls yet one more
episode: "When I was nine or ten years old, the healthy brother was ill
with typhoid and the parents were up nights on his account. We sisters
were sent to stay elsewhere, where we had opportunity to play with a boy
who carried on a number of sexual things with us. I then dreamed of him
at night and phantasied the sexual things which I had done with him in
the daytime. Apparently I had also at that time played underneath with
my genitals. At the same time, while my brother had typhoid, I was
unwilling to go to sleep and could not, because I could have no rest
while my brother was ill." It is clear without further discussion to one
who understands these things that it was not anxiety for the brother but
secret, yet insistent sexual wishes which caused the sleeplessness. It
is finally significant that, when later she dreamed of a burglar, he
always came after her with a knife, or choked her, as her cousin and
mother had often done to her.
As we consider this third case of moon affectivity we find again
familiar phenomena, connections with early sexual dreams and the parent
complex. Especially noteworthy is further her direct falling in love
with the moon, to which she addresses her adoration in verses and to
which she even offers her virginity. It is as if she saw in it a man,
who should free her from her sexual need. One is reminded how in the
first case, the one cured by psychoanalysis, the four-year-old girl
sought continually the moon's face on the ground of a students' song. It
could not, we regret to say, be ascertained, in the absence of a
psychoanalysis, whether in this case the heavenly body represented to
the moon walker some definite person or not.
CASE 6.--I add here three autobiographical reports, which I have
gathered from literature. The first originates with the famous anatomist
and physiologist Karl Friedrich Burdach, who from his tenth to his
thirtieth year had occasional attacks of moon walking, although he
apparently "enjoyed the most perfect health." "I have during these
periods," he himself relates, "undertaken actions which I had to
recognize as mine, merely because they could have been carried out by no
one else. Thus one day it was incomprehensible to me why I had on no
shirt when I awoke, and it remained so in spite of my utmost efforts to
recollect myself, until the shirt was found in another room rolled
together under a press. In my twenty-ninth year I was awakened from a
night wandering by the question, What did I want? and then the
consciousness of the somnambulistic state passed over in part to the
awaking. First I found the question strange, but since I thought the
reason for it would become plain, I need not betray it. Immediately,
however, as I began to waken, I asked myself in what that consisted and,
now that the somnambulistic state was over, the answer must be due me."
One cannot help finding this self revelation exceedingly interesting.
The hiding of the shirt, although the affair is so incompletely
reported, especially in its motivation, points unmistakably at least to
exhibitionism. The second sleep walking appears much more difficult of
explanation. In this Burdach sought plainly a definite goal, which
seemed so clear and transparent to him that he could not at all
understand why anyone should question him about it. If we consider that
his first thought on waking was that he need not betray this purpose,
that moreover there enters at once a repression and causes him
completely to forget it, there remains then no other possibility than
that we have to do with a strongly forbidden wish, which the conscious
censor will not allow to pass. It is easy to conceive a sexual
motivation in this second instance if we remember that in the first
sleep walking something sexual surely took place.
Still more probable is the strongly forbidden sexual goal, if we take
into consideration the circumstances of his life. In his autobiography
"Rückblick auf mein Leben" Burdach tells us how extraordinarily his
mother depended upon him. "Having already lost four children in their
first year, she had longed to bear another child and especially since
the setting in of the illness of my father had compelled her to think of
losing him, she had wished for a son as a sure object for her
love-thirsty heart. Her wish was fulfilled when she bore me." Eleven
months later the father died, leaving his wife and his little son not
yet a year old unprovided for. Nevertheless she, the widow, rejected the
proposal to return to her parents' home and preferred rather "trouble,
need and a thousand cares upon herself in order that I might be better
educated; for I was the object of her deepest love. About nine o'clock
in the evening she went with me to bed and twined her arm about me; in
the morning she stole from my side and permitted me an hour or two more
of rest (p. 14).
