You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Freud had the fond expectation that child analysis would supply the clinical evidence for concepts arrived at by reconstruction from the analyses of adults. Speaking of pavor nocturnus (2), Freud remarked upon the lack of psychoanalytic child material at the time he put forward his suggestions concerning the nature of this condition in children. In the meantime, the psychoanalytic literature has provided ample confirmation for the correctness of his assumptions.
The interest in a systematic psychoanalytic investigation of sleep disturbances in children is, however, of fairly recent origin (1), (11), (13). This paper, based upon an extensive clinical experience with children and their parents, constitutes such an attempt at systematic psychoanalytic study of pavor nocturnus in children.
Pavor nocturnus is so frequently encountered in children that pediatricians and parents have come to regard it as a phenomenon of childhood to be placed in a category similar to certain daytime fears considered typical in children.
If we consider the fact that the wish fulfillment tendency of the dream is to be observed in young children in an almost undisguised way, the occurrence of a pavor nocturnus is a somewhat surprising finding. We assume that in children the ego and the superego are not so strongly opposed to the demands of the id as in the adult, and will permit fulfillment of frustrated or warded-off wishes to come through in the state of sleep, with little or no objection.
What then causes children to suffer from the sleep disturbance known as pavor nocturnus?
It might be advantageous to survey briefly the known theories on this subject, before embarking upon the psychoanalytic investigation