Heather Sanders
Professor Staiti
PHIL5600
21.3.17
Merleau-Ponty on Sleep Paralysis
For centuries, sleep paralysis has been a source of folklore and art around the world and even stories of alien abductions have been attributed to the phenomenon. The tableau above painted by Henry Fuseli in 1781 and entitled “The Nightmare” is perhaps the most well-known artwork on the condition. However, as sleep paralysis is medical condition, work on the phenomenon has also taken place in the scientific realm. As evidenced by the incubus upon the woman’s chest in the painting above, sleep paralysis is a frightening and debilitating phenomenon, thus medical research has been done conducted in the hopes of subsiding patients’ fears through explanation. As a condition that evokes questions on the mind, body, perception, and freedom, philosophical work has also been done through phenomenological studies that seek to accurately describe and document it. Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote extensively in the field of phenomenology on topics such as the body, perception (as well as phenomena of the lack of perception), and consciousness. Yet, he surprisingly neglected to explicitly treat the subject of sleep paralysis, a phenomenon that seems to combine many of his other research interests into one domain. His lack of work on the subject may be attributed to his unfortunate early death that arrived just as he was beginning to rigorously treat the topic of sleep in his text entitled The Visible and the Invisible. Merleau-Ponty died before being able to finish this manuscript which could have led to him eventually researching sleep paralysis later on. A second reason may be the history of the study of sleep paralysis itself as it has had a tumultuous relationship with medical research, psychology, and philosophy. This paper will briefly examine the relationship between sleep paralysis and the three domains and then consider how this may have had an impact on Merleau-Ponty’s lack of work on the topic. Despite this dearth of explicit research on behalf of Merleau-Ponty, this paper will attempt to formulate how he would have approached sleep paralysis had he given the topic its due consideration. This will be accomplished by compiling his extensive work in the aforementioned areas in order to create a cohesive and plausible response from Merleau-Ponty on the subject of sleep paralysis.
First, it would be remiss to not properly define and describe the phenomenon that is sleep paralysis. Though, the very nature of sleep paralysis itself makes this a difficult and problematic task. In his article entitled “‘The devil lay upon her and held her down’ Hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis described by the Dutch physician Isbrand van Diemerbroeck (1609–1674) in 1664”, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, Erwin J. O. Kompanje defines the phenomenon in the following way:
“Sleep paralysis occurs immediately prior to falling asleep (hypnagogic paralysis) or upon waking (hypnopompic paralysis). Individuals are conscious of their surroundings and able to open their eyes, but usually completely unable to move (Cheyne et al., 1999a,b; Hishiwaka, 1976). Most often there is pervasive fear, sometimes so strong that people are sure they are about to die and are afraid to go to sleep again. Other parts of their hallucination, which may include people, animals, parts of objects, or just shapes, have a nightmarish quality. […] Sleep paralysis and hypnagogic/hypnopompic hallucinations can be related to specific physiological conditions identified for REM states (Cheyne et al., 1999a,b). They arise from temporary discordance in the architecture of REM sleep (McNally and Clancy, 2005)” (464).
As evidenced by the length of description (of which I have truncated for the purposes of this paper) as well as the multiple sources required, defining sleep paralysis is an arduous undertaking. Further complicating defining the experience of the phenomenon is the phenomenon itself. As we can see in the citation above, two common aspects of a sleep paralysis experience are fear and hallucination. Despite the consciousness or alertness of the patient during the episode, these two sensations could cause him or her to have trouble understanding what is actually occurring. The opposition between what the patient believes he or she is experiencing versus what is truly transpiring obviously presents a source of disruption for a phenomenological analysis. Another problematic facet of sleep paralysis is the state of consciousness in which it occurs. The above citation simply mentions that the patient is conscious, but many other definitions and descriptions of the phenomenon describe the patient as straddling the border between sleep and consciousness. This paper will take a closer look at these oppositions later on. The largest obstacle in the definition and description of sleep paralysis is the impossibility of the patient to describe what he or she is experiencing in the moment of the episode. The paralysis itself renders the patient largely unable to speak and certainly unable to write. Thus, the description of the phenomenon from the perspective of the patient is dependent upon the memory of the experience. Obviously, the dependence upon the memory of a patient who was semi-conscious, overcome with fear, and possibly hallucinating during the episode presents a large problem to anyone attempting to faithfully research this condition.
