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