Sleep Paralysis, Somnambulism and the Uncanny

Richard Dyer

When we are in the REM stage of sleep,1 that stage associated with the most vivid and visually oriented dreams, there is
a complete loss of muscle tone in the major muscle groups of the body. We are effectively paralysed. The accepted theory
behind this natural and universal phenomenon is that a state of paralysis is induced in the body so that we cannot act out
the content of our dreams – consequently exposing ourselves to danger and damage. If this physiological mechanism did
not exist, everyone would sleepwalk every time they dreamt. The mind, being fully involved in the dreamworld, is not
normally aware of the phenomenon of nocturnal paralysis. However, in a small percentage of individuals, perhaps ten to
fifteen percent, a disturbing psycho physical syndrome occurs: Isolated Sleep Paralysis (ISP), 2, commonly known as
‘Petit-Mal’ in the West. In this instance, the sleeper gains consciousness while the body is still in a state of paralysis. Not
only is this terrifying because the subject believes themselves to be truly paralysed, generally engaging in desperate but
usually futile attempts to move, or ‘awaken’, but the brain is still partially dreaming, such that dream imagery and
hallucinations, both visual and tactile, are experienced as real. A common hallucination is of a being crouching on the
subjects chest, an ‘incubus’ or ‘succubus’, or the subjects arms or legs being pulled or touched by unseen hands, the
room filling with daemons and preternatural light.

Jorg Conessa has suggested that this terrifying occurrence may be turned into a positive experience by transforming it
into a lucid dream – that is, a dream where the dreamer is conscious that they are dreaming and can exert a certain degree
of control over the content and progress of the dream – however, this requires diligent training and may not work for all
‘sufferers’ of the condition.3 Clement Page’s 16mm film, entitled Tiny Pain (2005), 4, is a filmic evocation of this naturally
occur ring ‘uncanny’ psycho physical state. Based on the reports of a real-life sufferer from Sleep Paralysis, this short film
intensely echoes the claustrophobic atmosphere of cloying dread and steadily increasing panic as the paralysis spreads
and the hallucinations intensify.

What are the elements of this phenomenon that equate it with Freud’s notion of the uncanny? Freud saw the uncanny as
a blurring of the boundaries between reality and the imaginary. This is exactly what occurs during Sleep Paralysis. Dream
content literally ‘leaks’ from the unconscious into reality, the hallucinations appear to be projected into the three-dimensional space of the real, disrupting the stability of the subjects perception of reality and thus causing an intense sensation of the uncanny. The ‘familiar’, the ‘homely’ – ‘Heimlich’ in Freud’s original discourse – in this case literally the home of the dreamer, the bedroom, is rendered ‘unfamiliar’ and distinctly ‘unhomely’, ‘unheimlich’, by its seemingly real and terrifying daemons and assorted creatures from inner space.In ‘Tiny Pain’, the hallucination is produced by the use of animation – rather than the use of a superimposed filmed images of a real object or person – this aids in replicating the ‘other worldliness’ of the image, in this case an ever increasing vortex of force which increases in size as the subject’s paralysis spreads, and seems
to be moving ever closer to her.

In Sleep Paralysis then, the suppressed contents of the unconscious literally escape into reality and become ‘manifest’, as
it were, no longer suppressed, but instead liberated and able to terrify and threaten the subject, seemingly in the real world.
The concomitant to Sleep Paralysis is the phenomenon that results due to an absence of REM paralysis: somnambulism.
Page has explored this condition in two further works; Unknown Disturbance, 2004 and Sleepwalker, 2005.
Unknown Disturbance, shown at the Trafalgar Hotel, London, as a two-screen slide projection, reveals a sleepwalking
female child wondering the corridors of the very same hotel.

In Sleepwalker, Page explores this state with a greater depth and elaboration. The film is conceived too be projected onto
adjacent walls, in the corner of a gallery. On the right-hand screen of the film we see a man asleep, he gets out of the bed
and begins to sleepwalk, engaging in a set of bizarre actions as he moves through the rooms of his house and then out into
the streets of the city. By way of ‘explanation’ the left-hand screen shows the same man, but this time it depicts his dream.
which is occurring in parallel with his sleepwalking episode.

The settings for both the dream – a dilapidated and abandoned building of vast dimensions – and the ‘real’ environment of
the right-hand film – run-down, graffitied parts of the city at night – refers back to an earlier series of photo works,
‘Topologies’, (2003), where the city acted as a metaphor for the dream. Repressed parts of the city stood in for the
unconscious; viewed from the vantage point of a passing train one could see parts of the city that the town planner did not
intend us to see; the grey zones, gaps, wastelands, and ghettos. This uncovering of the hidden functioned as a trope for the
repression of social memories, the visual erasure of the environments of the poor. Those same locations became the
mise-en-scène for Sleepwalker.The physical body of the somnambulator acts in the manner of an automaton, animated as it
is not by the conscious volition of the subject, but by the unrestrained forces of the unconscious mind. This relates to an
early example of the uncanny as given by Ernst Jentch – whose essay on the subject preceded Freud’s – that of the
uncertainty as to whether an animate object was really alive, and conversely whether an inanimate object was truly non-
sentient. The sleepwalker appears to be an automaton, a puppet, animated by some unseen force. In fact, Jentch explicitly
refers to somnambulism as being a state capable of invoking a sense of the uncanny in the observer for this very reason.

