Vacations: A Psycho-Analytic Study

The willingness with which multitudes of people spend huge sums of money annually for vacations amply attests their necessity in our Western civilization. It is the purpose of this essay to study some of the psychological factors involved in vacations from a psycho-analytic standpoint.

We would like to know, in the first place, why vacations are really necessary; secondly, what happens in the mental apparatus during the process of taking a vacation, in other words, what are the psychodynamics of a vacation; and thirdly, what constitutes a 'good' vacation.

The first of these questions is perhaps the easiest to answer, at least partially. The need for vacations is an expression of a very basic tendency which we may observe in the general cyclic character of the individual's life, as well as in the cyclic character of all living matter. This is expressed primarily in the necessity for rest, the daily requirement for a certain number of hours of sleep, varying with individuals, as well as the periodic succession of the ebb and flow of bodily energies and rhythms. This is certainly borne out by the fact that many people use their vacations to 'catch up on their sleep'. One may also observe the existence of fluctuations in psychic reactions manifested in the relation of the individual to his various love objects.

Viewed from the broader framework of the individual's day-to-day existence, we find that in all cultures there exist holidays, feasts, and celebrations throughout the calendar year, which are set up to commemorate certain events in the seasons or in the history of the particular culture. In many religions, for example, one day of the week (the Sabbath day) is set aside as a holy day, on which one is commanded to rest (1), as God rested on the seventh day from his labour of creation.

There is a difficulty here, however. If a vacation is to serve the function of relaxation or rest, then one might think off-hand that the activity which is the most relaxing and le