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It is the aim of this paper to contribute to the knowledge of sleep and dream by reporting a study which was started in the year 1931 with a phenomenological study of awakening. This was carried through the years by collecting new observations, including the study of patients with brain tumors who showed heretofore undescribed symptoms of akinesia. These observations were published in 1938 with Thomas M. French and an attempt was made to evaluate them in relation to their significance to the psychoanalytic theory. In this paper the phenomena of awakening is being presented in order to gain some insight into the psychology of the Ego.
The questions which arise at the beginning of a study of awaking are numerous: What happens to or within a person during the awakening process? What may be observed by objective means and what can be reported from the person himself? How can the material gained by observation be interpreted? What are the differences between spontaneous awakening, which may be called the “natural” end of sleep, and awakening due to external causes—by the noise of an alarm clock, for instance? What goes on during the stage in which a sleeper prolongs awakening, a stage of half-sleep—for instance, in a person leisurely resting on a Sunday morning? How does the daily expected awakening in the same room at the same