In the morning he told the horrified prior that he had dreamed that the latter had murdered his mother, and that her b.l.o.o.d.y shadow had appeared to him to summon him to avenge her. He had hastened to arise and had stabbed the prior. Immediately he had awakened in his bed, bathed in perspiration, and had thanked G.o.d that it had been only a frightful dream. The monk was horrified when the prior told him what had taken place." The following cases besides: "A shoemaker"s apprentice, tortured for a long time with jealousy, climbed in his sleep over the roof to his beloved, stabbed her and went back to bed."
Another, "A sleep walker in Naples stabbed his wife because of an idea in a dream that she was untrue to him!" We may conclude, on the ground of our a.n.a.lytical experiences, that the untrue maiden always represents the mother of the sleep walker, who has been faithless to him with the father. The hatred thoughts toward this rival lead in the first dream to the reverse Hamlet motive, the mother has demanded that the son take revenge upon the father. Finally Krafft-Ebing gives still other cases: "A pastor, who would have been removed from his post on account of the pregnancy of a girl, was acquitted because he proved that he was a sleep walker and made it appear that in this condition (?) the forbidden relationship had taken place." Also, "The case of a girl who was s.e.xually mishandled in the somnambulistic condition. Only in the attacks had she consciousness of having submitted to s.e.xual relations, but not in the free intervals."
There exists a better agreement of opinion over the relationship between sleep walking and the dream. Sleep walking, a.n.a.logously to the latter, fulfills also wishes of the day, behind which stand always wishes from childhood. Only it must also be emphasized that the old, like the recent wishes, are exclusively or predominantly of a s.e.xual nature. Because however that s.e.xual desire is forbidden in the waking life, it must even as in the dream take refuge in the sleeping state, where it can be gratified unconsciously and therefore without guilt or punishment. Most of the sleep activities of our patient were performed originally in a state of apparent sleep, that is actually practiced in the conscious state until later they were carried out quite unconsciously. She would never then betray what when feigning sleep she had to conceal as causes.
Finally the directly precipitating causes in her erotic nature for the sleep walking and moon walking seem especially to have been light and the shining of the moon, her p.u.b.erty and her mother"s sickness.
All of our patient"s sleep walking, in accordance with the etiology and interpretation, since it goes back to infantile s.e.xuality, is half s.e.xual, half outspokenly infantile. It reaches the greatest degree, indeed the moon walking sets in just at the time of s.e.xual maturity and leads to the most complicated actions before the menses, that is at the time of the greatest s.e.xual excitement. And this activity in sleep and the moon walking too almost cease when the patient enters upon regular s.e.xual intercourse. The shining of every light stimulates her s.e.xually, especially that of the moon. The wandering about in her nightgown or in the scantiest clothing is plainly erotically conditioned (exhibition), but also the going about in the ghostly hours (see later), finally the being wakened through the softest calling of her name by the mother, with whom alone she stands in a contact like that of hypnotic somnambulism.
Purely childish moreover is the clever technique of disguise. First she simulates illness or fear in order to be taken into the mother"s bed.
Then she pretends to be asleep, talks in her sleep, throws herself about in her sleep, that she may be able to do everything without punishment and without being blamed, finally plays the mother in a manner which corresponds completely to child"s play. Also later, before and after wandering in the bright moonlight, she produces specially deep sleep and first as if in an obsession tries the door repeatedly to see if it is closed. I see in this, naturally apart from possible organic causes of profound sleep, an unconscious purpose, which plainly insists: "Just see, how sound-asleep I am (we are reminded of the earlier pretending to be asleep) and how afraid I am that the door might be left open! Whoever has to walk about in spite of such sound sleep and such precaution, and even perhaps do certain things which might be s.e.xually interpreted, he plainly is not to blame for it!"
We might add from knowledge of the neuroses that the fear that some one might be hiding in the room signifies the wish that this might be so in order that the subject might be s.e.xually gratified. There was one circ.u.mstance most convincing in regard to this, which I will now add.
