Sleep walking or night wandering, known also by its Latin name of noctambulism, is a well-known phenomenon. Somnambulism is not so good a term for it, since that signifies too many things. In sleep walking a person rises from his bed in the night, apparently asleep, walks around with closed or half opened eyes, but without perceiving anything, yet performs all sorts of apparently purposeful and often quite complicated actions and gives correct answers to questions, without afterward the least knowledge of what he has said or done. If this all happens at the very time and under the influence of the full moon, it is spoken of as moon walking or being moonstruck.Under the influence of this heavenly body the moonstruck individual is actually enticed from his bed, often gazes fixedly at the moon, stands at the window or climbs out of it, “with the surefootedness of the sleep walker,” climbs up upon the roof and walks about there or, without stumbling, goes into the open. In short, he carries out all sorts of complex actions. Only it would be dangerous to call the wanderer by name, for then he would not only waken where he was, but he would collapse frequently and fall headlong with fright if he found himself on a height.

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Sleep walking or night wandering, known also by its Latin name ofnoctambulism, is a well-known phenomenon. Somnambulism is not so good a term for it, since that signifies too many things. In sleep walking a person rises from his bed in the night, apparently asleep, walks around with closed or half opened eyes, but without perceiving anything, yet performs all sorts of apparently purposeful and often quite complicated actions and gives correct answers to questions, without afterward the least knowledge of what he has said or done. If this all happens at the very time and under the influence of the full moon, it is spoken of as moon walking or being moonstruck. The author's application of psychoanalysis to these problems has the directness and explicitness which we are accustomed to find in Freud's own writings. This is as true in the literary portion of the work as in the medical but it never intrudes to mar the intrinsic beauty of certain of the selections nor the force of the intuitive revelations which the writers of the preceding science have made in regard to sleep walking and walking in the moonlight.

Excerpt from Sleep Walking and Moon Walking: A Medico-Literary Study Psychoanalysis holds a key to the problem of sleep walking, which alone has been able to unlock the mysteries of its causes and its significance. This key is the principle of wish fulfilment, an interpretative principle which explains the mechanisms of the psyche and illuminates the mental content which underlies these. Sleep walking as a method of wish fulfilment evidently lies close to the dream life, which has become known through psychoanalysis. Most of us when we dream, according to the words of Protagoras, lie still, and do not stir. In some persons there is however a spe cial tendency to motor activity, in itself a symptomatic manifestation, which necessitates the carrying out of the dream wish through walking in the sleep. The existence of this fact, together with the evidence of an influence of the shining of the moon upon this tendency to sleep walking, give rise to certain questions of import ance to medical pschology. The author of this book has pursued these questions in relation to cases which have come to him for psychoanalysis, in the investigation of actual records of sleep walk ing given in literature and in the study of rare instances where it has been made the subject of a literary production or at least an episode in tale or drama. In each case the association with moon light or some other light has been a distinct feature. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.