"Women had a particular influence upon me; but it was also natural to me
to attach myself to them. As my mother related, I never as a child went
for a ride on my hobby horse without having at parting and on my return
kissed my hand to my lady represented by a doll" (p. 24). It is
superfluous to add that this lady was no other than his mother. Also the
following passage I think is significant: "I was by nature endowed with
as great a sensitiveness to womanly charm as to womanly dignity and this
inclination toward the other sex grounded in my psychical constitution
was nurtured by circumstances from my earliest youth on. I could but
recognize very soon the high intellectual and moral quality of my good
mother, who in her struggle with poverty kept herself fresh and free
from vulgarity and shunned no sacrifice for me. Likewise the matrons to
whose well wishing I owe my gratitude, inspired me with high respect for
their character. In my former nurse there seemed to me a pattern of
tireless and sagacious activity of a high order and breeding.... Thus a
high respect for true womanhood was implanted in me. On the other hand I
was as a boy made so accustomed to this rôle by several young women, who
entertained themselves with me and considered me as their lover to while
away their time, that I later retained the inclination to play this part
and considered a friendly advance as an invitation which I in turn held
as a sacred claim of honor and an agreeable duty" (pp. 69 ff.).
When later the mother took a young widow into lodgings, the young man,
then twenty-one years old, had "the exalted feeling of being her
protector. Then it was all up with my heart" (p. 71). The death of the
dearest one to him on earth, his mother, followed close upon this and
brought an end to it. "I became convinced that happiness would be found
for me only where I shared it with another being, and that I could be
satisfied only by a relationship similar to that in which I had stood
toward my mother; an inner bond where only a single mutual interest
controlled, where one soul found its happiness only in the other.
Without such an absolute love, penetrating the whole being, life seemed
to me worthless and stale. My mother, whose unbounded love I had
enjoyed, was torn from me; my excellent uncle, heartily devoted to me, I
saw in the enjoyment of his own family happiness. And an unconquerable
desire for the same happiness tortured me as I felt my utter loneliness"
(p. 79). So he concluded to marry although he had only limited prospects
for supporting a family.
"The first intimation that my wife was pregnant filled me with delight.
I took it for granted that Heaven would send me a daughter. With my idea
of the value of woman all my wishes tended thither, to possess a
daughter and to be able to watch over her while she unfolded to a noble
womanhood. She should have my mother for her pattern and therefore also
be named Caroline after her.[16a] I spoke so confidently, after I had
left Vienna, of 'our daughter Caroline' in my letters to my wife that
she was finally quite concerned and sought to prepare me for the birth
of a son. I had not however made a mistake and my confidence was in the
end justified" (pp. 83 ff.). His wife was confined at some distance from
him and then as soon as possible journeyed to him with the little one.
He relates as follows: "I went in Borsdorf with a beating heart to the
carriage which brought her to me, kissed her hastily, took my child out
of her arms and carried it hastily into the inn, laid it upon the table,
loosed the bindings which bound it to its tiny bed and was lost in happy
contemplation of the beautifully formed, lovely, vigorous and lively
little girl and then first threw myself into the arms of my wife, who in
her mother's pride and joy was feasting her eyes upon us, and then I had
again to observe the lovely child. What cared I for mankind! What cared
I for the whole world! I was more than happy" (pp. 85 ff.).
[16a] Cf. Barrie: "Dear Brutus," Act. II. for the dream daughter, who
bears the name of the author's mother. See also "Margaret Ogilvy." The
dream daughter's apostrophe to the moon is also interesting in
connection with the present study. Tr.
