The patient proceeds in her story: “This continued until the seventeenth year. At eighteen I had to go into the country because of a nervous trouble. There I was quite alone and also had to sleep alone in a room. I always went to sleep very late and once—my small room was bright with moonlight—I arose, went into the small passageway, which opened into the court, and was going out of the courtyard gate. I was obliged to turn back, however, because this was fastened. Yet instead of going back to my room, I went into the sleeping room of my landlady, who was sleeping there with her daughter, a girl of about twenty-six years. The moon was also shining into this room and I slowly opened the door. Both of them then awoke and were, as they told me next day, frightened to death. It affected the daughter especially, so that she was terrified and at once sought refuge in her mother's bed. I went back. What happened further I cannot say, for the daughter had immediately bolted the door behind me. I had made it impossible for me to stay longer in the little country village, and although I had paid for my room for a month I preferred to go away two days later. All the people avoided me and looked at me askance. Most of all the people with whom I was stopping! I saw that a stone rolled from their hearts when I departed.” At my question, whether she perhaps had been especially attracted by her landlady, she answered: “No, but in fact with another woman of the village. And it seems that I at that time wished to go to this woman in my sleep walking. At least the landlady's room, into which I went, after I found the gate of the courtyard fastened, lay in the direction of the house where she lived.
“From this time nothing is known of my walking in my sleep even on moonlight nights. Only I have sometimes since that time put on my underclothes in the night, but always my own. That is I have often discovered in the morning, up till quite recently, that I had on my linen or my stockings. Besides I often dressed my hair during the night, and if I had had my hair, for example, braided or loose when I went to sleep, I would awaken in the morning with my hair put upon my head. This unconscious hair dressing happened most frequently before menstruation and was then an absolute sign that this would take place very soon. This has the following connection. Mother never went to sleep with her hair done up, but when in bed had it always hanging down in a braid. Only, when she was suffering from the hemorrhages—at the time of menstruation I also lost a good deal of blood—she did not have the braid hanging down but put up upon her head. Before the appearance of menstruation this braid hanging down annoyed me very much. Furthermore, the doing of my hair in my sleep, which occurred a few days before, is only the wish again to see blood, for which reason it appears only usually before menstruation.” I will add to complete this that the ceasing of her sleep walking at her eighteenth year was contemporaneous with her taking up regular sexual relations with different men.
The patient gives still other important illustrations of her awaking at the calling of her name by her mother, and of staring into the light, particularly the moon. “In school my thoughts were always on the sexual and therefore I heard nothing when an example was explained. I often resolved to listen attentively, but in a few minutes I was again occupied with sexual phantasies. Then if I heard my name called I woke up suddenly but had first to orient myself and think where I was. This awaking at the calling of my name at school was exactly like that when my mother called me by name during my sleep walking. Both times I was startled and awoke as if from a heavy dream. That excessive dreaming while awake goes back however to my earliest childhood, when I sat evenings on my mother's lap, while my parents were talking together, and excited myself with her. Oh, what wonderful things I dreamed! I always revelled then in sexual phantasies, and, completely lost in them, forgot entirely where I was until I suddenly heard my name called, when I started up frightened and had first to orient myself. Mother always called my name softly and usually added, when I began to yawn, ‘the pillow is calling you,’ and imitating a wee voice, ‘You ought to come to it in bed.’”
Once more: “When evenings I began to dream on mother's lap, I was compelled to look directly into the flame of the lamp. I looked straight into it and was as if hypnotized. I laid both hands upon my mother's breasts and traced their form. Besides I had my braid lying upon her left breast, which I liked very much, because it lay as softly as upon a pillow. I was also compelled to look into the light, gazed steadily at the flame until my eyes were closed. Then I lay in a half sleep, in which I heard the voices of the family without understanding what was said. Thus I could dream best, until my mother called my name and I awoke.
“Every day I took delight in this sleep by the light of the lamp and the pleasure experienced upon my mother's lap. I lay quietly and with eyes closed so that they all thought I was fast asleep. Yet I knew indeed that it was no ordinary sleep, but merely a ‘daydream,’ from which I only awoke when Mother called me by name. When she did not do this, but quietly undressed me and put me into bed, I began to be restless. I stood up in bed, lay down at their feet and took care to cry out and throw myself about until Mother, quite alarmed, called me by name and quieted me. I believe that in these experiences lies another root for my staring at the moon when sleep walking, as well as for the dreamy state occasioned by the fixed gazing at the light.”
In conclusion there are still some less important psychic overdeterminations. “I often had the desire, when looking at the moon at the age of four or five, to climb over the houses into the moon. I knew nothing at that time of sleep walkers. About the same time my sisters often sang the well-known song: ‘What sort of a wry face are you making, oh Moon?’ I stared immovably also at the moon, when I had the opportunity to look at it once from my window, in order that I might discover its face and eyes. Then, too, my eyes grew weary and began to close. Later, when nine or ten years old, I heard other children say that people dwelt in the moon. I would have given anything to know how these people looked, and whenever it was full moon, I gazed fixedly at it. I had understood that another people dwelt there of a different race. I wished to have another race of men. Perhaps they had other customs, thought differently, ran about naked as in Paradise and there I wished to go, and lead a free life with boys as with girls. Even as a child I seemed to myself quite different from the rest of humankind on account of my sexual concerns and sexual phantasies in school. I always believed that I was something peculiar and for that reason belonged not on the earth but upon the moon. Once when I heard the word ‘mooncalf’ and asked what it meant, some one at home told me that mooncalves were deformed children.
“I thought however that they did not understand; the children were quite differently formed, just as were all the people in the moon, so that their feelings were altogether different and they led a sexual life of a quite different kind. I thought they were kind to both sexes, because Mother always said, ‘You must not be alone with boys!’ and that in the moon this was permitted, for there no distinction was made between the sexes in play.”
I asked her more particularly in conclusion whether her explanation for staring at the moon, that she identified moon and lamplight, was all there was of it. She answered immediately that another explanation had pressed itself upon her earlier, which she had rejected as “too foolish.” “The moon's shining disk reminded me in fact of a woman's smooth body, the abdomen and most of all the buttocks. It excited me very greatly if I saw a woman from behind. Whenever I am fondling any one erotically and have my hand on the buttocks—I always think then of a woman—the moon always occurs to me but in the thought of a woman's body.”
According to this explanation the sleep walker would have also stared at the planet, because the round sphere awoke sexual childhood memories of the woman's body, or, as I learned from another source, of the woman's breast, most frequently however of her buttocks. It is moreover noteworthy that it was always only the full moon that worked thus attractively, not by chance the half moon or the sickle. An everyday experience agrees very well with this. Children, when they see the full moon or their attention is called to it, begin to snigger. Every one familiar with the child psyche knows that such giggling is based on sexual meaning, because the little ones usually think of the nates. Not infrequently will children, when they are placed on the chamber, pull away their nightclothes with the words, “Now the full moon is up,” likewise when a child accidentally or intentionally bares himself at that spot.
We have now the explanation, if we put together that which has just been told us, why our sleep walker wakes up on the spot and comes to herself as soon as she is called by name. This corresponds to her starting awake when in school she was recalled from her sexual daydreams and the earlier being startled when the mother called her out of similar sexual phantasies to go to sleep. The inference may be drawn from this however that one is startled from sexual dreaming also when the name is called during sleep walking, or going a step further, that sexual phantasies are at the bottom of sleep walking in the moonlight and first find their fulfilment here.