“It was the same way with her desire to urinate. Every night she had a frightful need to urinate and hunted for the chamber, but, although it always stood in its accustomed place, she was not able to find it. Meanwhile the desire grew more severe, so that she began moaning fearfully in her sleep while hunting. She sought all over the room, even crept around under the bed without touching or noticing the chamber, which was there. Often she did not then return to her bed until Grandmother was awakened by her moans, brought her what she wanted and helped her to bed. It happened rather frequently that, because of the very great need, she wet the bed or the room while on her search, whereupon naturally a whipping followed. Sometimes she lay quite quiet later on in her sleep, but when she could not find her bed, was obliged to pass half the night in the cold room. Once when I myself wet my bed, she struck me with the words: ‘Every time that this happens you will be whipped; my mother whipped me for this reason’ Although she knew from her own experience that it could not be helped, yet she struck me.
“Besides the moon exercised a great power over my mother. Since the house in which she lived was low and stood out in the open country, and there were no window blinds, on bright moonlight nights the moon shone into the farthest corner. In the corner stood a box, on which were a number of flower pots, figures and glass covers. Upon this box she climbed, after she had first taken down one object after another and placed them on the floor without breaking anything. Then she began to dance upon the top of the box, but only on bright moonlight nights. Finally she put everything back in exactly the same place to a hair's breadth and climbed out of the window, but not before she had removed there a number of flower pots out of the way. From the window she reached the court where she rambled about, climbed over the garden fence and walked around at least an hour. Then she went back, arranged the flowers on the window in exact order and—could not find her way to bed. There was always a scene the next day if Grandmother had been wakened in the night.”
The most noteworthy feature in this statement, beside the phenomenon of sadism, later taken over by the daughter, the urethral eroticism and the susceptibility toward the moonlight, is the behavior of the mother while walking in her sleep. She plainly has an idea where the flower pots stand, which she removes from the box and the window, but on the other hand she comes in contact neither with the bed nor the chamber, which yet are in their usual places. We will also take note further on of the dancing upon the box in the bright moonlight as well as the climbing out of the window, climbing and walking about.
Before I go on with my patient's story, something should be said concerning its origin. She had been undergoing psychoanalytic treatment with me for nine months on account of various severe hysterical symptoms, which I will not here touch upon further, when she one day came out with the proposal that she write for me her autobiography. I agreed to it and she brought me little by little about two hundred fifty pages of folio, which she had prepared without any influence on my part, except of course that she had, in those months of treatment, made the technique of the analysis very much her own as far as it touched upon her case. Practically nothing in our work together in solving her difficulties was said of her sleep walking. I have also in no way influenced or been able to influence her explanation. It originates solely from the patient's associations and the employment of her newly acquired knowledge of the unconscious in the interpretation of her symptoms.
I find then in her account of her life some highly interesting points. “Even at two or three years old Mother at my entreaties must soothe me to sleep. As we lay together in bed I pretended often to be asleep and reached as if ‘in my sleep’ after my mother's breast in order to revel in sensation there. Also I often uncovered myself, again ostensibly in my sleep, and laid myself down quite contentedly. Then I awoke my mother by coughing, and when she awoke she stroked me and fondled me, and as was her custom kissed me also upon the genitals. Frequently I stood up in bed between my parents—a forerunner of my later sleep walking—and laid myself down at my mother's feet, asleep as she thought, but in reality awake only with eyes closed. Then I pulled the feather bed away from Mother and blinked at her in order to see her naked body, which I could do better from the foot than if I had lain near her.
“If she awoke she took me up to my place, kissed me repeatedly over my whole body and covered me up. I opened my eyes then as if just awakening, she kissed me on the eyes and said I should go quietly to sleep again, which I then did.
“Still earlier, at one or two years, I pretended to be asleep when my parents went to bed, that I might obtain caresses, because Father and Mother always said, ‘See, how dear, what a little angel!’ They kissed me then and I opened my eyes as if waking from deep sleep. This was the first time that I pretended to be asleep. I often lay thus for a long time apparently asleep but really awake. For when the parents saw that I was asleep, they told one another all sorts of things about us children. Especially Mother often spoke of my fine traits, or that people praised me and found me ‘so dear’ which she never said in my presence lest she should make me vain.”
Here is an early preceding period when the little one deliberately pretends to be asleep in order to hear loving things, receive caresses and experience sexual activity without having to be held accountable or to be afraid of receiving punishment, because everything happens in sleep. In the same way similar erotic motives and analogous behavior may be found in the account of her other actions while asleep. As she began to talk at two years old her parents begged her to tell everything that had happened to her, for example in the absence of either of them. She must tell to the minutest detail, when she awoke early lying between her parents, what had happened to her during the day before, what she had done with her brothers and sisters, what had taken place for her at school, and so on. She responded so much the more gladly, because in narrating all this she could excite herself more or less as well upon the father's as upon the mother's body.
In fact, this was the very source of a direct compulsion to have to tell things, from which she often had to suffer frightfully. The very bigoted mother sent her regularly from her sixth year on with her sister to the preaching services with the express injunction to report the sermons at home. And although on account of her poor head she had to struggle grievously with every poem or bit of lesson which she had to learn for school, yet now at home she would seat herself upon a hassock, spread a handkerchief over her shoulders and begin to drone out the whole sermon as she had heard it in the church from the minister. And this all merely out of love for her mother! Furthermore she was, according to her own words, directly in love with her teacher in the school, who often struck her on account of her inattentiveness and certainly did not treat her otherwise with fondness. Here is a motive for the later learning, singing and reciting of poetry during the sleep walking, while the pleasure in being struck when at fault was increased by self reproach, that she in spite of all her pains was so bad at learning.
“During my whole childhood,” the patient states, “I talked a great deal in my sleep. When I had a task to learn by heart, I said over the given selection or the poem in my sleep. This happened the first time when I was eight years old, on a bright moonlight night. I was sleeping at the time in the bed with my sister and I arose in the night, recited a poem and sang songs. At about the same period, standing on a chair or on the bed, I repeated parts of sermons which I had heard the day before at church. Besides I prattled about everything which I had done the previous day or about my play. How often I was afraid that I would divulge something from my sexual play with my brother! That must never have happened, however, or mother would have mentioned it to me, for she always told me everything that I said during the night.” I might perhaps sum up this activity in her sleep after this fashion: Day and night she is studying for the beloved but unresponsive teacher and strives to win and to keep her good will as well as that of the mother through the repeating of sermons and relating of all the events of the day.