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 phenomena of sleep walking and moon walking must be acknowledged, as
far as I can see, almost entirely as pathological yet connected or
identical with analogous manifestations of normal profound sleep. The
dreams in such sleep, in contrast with those of light sleep, are
characterized by movements. These often amount merely to speaking out,
laughing, weeping, smacking, throwing oneself about and so on, or
occasionally to complicated actions, which begin with leaving the bed.
Further comparison shows the night wandering as symptomatically similar
to hysterical and hypnotic somnambulism. This interpretation might be
objected to upon the ground that unfortunately we know nothing of the
origin of the motor phenomena of the dream and that understanding of the
hysterical and hypnotic somnambulism is deplorably lacking. Still less
has science to say about the influence of the moon upon night wandering.
The authors extricate themselves from the difficulty by simply denying
its influence. They bring forward as their chief argument for this that
many sleep walkers are subject to their attacks as frequently in dark as
in moonlight nights and when sleeping in rooms into which no beam of
moonlight can penetrate. Spitta indeed explains it thus: "The much
discussed and romantically treated 'moon walking' is a legend which
stands in contradiction to hitherto observed facts. That the phantasy of
the German folk mind drew to itself the pale ghostly light of the moon
and could reckon from it all sorts of wonderful things, proves nothing
to us." I can only say here that ten negative cases signify nothing in
the face of a single positive one and a thousand-fold experience
undoubtedly represents a certain connection between the light of the
full moon and the most complicated forms of sleep walking.
Not merely does science avoid these things on account of their
strangeness, but also the poets best informed in the things of the soul,
whom the problems of night wandering and moon walking should stimulate.
From the entire province of artistic literature I can mention only
Shakespeare's "Macbeth," Kleist's "Prinz von Homburg," the novel "Maria"
by Otto Ludwig, "Das Sündkind" by Anzengruber, "Jörn Uhl" by Gustav
Frenssen and "Aebelö" by Sophus Michaelis.[4] Finally Ludwig Ganghofer
has briefly sketched his own sleep walking in his autobiographical
"Lebenslauf eines Optimisten," and Ludwig Tieck has given unrestrained
expression to his passionate love toward this heavenly body in different
portions of his works.
[4] The text of Bellini's "Nachtwandlerin" could hardly be called
literature, nor Theodor Mundt's fabulous novel, "Lebensmagie,
Wirklichkeit und Traum." The latter I will mention later in the text.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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