“As for the talking in my sleep, I began at the age of two or three, though awake, to pretend to be asleep and to speak out as if asleep. For example I acted as if I were tormented with frightful dreams and cried out with great terror, ostensibly in a dream: ‘Mother, Mother, take me!’ or ‘Stay with me!’ or something of the sort. Then Mother took me, as I had anticipated, under her feather bed and quieted me, but I naturally became excited while I pressed my legs about her body presumably from fear of witches and immediately there occurred a ‘convulsive attack,’ that is I now experienced such lustful pleasure that ‘the good’ came.”
Attention may further be called to the fact that she threw herself about violently in her sleep, which caused her, as the daughter of so brutal a mother, who was herself a sado-masochist, an excessive amount of pleasurable sensation. When only two or three years old, as she lay between the parents, she pushed them with hands and feet, of which she was quite conscious, while they thought it happened in sleep. This brought the advantage that she was not responsible for anything which happened in sleep, for it occurred when she was in an unconscious condition.
The changing of the home in her seventh year, after the death of the father, led to her sharing the bed of her sister six years older than she. “My sister had the habit of throwing off the covers in her sleep or twisting her legs about mine. I, on the other hand, always hit her in my sleep with hands or feet. Naturally I could not help it since it actually happened while I was asleep, yet when my sister could stand it no longer I had to go and lie with Mother. I also struck her in my sleep. Besides I nestled up against her body, especially her buttocks, and experienced very pleasurable excitement. For it was simply impossible with her strong body and in the narrow bed to avoid touching my mother. Only I did it to her quite consciously, but she was of the impression that I pressed upon her in my sleep because I had no room in bed. The reason that I as a small child pushed against my parents in bed was simply the wish to be able to strike them once to my heart's desire, and since this was impossible during the day, I did it while asleep, when no one is responsible for what one does. Striking my sister then actually in my sleep, when I was seven years old, was again the wish to be able to excite myself pleasurably by the blows as when a smaller child.” Here her sadism again breaks through in this desire to strike mother and sister according to her heart's desire and it especially excited her because of her constitutionally exaggerated muscle erotic. I have discussed this sadism at length elsewhere.[7]
It can be affirmed, if we examine her behavior in sleep, that without exception sexual wishes lay at the bottom of it, just as the dream also, as is well known, always represents the fulfilment of infantile wishes. The plainly erotic character is never wanting in an apparently asexual action, if we penetrate it more deeply. So for example this patient repeated the sermon at her mother's bidding in order to receive her love and praise. Saying her lessons at night arose from her strong attachment to her teacher, which again in turn was a stage of her love for her mother. Naturally this was all concerned with wishes, which, strictly tabooed when awake, could only be gratified in unconsciousness, somehow carried out in sleep, or, as with the simulated convulsions, only in the mother's bed. The behavior during sleep served especially well to grant sexual pleasure but without guilt or liability to punishment.
It was quite in order further that a conscious activity preceded the unconscious activity in sleep, that is, that for a time the patient while awake, but with closed eyes and therefore apparently asleep, did the very thing which later was done in actual unconsciousness. What then impressed itself as an unconscious performance during sleep, had been earlier done consciously, almost I might say as “a studied action.” Only in special cases is there any need for playing such a comedy, for the direct demand of a beloved individual—“You must tell everything,” “You must learn diligently,” “Repeat the sermon accurately,”—when the eroticism is well concealed, permits of open action without more hindrance. It may be noted further that the patient never betrayed in the least in her sleep what she must have been at pains carefully to conceal, as, for example, the sexual play with her brother. Finally the striking participation of the muscle erotic at times in sleep must be emphasized.
