Sleep Walking and Moon Walking¹: A Medico-Literary Study

(Continued from page 193)

“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 sexual wishes toward him analogous phantasies toward the father were hidden. That which hangs down (pendens, penis) 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 sexual 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