The influence, I was assured, came
from a priest whom I believed in and admired above everyone in the world.
I had never dreamed of love in connection with him, because I always
thought him so far above me. The influence has been upon me ever
since--sometimes by day and nearly always by night; from it I generally go
into a deep sleep, which lasts until morning. I am always much refreshed
when I awake. This influence has the best effect upon my life that
anything has ever had as regards health and mind. It is the knowledge that
I am loved _fittingly_ that makes me so indifferent to my future. What
worries me is that I sometimes wonder if I suffer from a nervous disorder
merely." The subject thus seemed to regard these occurrences as
objectively caused, but was sufficiently sane to wonder whether her
experiences were not due to mental disorder.[243]
The tendency of the auto-erotic phenomena of sleep to be manifested with
such energy as to flow over into the waking life and influence conscious
emotion and action, while very well marked in normal and healthy women, is
seen to an exaggerated extent in hysterical women, in whom it has,
therefore, chiefly been studied. Sante de Sanctis, who has investigated
the dreams of many classes of people, remarks on the frequently sexual
character of the dreams of hysterical women, and the repercussion of such
dreams on the waking life of the following day; he gives a typical case of
hysterical erotic dreaming in an uneducated servant-girl of 23, in whom
such dreams occur usually a few days before the menstrual period; her
dreams, especially if erotic, make an enormous impression on her; in the
morning she is bad-tempered if they were unpleasant, while she feels
lascivious and gives herself up to masturbation if she has had erotic
dreams of men; she then has a feeling of pleasure throughout the day, and
her sexual organs are bathed with moisture.
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