The trigger for this piece was the artist’s own personal experience of sleepwalking (where, as in one scene in the film, he
destroyed his own study while in a somnambulistic state, and knew nothing of his actions until he discovered the disorder of
the study in the morning.) However, this does not make the work merely autobiographical, or therapeutic in a cathartic sense.
Page has used his own personal experience of this phenomenon as an emotional engine to drive the intensityof the film,
but he has then channelled this energy to push the subject forward into philosophical, social and political territories of
investigation and exploration. With the global increase in hyper-technologies – those telematic methodologies which go
beyond the necessary functionality of the mechanical – computers, mobile phones, portable personal music collections –
thousands of tracks carried in a pocket-size box – global positioning devices, etc, we are moving closer to a state of
complete immersion in alternative dimensions, alternative that is to consensus reality. There already exists the technology –
head-mounted stereoscopic displays, data gloves (producing a ‘virtual’ cyber hand of for the user in cyber space), even
pressure responsive sensors, so that the fully immersed ‘cybernaute’ feels as if they are actually touching objects which do
not exist in the real world – which enables us to enter dimensions which challenge the dominance of a collective and
consensual singular reality. Dimensions which bear more than a passing resemblance to the dream world.At the same time
the exponential expansion of capitalist production, consumption and waste proliferation is turning the world population into a
sleep - and therefore dream-starved mass, hardly anyone sleeps eight hours a night anymore, the norm is more like four or
five.

We are exchanging the interior dream world of our unconscious for the exterior dream world of computer generated
realities.Sleep disorders proliferate. We are becoming dislocated from the unconscious. But, paradoxically, the reality we are
creating begins to resemble that very unconscious. A three-dimensional, stereoscopic realm where our wildest fantasies are
only a mouse click away. Our unconscious content seemingly no longer has a need to find expression in a panoply of mythic
symbols. Secret wishes and hidden desires can be instigated and simulated in glorious 3-D within the realm of the virtual,
the new, pixilated paradise of cyberspace.At the same time the exponential expansion of capitalist production, consumption
and waste proliferation is turning the world population into a sleep- and therefore dream-starved mass, hardly anyone
sleeps eight hours a night anymore, the norm is more like four or five. We are exchanging the interior dream world of our
unconscious for the exterior dream world of computer generated realities. Sleep disorders proliferate. We are becoming
dislocated from the unconscious. We are experiencing an epidemic of somnambulism. Our natural body and brain rhythms,
thousands of years old, sleeping at dusk, waking with the dawn – have been disrupted and reconfigured by the onslaught of
a techno-capitalist interruption of ‘standard reality’. We now move between different levels of reality on an hour-to-hour
basis, thinking nothing of talking to someone on the other side of the world, while viewing their image on a screen, listening
to music a century old, while manipulating futuristic images in three dimensions, creating new realities, downloading
possibilities, surfing the dark underbelly of the new world of the digital collective unconscious.

A man wakes to find his murdered wife in bed next to him; she has been subjected to a violent and frenzied knife attack during the night. But all the windows and doors are secure, there has been no break-in. The man has committed murder whilst sleepwalking. The unconscious is leaking into the real. With the aid of technology, hyper-capitalism and the abolition of moral and social order, we are creating a reality that is only a whisper away from the tumultuous derangement and deregulated desire of the unconscious mind. Freud’s hidden domain is now exposed for all to see.

Richard Dyer © 2005

References

1) REM stands for ‘Rapid Eye Movement’, that characteristic physiological indicator that the subject is dreaming. It would
appear that the eyes move in this way because they are following the unfolding events of the dream.
2) Jorge Conesa, Wrestling with Ghosts: A Personal and Scientific Account of Sleep Paralysis, Xlibris Corporation, 2004
3) Ibid
4) Tiny Pain, 2005, 2 minutes, 16mm colour, mastered to DVD, single screen projection
5) Unknown Disturbance, 2004, 10 minutes, double slide projection for two screens, dimensions variable, private collection
6) Sleepwalker, 2005, Digi-Beta/16mm mastered to DVD, two
projectors, two screens. dimensions variable.
7) The term ‘telematic’ has been appropriated by the electronic arts community to describe artwork which employs modern
communications medium as part of its structure, or process. A telemeter is an apparatus for recording readings of an
instrument at a distance, usually by means of radio. The term ‘telematics’ was first coined by Simon Nora in the late 1970s
to mean computer-mediated telecommunications, or remote, automatic transmissions of information.