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The Secret of Sound Sleep

by Keen Sumner

American Magazine, 1923, 95, 14-15; 98-104.

 

 

         
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Boris Sidis, the famous psychopathologist, explains what he declares to be the only road to a real cure of sleeplessness―He says that the popular devices for going to sleep are mere "trick plays" which do not get at the root of the trouble.

Dr. Boris Sidis was born in Russia and came to the United States when twenty years old. He won four degrees at Harvard, the A. B., A. M., Ph. D.,' and M. D. He is a widely known writer on psychopathology and kindred subjects. "Experimental Study of Sleep," "The Psychology of Laughter," "The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases, and "The Source and Aim of Human Progress," are among his books. He has been associated with various institutions, including the Pathological Institute of N. Y. State. He is fifty-three [56] years old and resides at Portsmouth, N. H.

 

 

IF YOU want to get an eager response out of the average man or woman, just say solicitously, "How did you sleep last night?"

        You can then devote yourself to your own thoughts, merely emitting an occasional murmur of sympathy, for few indeed are the persons who do not know what it is to wrestle with the Angel of Sleep, and to find him―or is it her?―a very refractory sort of angel.

        Some years ago, Boris Sidis―who is a neurologist, psychologist, and various other kinds of scientific "ologist"―made an elaborate study of sleep. He conducted a long series of experiments with animals, as well as with human beings, and evolved what may be called "a theory and practice of sleep."

        Even a theory would be welcome to the victims of insomnia. But if you add to it a practice that gets results, the sleepless themselves would be glad to stay awake to listen.

        In what he says here, Doctor Sidis begins with the theory, since that naturally comes first. But I will encourage you by saying, in advance, that he found he could put himself to sleep at almost any time by a practice based on certain facts and principles.

        "People always have been interested in sleep," he said to me; "and there have been many scientific theories about it. One was that it was due to the venous congestion of the brain. That is, the blood which was sent to the brain was not sufficiently carried away again. Some scientists claim that sleep is due to not enough blood in the brain; others claim it is due to too much.

        "People are advised to sleep with the head high, or with it low; to take a hot bath, or a cold bath, or no bath at all, before retiring; to eat or to drink, or else to avoid eating or drinking; to exercise, or not to exercise. All these contradictory directions are prompted by the belief that sleep is due to some phase of the circulation of the blood.

        "Then there is the theory that sleep is the result of an accumulation of toxins, poisonous matters, in the blood, due to the tissue-waste going on during our active waking hours. It is true that auto-intoxication does produce sleep. So do other forms of intoxication. Opiates and bromides induce sleep.

        "But sleep that is due to any of these toxins, whether generated within the body, or taken as narcotics, is not normal. Therefore I cannot accept the theory as an explanation of natural sleep.

        "I am more, inclined to, agree with the Swiss scientist, Claperède, who said: 'We do not sleep’ (meaning sleep under the ordinary conditions) 'because we are poisoned or exhausted, but in order not to be.'

        "I became interested in natural sleep through my use of hypnosis in the treatment of psychopathic patients. Certain conditions are necessary to bring about the hypnotic state. But in the course of my work I sometimes found that these conditions, instead of bringing a hypnotic state, brought ordinary sleep instead.

        "Evidently the conditions favorable to inducing the hypnotic state were favorable to inducing ordinary sleep. So I began to experiment on myself. I found there were three conditions favorable to sleep: They were the limitation of voluntary movement, the limitation of the field of consciousness, and monotony.

        "The first two sound very scientific. We professional men are inclined to use long words because we like to show off our vocabulary. But the limitation of voluntary movement really means keeping perfectly still; not turning and tossing about. And the limitation of the field of consciousness means shutting the mind against outside impressions.

        "I found that by observing the three conditions mentioned I could put myself into a state of deep natural sleep at almost any time. I have used the methods in the treatment of many cases of insomnia and with good results.

        "People do not realize that natural sleep is a voluntary act. We go to sleep because we decide to do it. Deciding is very different from wanting! The very persons who are most eager to go to sleep are the ones who willfully discourage sleep.