Even during the time of her psychoa.n.a.lytic treatment, when she did not wander at night any more nor perform complicated acts in her sleep, she had a number of times in the country carefully locked the door of her room in the evening, only to find it open again in the morning. To be sure, her lover of that period slept under the same roof, though at some distance from her.
Before I go more closely into the question as to what share the light had upon the sleep walking of our patient, I will recall once more that her actions during sleep were at first but few and had nothing to do with the light. As the years went by they became more complicated and finally took place only under the influence of the light, whether it was artificial or natural, that is of the moon. More extended walks were in general possible only in the light of the moon, which as a heavenly body shining everywhere threw its brightness over every thing, in the court, garden and over the street, while candles or lamps at the best lighted one or two rooms. The patient, given to sleep walking or moon walking, went after the light, which meanwhile represented to her from childhood on a symbol of the parents" love and gave hope of s.e.xual enjoyment.
It was also bound inseparably within with motor activities of an erotic nature. When her mother approached her bed with the light it was a reminder to the child, Now you must go upon the chamber and you can pa.s.s "the good," or, when she sat on the mother"s lap and gazed into the lamplight, Now you may stimulate yourself according to your heart"s desire. Then the lamp was shining when the little one wished to climb into bed with the mother in order that, while exhibiting herself, she might see her as scantily covered as possible. And finally the striking of the light announced, "the mother is sick, in nursing her you will have the opportunity to see her bared b.r.e.a.s.t.s and her blood." Evidently the light thus led, when she climbed after it, to the greatest experience of s.e.xual pleasure of her earliest childhood. On account of this strong libido possession the memory of the light was kept alive in the unconscious and it needed only that the light of the lamp or the candle should fall upon the face of the wanderer to permit her to experience in the most profound sleep the same pleasure, the unconscious was set into activity and everything was accomplished most manifestly according to the purpose that served her strong libido.
It is remarkable that our patient distinguished immediately a strong feeling of pleasure by the shining of every light, that moreover she seemed to herself as a supernatural being (glorification through the s.e.xual feeling of pleasure[10]), that she herself imagined it must represent a second sort of consciousness, and finally that she stood in such contact with the beloved person as that of a hypnotized subject--somnambulist--with her hypnotist. For she perceived also the mother"s lightest word when most soundly asleep, in spite of her difficulty in hearing at other times.
[10] One thinks of the halo in religious pictures, which indeed is nothing else than the shining of the light about the head.
What was the patient"s intention in her longer walks under the moon"s influence, that she, for instance, climbed to the first story, reflected for a moment and then started to go out at the gate? That becomes comprehensible when it is remembered that she once opened the door in her sleep for her lover in the country and furthermore in her first complicated sleep walking. The purpose of the latter has been stated, to climb into her mother"s bed in order to obtain the greatest s.e.xual pleasure. I do not believe I am far astray when I a.s.sume that this erotic desire of the child lies also essentially at the basis of her more extensive wandering in the moonlight. She simply wishes each time to go to the bed of some beloved one, which, as we shall hear later, is accepted by poets and the folk mind as a chief motive, and a fundamental one for many instances of sleep walking, especially with maidens.
It becomes clear now, likewise, why the patient climbs into the first story, then recollects herself and seeks to go out at the gate. In her seventh year she and her family had changed their abode and this had been before in the first story but was now on an upper floor. She is trying yet to climb into the mother"s bed, this still remaining as a fundamental motive. Only she is not seeking the bed where it stands at the present time but where it stood in childhood, in the first story and in another house. She goes, therefore, downstairs but remembers, unconsciously of course, that this is not the right floor and wants now to go out at the gate to find the home of her childhood. Later in the country when she so thoroughly frightens her landlady and her daughter, there she is also going to a woman she loves and she leaves the house for this purpose and goes at least into the room that lies in the direction of the house where the beloved lies. Later still she opens the door wide in her sleep so that her lover can have free entrance.
