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.
What was the patient's intention in her longer walks under themoon'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 Ilearned 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.
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 converselya 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.
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 inwhite” may also be the maiden in her nightgown, who thus exhibitsherselfin 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 uponme. 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.”—“Howis 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?”—“Ibelieve 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. Andthenyou 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 youagain.”—“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 myselfin!’”—“That would mean also that if the mother wants to come, onlyshe 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 tothe 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.
Cases3, 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 theaffection 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 wentbackto 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.
“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 appearedclear 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 Iam!’”—“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.
“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 connectionwith 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:“WhenI 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 moonwalking, 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 enjoymentof 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.).
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 Icame 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 tohim 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.
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 averitablemoon 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.”
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.