        "Let me explain the three conditions I spoke of. The one essential to sleep is relaxation of mind and body. All external stimulations should be cut off, so far as possible.

        "Closing the eyes shuts off one very important group of stimuli. And if we lie perfectly still a whole mass of muscular sensations, as well as of what are called kinæsthetic sensations, are kept from pouring into the consciousness. If you restlessly toss and turn and twist you are constantly sending stimuli to your brain cells. Every movement of any part of your body causes a reaction of the brain cells. You give them no chance to rest.

 When You Lie Awake―
Think About This

    "SLEEP is not as important as people think,” says Doctor Sidis. "Rest is important! In fact, it is essential. But we do not have to be absolutely unconscious (as we are in the sleep state) in order to rest. The lower animals do not sleep as human beings do. They literally sleep with one eye open. sometimes with both eyes partially open. They prick up their ears at sounds which, in our own sleep state, we would not hear. In them, sleep is only a pronounced rest state.

    "Therefore, the first thing for you to realize, if you are more or less wakeful, is that it is nothing you have cause to worry about. Moreover, this realization that sleep is not all-important will be a great factor in helping you to sleep. Nine tenths of your difficulty in going to sleep is due to your fear that you won't go to sleep. And nine tenths of the bad effects of a sleepless night are not the result of your loss of sleep, but of your worry over it.

    "I do not say this in order to delude you into a better frame of mind, one that is favorable to sleep; but because it is physiologically, as well as psychologically true! People make a sort of fetish of sleep. They fix upon a certain number of hours which they think they must have, in order to be well. Then they measure each night's sleep; and if it is short of the sacred number of hours, they are, full of worry and fear.

    "Don't be impatient for sleep to come. Let it take its time. Don't lie there, saying to yourself, 'It’s two o'clock now! I have to get up at seven. If I don’t go to sleep right away I won't get even five hours of sleep―and I ought to have eight!'

    "If you do pay attention to the time, say to yourself, 'I have been in bed, resting, for several hours already. And I have five hours more in which I can rest. Eight hours of rest! It's wonderful to lie here quietly and know that I am storing up energy all the time.''

 

        “As for monotony, it is perhaps the most important condition favorable to sleep. In bringing about the hypnotic state, we tell the subject to try not to think of anything. That is, we try to make his mental state monotonous by having him dismiss thoughts that interest him.

        “It is a well-known fact that people easily fall asleep to the monotonous accompaniment of the rain. The droning sound of an uninteresting speaker's voice will soothe his hearers to slumber. Go to bed, have someone read aloud from a dull book, and you will soon be asleep. The buzzing of insects―if we know they are not going to attack us; the steady rumble of the train when we are in a sleeping car; the subdued but incessant noises peculiar to a city at night―all these, by their monotonous repetition, often help to induce sleep. There is a physiological explanation for this fact, which I will give later.

        In order to test my theory I made many experiments. First, with frogs; then successively with guinea pigs, cats, dogs, and finally with human beings. I used a great number of subjects in these different groups.

        “Sometimes I merely put a frog on its back, held it a few minutes, and drew up its lower eyelids to close its eyes. The frog, you know, has only one eyelid, the lower one. It would soon become quiet and be apparently in a very deep sleep. Sometimes I put a cloth over the frog's head, to exclude all light. It quickly sink into a state of rest. I tried holding the eyelids closed by painting them with collodion. At first the frog struggled; but it soon became quiet and went to sleep.

        “The results were the same with guinea pigs. If I took them in my hands to prevent their moving, and put a blind over their eyes, they would struggle at first, then become quiet and go sleep.

        “When it came to cats, I found it advisable to wrap the animal to keep it from scratching and clawing. For instance, I took a six-week-old kitten as one subject. It struggled and fought when I wrapped the cloth around it. And that, by the way, was not a condition favorable to the experiment, for it was a state of excitement and activity.

        However, as in practically every single instance, the kitten soon ceased to struggle when I held it as still as possible. Then I closed its eyes, holding them shut with my fingers. In a little while it was asleep. It remained asleep for more than twenty minutes, and would not have awakened then if I had not roused it.