The manner also in which he brought up his child is highly significant:
"Our hearts clung mostly to our daughter.... I enjoyed the pleasure of
possessing her with full consciousness of her worth, gazed upon her with
rapture and was delighted when I observed in her a new trait of
beautiful womanly character. She recognized by my serious treatment of
her the entire depth of my love, repaid it with inner devotion and
challenged it with merry playfulness. From her first year I delighted to
lift her from her bed in the morning and even when she was eight years
old she often got up of herself, knocked on the window of the alcove
door leading into my work room and whisked back to her bed, so that when
I came she could throw herself with hearty laughter into my arms and
let me take her up. Or she slipped behind my chair and climbed up behind
my back, while I was deep in my work, so that she could fall
triumphantly upon my neck.
"I must refrain from mentioning more of her winsome childhood. She was
the most beautiful ornament of my life and in the possession of her I
felt myself, in spite of all pecuniary need, immeasurably happy." It
will not surprise any one with knowledge of these things that a child so
insatiable for love should become hysterical. "Her sensitiveness was
unnaturally exaggerated," also she was seized once with a hysterical
convulsion, as Burdach relates. She died young and "the flower of my
life was past. The fairest, purest joy was extinguished for me. I had
wished her for myself and Heaven had heard me. Finding in her the
fulfilment of my warmest wishes, I had never thought it would be
possible that I should outlive this daughter. Nevertheless I bore the
pain ... confident of being reunited with her.... For thirty years
scarcely a day has passed on which I have not at least once thought in
my inmost soul of my Caroline" (pp. 142-147).
I will cite in conclusion still one more fragment of self
characterization: "A chief trait in my character was the need for love,
not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and
delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself
completely one with the beloved.... The ideal of marriage was before me
in youth, for this need for love has been mine all my life.... I
remember as a student having written in my diary that I would rather
forego life itself than the happiness of family life" (pp. 53 ff.).
The center of this interesting life is Burdach's deep oneness with his
mother. She on her part took him from the beginning unconsciously as a
sexual object, as a substitute for her husband, who was failing in
health and soon after died. She lay in bed near her little one, her arm
twined about his body and slept with him until morning. No wonder that
the boy was so sensitive to womanly charm and likewise that later
different women looked upon him as their lover. The thought early
established itself with Burdach that only such a relationship could
satisfy him as that in which he had stood toward his mother. And as he
stood for the father it seemed to him a certain fact that now a little
girl should come to be the surrogate for his mother. Noteworthy also is
his attitude toward the mother who had just been confined and the child.
The former is to him almost incidental, while in the contemplation of
his child, in whom he secures his mother again, he can scarcely get his
fill, and he overwhelms her later with such passionate love as he had
once obtained from his mother. When the girl was torn from him, he was
consoled only by the thought of being united again with her in heaven.
We may see finally in the fond play in bed with his daughter a
repetition of that which he carried on with his mother, and we may
remember also that as a child he always slept with his mother. From all
this it seems to me a light falls upon the unexplained purpose of
Burdach's sleep walking. If this seems completely clear to him but so
objectionable that he not only concludes to keep it secret, but, more
than that, forgets it on the spot, then the probability is, that he
desired that night to climb into bed with his beloved mother.
CASE 7. A second autobiographical account of repeated sleep walking I
find in the "Buch der Kindheit," the first volume of Ludwig Ganghofer's
"Lebenslauf eines Optimisten." When the boy had to go away to school his
mother gave him four balls of yarn to take with him, so that he might
mend his own clothing and underwear. She had hidden a gulden deep within
each ball, a proof of mother love, which he later discovered. In the
course of time while at the school the impulses of puberty began to stir
in him and pressed upon him so strongly at first that frequent
pollutions occurred. He thought he must surely be ill, until finally a
colleague explained to him that this was on the contrary a special sign
of health. This calmed him and now he could sleep splendidly.
"One night I awoke suddenly as if roused by a burning heat. I
experienced a horrible suffering and believed I felt a hand on my body.
