Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
Concerning her enuresis, in its relation to urethral eroticism, the
patient relates the following: "When I pressed myself against my
mother's or brother's thigh, not only 'the good' came, but frequently
also urine with it. At about eight years old there was often a very
strong compulsion to urinate, especially at night, which would cause me
to wet my bed. This was however according to my wish to pass not urine
but that same secretion which I had voided at two or three years old,
when I became so wildly excited with my mother, that is when, lying in
bed with her, I pressed her thigh between mine. I could not stop it in
spite of all threats or punishments. Very curiously I usually awoke when
I voided urine, but I could not retain it in the face of the great
pleasure."
I lay emphasis upon a specially strong homosexual tendency[5] among her
various perversions, although she had the usual sex relations with a
legion of men with complete satisfaction. Furthermore, as
sadistic-masochistic traits, there was an abnormal pleasure in giving
and receiving blows and a passionate desire for blood. It was a sexual
excitement that occurred when she saw her own blood or that of others. I
have elsewhere[6] described this blood sadism and I will refer here to
only two features, which are of significance also in regard to her moon
walking. The first is her greatly exaggerated vaginal eroticism, which
at menstruation especially was abnormally pleasurably excited. The
second, on the other hand, was that our patient already at the age of
two years should have experienced sexual pleasure in the mother's
hemoptysis. Sitting on the mother's lap she stimulated herself upon the
latter's breast, when she began to scrape and then to cough up blood.
She reached after her bloody lips in order afterward to lick off her own
fingers. As a result of the sexual overexcitement which occurred then,
blood has afforded her enormous pleasure ever since, when she has looked
upon it.
[5] This homosexual tendency was first directed toward her own mother
in childhood and early puberty.
[6] "Über den sado-masochistischen Komplex," Jahrb. f. psychoanal.
Forsch., Vol. 5, pp. 224-230.
As for the rest of her life, I will refer to two other points only,
which are not without importance for our problem. First of all was the
change of dwelling after the father's death in our patient's seventh
year. The other is her burning desire, arising in her third or fourth
year, to play mother and most eagerly with a real live child. A baby
doll, of which she came into possession, was only a substitute, although
for want of something better she carried this around passionately and
did not once lay it out of her arms while asleep. At the age of eight it
was her greatest delight to trudge around with a small two year old girl
from the house and sing her to sleep as her mother had once done to her.
"Carrying that child around was my greatest delight until I was fourteen
years old."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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