HALF-WAKING TRANCE OR SOMNAMBULISM.—The same thing with ordinary
sleep-walking—Its characteristic feature, the acting of a dream—Cases,
and disquisition.
A curious fate somnambulism has had. While other forms of trance
have been either rejected as fictions, or converted to the use of
superstition, somnambulism with all its wonders, being at once
undeniable and familiar, has been simply taken for granted. While her
sisters have been exalted into mystical phenomena, and play parts in
history, somnambulism has had no temple raised to her, has had no
fear-worship, at the highest has been promoted to figure in an opera.
Of a quiet and homely nature, she has moved about the house, not like a
visiting demon, but as a maid of all work. To the public the phenomenon
has presented no more interest than a soap-bubble, or the fall of an
apple.
Somnambulism, as the term is used in England, exactly comprehends all
the phenomena of half-waking trance.[5]
[Footnote 5: Many writers employ the term somnambulism to denote
indiscriminately several forms of trance, or trance in general. I
prefer restricting it to the peculiar class of cases commonly known as
sleep-walking.]
The seizure mostly comes on during common sleep. But it may supervene
in the daytime; in which case the patient first falls into the lightest
form of trance-sleep. After a little, still lost to things around
him, he manifests one or more of three impulses: one, to speak, but
coherently and to a purpose; a second, to dress, rise, and leave his
room with an evident intention of going somewhither; a third, to
practise some habitual mechanical employment. In each case he appears
to be pursuing the thread of a dream. If he speaks, it is a connected
discourse to some end. If he goes out to walk, it is to a spot he
contemplates visiting; his general turn is to climb ascents, hills, or
the roofs of houses: in the latter case he sometimes examines if the
tiles are secure before he steps on them. If he pursues a customary
occupation, whether it be cleaning harness or writing music, he
finishes his work before he leaves it. He is acting a dream, which is
connected and sustained. The attention is keenly awake in this dream,
and favours its accomplishment to the utmost. In the mean time the
somnambulist appears to be insensible to ordinary impressions, and to
take no cognisance of what is going on around him—a light maybe held so
close to his eyes as to singe his eyebrows without his noticing it—he
seems neither to hear nor to taste—the eyelids are generally closed,
otherwise the eyes are fixed and vacant. Nevertheless he possesses some
means of recognising the objects which are implicated in his dream; he
perceives their place, and walks among them with perfect precision.
Let me narrate some instances. The first, one of day-somnambulism,
exemplifies, at the same time, the transitions to full waking, which
manifest themselves occasionally in the talking form of the trance. The
case is from the _Acta Vratisv._ ann. 1722.
A girl, seventeen years of age, was used to fall into a kind of sleep
in the afternoon, in which it was supposed, from her expression of
countenance and her gestures, that she was engaged in dreams that
interested her. (She was then in light trance-sleep, initiatory
trance.) After some days she began to speak when in this state. Then
if those present addressed remarks to her, she replied very sensibly,
but then fell back into her dream discourse, which turned principally
upon religious and moral topics, and was directed to warn her friends
how a female should live—Christianly, well governed, and so as to incur
no reproach. When she sang, which often happened, she heard herself
accompanied by an imaginary violin or piano, and would take up and
continue the accompaniment upon an instrument herself. She sewed, did
knitting, and the like. She imagined, on one occasion, that she wrote a
letter upon a napkin, which she folded for the post. Upon waking, she
had not the slightest recollection of any thing that had passed. After
a few months she recovered.
The following case is from the Hamburgh _Zeitschrift für die gesammte
Medicin_, 1848:—
A lad of eleven years of age, at school at Tarbes, was surprised
several mornings running at finding himself dressed in bed, though he
had undressed himself overnight. Then on the 3d of May he was seen by
a neighbour, soon after three in the morning, to go out dressed with
his cloak and hat on. She called to him, but he did not answer; and she
concluded that he was going to Bagnères with his father. In fact that
was the road he took; and he was afterwards seen by several persons
near Bagnères, trudging after a carriage. It rained hard; and they were
surprised to see so young a lad travelling at so early an hour; but
they thought he probably belonged to the people in the carriage. He
reached Bagnères at half past five, having done the distance of five
post leagues in two hours and a quarter. He went to the hotel of M.
Lafargue, which he had on a former occasion visited with his father,
and entered the eating-room. The people of the hotel addressed him. He
told them that he had come with his father in a post-chaise, and that
they would find his father in the yard busied with the carriage. M.
Lafargue went out to look for him. In the mean time the people of the
house observed that the boy’s remarks were incoherent; so they took off
his cloak and cap, when they found that his eyelids were closed, and
that he was fast asleep. They led him towards the stove, took off his
wet things and his boots without awakening him; but before they had
completely undressed him to put him to bed he awoke. The impressions of
his dream did not desert him. He complained of having had a bad night;
and asked for his father. They told him his father had been obliged to
set off again immediately. They put him to bed, and he slept. They sent
intelligence to his father, who came to Bagnères. The boy believed, and
believes still, that he came to Bagnères with his father in a chaise
that was driven very slowly. Being asked what he had seen on the road,
he described having passed a number of monks and priests in procession.
