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