What Do You Know About Sleepwalking?

And this is not merely abnormal, but terrifying in its strangeness and in the varied forms it takes; many of the afflicted commit crimes they know nothing of. So listen to this incident, which will stir pity and fear in your soul!

While Sami was deep in sleep, he suddenly rose and sat up in his bed as if listening to voices; then he left the bed, opened one of the cupboards with a calm, steady hand, took out a revolver, aimed it without flinching at where his wife lay, and fired. The poor woman was gravely wounded; and it became clear after the investigation and the analysis of the psychologists that she did not wake until the bullets pierced her body, just as he awoke at the sound of the shot.

He was dreaming that there was a thief in the house; so he rose with firm steps, his eyes open, and did no less than a waking man would do, without distinguishing between the imagined thief and the real human being in the room. His thoughts turned toward his wife's bed when he heard her breathing, and he aimed the shot at her with perfect precision, as if he meant murder. The strange thing is that when he woke to her screaming, he had no recollection whatever that he was the culprit. And the pity of it is that such an accident could have been avoided had Sami taken precautions for himself before that day, for his life, after adolescence, had been a chain of acts performed without his own knowledge.

Let us go back to his life at preparatory school. He would leave his bed, put on his clothes, then climb the iron bars of the window to the roof and sit on its edge, staring at what was around him, while his companions watched without interfering with him, lest he fall; then they would leave him to return to his room just as he had left it, remembering nothing of what had happened when the next morning came.

Sometimes his amusement was to strike a match and then watch it until it burned out. The affliction eased somewhat when he grew older, and he also took precautions, tying the door of his room with a rope, so that if he rose to open it, he would wake while trying to undo the knots. After his marriage he would wander about the room and then return to bed, and he committed no act of consequence until this very night!

Few people grasp the danger arising from this abnormality, which is caused by confusion of thought and disturbance of the soul. Are you one of those who walk in their sleep?

Understand your situation fully, and what you can do to avoid it. Time will see to lightening the ailment; otherwise, the cure lies with the doctors of the mind. Why does a person walk during sleep?

The psychologists agree that the cause is mental distraction, and the sexual disturbances whose traces have lain latent in the subconscious mind since childhood. We find that this walking resembles dreams, or is one aspect of them, though it differs from them in that its effect does not appear until sexual maturity; and it may lessen or vanish if the sufferer attains complete stability in his sexual life — while in women it disappears the moment a woman conceives for the first time!!

It differs also from the dreams that follow the first doze, when the body is resting, because it occurs in the deepest period of sleep — which is why it is difficult to wake the sufferer. Likewise, a person remembers his dreams, or some of them, and retells them the next day, while the other is unable to recall anything of what happened to him; for the dream is connected with the conscious mind and thence with memory, whereas the movements of sleepwalking are confined to the subconscious mind.

There is another kind of walking in sleep, confined to moonlit nights. Here is a girl who rises only when the moon's rays enter her room; she differs from those who walk in their sleep in that she rises when the moon is full, but she ventures on attempts more striking than the rest — and that comes of the effect which the pull of the moonbeam leaves upon her soul. We must beware of waking the sleepwalker, lest he fall or suffer some accident in his brain; whereas the one who walks under the effect of the moon's light is not startled if we wake him, because a part of his mind is conscious of what he is doing. This last is very rare — while every one of us has walked in his sleep at some period, since every movement we perform waking and then repeat in sleep is an instance of it, like moving the hand or the leg or the mouth.

To avoid all these movements, and work toward their cure, the sufferer should not take intoxicating drinks, and should keep clear of nervous disturbances. And if you dream of flying, or of falling from a great height, that means sexual instability; and in each of these cases the psychiatrist will help you avoid the dangers that may result from walking during sleep.