        "I need not continue to give specific examples. Over and over again, I demonstrated with kittens and puppies that they would go to sleep if kept perfectly quiet with their eyes closed. Later they would wake up, yawning as if they had been having a fine rest. Moreover, they seemed to form the habit of going to sleep under those conditions; for they would do it more quickly and easily after the experiment had been repeated a number of times.

        "When it came to children, I began with very young infants and carried the experiments on up to children of fourteen. With the older ones, I would have them lie down, or perhaps merely sit in a chair in a darkened room. I asked them to keep perfectly quiet and to close their eyes. Sometimes I would set the metronome going with a slow beat; or I would start my electric battery, which would make a steady buzzing sound. In every instance, the children went to sleep.

        "As I said before, I have had a great deal of experience with cases of insomnia. Most of my patients are psychopathic; that is, they are not normal in some of their mental reactions or habits. And almost all psychopathic people have insomnia. So I have had a good opportunity to study its causes and its cure.

        “To begin with, sleep is not as important as people think it is. Rest is important! In fact, it is essential. But we do not have to be absolutely unconscious (as we are in the sleep state) in order to rest. The lower animals do not sleep as human beings do. They literally sleep with one eye open; sometimes with both eyes partially open. They prick up their ears at sounds which, in our own sleep state, we would not hear. In them, sleep is only a pronounced rest state.

        "Therefore, the first thing for you to realize, if you are more or less wakeful, is that it is nothing you have cause to worry about. Moreover this realization that sleep is not all-important will be a great factor in helping you to sleep. Nine tenths of your difficulty in going to sleep is due to your fear that you won't go to sleep. And nine tenths of the bad effects of a sleepless night are not the result of your loss of sleep, but of your worry over it.

        "I do not say this in order to delude you into a better frame of mind, one that is favorable to sleep; but because it is physiologically, as well as psychologically, true! People make a sort of fetish of sleep. They fix upon a certain number of hours which they think they must have in order to be well. Then they measure each night's sleep; and if it is short of the sacred number of hours they are full of worry and fear.

        “It is the worry and fear that hurt them, not the few hours of unconsciousness they have missed; Even if you pass an absolutely sleepless night occasionally, it isn't going to affect your health. If you rest and don't worry, you won't know the difference two days later. Think of it as a matter of small consequence, a discomfort, perhaps, but nothing that need have an effect on your health or happiness; and if you take that mental attitude nature will see to it that you get an extra portion of sleep later on―if you really need it."

        "But just wait a minute!" I interrupted. "I can understand that the body will rest, if we lie quietly in bed, even though we do not sleep. But it's the mind that craves the unconsciousness of sleep! So long as you are awake, you keep on thinking. It is this unceasing mental activity that wears one out."

        "Oh, no, it isn't!" said Doctor Sidis. "It is the kind of mental activity!' Your thoughts are accompanied by emotions of anxiety and fear. And these emotions are the trouble makers. If you believed, really believed, that all you needed was, say, two hours of sleep, with the remainder of the night devoted to rest, I haven't a doubt that you would get along all right on such a schedule. Because if you believed it to be a perfectly normal arrangement your mind would be calm and unworried.

        "Of course," he smiled, "with that mental attitude you would sleep more than two hours, when you needed to. But that is not the point. The point is that the after-effects of a bad night are not caused by lack of sleep but are chiefly due to your emotions of anxiety and fear.

        "I say 'chiefly,' because there may be another factor. What are the thoughts that occupy the mind of a person who lies awake at night? Much of the time, of course, he is thinking about going to sleep; fearing he won't, and worrying because he doesn't. The rest of the time he is thinking about the same things that have occupied his thoughts during the day.

        "The man keeps on thinking about his business problems. The woman thinks about her domestic cares. If people are not well, or believe they are not well, they think about their health. If they have any sorrow, they think about that. College students, who have been working over their books, think about their studies. People have an idea that men who work at physical labor are not troubled with sleeplessness. But they very often are, because they spend the night, or a part of it, thinking about their own special worries: fear of losing their jobs, worry over expenses, or over family complications.