We might also explain now in great part the sleep walking of the mother.
As far as I can discover, the mother also as a very small child lived in another home than the one in which her sleep walking began. She ran about her room at night and could not find her bed and felt around in distress without coming upon the chamber, both of which stood in the usual places. This may be explained by the fact that in phantasy she was seeking the bed and chamber of her earliest childhood, which of course stood elsewhere. Moreover she attained by her moaning the fulfilment of her unconscious wish to be set by her mother upon the chamber and then lifted into bed. The wanderings in the moonlight, after which likewise she could not find her way back to bed, may be similarly explained, though I learned only this much about her dancing in the moonlight, that in her childhood she was very fond of dancing, which is also the case with our patient. Perhaps she wished also to play elves in the moonlight, according to poems or fairy tales or had, like her daughter, earned the special love of her parents through her skill in dancing.
We are now at the chief problem. How is it then that the night"s rest, the guarding of which is always the goal of the dream, is motorially broken through in sleep walking? There is first a special organic disposition, which is absent from no sleep walker, a heightened motor stimulability[11]. This appears clearly with children, and so for example with our patient as a tendency to convulsive attacks, pavor nocturnus and terrifying dreams, from which she starts up.
[11] Cf. with this Krafft-Ebing, _l. c._ "Slight convulsions or cataleptic muscular rigidity sometimes precede the attacks."
As far as my observations go, it seems to me that there is a special disposition to sleep walking in the descendants of alcoholics and epileptics, of individuals with a distinctively s.a.d.i.s.tic character, finally of hysterics, whose motor activity is strongly affected, who also suffer with convulsions, tremor, paralyses or contractures. It should be merely briefly mentioned that the heightened motor excitability also establishes a disposition to a special muscle erotic, which in fact was easily demonstrable in every one of the cases of sleep walking and moon walking which have become known to me. The disturbance of the night"s rest was made desirable through the satisfaction of the muscle erotic to every one for whom the excessive muscular activity offered an entirely specialized pleasure, even s.e.xual enjoyment.
Moreover in our case a series of features besides those already mentioned bear undoubted testimony to the abnormally increased muscle erotic. I have already elsewhere discussed them in detail[12] and will here merely name briefly the chief factors. The patient had an epileptic alcoholic grandfather on the mother"s side, who was notorious when under the influence of alcohol for his cruelty and pleasure in whipping. She had, besides a strongly s.a.d.i.s.tic mother, two older brothers, of whom the elder was frightfully violent and brutal, often choking his brothers and sisters, while the other found an actually diabolical pleasure in destroying and demolishing everything. Our patient exhibited already at two years old as well as through her whole life a pleasure in striking blows, and also conversely a special pleasure in receiving them, further at four years old an intensive delight in dancing, an enjoyment that was unmistakably s.e.xual. We have learned above how she delighted to press herself upon her mother"s body or twine herself about her legs.
Moreover, finally, one of her very earliest hysterical symptoms was a paralysis of the arm.
[12] Cf. note 6, p. 163.
More difficult seems to me the answer to the second main question: What influence does the moon exercise upon the sleeper? It was earlier discussed, along with the various psychical overdeterminations, that the moonlight awoke first the infantile pleasure memories, among other things that that light shining everywhere lighted the way which led to the house and the dwelling of the earliest childhood. Mention was made of the infantile comparison of the moon"s disk with the childish nates and perhaps the gazing upon the nightly orb, which seems besides most like a hypnotic fixation, may be also referred back to the same. Since we know today that the love transference const.i.tutes the essential character of hypnotism, that symptom brings us once more to the eroticism. Beside there was not wanting with our patient a grossly sensual relationship. Finally there is also the infantile desire to climb over the houses into the moon, realizing itself in part at least in the moon-inspired climbing upon the roof.