I cried out and pushed with my feet, and as I lay there in a half
consciousness it was as if many of my dormitory companions were awake
and I heard them ask, 'What is it? Who has called out this way?' A
voice, 'Some one has been dreaming!' And another voice, 'Silence in the
dormitory!' And all was gone from me as if under a heavy veil. Once
again quiet. Am I asleep or am I awake? A wild beating in the arteries
of my neck, a roaring in my ears. Yet in the dormitory all is quiet. The
lamp is burning, I see the white beds. I see the copper of the washstand
glimmer like red gold. Must I have dreamed--an oppressive, frightful
dream? Drops of sweat stood out on my forehead. Then came a heavy sleep.
What was this? I rarely had days of depression or restless, disturbed
nights. And yet in these weeks I entered upon this uncomfortable
experience.
"One night I awoke. Darkness was round about me. And I was cold. And I
saw no lamp, no bed, no shining copper. Was this also a dream? Yet my
hands felt plainly the hard wood in front of me. Slowly I recognized a
number of vaguely outlined squares, the great windows. Clad only in my
shirt, I sat in the study room before my desk. Such a horror fell upon
me as I cannot describe. I ran wildly up the stairs, threw myself into
my bed and shook. Another night I awoke. Darkness was about me. Again I
was cold. And I believed that I was again sitting at my desk. No; I was
standing. My hands however felt no wood, my eyes found not the gray
windows. As I moved, my head struck against something hard. I became
aware of a feeble light shining. As I went towards it, I came from some
dark room upon the dimly lighted stair landing.
"I awoke again in the night. I was cold. A semi-darkness was about me
and over me many stars twinkled. I sat upon the shingle roof of the
bowling alley. It was not a far leap to the ground below. But the pebble
stones of the seminary garden pricked my bare feet. Moreover, when I
wanted to get into the house, I found the gate closed. My God! how had I
then come out? Somewhere I found an open window and climbed into the
house and noiselessly up to the dormitory. The window near my bed stood
open--and there outside, I believe, was a lightning rod.
"All day I racked my brains to find a way to escape from the fear of
this dreadful thing. I dared not confide in anyone, for fear of the
ridicule of the others, for fear--I never knew just what I feared. In
the evening I took one of Mother's balls of yarn to bed with me, bound
two double strands about my wrists and tied the ends around the knobs of
the bedstead. In the night, as I was about to wander again, I felt the
pull of Mother's threads and awoke. It never came again. I was cured."
This appears at the first glance a non-sexual sleep walking. This is
only however in its first appearance, although it is to be regretted
that the full explanation can scarcely be given in the absence of any
analysis. It is first to be noted that sleep walking sets in at puberty
and is ushered in by anxiety dreams, pollutions and various anxiety
equivalents. The hammering in the arteries, the roaring in the ears, the
restless, disturbed nights, as well as the unusually disturbed days, we
know these all as manifestations of an unsatisfied libido. The first
"frightful" anxiety dream seems to lead deeper, as well, as the
"horrible suffering" started by a hand, which he felt upon his body.
Must not this hand, which causes this "horrible suffering" to the youth
who had never yet known trouble, have touched his genitals?[17] Behind
this perhaps, moreover, are very early memories of the care bestowed
upon the nursing infant and the child.
[17] One may also think of the fear of castration, associated with the
threats of parents so very frequently made when children practice
masturbation.
The terror which fell upon him every time that he walked in his sleep is
worthy of note, for he was not otherwise easily frightened. "A terror
which I could not describe," "fear of that dreadful thing" and fear not
merely of the ridicule of his fellows but of something, what, he never
knew, which is a far more violent reaction than we have been accustomed
to find with sleep walkers. This excessive reaction may be very well
understood, however, if behind it a particularly inacceptable sexual
factor hides itself. Finally the cure by means of the mother's balls of
yarn, homely proof of her love, doubtless has to do with the erotic. It
must be admitted to be sure that we have to confine ourselves to mere
conjectures. Only one may well maintain that even an apparently
non-sexual case soon reveals its sexual grounding. Moreover, a strong
muscle erotic is demonstrated further throughout Ganghofer's
autobiography.