        Now, here is a very important fact: When we use a nerve cell, we exhaust some of its stored-up energy. When we allow it to rest, it stores up new energy in place of what has been used. Mental fatigue comes through a continuous use of the same group of cells without giving them a chance to renew their store of energy.

        "The mental exhaustion which is felt after a bad night is due not only to the anxious emotions we have had but also to the fact that we have gone right on working the same nerve cells which we have been using during the day. If we had allowed them to recuperate, while we used other cells, which were not already tired, we should not feel exhausted.

        "Everyone ought to realize the importance of resting the nerve cells. We should do it a number of times during the day. Stop your work once in a while. If you are a brain worker, either lie down a few moments, or sit back in your chair with closed eyes, and completely relax. Stop thinking about what you have been working on. Make your mind as blank as possible.

        "I have told some of my patients who are business men to have a couch in their office and to lie down occasionally for a few moments of relaxation. If you don't want to have a couch―there, again, we have the fear instinct, the fear of what others will say―you can lean back in your chair and stop thinking about your immediate problems. I do this myself. We all need to do it.

        "This is especially advisable for anyone troubled with sleeplessness. For it not only prevents the nerve cells from becoming exhausted but it helps a person to acquire the ability to relax at will. We must relax at night, in order to sleep. Practice it in the daytime. It is easier then if you are a beginner, because you are not obsessed with the fear of not going to sleep. In this way you will ‘get the habit’ and will be able to do it at night.

        "You probably are disappointed because I don't tell you things to do about eating and bathing and exercise, or give you a lot of schemes for counting, or tell you to count sheep jumping over a fence, or something like that. Most people want to use 'trick plays' of this sort. But they are fundamentally valueless, because they do not get at the root of the matter.

        "Indeed, they are more likely to prevent sleep than to induce it. The trouble is that they demand concentration of the attention, whereas it should be dissipated instead. You may get some purely temporary benefit from them, because they keep you from thinking about the worries of the day, and so let the brain cells which are fatigued have a chance to rest. But you can accomplish the same result in a better way by relaxing the mind and body. And this will give permanent benefit, as well as better temporary results.

        "Of course the common protest to this is the impatient exclamation, 'But I can’t relax!' My own answer to that is, ‘It isn't true. You can―but you wont.’ People have said to me, when I have told them to lie perfectly quiet when they go to bed, 'I can't! I am so nervous I can't lie still an instant!' Again I say, ‘It is not true.’

        "At first, you will have to compel yourself to keep still. You will think that you simply must move your head, if only an inch or two. You will have to restrain yourself, by an effort of the will, for several minutes. But then you will find that your inclination to make that particular movement has passed. If you are sincere and earnest in your wish to give the thing a fair trial you will tell yourself that it really is working. A moment later you probably will want to move your head some other way! And again you will have to restrain yourself. Then you may feel that you simply must move your arm, or your foot.

        "But these inclinations will pass, if you do not yield to them. I had one case, a woman who used to keep her head in almost constant motion for some time after going to bed. Every few seconds she would shift it a little on the pillow. She would turn her whole body, again and again. She would move one foot, then the other, and so on. But chiefly it was her head that she kept shifting about. She thought she couldn't keep still. But the very first night that she made herself, she did so quite easily; and she very soon went to sleep.

        "As I said before, we go to sleep because we decide that we will. And we 'decide' this by deliberately trying to put ourselves in a condition favorable to sleep.

        "Do you have trouble in going to sleep?" Dr. Sidis suddenly asked me.

        "Yes," I admitted.

        "Well then," he went on, "w
hen you go to bed, say to yourself, 'I don't care whether I go to sleep or not.'"

        "But I do care!" I protested.

        "I know you do," he said, smiling; "but it is important for you to tell yourself that you don't. It is a well-known fact that mere affirmation has an influence on the mind. We really help ourselves not to care by telling ourselves that we don't care. Have you ever wanted to go some place, have been prevented from going, and have said with a shrug of your shoulders, 'Oh, well, I don't care!' Didn't it help to give you a really don't-care frame of mind? When you want to relax it helps if you say to yourself, 'I am utterly relaxed.' Because you instinctively react to the suggestion.