Yet the second leading problem appears to me, in spite of all this, not completely exhausted. It might not thus be absolutely ruled out that more than a mere superst.i.tion lurks behind the folk belief which conceives of a "magnetic" influence by which the moon attracts the sleeper. Such a relationship is indeed conceivable when we consider the motor overexcitability of all sleep walkers and the effecting of ebb and flow through the influence of the moon. Furthermore no one, in an epoch which brings fresh knowledge each year of known and unknown rays, can deny without question any influence to the rays of moonlight. Perhaps in time the physicist and the astronomer will clear up the matter for us.
Meanwhile the question is raised and can be answered only with an hypothesis.
In conclusion I have in mind a last final connection which the spell of the moon bears to belief in spirits and ghosts. It is established through many a.n.a.lyses that the visits of the mother by night form the basis of the latter, when she comes with the light in her hand and scantily clothed in white garments, nightgown, or chemise and petticoat, to see if the children are asleep or, if they are, to set a child upon the chamber. The so often mentioned "woman in white" may also be the maiden in her nightgown, who thus exhibits herself in her night garment to her parents as she climbs into their bed, later also eventually to her lover. The choice of the hour between twelve and one, which came to be called the ghostly hour, may perhaps be referred to the fact that at this time sleep was most profound and therefore there was least danger of discovery.
CASE 2. I introduce here a second case, in which to be sure the influence of the moon represented only an episode and therefore received also but a brief a.n.a.lysis. It is that of a twenty-eight year old forester, who came under psychoa.n.a.lytic treatment on account of severe hysterical cardiac distress. The cause of this was a damming up of his feelings toward his mother, for whom he longed in the unconscious. His condition of anxiety broke out when he went to live with his mother after the death of his father and slept in the next room. He admitted that his father drank. Every Sunday he was somewhat drunk. Likewise the mother, who kept a public house, was in no way disinclined toward alcohol. He himself had consumed more beer especially in his high school days than was good for him. I would emphasize in his s.e.xual life, as belonging to our theme, his strong urethral erotic, which made him a bed wetter in childhood, led in later years to frequent micturition at night and caused a serious dysuria psychica. His muscle erotic finally drove him to the calling of a forester.
Only the portions of his psychoa.n.a.lysis, which lasted for eight weeks, which have to do with his sleep activities and his response to the moon will be brought forward. Thus he relates at one time: "At thirteen years old, when I was in a lodging house kept by a woman, I arose one morning with the dark suspicion that I had done something in the night. What I did not remember. I merely felt stupefied. Suddenly the boys who slept with me began to laugh, for from under my bed ran a stream of urine. In the night the full moon had shone upon my bed. We fellows had no vessel there but had to go outside, which with my frequent need for urination during the night was very unpleasant. Now there stood under my bed a square box for hats and neckties, which I, as I got up in the night half intoxicated with sleep, had taken for a chamber and I had urinated in it. This was repeated. Another time, also at full moon, I wet a colleague"s shoe. They all said that I must be a little loony. When the full moon came, I was always afraid that I might do this again, an anxiety which remained long with me. I never dared sleep, for example, so that the full moon could shine directly upon me. Yes; still something else. Two or three years later the following happened, only I do not know whether there was moonlight. I was sleeping with several colleagues in a room adjoining that of the lodging house keepers, the man and his wife. I must have gone into them at night and done something s.e.xual. Either I wished to climb into bed with the wife or I had m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed, I do not know which. I had at any rate the next day the suspicion that something of the kind had happened. The landlord and landlady laughed so oddly, but they said nothing to me."