CASE 8. I will now, especially upon the subject of moon walking, cite an
author who shows a very unusual preference for this heavenly body. In
many a description and in many of the speeches which he has put into the
mouths of his heroes, has Ludwig Tieck, who also has sung of the
"moon-lustered magic night," given artistic expression to this quite
remarkable love mania--this is the correct designation for it. Ricarda
Huch in her "Blütezeit der Romantik" makes the striking statement that
from this poet's figures one must "tear away the labels stuck upon them
and name them altogether Ludwig Tieck, for in truth they are only
refractions of this one beam." One may hear for example how Sternbald
felt: "The orb of the moon stood exactly opposite the window of his
room." He watched it with longing eyes, he sought upon the shining disk
and in the spots upon it mountains and forests, wonderful castles and
enchanted flowers and fragrant trees. He believed that he saw lakes with
shining swans which were drawing boats, a skiff which carried him and
his beloved, while about them charming mermaids blew upon their twisted
conchs and stretched their arms filled with water lilies over into the
bark.
"Ah, there, there!" he would call out, "is perchance the home of all
desire, all wishes; therefore there falls upon us so sweet a melancholy,
so soft a charm, when that still light, full and golden, floats upon the
heavens and pours down its silver light upon us. Yes, it awaits us and
prepares for us our happiness, and for this reason its sorrowful look
toward us, that we must still remain in this earthly twilight." The
similarity here with the phantasies of the psychoanalytic patient at the
beginning is indeed unmistakable.
Yet one or two extracts from the novel "Der Mondsüchtige,"[18] the title
of which is misleading since it in no way treats of one afflicted with
lunacy but of a veritable moon lover, presumably our poet himself. There
the nephew, Ludwig Licht(!), writes to his uncle: "It is now three
months since I had a very serious quarrel with my friend, a quarrel
which almost separated us, for he mocked at an entire world which is to
me so immeasurably precious. In a word, he railed at the moon and would
not admit that the magic light with which it shines was anything
beautiful or exalting. From Ossian to Siegwart he reviled a
susceptibility toward the moon although the poets express it, and he
almost had declared in plain words that if there were a hell, it
certainly would be located in the moon. At any rate he thought that the
entire sphere of the moon consists of burned out craters, water could
not be found upon it, and hardly any plant life, and the wan,
unwholesome reflection of a borrowed light would bring us sickness,
madness, ruin of fruits and grains, and he who is already foolish will
without doubt behave himself worst at the time of full moon.... What
concern is it of mine what the astronomers have discovered in the moon
or what they will yet discover?... It may be ludicrous and vexatious to
devote oneself exclusively and unreservedly to this or that, any
observation, any favorite object. Upon my earlier wanderings I met a
rich Englishman who traveled only to waterfalls and battlefields.
Ridiculously enough, though I have not journeyed only in the moonlight,
yet I have from my earliest youth forever taken note of the influence of
its light, have never in any region missed the light of the full moon
and I dream of being, not quite an Endymion, but yet a favorite of the
moon. When it returns, its orb little by little growing full, I cannot
suppress a feeling of longing while I gaze upon it, whether in meadow
and woodland, on the mountains or in the city itself and in my own
room."
[18] Literally, "Moonsick." [Tr.]
And the uncle answers him: "It is true, you are moon sick, as we have
always called you, and to such a one much must be forgiven which would
have to be reckoned differently to a well man. I have myself however
always inclined to this disease." In fact the entire action, loving and
losing, the development and solution of the plot, takes place almost
exclusively under the light of the moon. At the conclusion, when the
hero finds the beloved given up for lost, he cannot refrain from the
outcry: "Yes, the moonlight has given her and led her to me, he, the
moon has so rewarded me, his true friend and inspired panegyrist!" I
regret that I find nothing in the biographies which would explain
Tieck's exquisite amorousness toward the moon.