        "My patients, as I said before, are people we call psychopathic; that is, they have fallen into abnormal mental habits. But we can learn a great deal from them. The psychopathic person makes himself believe in utter absurdities by following the simple process of telling himself that they are true. But the normal person can use the same method to control his sane and reasonable ideas.

        "You tell yourself that you don't care if you do not go to sleep. And you can believe it; for you have reason on your side. You have had it explained to you by scientists, for they all will tell you this: that a prolonged sleep state of unconsciousness is not essential to your health! You know, because they have told you, that what you do need is relaxation and rest. So you tell yourself that you will relax, be quiet, and think idly of something remote from your personal interests. You can do this. Of course, these being the conditions favorable to sleep, you probably will go to sleep anyway. The point is, not to care whether you do, because you realize that it is not vitally important whether you go to sleep or not.

        "Did you ever hear the story of the peasant who went to a magician and wanted to be told the secret of how to find a hidden treasure of gold? The magician assured the man that it would be perfectly simple.

        '''All you need to do,' he said, 'is not to think of foxes' tails for three days.'

        "Well," laughed Doctor Sidis, "you can imagine the rest of the story. Of course the peasant couldn't keep from thinking of foxes' tails for three minutes, let alone three days. It was so tremendously important for him not to think of them that he was afraid he would; and his fear made him think of them constantly.

        "It is the same with sleep. You have a mistaken idea that it is vitally important for you to sleep a certain number of hours every night. Because you think it is so important you are afraid that you won't. And your fear, brings about the very result you dread.

        "I spoke of shutting out sensory stimuli, such as the impressions which come through the eyes. I advise you always to close the eyes when you first go to bed. They themselves need rest. So do the brain cells to which they have been sending impressions. However, if you stay awake for some time, especially if it is hard for you to keep your mind from thoughts which excite and interest you, I suggest that you try this:

        "Open your eyes. Perhaps, as you lie in bed, you can see a star in the sky.  Keep your eyes on that star; not intently with rigid purpose, but quietly and easily because the star really is nothing that concerns you. Let yourself think idly about it. You will find that, if you do not think, your mind will wander on and is bringing up a lot of impressions and ones that are scarcely held together by a thread of thought. They come and go without effort on your part, mere fleeting pictures most of them. After a while your eyes will close of themselves. And the chances are that you will go to sleep. But it does not matter if you don't! You are resting both in body and in mind.

        "If you cannot see a star, you can perhaps look at the dim shape of a tree, or you can look at some object, half visible in the room itself. You can look at it and let your mind drift, while you rest. It is a well-known fact that prisoners in solitary confinement have a tendency to sleep unless there are external stimulations which cause mental activity. And so, with ourselves, if the body is quiet, the attention relaxed, drowsiness naturally follow.

        "I said that I would explain the element of monotony in inducing sleep. Our nerve cells have what is called a 'threshold of stimulation.' That is, the stimulus coming from outside must be of a certain intensity in order to get over this threshold and cause the nerve cell to react. Sounds, for instance, must reach a certain intensity for us to hear them, and so on.

        "But science has discovered that if stimulation is repeated over and over, the threshold of sensation rises. Or, to put it another way, the nerve grows fatigued and the stimulus must be made stronger and stronger in order to affect the neurons. If the strength of the stimulation remains the same the effect on the nerve constantly diminishes.

        "That explains why a monotonous repetition of sound helps to induce sleep. The nerve cells which are affected by the so grow tired, the threshold of sensation rises, and they cease to reach to sound unless they are much louder or of a different character. So by monotonous repetition of sound we actually succeed in shutting it out of our consciousness entirely.  And, by just that much, we limit the field of consciousness―which, you remember is one of the conditions favorable to sleep.

        "That sounds all right as a theory,” he admitted; "but I know people who can't sleep if there is a clock in the room and they can hear it tick."