He said there was one good-looking young man who did not leave him,
but was always saying, “Good day, Joseph; Adieu, Joseph.” He said that
what had most annoyed him was the burning heat of the sun, which was so
intense that he had been obliged to wrap himself up in his cloak; that
he could not bear its bright light.
The following case of somnambulism, allied with St. Vietz’s dance, is
given by Lord Monboddo:—
The patient, about sixteen years of age, used to be commonly taken
in the morning a few hours after rising. The approach of the seizure
was announced by a sense of weight in the head and drowsiness, which
quickly terminated in sleep, (trance-sleep,) in which her eyes were
fast shut. She described a feeling beginning in the feet, creeping
like a gradual chill higher and higher, till it reached the heart,
when consciousness left her. Being in this state, she sprang from her
seat about the room, over tables and chairs, with astonishing agility.
Then, if she succeeded in getting out of the house, she ran, at a pace
with which her elder brother could hardly keep up, to a particular
spot in the neighbourhood, taking the directest but the roughest path.
If she could not manage otherwise, she got over the garden wall, with
astonishing rapidity and precision of movement. Her eyelids were all
the time fast closed. The impulse to visit this spot she was often
conscious of during the approach of the paroxysm, and afterwards she
sometimes thought that she had dreamed of going thither. Towards the
termination of her indisposition, she dreamed that the water of a
neighbouring spring would do her good, and she drank much of it. One
time they tried to cheat her by giving her water from another spring,
but she immediately detected the difference. Near the end, she foretold
that she would have three paroxysms more, and then be well; and so it
proved.
The next case is from a communication by M. Pigatti, published in the
July number of the _Journal Encyclo__pedique_ of the year 1662. The
subject was a servant of the name of Negretti, in the household of the
Marquis Sale.
In the evening Negretti would seat himself in a chair in the ante-room,
when he commonly fell asleep, and would sleep quietly for a quarter of
an hour. He then righted himself in his chair so as to sit up. Then
he sat some time without motion, looking as if he saw something. Then
he rose and walked about the room. On one occasion he drew out his
snuff-box, and would have taken a pinch, but there was little in it;
whereupon he walked up to an empty chair, and, addressing by name a
cavalier, whom he supposed to be sitting in it, asked him for a pinch.
One of those who were watching the scene, here held towards him an open
box, from which he took snuff. Afterward he fell into the posture of
a person who listens; he seemed to think that he heard an order, and
thereupon hastened with a wax candle in his hand to a spot where a
light usually stood. As soon as he imagined that he had lit the candle,
he walked with it in the proper manner, through the _salle_, down the
steps, turning and waiting from time to time as if he were lighting
some one down. Arrived at the door he placed himself sideways, in order
to let the imaginary persons pass; and he bowed as he let them out. He
then extinguished the light, returned up stairs, and sat himself down
again in his place, to play the same farce once or twice over again
the same evening. When in this condition he would lay the table-cloth,
place the chairs, which he sometimes brought from a distant room,
opening and shutting the doors as he went with exactness; would take
decanters from the buffet, fill them with water at the spring, put
them down on a waiter, and so on. All the objects that were concerned
in these operations he distinguished, when they were before him,
with the same precision and certainty as if he had been in the full
use of his senses. Otherwise he seemed to observe nothing; so, on one
occasion in passing a table, he threw down a waiter with two decanters
upon it, which fell and broke without attracting his attention. The
dominant idea had entire possession of him. He would prepare a salad
with correctness, and sit down and eat it. If they changed it, the
trick escaped his notice. In this manner he would go on eating cabbage,
or even pieces of cake, without observing the difference. The taste he
enjoyed was imaginary, the sense was shut. On another occasion, when
he asked for wine they gave him water, which he drank for wine, and
remarked that his stomach felt the better for it. On a fellow-servant
touching his legs with a stick, the idea arose in his mind that it was
a dog, and he scolded to drive it away; but the servant continuing his
game, Negretti took a whip to beat the dog. The servant drew back, when
Negretti began whistling and coaxing to get the dog near him; so they
threw a muff against his legs, which he belaboured soundly.
M. Pigatti watched these proceedings with great attention, and
convinced himself by many experiments that Negretti did not use his
ordinary senses. He did not hear the loudest sound when it lay out of
the circle of his dream-ideas. If a light was held close to his eyes,
near enough to singe his eyebrows, he did not appear to be aware of
it. He seemed to feel nothing when they inserted a feather into his
nostrils.