"Did your mother perhaps in your childhood come to look after you with the light?"--"Yes; that is so. My mother always stayed up for a long time and came in regularly late at night with the light to go to bed. My father was obliged to go early to bed because of his work and had to get up at midnight, when he always made a light." Here he suddenly broke off: "Perhaps it is for this reason that I have an anxiety in an entirely dark room. If there is not at least a bit of light I can not perform coitus."--"How is that?"--"I have remonstrated rather seriously with myself that the s.e.xual act could be performed only with a light."--Then at a later hour of a.n.a.lysis: "When my father went away at night, I came repeatedly into my mother"s bed. I lay down in my father"s bed, also in a certain measure put myself into his place."--"Did your mother call you, or did you come of yourself?"--"I believe that my mother invited me to her. Now something occurs to me: The moonlight awoke me as my father woke me when he struck a light as he was going out. Then it was time to go into bed with my mother, for the father was gone, which always gave me a feeling of rea.s.surance."--"Yes, when he was gone he could do nothing more to the mother. And then you could take his place with her."
Two months later came the following to supplement this: "Already in the grammar school I was always afraid someone might attack me in the night, because of which I always double locked the room and looked under the bed and in every chest. In childhood Mother came in fact to look after me and set me on the chamber."--"Then your neurotic anxiety presumably signifies the opposite, the wish that your mother shall come to you again."--"Or rather, I bolt the door so that my father cannot come to my mother. I followed in this also a command of my mother, "Lock yourself in well!" She always had a fear of burglars. Now even since I have been living with my mother she has said to me more than once, that I should lock myself in well. But I thought to myself, "What, bolt myself in!""--"That would mean also that if the mother wants to come, only she should come."--"That is just what I thought to myself, when Mother woke me early, that she need not knock but come right in. In the daytime I lay in my mother"s bed because her room was warmer than mine. I was feeling very wretchedly at that time and my mother said in the evening, "Stay there where you are; I will sleep in the little room next. Leave the door open." In the night I know I was very restless."--"Did you not perhaps have the wish that your mother should look at her sick child in the night, as she once did when you were younger?"--"Yes, to be sure.
This wish pursued me and therefore I slept badly. I would have carried the thing out further if my dysuria had not hindered me. If I had arisen in the night or the morning, then Mother would at once have heard me in her light sleep and I would not have been able to urinate. One time I crept out of bed very quietly so that she did not hear me, and yet it held back a long time until I couldn"t stand it any longer. It was just the same at the time when I was in the grammar and the high school, if Mother asked me to sleep near her and Father was not there. Then also I could urinate only with great difficulty. And now when I was living with my mother, I had the most severe excited attacks. There was no other reason for I was neither a loafer nor a drunkard. I have laid myself down in my mother"s bed and been unwilling to get out. That is very significant. And if at any time I went away from home I at once felt so miserable that I must go back. I was immediately better when once there."
This case, when we consider it, is plain in its relationships. The excessive love for the mother is a decisive factor as well as the desire to play the role of the father with her. Therefore the fear of burglars at night, behind which hides in part the anxiety that the father would have s.e.xual relations with the mother and in part the wish that the latter might herself come to him. Joined to this is the desire for all sorts of infantile experiences, such as the mother"s placing him every night upon the chamber because of his bed wetting. In the later repression the pleasure in the enuresis as well as in the being taken up by the mother becomes a dysuria psychica. Naturally to the urethral eroticist in childhood, and also later unconsciously, micturition is a.n.a.logous to the s.e.xual act. In p.u.b.erty the moonlight awakens him as in childhood the mother"s light or that of the father. So on the one hand the memory of the former is awakened, who with the light in her hand reminded him to go to the chamber,[13] and on the other hand the memory of the going out of the father, which was a signal to him to go to his mother. He arises and carries out with her symbolically the s.e.xual act, for he urinates into a v.a.g.i.n.al symbol (box or shoe-v.a.g.i.n.a). Also the fact that he got up once by the light of the full moon and wanted to climb into the bed of the landlady, likewise a mother subst.i.tute, is all of a piece. This case here before us, as may be seen, confirms what the first has already taught us.
[13] In Rumania the folk belief prevails that children readily wet themselves in full moonlight. (Told by a patient.)
