Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
[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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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