Perhaps the most interesting case of somnambulism on record is that
of a young ecclesiastic, the narrative of which, from the immediate
communication of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, is given under the head
of Somnambulism, in the _French Encyclopedia_.
This young ecclesiastic, when the archbishop was at the same seminary,
used to rise every night, and write out either sermons or pieces of
music. To study his condition, the archbishop betook himself several
nights consecutively to the chamber of the young man, where he made the
following observations:—
The young man used to rise, take paper, and begin to write. Before
writing music, he would take a stick and rule the lines with it. He
wrote the notes, together with the words corresponding to them, with
perfect correctness; or when he had written the words too wide, he
altered them. The notes that were to be black he filled in after he had
written the whole. After completing a sermon, he would read it aloud
from beginning to end. If any passage displeased him, he erased it, and
wrote the amended passage correctly over the other. On one occasion he
had substituted the word “adorable” for “divin;” but he did not omit
to alter the preceding “ce” into “cet,” by adding the letter “t” with
exact precision to the word first written. To ascertain whether he used
his eyes, the archbishop interposed a sheet of pasteboard between the
writing and his face. The somnambulist took not the least notice, but
went on writing as before. The limitation of his perceptions to what
he was thinking about was very curious. A bit of aniseed cake, that
he had sought for, he ate approvingly; but when, on another occasion,
a piece of the same cake was put into his mouth, he spat it out
without observation. The following instance of the dependence of his
perceptions upon his preconceived ideas is truly wonderful. It is to
be observed that he always knew when his pen had ink in it. Likewise,
if they adroitly changed his papers when he was writing, he knew it,
if the sheet substituted was of a different size from the former, and
he appeared embarrassed in that case. But if the fresh sheet of paper,
which was substituted for that written on, was exactly of the same
size with it, he appeared not to be aware of the change. And he would
continue to read off his composition from the blank sheet of paper,
as fluently as when the manuscript lay before him; nay more, he would
continue his corrections, and introduce an amended passage, writing
it upon exactly the place in the blank sheet corresponding with that
which it would have occupied on the written page.—Such are the feats of
somnambulists.
At first sight, the phenomena thus exemplified appear strange and
unintelligible enough. But upon a careful consideration of them, much
of the marvellous disappears. The most curious features seem, in the
end, to be really the least deserving of wonder. The simplest of the
phenomena are alone the inexplicable ones.
I have, however, advanced this group of cases as instances of trance,
in which, therefore, I assume that an abnormal relation exists between
the mind and body, in which the organs of sensation are partially or
entirely deserted by their functions, and in which new perceptive
powers manifest themselves. Then an opponent might argue:—
“I know nothing about your trance. What I see is first a person
asleep, then the same person half or partially awake, occupied with
a dream or vivid conception of an action; which, being partially
awake, and therefore having partially resumed his power of attention,
he is capable of realizing. He appears to be insensible; but this
may be deceptive; for he is still asleep, and therefore notices not
things around him; and his attention is partly still suspended as in
sleep, partly more useless still for general purposes through intent
preoccupation.
“He goes about the house in his rapt state, and finds his way
perfectly; but the house is familiar to him; every thing in it is
distinctly before his conception; he has, too, the advantage of perfect
confidence; and besides, being partially awake, he partially, vaguely
perhaps, uses customary sensations in reference to the objects which
his dream contemplates his meeting.
“The ecclesiastic, indeed, seems at first to see through a sheet of
pasteboard. But the concluding interesting fact in his case shows that
he really used his perception only to identify the size and place of
the sheet of paper. His writing upon it was the mechanical transcript
of an act of mental penmanship. The corrections fell into the right
places upon the paper, owing to the fidelity with which he retained the
mental picture. The clearness and vividness of the picture, again, is
not so very surprising, when it is considered that the attention was
wholly and exclusively concentrated on that one operation.”
The observations of my imaginary opponent might sufficiently account
for the more striking phenomena in the preceding cases, and are
doubtless near the truth as regards the principal parts of the young
ecclesiastic’s performance. Still there remains the commoner instance
of the lad going about with precision with his eyes shut. I see no mode
of accounting for that on common principles.
And besides, it may be presumed that, if more decisive experiments
as to their sensibility had been made upon all these subjects, they
would have been found really without sight and feeling. For, in
general character, persons in somnambulism exactly resemble other
entranced persons, who certainly feel nothing; for they have borne
the most painful surgical operations without the smallest indication
of suffering. So I have little doubt that the insensibility, which the
observers imputed to the somnambulists, really existed, although they
may have failed to establish the fact by positive evidence.
The question as to the development of a new power of perception, such
as I conjecture the lad used in his walk from Tarbes to Bagnères,
will be found to be resolved, or, at any rate, to be attended with
no theoretical difficulties, when the performances of full-waking in
trance, which I propose to describe in the next letter, shall have been
laid before the reader.