Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/49

 PLEASURE IN SLEEP AND DISTURBED CAPACITY FOR SLEEP 4I

which managed without a love object, did not permit of its be- coming a perversion. In this way this component impulse, cut oft from conscious life, was able to retain in the unconscious its potential force, so as finally to become effective, i, e. pathological, after diminution of complete enjoyment in the sexual act, in a temporary disturbance of sleep. It is worth noting that the oral libido behind the symptom of sleeplessness did not have to give up its incognito. This is shovm in the next case similarly.

4. A man of forty-eight became a martyr to insomnia which set in with the decline of his genital functions, when he had lost all sexual craving. This insomnia is explained by the fact that- in the process of ageing the impulses capable of becoming con- scious were put out of action, while the unconscious — repressed — impulses had experienced the increase usual at the climacterium, amongst them an oral libido which had been inactive up to that time. Since the oral libido could not then come to the fore in the sexual activity now abandoned, its complement, insomnia, took its place. It may serve as an indirect proof of the patient's unusual oral disposition that his daughter up to fifteen years of age was a tliumb- sucker and later io her sexual indiiference very much recalled the present condition of her father, whom she resembled in physical details.

5. In a case of extreme insomnia which developed as the result of a mentally-conditioned and ■ deeply-rooted aversion to normal sexual intercourse — its motive was a protest against the immorality of the mother with whom the patient identified himself— an oral perversion appeared as the final bearer of the patient's still existing sexual impulses. Nevertheless, before this broke out in- somnia had been permanently established. The patient suffered all his life from salivatio nervosa.

I believe this series of observations might easily be augmented by following out the leading points of view. We may assume that under certain conditions there is a complementary relation between impulses or, in case we do not wish to reduce the need for sleep to the rank of an impulse, that impulses unite with the cardinal phenomena of life which belong to organic nature. The follow- ing considerations support this view. Consciousness is a phenomenon of life of primary significance. Consciousness in the real sense begins with respiration. In a sense every human being might say that since he began to breathe he became conscious of himself