Note 9 — PART I Medical

E. g., “A monk of a melancholy disposition and known to be a sleep walker, betook himself one evening to the room of his prior, who, as it happened, had not yet gone to bed, but sat at his work table. The monk had a knife in his hand, his eyes were open and without swerving he made straight at the bed of the prior without looking at him or the light burning in the room. He felt in the bed for the body, stuck it three times with the knife and turned with a satisfied countenance back to his cell, the door of which he closed. In the morning he told the horrified prior that he had dreamed that the latter had murdered his mother, and that her bloody shadow had appeared to him to summon him to avenge her. He had hastened to arise and had stabbed the prior. Immediately he had awakened in his bed, bathed in perspiration, and had thanked God that it had been only a frightful dream. The monk was horrified when the prior told him what had taken place.” The following cases besides: “A shoemaker's apprentice, tortured for a long time with jealousy, climbed in his sleep over the roof to his beloved, stabbed her and went back to bed.” Another, “A sleep walker in Naples stabbed his wife because of an idea in a dream that she was untrue to him!” We may conclude, on the ground of our analytical experiences, that the untrue maiden always represents the mother of the sleep walker, who has been faithless to him with the father. The hatred thoughts toward this rival lead in the first dream to the reverse Hamlet motive, the mother has demanded that the son take revenge upon the father. Finally Krafft-Ebing gives still other cases: “A pastor, who would have been removed from his post on account of the pregnancy of a girl, was acquitted because he proved that he was a sleep walker and made it appear that in this condition (?) the forbidden relationship had taken place.” Also, “The case of a girl who was sexually mishandled in the somnambulistic condition. Only in the attacks had she consciousness of having submitted to sexual relations, but not in the free intervals.”