        "You mean that they say they can’t sleep," objected Doctor Sidis. "It is not the clock that keeps them awake. It is their fear of the clock. I mean, their fear that it will disturb them. I could put to you that almost no sound in the world keeps a person awake. It is only what they feel about the sound."

        "But that's it," I said. "People think they can't control their feelings."

        "Yet they do it, if they want to," is the patient reply. "I have had cases of people who thought they couldn't sleep with a clock in the room; and others thought they must have a clock in order to sleep."

        "Did you try to prove to each one that he was mistaken?" I asked.

      "As a physician, I am governed by various factors in deciding on treatment," said Doctor Sidis. "But the normal person should say to himself: 'I can go to sleep with or without a clock. I hear it only when I listen for it, anyway. The real point is whether it is a convenience for me, regardless of sleep, to have clock in my bedroom. If it is, I naturally want one there. It has nothing to do with my sleeping. It is really favorable to sleep.

        “Of course the greatest trouble people have is in controlling the thoughts, in letting alone the things they have been thinking of during the day. You cannot acquire this ability as quickly as you can acquire the ability to keep your body quiet. It takes practice, cultivation, to be able to relax the mind. The reason why I object to the use of the countless formulas for going to sleep is that I think they defeat their object.

        “I have read directions for hundreds of these ‘trick plays.' But the flaw in all of them is the fact that they require you to concentrate the mind on some definite thought, even though it is a trivial one. I do not see, therefore, how these things can effect a cure. For we cannot overcome the result of mental concentration in one direction by mental concentration in another direction. Not when inability to sleep is the result we want to overcome. In that case we must substitute mental relaxation. I cannot see any other road to a permanent escape from the condition.

        “Do you realize what constitutes our chief mental activity? It is making selections from a vast number of impressions and ideas. That is what we are doing, all day long; selecting the impressions received from outside, putting them together to make thoughts. And we are constantly selecting memory impressions and associating them with new ones as they come to us through our senses.

        “Now, when your thoughts keep you awake, it is because you are going right on with this selecting and arranging of ideas. If you didn’t, you wouldn't have consecutive thought.

        “Well then, this is the very thing we must stop doing if we want to have mental rest. Sometimes you are conscious that you are going to sleep. You know vaguely that you are 'dropping off.' And haven't you noticed at such times, that your thoughts are broken and disconnected? Half-formed ideas, fleeting and unrelated impressions pass through your mind. It is because you no longer are selecting your thoughts and fitting them together.

        “If you let your mind alone and don't direct your thoughts they will wander from one thing to another. They are not thoughts, in fact; they are merely a train of disconnected ideas and impressions. This is the normal state of the mind as it approaches sleep. And since this is true you can see clearly that the way to go to sleep is to put the mind in the normal state for sleep.

        “I wish you would sum it up as concisely and definitely as you can," I said.

        “All right,” agreed Doctor Sidis. "The first step is to lie still―keep quiet, close your eyes and relax physically. If you were merely an animal, you would go to sleep under those conditions almost immediately. Remember that I proved this over and over again even with animals that were so excited and nervous that I had to keep them still by main force.

        "But you are not merely an animal. You are a thinking human being. You want to have your mind in a state of unconsciousness. That is what sleep means to you.

        "Well, first remember that you can rest without unconsciousness; and that rest is the chief essential to your well-being. The state of unconsciousness, therefore is not of supreme importance to your health.

        "However, your mind is tired too. The brain cells you have been using all day are fatigued. They need to store up new energy. If you go on thinking and planning―planning is particularly bad because it is especially devoted to selecting ideas―the brain cells are kept at work. Their energy is still further exhausted, and you will get up in the morning more fagged mentally than when you went to bed. Therefore you must relax mentally. You can do this by not thinking consecutively on any subject. You can let your mind wander. This is the normal state of approaching sleep. A quiet body and an 'unthinking mind' will almost inevitably result in sleep. It is the only right method. It is fundamentally sound. The popular devices are mere trick plays. They have no lasting value."

 

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