CASES 3, 4, and 5.--I wish to give further a brief report of three cases of walking by moonlight, which I regret to say I could only briefly outline in pa.s.sing, not being able to submit them to an exhaustive a.n.a.lysis. In everything they confirm every detail of our previous conclusions.
The first case is that of an unmarried woman of twenty-eight, who walked in her sleep first in her sixth year and the second time when she was nine years old. "I got up when the full moon was shining, climbed over a chair upon the piano and intended to go to the window to unfasten it.
Just then my father awoke and struck me hard on my b.u.t.tocks, upon which I went back and again fell asleep. I often arose, went to each bed, that of the parents and those of the brothers and sisters, looked at them and went back again. Between sixteen and seventeen years old, when my periods first occurred, the sleep walking stopped." She adds later: "I frequently as a child spoke out in my sleep. My nose began to bleed when I was walking on the street and the sun shone upon me. After this the sleep walking improved. I always clung affectionately to my parents and brothers and sisters, and never received a blow except in that one instance by my father."--"Which you took rather as a caress, than as a blow for punishment."
In this case also the sleep walker plays sometimes the role of the mother, who satisfies herself that her dear ones are asleep. Moreover a period of talking in the sleep precedes the wandering by moonlight. It is noteworthy that the sleep walking is intercepted by a caressing blow from the father and ceases altogether when menstruation sets in. Also earlier nosebleed had a beneficial effect.
The second case is that of a forty-year-old hysteric, who in her marriage remained completely anesthetic s.e.xually, although her husband was thoroughly sympathetic to her and very potent. Her father"s favorite child, she strove in vain in early childhood for the affection of the mother, who on her part also suffered severely from hysteria, with screaming fits, incessant tremor of the head and hands and a host of nervous afflictions. This mother"s daughters had all of them always an extraordinary pa.s.sion for muscular activity with apparently great satisfaction in it. They were among other things distinguished swimmers and enthusiastic dancers. My patient besides could never tire of walking for hours at a time.
In our discussion she related the following to me concerning her sleep walking: "I got up once in the night when I was about ten years old. I had dreamed that I was playing the piano. I found myself however not in bed but standing between a chest and a desk scratching upon the latter with my nails, as if playing the piano, which finally awoke me. There was also a paper basket there which either I had stepped over or there was a s.p.a.ce through which I could slip, at any rate the way there was not quite free. I stood in this narrow s.p.a.ce and dreamed I was playing the piano. Suddenly I heard my mother"s voice, "Mizzi, where are you?"
She called me several times before I finally awoke. Without it was not yet growing daylight, but the moon shone brightly within. I recollected myself immediately, realizing where I was, and went back to bed. I told my mother, as an excuse, that I had to go to the chamber." "Had you at that time a great desire to play the piano?"--"Three years later it made me sick that I had not had to learn, but then I had as yet no desire for music. We had no piano at that time. Yet among my earliest memories is that of the way in which my mother played the piano. As a woman I wished that I could express my joy and sorrow in music. I would mention further that my brother and my uncle on the mother"s side[14] are both sleep walkers. The former always wants to come into my bed in the night when he walks in his sleep. I must emphasize that he is especially fond of me.
[14] They are both pa.s.sionately devoted to sports, thus also endowed with a heightened muscle erotic.
