Still more probable is the strongly forbidden sexual goal, if we take into consideration the circumstances of his life. In his autobiography “Rückblick auf mein Leben” Burdach tells us how extraordinarily his mother depended upon him. “Having already lost four children in their first year, she had longed to bear another child and especially since the setting in of the illness of my father had compelled her to think of losing him, she had wished for a son as a sure object for her love-thirsty heart. Her wish was fulfilled when she bore me.” Eleven months later the father died, leaving his wife and his little son not yet a year old unprovided for. Nevertheless she, the widow, rejected the proposal to return to her parents' home and preferred rather “trouble, need and a thousand cares upon herself in order that I might be better educated; for I was the object of her deepest love. About nine o'clock in the evening she went with me to bed and twined her arm about me; in the morning she stole from my side and permitted me an hour or two more of rest (p. 14).
“Women had a particular influence upon me; but it was also natural to me to attach myself to them. As my mother related, I never as a child went for a ride on my hobby horse without having at parting and on my return kissed my hand to my lady represented by a doll” (p. 24). It is superfluous to add that this lady was no other than his mother. Also the following passage I think is significant: “I was by nature endowed with as great a sensitiveness to womanly charm as to womanly dignity and this inclination toward the other sex grounded in my psychical constitution was nurtured by circumstances from my earliest youth on. I could but recognize very soon the high intellectual and moral quality of my good mother, who in her struggle with poverty kept herself fresh and free from vulgarity and shunned no sacrifice for me. Likewise the matrons to whose well wishing I owe my gratitude, inspired me with high respect for their character. In my former nurse there seemed to me a pattern of tireless and sagacious activity of a high order and breeding.… Thus a high respect for true womanhood was implanted in me. On the other hand I was as a boy made so accustomed to this rôle by several young women, who entertained themselves with me and considered me as their lover to while away their time, that I later retained the inclination to play this part and considered a friendly advance as an invitation which I in turn held as a sacred claim of honor and an agreeable duty” (pp. 69 ff.).
When later the mother took a young widow into lodgings, the young man, then twenty-one years old, had “the exalted feeling of being her protector. Then it was all up with my heart” (p. 71). The death of the dearest one to him on earth, his mother, followed close upon this and brought an end to it. “I became convinced that happiness would be found for me only where I shared it with another being, and that I could be satisfied only by a relationship similar to that in which I had stood toward my mother; an inner bond where only a single mutual interest controlled, where one soul found its happiness only in the other. Without such an absolute love, penetrating the whole being, life seemed to me worthless and stale. My mother, whose unbounded love I had enjoyed, was torn from me; my excellent uncle, heartily devoted to me, I saw in the enjoyment of his own family happiness. And an unconquerable desire for the same happiness tortured me as I felt my utter loneliness” (p. 79). So he concluded to marry although he had only limited prospects for supporting a family.
“The first intimation that my wife was pregnant filled me with delight. I took it for granted that Heaven would send me a daughter. With my idea of the value of woman all my wishes tended thither, to possess a daughter and to be able to watch over her while she unfolded to a noble womanhood. She should have my mother for her pattern and therefore also be named Caroline after her.[16a] I spoke so confidently, after I had left Vienna, of ‘our daughter Caroline’ in my letters to my wife that she was finally quite concerned and sought to prepare me for the birth of a son. I had not however made a mistake and my confidence was in the end justified” (pp. 83 ff.). His wife was confined at some distance from him and then as soon as possible journeyed to him with the little one. He relates as follows: “I went in Borsdorf with a beating heart to the carriage which brought her to me, kissed her hastily, took my child out of her arms and carried it hastily into the inn, laid it upon the table, loosed the bindings which bound it to its tiny bed and was lost in happy contemplation of the beautifully formed, lovely, vigorous and lively little girl and then first threw myself into the arms of my wife, who in her mother's pride and joy was feasting her eyes upon us, and then I had again to observe the lovely child. What cared I for mankind! What cared I for the whole world! I was more than happy” (pp. 85 ff.).
