Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/39

 PLEASURE IN SLEEP AND DISTURBED CAPACITY FOR SLEEP 31

protection of its mother's womb. This is not a direct observation but an abstraction which is arrived at logically and easily from the sum of psycho-analytical experience. Freud' following the same train of thought has made this abstraction clearer. 'We are not accustomed to give much thought to the fact that every night a human being removes the garments with which he has clothed himself, and also those complements of the organs of his body which as far as possible replace whatever is lacking in them, for instance, spectacles, false hair and teeth, etc. It can also be said that he carries out a similar unclothing of his psyche on going to sleep — he renounces most of his psychical acquisitions. Thus in two directions he brings about a remarkable resemblance to the situation in which his life began. Sleep is somatically a re-activation of the sojourn in the womb, fulfilling the same con- ditions of restful posture, warmth and absence of stimuli ; indeed, many people assume in sleep the foetal attitude. The psychic con- dition of a person asleep is characterised by an almost complete withdrawal from his environment and all interest in it.' In another place Freud says:' 'We can say in the light of the libido theory that sleep is a state in which all investments of objects, both libidinal and egoistic, are given up and withdrawn into the ego. Does not this throw a new light on recuperation IJy sleep and on the nature of fatigue? The picture of blissful isolation in intra-uterine life, which the sleeping person conjures up again every night is thus confirmed and amplified on the mental side. In the sleeper the primal state of the libido-distribution is again reproduced, that of absolute narcissism, in which libido and ego-interests dwell together still, united and indistinguishable in the self-sufficient Self.'

These are the most important contributions that psycho-ana- lysis has made to the problem of sleep. These two statements of Freud, which are more in the nature of brilliant apergtis, never- theless contain the essence of all his clear-sighted observations which have been so carefully put together. His view of the nature of sleep is peculiar to the psycho-analytic line of thought, and it has nowhere been foreshadowed in academic biology and psycho- logy. We anticipate all subsequent discussion when we remark that in the first instance we have nothing to add to these

' 'Metapsychologische Erganzung zur Traumlehre '. Iniemationale Zeit- sekrift filr Sntlicke Psychoanalyse. 19I&-17, Bd. IV, S. 277.

» Vorlesungen zur Einfiihrung in die Psychoanalyse, 151 7, S. 486.