"The following often happened to me after I was married but never in my maidenhood. I awoke in the night, sat up in bed and did not know what was the matter with me. I could not think consciously, I was quite incapable of thought. I knew neither where I was nor what was happening to me; I could remember nothing. I did not know whether I was Jew or Christian, man or woman, a human being or a beast, only stared straight ahead into the next room, at a point of light. That was the only thing that appeared clear to me. I held myself to it to regain clearness. I always said to myself: "What, what then? Where, how and why?" My powers of thought went no further. I was like a newborn child. I stared fixedly at this point of light because I unconsciously thought I would obtain clearness there for everywhere else it was dark. This lasted for a long time until through the light I could distinguish what it was that caused the light. It was from a street lamp, so apparently before midnight, and the lamp lighted a bit of the wall in the next room. After I had said to myself for a long time "What, what?" and stared straight at that light, I learned gradually to distinguish what made the light, that is to recognize, That there above, is a bit of lamplight; again after some time; That is my lamp. Upon this I recollected my home and then for the first time everything else. When I had made out the outlines of things around me, then returned the consciousness that I was a human being and was married. Of all that I had not before been aware. I do not remember that I had dreamed anything before this came on, or that anything had excited me, nor that anything special had happened beforehand. Beside nothing like it has ever happened to me when I have been greatly excited. At the most, after my marriage I led a life of strain. I was tied to a shop which was damp, unwholesome and full of bad air, and I am a friend of fresh air. I suffered very much mentally under these conditions, because I love light and air."--"Did you think that you were indeed not a human being?"--"No; only that with G.o.d"s help I would endure this life." I will add here that her second sister also manifested similar disturbances of consciousness.
We find first in the foreground a family disposition to sleep walking and moon influence. The brother significantly always wants in his wanderings to get into the sister"s bed, while our patient herself openly plays the part of mother, especially the mother of the earliest childhood. It is interesting also that when in her married life she had to give up her pleasure in light and air, the disturbances of consciousness set in, from which she could free herself only through fixing her attention upon a point of light. She had the distinct feeling that from this point of light things would become clear to her. One can easily think of occasions of being dazed by sleep when perhaps the mother came with the candle in her hand to see whether her child was asleep and the child awoke. The whole remarkable occurrence would then be simply a desire for the mother"s love, which she all her life long so sorely missed.
Now for the last case, a twenty-three year old married woman suffering from a severe hysteria, who clung with great tenderness to her parents, but received a reciprocal love only from her father, while the mother preferred her sister. The patient told me of her moon walking: "I always wanted to sleep by the open blinds so that the moon could shine upon me.
My oldest brother walked about in the night, drank water, went to the window and looked out, all of course in his sleep, then he went back to bed and slept on. At the same time he spoke very loudly, but quite unintelligible things and one could actually observe that the moon exercised an attraction over him. My younger healthy brother said that it was frightful, the many things that he uttered in the night. I also climbed out of bed one night when sixteen or seventeen years old, because I could not find the moon, and sought it and met my moon haunted brother. I immediately disappeared again going back to my bed and he did not see me.
"I was ill once, about the same time, with influenza, and continually repeated in my feverish phantasies that they should take down some one who was hanged and not punish him; he could not help it. There was moonlight at that time and moreover a light burned in the room. I took this for the moon, which I could not see but wanted to see. I strove only all the time to see the moon. The windows must be closed because I was afraid, but the blinds must remain open so that I could see the moon. Some one roused me then from my phantasies and there I saw that my cousin sat near me. He was not however the one hanged, it was some one who was first dragged out by another man, a warden in the prison. The face of the one who was hanging I did not see, only his body."--"Of whom did he remind you?"--"I do not know definitely and yet it was the cousin who sat near me. And as I awoke, apparently I called his name for he answered me, "Yes, here I am!""--"What about the warden of the prison?"--"A man is first locked up before he is hanged."--"Do you see also in phantasy something that hangs down?"--"Yes; when with my cousin I always had the desire to see his membrum stiff, as it could be felt and noticed outlined through his clothing." I will add likewise that behind the cousin and her s.e.xual wishes toward him a.n.a.logous phantasies toward the father were hidden. That which hangs down (pendens, p.e.n.i.s) is also the phallus. Her adjuration that the hanged person should not be punished, he could not help it, is a demand for mercy for s.e.xual sins (see also later).