We have found already as roots and motives of her sleep activity sexual, strongly forbidden wishes, which particularly could often be gratified only in bed; the striving that she might commit misdemeanor without being held guilty or answerable; further the practicing of these things first while awake; and finally, as an organic root, at least the pleasure in blows in sleep, the undeniably exaggerated muscle erotic. Nearly everything takes place in bed, only occasionally outside it, and then always near it. Complicated actions are completely wanting. Likewise nothing was said of the influence of the light or of the moon. Only in passing was it mentioned that the patient arose in the moonlight for her first nightly recitation of lessons.
The group of phenomena which we will now take up displays complicated performances and stands above all under the evident influence of the light of the moon. “In my fourth year,” the patient relates, “I was put for the first time into a little bed of my own, so that my mother, who the day before had begun to cough up blood, should have more rest. She had closed the net of my crib and that I should not be frightened moved the crib up to her large bed. I pretended to be asleep and as soon as my parents had fallen asleep I climbed over the side but was so unfortunate as to fall into my mother's bed. I was quickly laid back in my own bed, without having seen the blood, which was my special longing. Often after this, almost every night, I tried again to climb into Mother's bed, so that finally she placed my bed by the wall in order to prevent my climbing over to her. For some months I slept alone in my little bed. She caught me one night, however, this time actually in my sleep, trying to climb over the side but entangled in the net. Fortunately I did not fall out but back into bed. At that time I produced also my pretended convulsive attacks that I might be taken by Mother into her bed and be able to excite myself upon her.
“Mother began raising blood again when I was ten years old and we had already moved into the new home. That year she was seized twice with such severe hemorrhages that for weeks she hovered between life and death. Then in my eleventh year I began my sleep walking. What urged me to it was again Mother's coughing of blood as well as the desire to see her blood, both reasons why I had already at four years old pretended sleep so that I could climb into Mother's bed.”
The patient proved herself such an ideal nurse on the occasion of the mother's severe hemorrhage that the mother would have no one else. She watched tirelessly day and night together with her sisters, changing every few minutes the icebags which had been ordered. “Scarcely a moment did I tear myself away from my mother's bedside and, if one of my sisters relieved me, I often could hardly move, undress myself and lie down for an hour. If I did lie down, I threw myself about restlessly, torn with anxiety, and was only happy again when I sat by my mother's bed.” This fearful anxiety was not however merely fear for the precious life of the mother, but still more, repressed libido. In spite of all her concern for the mother's suffering she could not prevent the strongest sexual pleasurable sensations at the sight of the mother's snow white breast in putting on the applications or when she raised blood. This intensive nursing lasted four weeks until finally a nursing Sister came to assist.
“As I now for the first time could enjoy a full night's rest, I fell into a deep sleep, as from this time on I always did before every sleep walking. Near my bed stood the table with Mother's medicine and on the window ledge, behind the curtain, a lamp, which threw its light upon my bed. Suddenly I arose in my sleep, went to my mother's bed, bent over her. Mother opened her eyes but did not rouse herself. Then the Sister, who was dozing on the sofa near Mother's bed, awoke and rushed forward frightened as she saw me there in my nightgown. She thought something had happened to Mother, but the latter motioned with her hand to leave me alone and to keep still. I kissed Mother and changed the icebag, apparently in order to see her breast. I could see no blood this time, so without a sound I moved away and went to the table, where I put all the medicines carefully together to make a place and then went out into the pitch dark kitchen without stumbling against anything. There I took from the kitchen dresser a bowl with a saucer and a spoon and came back again to the room. Next I seized a glass of water which stood there and poured the water carefully into the bowl without spilling more than a drop. With this I spoke out half aloud to myself: ‘Now Emil (my brother-in-law, who had for a long time taken his breakfast with us) can come to his breakfast without disturbing Mother, who had always prepared it for him.’ Then I went to bed and slept soundly for some hours, as I sleep only at my periods of sleep walking, without crying out. All that I have described the Sister of Charity told me afterward. Naturally I did everything with closed eyes, without knowing it, and moved about as securely in the darkness as if it had been bright day. The next morning they told me about it and laughed over it.”