The sleepless Count and the Kitten

Today I am going to talk about the torturous insomnia, the desperate fight with the awakeness that doesn't leave, and the sleep that doesn't come. Firstly a description of an experience of insomnia. The Austrian writer, Arno Geiger, speaks of the moment when:

[...] following is the change from the absence of sleep to the presence of insomnia. I often don't notice the absence of sleep. The presence of insomnia has something dominant.

He continues:

The furniture scares me with its creaking. I take the grumble of my own stomach for burglars. Is the bed creaking, or the dome of the sky? (...)

Sleep is approaching. But it gets annoyed with a side-look with which I wanted to size up our forces. One more chance lost. You shouldn't look at sleep as a tamer. It doesn't like it.

With all my willpower I try not to think of anything. I can't do it, something always pushes in, a bad memory, or a useless thought. An old wolf is ridden by crows. An insomniac is ridden by useless thoughts. (...) I make another attempt not to think of anything. I gather all the strength I have left. But no wrong move. But no wrong thought, no wrong memory. Sleep?... I mubble with a very distant question mark. (...)

The insomniac is scared of the night as the man who can't swim is scared of the water. You fail to sink even an inch. The temporary dizziness is as shallow as a pond. You don't need diving lead. There are no depths here. Only leaden tiredness. How late is it, I don't know. It's hours past midnight.

I remember that I must wake up on time in the morning. The next unnecessary thought. In bed bargaining over minutes - that's bad. Anything you bargain over in bed - is bad. Just don't start counting, or a race will start. And here only one can be the loser: I, who want to sleep in a race with time.

The whole futility of what remains unfulfilled here, overpowers me. At the same time the tiredness grows. Slowly, the tiredness becomes so bad that no sleep dares to approach it. I no longer count on any positive outcome. At 5, when it grows light, I no longer count on any positive outcome.

In the pale light the day is announced. The morning wind shakes the leaves of τηε blackberry bushes under the window. The trees bend. Unlike my body which is stiff. My neck hurts. (...)

Exhausted, sleepless, with zero morale and drooping temples, I get up. The bed is a mess. Immersed in my empty self I move around the house. I am marked by sleepless sleep. While drinking coffee, the mark of the bedsheet leaves my skin ever so slowly. I go to the bathroom with small, fast, and clumsy steps. My tongue is white. The toothpaste tastes differently today.

The lucent face of the sleeping one.

Picasso, War and Peace

The dark face of the sleepless one.

Munch, Self-portrait. The Night Wanderer

In insomnia even the, in the words of Georgios Vizyinos, "rhythm of the world" changes. Peter Handke writes that the sleepless one

sees the existence mostly as unhappiness, each act without meaning, every love ridiculous. (...) he stays lying in bed till the fade morning light, which signifies for him the curse, beyond for only him, there at the hell of his insomnia, curse also for all the humankind (...) The wheezing and screaming of two cats which attack each other, is like calling and clearly showing the bestial in the center of our world.

I remind you that I am not talking just about he insomniac who is experiencing intense situations such as a heartbreak, stress at work, financial dead ends, anxiety about what will happen. For this people, with the fogs and the unresolved dead ends, the day insists, it doesn't let them go, make room for the night and the sleep. I am also not talking just about the person who has some illness, the symptoms of which do not let him sleep, as the stuffy nose from a cold, or the bone pain from cancer metastases.

Neither am I talking about the one who compulsively wants to have the supervision and control of his life. Sleep, as death, comes without noticing. Sleep always catches us asleep. The verb "fall asleep", as indeed the verb "die", in its use, doesn't have the present tense! That's why the people of action and control, the people of the present tense and the active voice, hate sleep.

Thomas Edison:

Sleep is a criminal waste of time and heritage from our cave days.

Margaret Thatcher, who got by with four hours of sleep:

Sleep is for wimps

And an old slogan of Citibank:

Citi never sleeps

Everywhere here only awakeness . Always on the edge - nonstop action, work, production.

So here Ι am talking about the insomniac who, regardless of the reason, when there is even a reason, has sleeping as his sole concern, is consumed in the fight against awakeness. Perhaps there is no other experience where sleep and awakeness are so hermetically separated from each other. Where sleep is close, and yet, at the same time, totally inaccessible.

Consider the other situation, that effortless rolling, when the eyelids become weightlessly heavy and the bed calls you, hypnotises you, you lose yourself in the charm of its arms. The bed, the gate, wide open now, between sleep and awakeness. How different the bed for the insomniac! How hostile! Like the barren, harsh soil that doesn't let anything grow. The bed receives you when it remains unnoticeable, concealed, a welcoming home that offers without asking for anything. The bed of the insomniac is restless, noisy, messy. [video]

The greek word for the state of wakefulness is "ξυπνος". Interesting word: εξ-υπνου, out of sleep, having come out of sleep. Thus, in the modern greek language there is no word for the state of wakefulness.

The womb, the first is sleep, from which we someday exit, and then we are - awake. Shakespeare expressed this through the words of Prospero in "The Tempest":

We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

We could see our lives in this way too: isles of alertness in a sea of sleep. (Only for the insomniac sleep and awakeness are mutually exclusive). Sleep permeates, infiltrates our everyday life, e.g. when somebody is moving like a sleepwalker we say to him "Wake up!". While other times when it's appropriate for the eyes to be closed e.g. in music, a scent, a taste, reflection, love, in happiness and sadness. In another way also in delirium and illusion. Sometimes in the psychoanalytic meeting too. But awakeness permeates and infiltrates our sleep also - in sleep walking, in talking in our sleep, most of all in dreams. The "almond of the world" is what Elytis calls the places and utopias of the world,

[...] there's no way you can find it unless you sleep half outside of sleep

From this place, and an even further one, Heraclitus speaks:

wakefulness and sleep are one and the same

The torment of insomnia eloquently shows that the when the world of wakefulness dominates everything, it becomes unbearable. Of course there are Edison and Thatcher, there are people of power, of performance and domination who are in their element here. But, they pay a price, usually without knowing it: they live an incredibly limited, one-dimensional life. Without realizing it, their places look like the cells of torture where the blinding light never goes off. For the rest of the insomniacs, the only-awake-world is hell on earth.

How do we cope with insomnia? The book "In search of lost time" by Marcel Proust begins with the following words:

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

The usual translation is: "For a long time I went to bed early." De bonne heure means "at the right time". When things happen at the right time, on time, it's a sign of happiness. In French the word for happiness is: bonheur. Thus, Proust's phrase could be translated as: "For a long time I went to bed happy." The good sleep shows that one has a good life, a happy life.

In 1971 count Keyserlingk, Russian ambassador in Saxony, requested Bach, through the harpsichordist and student of Bach Goldberg, to compose something that would cheer him up during his long, sleepless nights. Bach composed the famous "Goldberg Variations". These too are a break of happiness [video].

So, how do we treat insomnia? As with other things that torment someone, I don't apply a particular method and I don't focus on individual symptoms. What I look forward to and hope we can reach during the course of the therapeutic encounter, is an utopia, which sometimes becomes an abode, is somewhat a place of - happiness.

Years ago, a woman told me about a dream: She comes for analysis. I am in the next room busy with a newborn kitten, I ask her to take care of it, because the only thing I have to offer it is - deep sleep.

Translation: Maria Soupou, Psychotherapist