Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary StudySadger, J.
Science
Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study
Sadger, J.
Psychoanalysis; Sleepwalking
Both Eisener and Maria conducted themselves further entirely in
accordance with their earlier unconscious wishes. The former for example
"found a growing pleasure in representing his own action, when it was
really the effect of many circumstances acting one upon the other, as
the result of a cold, calm calculation on his part." And was it not at
bottom actually something like a calculation, since he in his earliest
childhood phantasies imagined something similar for himself from the
mother? It is only natural that he now greatly exaggerated in
consciousness the sin which he had desired. Never for a moment did it
occur to him "to throw any part of the burden of guilt upon that being
who so closely participated in it. His rightful feeling remained in
regard to it that he had this night given to a woman a right to himself,
which he, if she should demand it, could not dispute. It was a source of
calmness to him to look upon himself as punished, as it were, in this
manner." Only all too evident! This punishment was in reality a
disguised reward, fulfilment of the infantile wish to win the
mother.[24] For this reason he had not been able earlier to withstand
Julie although Maria attracted him far more. For the former was the
indulgent mother of his power of imagination, the latter on the contrary
the proud, unapproachable mother of his real childhood. Moreover, though
he did not conceal from himself that his heart belonged to the chaste
Maria, yet he resolved, if Julie should convince him that she had been
the ghostly visitor, to offer her his hand immediately. "The doubt,
whether she deserved it, which was near enough at hand, he put from him
as an excuse which he wished to make so that he could believe that he
might release himself from that which he had to recognize as his duty."
Maria however "he had in these days accustomed himself to think of as a
being so high above him that his love must profane her." Again the well
known splitting of the mother into the holy and the yielding one.
[24] Cf. with this also the interesting passage ... "the passionate
self accusations, in torturing himself with which he found comfort a
short time before."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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