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 night before she had spoken out loud in her sleep just as Joern Uhl
went by to his room. He had spoken of it directly as the action of the
moonlight, which she of course contradicted; she had been lying awake
and heard the calves break out.[19] Then she takes the following night,
when the housekeeper, with whom she slept, was sitting up nursing an old
farmer and the boy had gone courting again, to approach Joern Uhl on her
part as a moon walker, who knew nothing of what she did and could not be
held responsible. More than this her unconscious had a fitting speech
ready, the calves had broken out again.
[19] Has not the bringing in of these animals and of the word
mooncalves a hidden closeness of meaning? The repetition twice of the
same motive, the analogy with the case at the beginning which I
analyzed, and at last the fact that Lena, when she looked at the
stars, wanted to see a farmhouse where some one was just driving out
the calves, all this gives food for thought.
The breaking through of the motor impulse is also well grounded.
Everything with Lena Tarn is joy in muscular activity, the restless,
almost unappeasable desire for work and pleasurable "getting things
done," "exerting herself," the constant singing, the easy giving way to
anger. Work is the only thing which she can carry on earnestly because
in that she lives out in part her sexuality, she meets every one else
smilingly or angrily according to her mood. It is noteworthy too that
her unquiet libido transforms itself toward Joern Uhl into anger and
animosity and so much so that once in anger she addresses him as "thou"
and acts as if she were his beloved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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