"Upon the wedding journey my husband did not want to sleep by the open blinds, and I wanted to sleep nowhere else so that the moon could shine upon me. I could never sleep otherwise, was very restless and it was always as if I wanted to creep into the moon. I wanted, so to speak, to creep into the moon out of sight.[15] Recently I was out in the country with my sister and slept by the open blinds. The light from the heavens, to be sure not the moonlight, forced its way in and I had the feeling as if something pierced me,[16] in fact it pierced me somehow in the small of my back, and I arose with my eyes closed and changed the position of the bed, upon which I slept well. I knew nothing of it that I had arisen, but something must have happened because I now could lie comfortably.
[15] Phantasy of the mother"s body? The moon"s disk = the woman"s body?
[16] A clear coitus phantasy.
"Something else still. About two years ago I observed the moon in the country, as it was reflected in the water, and I could not tear myself from this spectacle until I was suddenly awakened by my husband and cried out. Five or six years ago I went out in a boat upon the Wolfgang lake. The moon was reflected in the water and I sat there very still.
Suddenly my brother, the one who is well, with whom I do not have much to do, asked, "What are you thinking of?"--"Nothing at all."--"It must be something."--"No, nothing!" As we climbed out, I was still quite absent minded. Also at night I always had the moon before me and spoke with it."--"Consciously or in a dream?"--"I believe I was more asleep than awake. For if any one had come upon me then I should have felt it very painfully. I have incidentally noted the words: "Oh moon with thy white face, thou knowest I am in love only with thee. Come down to me. I languish in torture, let me only comfort myself upon thy face. Thou enticing, beautiful, lovely spirit, thou torturest me to death, my suffering rends me, thou beautiful Moon, thou sweet one, mine, I implore thee, release me from this pain, I can bear it no longer. Ah, what avail my words and my complainings! Be thou my happiness, take me with thee, _only pleasure of the senses do I desire for myself_. Thou Moon, most beautiful and best, _save me, take my maidenhood, I am not evil to thee_. Draw me mightily to thyself, do not leave off, thy kisses have been so good to me."" As may be seen, she loved the moon like a lover to whom she would yield herself entirely. The grossly s.e.xual relationship is evident. It is after this fragment doubly regrettable that a penetrating psychoa.n.a.lysis was not here possible.
The early s.e.xual content of the moon desire and its connection with the parent complex is shown by her further statement: "Last summer in the country I had only my mother-in-law with whom I could talk. It was the time of the new moon and I could not bear complete darkness in my room.
It was frightfully lonely to me thus and I could not sleep. I had the idea that in the lonely darkness someone was coming to me and I was afraid."
It soon came to light that she and her sister in their early childhood and again between the ages of eight and thirteen shared the parents"
sleeping room and had repeatedly spied upon their s.e.xual intercourse.
Her present fear is also evidently the wish to put herself in the place of the mother, to whom the father comes. She recalls yet one more episode: "When I was nine or ten years old, the healthy brother was ill with typhoid and the parents were up nights on his account. We sisters were sent to stay elsewhere, where we had opportunity to play with a boy who carried on a number of s.e.xual things with us. I then dreamed of him at night and phantasied the s.e.xual things which I had done with him in the daytime. Apparently I had also at that time played underneath with my genitals. At the same time, while my brother had typhoid, I was unwilling to go to sleep and could not, because I could have no rest while my brother was ill." It is clear without further discussion to one who understands these things that it was not anxiety for the brother but secret, yet insistent s.e.xual wishes which caused the sleeplessness. It is finally significant that, when later she dreamed of a burglar, he always came after her with a knife, or choked her, as her cousin and mother had often done to her.
As we consider this third case of moon affectivity we find again familiar phenomena, connections with early s.e.xual dreams and the parent complex. Especially noteworthy is further her direct falling in love with the moon, to which she addresses her adoration in verses and to which she even offers her virginity. It is as if she saw in it a man, who should free her from her s.e.xual need. One is reminded how in the first case, the one cured by psychoa.n.a.lysis, the four-year-old girl sought continually the moon"s face on the ground of a students" song. It could not, we regret to say, be ascertained, in the absence of a psychoa.n.a.lysis, whether in this case the heavenly body represented to the moon walker some definite person or not.