The manner also in which he brought up his child is highly significant: “Our hearts clung mostly to our daughter.… I enjoyed the pleasure of possessing her with full consciousness of her worth, gazed upon her with rapture and was delighted when I observed in her a new trait of beautiful womanly character. She recognized by my serious treatment of her the entire depth of my love, repaid it with inner devotion and challenged it with merry playfulness. From her first year I delighted to lift her from her bed in the morning and even when she was eight years old she often got up of herself, knocked on the window of the alcove door leading into my work room and whisked back to her bed, so that when I came she could throw herself with hearty laughter into my arms and let me take her up. Or she slipped behind my chair and climbed up behind my back, while I was deep in my work, so that she could fall triumphantly upon my neck.
“I must refrain from mentioning more of her winsome childhood. She was the most beautiful ornament of my life and in the possession of her I felt myself, in spite of all pecuniary need, immeasurably happy.” It will not surprise any one with knowledge of these things that a child so insatiable for love should become hysterical. “Her sensitiveness was unnaturally exaggerated,” also she was seized once with a hysterical convulsion, as Burdach relates. She died young and “the flower of my life was past. The fairest, purest joy was extinguished for me. I had wished her for myself and Heaven had heard me. Finding in her the fulfilment of my warmest wishes, I had never thought it would be possible that I should outlive this daughter. Nevertheless I bore the pain … confident of being reunited with her.… For thirty years scarcely a day has passed on which I have not at least once thought in my inmost soul of my Caroline” (pp. 142–147).
I will cite in conclusion still one more fragment of self characterization: “A chief trait in my character was the need for love, not that everyday love which limits itself to a personal pleasure and delight, but that unbounded, overflowing love which feels itself completely one with the beloved.… The ideal of marriage was before me in youth, for this need for love has been mine all my life.… I remember as a student having written in my diary that I would rather forego life itself than the happiness of family life” (pp. 53 ff.).
The center of this interesting life is Burdach's deep oneness with his mother. She on her part took him from the beginning unconsciously as a sexual object, as a substitute for her husband, who was failing in health and soon after died. She lay in bed near her little one, her arm twined about his body and slept with him until morning. No wonder that the boy was so sensitive to womanly charm and likewise that later different women looked upon him as their lover. The thought early established itself with Burdach that only such a relationship could satisfy him as that in which he had stood toward his mother. And as he stood for the father it seemed to him a certain fact that now a little girl should come to be the surrogate for his mother. Noteworthy also is his attitude toward the mother who had just been confined and the child. The former is to him almost incidental, while in the contemplation of his child, in whom he secures his mother again, he can scarcely get his fill, and he overwhelms her later with such passionate love as he had once obtained from his mother. When the girl was torn from him, he was consoled only by the thought of being united again with her in heaven.
We may see finally in the fond play in bed with his daughter a repetition of that which he carried on with his mother, and we may remember also that as a child he always slept with his mother. From all this it seems to me a light falls upon the unexplained purpose of Burdach's sleep walking. If this seems completely clear to him but so objectionable that he not only concludes to keep it secret, but, more than that, forgets it on the spot, then the probability is, that he desired that night to climb into bed with his beloved mother.
Case 7. A second autobiographical account of repeated sleep walking I find in the “Buch der Kindheit,” the first volume of Ludwig Ganghofer's “Lebenslauf eines Optimisten.” When the boy had to go away to school his mother gave him four balls of yarn to take with him, so that he might mend his own clothing and underwear. She had hidden a gulden deep within each ball, a proof of mother love, which he later discovered. In the course of time while at the school the impulses of puberty began to stir in him and pressed upon him so strongly at first that frequent pollutions occurred. He thought he must surely be ill, until finally a colleague explained to him that this was on the contrary a special sign of health. This calmed him and now he could sleep splendidly.