Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
[21] One thinks of Eisener's panegyric: "Before her clear look
confusion cannot exist, the coarse word of insolence sinks back
unspoken into the shame filled breast. The brightness of a lost
paradise shines from her eyes upon the fallen bringing pain and
warning, the consolation of eternal pity smiles upon the penitent."
[22] Like Otto Ludwig himself.
[23] The well-known psychic overcompensation in congenital organic
inferiority.
How had this so easily befallen him with a mother so deeply honored!
Around her spun all the boy's love desire and twined itself about her,
and all that lava heated feeling belonging so peculiarly to the child
alone. He had hung upon that idol the longing of his heart, the
phantasies of a power of imagination lustfully excited, which is not
indeed wanting in the best of children, although commonly these are
inhibited, and later even completely forgotten because of restraining
moral impulses. Therefore the memory of the highly honored mother is
awakened not only through Maria, the pure one, but also through Julie,
who comes into contact with his sensual desire and the unclean childish
phantasies slumbering in the last analysis behind this. It is
interesting how strikingly the poet is able to point out that double
emotion in Eisener's soul.
There the moral restraining impulses were first crowded back by the wine
plentifully pressed upon him, which he, accustomed from his early years
to moderation, could tolerate in only the smallest amount. Now "the sly
Julie seemed to him ever more charming. A play of glances began between
the two, which appeared to make the young hunter jealous. On the other
hand Eisener himself felt something similar when his neighbor on the
left addressed to the earnest Maria words which did not conceal the
liking she had inspired. He listened to her replies almost with fear and
was delighted that there was not audible in them the least response to
this inclination, and then he wondered at himself over this same
division in his nature. In Julie's dark eyes glowed a flame, of which he
felt how it kindled him and that its fire must attract more and more to
itself without his being able to defend himself from it, yes, without
his wishing to be able to do it." To be sure when "the slender Maria
stood like a holy picture behind Julie, the alluring child of the world
with all her seductive graces sank low in value in contrast to the
former. He felt the need to be open with himself." Transparency was a
necessity to him from his youth, as an inheritance from his wise mother.
"Then Breitung thrust with his glass against Eisener's refilled one.
Laughing and drinking he found the motley interchange of the liveliest
ideas outwardly, which already had taken the place of quiet thought,
soon becoming less and less menacing and finally even agreeable and
desirable."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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