It is important to take at least a brief look at the history of the way in which sleep paralysis has been treated and studied by medical researchers, psychologists, and philosophers alike. According to Kompanje, Isbrand van Diemerbroeck, a Dutch physician and anatomist, is the first to be credited with documenting the phenomenon of sleep paralysis in 1664. Even more interestingly, this first documentation was done in a phenomenological fashion through the use of case studies providing the descriptions of patients’ experiences. Though there are numerous instances of van Diemerbroeck and Merleau-Ponty being cited in the same text is often for their work largely unrelated to sleep paralysis. Furthermore, there is no widely available indication that Merleau-Ponty was aware of van Diemerbroeck, let alone his work such an obscure field.
Despite this start in the phenomenological field, for centuries most work being done on the phenomenon was strictly in the psychological realm. The shift from phenomenology to psychology obviously shifted the way in which it was studied and documented. This swing meant that analyses shifted from seeking to merely describe the experience to seeking to explain it and to ultimately cure it. Psychologists and psychiatrists often diagnosed their patients with psychosis or other mental illnesses when the patients described their experiences of hallucinations during episodes of sleep paralysis. While, there is some overlap in the population of people who suffer from mental illness and the population of those who experience sleep paralysis, there are many people who experience sleep paralysis but show no signs of any sort of mental illness. This misdiagnosis of sleep paralysis as psychosis or a number of other mental illnesses helped to create a stigma around the condition. Obviously those experiencing sleep paralysis would avoid admitting their struggles with the condition for fear of being labelled mentally ill or disturbed. The long silence surrounding sleep paralysis made it much harder for both psychologists and phenomenologists to study the condition as they would have been unable to access the experiences of people silently suffering from the phenomenon unless they themselves happened to experience it.
Now that we have uncovered the obstacles that may be the reasons behind why Merleau-Ponty never explicitly studied sleep paralysis, we can now move on to looking at the conditions he did study and how those writings could be used to also consider this fascinating condition that questions the relationship between body and mind. In his seminal text entitled “Phenomenology of Perception” he looks at the conditions of phantom limb and anosognosia. The nature of these two conditions correspond well to sleep paralysis in the sense that they comprise of a patient misunderstanding or misperceiving the reality of their body. In these three conditions there is a certain amount of disconnect between the mind and the body. Merleau-Ponty describes phantom limb in the following way: “The phantom limb is the presence of part of the representation of the body which should not be given, since the corresponding limb is not there” (Phenomenology of Perception 80). Thus, we can consider the phenomenon of the phantom limb to occur in a contradictory fashion to that of sleep paralysis. The phantom limb is the feeling of a part of the body that is not there, while sleep paralysis is when the body is there but cannot be felt by the mind. Where these two paradoxical conditions interestingly seem to intersect is in the following citation where Merleau-Ponty evokes the importance of memory: “If one now gives a psychological account of the phenomena, the phantom limb becomes a memory, a positive judgement or a perception” (Phenomenology of Perception 80). A patient experiencing a phantom limb is remembering a part of the body that had one existed, thus the condition is dependent upon his or her memory of what had once been there.
As previously mentioned, memory plays a large role in the documenting of sleep paralysis as the condition itself renders the patient incapable of describing his or her experience as it occurs. Memory can also play a role in the way in which a person experiences sleep paralysis as well. There are two types of sleep paralysis, the first and most common type is referred to as isolated sleep paralysis. As suggested in the title, this form of sleep paralysis is an isolated event or experience. Studies suggest that most people will experience this form of sleep paralysis at some point in their life. The lack of a previous experience of the condition can cause this person to perceive the event in the following two ways. First, he or she could believe that he or she is actually permanently paralyzed, thus intensifying the fear that the experience generates. Secondly, he or she will believe that the experience is nothing more than a harrowing nightmare, and thus he or she will not view the event as something that occurred only within their dreams and not in reality. This second perception of the sleep paralysis condition obviously further hampers the study of the phenomenon as the person who experienced it would likely not reach out to a physician or a psychologist to discuss their memory of what occurred. Thus, the experience will not be documented in a way in which is accessible to a phenomenologist such as Merleau-Ponty.
The second form of sleep paralysis is referred to as recurrent sleep paralysis. As suggested by its name, this form of sleep paralysis is experienced multiple times throughout the life of the patient. The recurrent nature of this form of sleep paralysis allows the patient to become more and more experienced and acquainted with the condition. A patient who has previously experienced sleep paralysis on numerous occasions will often recognize during an episode that he or she is experiencing the condition. This realization can influence the way in which he or she perceives the episode as his or her fear can be reduced as there is the recognition that the paralysis is only temporary. Also, the patient would be better suited to understand that any hallucinations that he or she is experiencing is in fact a hallucination rather than something that physically exists outside of the imagination of his or her mind.
Having previously experienced sleep paralysis can also help the patient to understand how to minimize the duration of the episode, thus minimizing the experience and perception of it. One way to end an occurrence of sleep paralysis is to focus on moving one specific part of the body such as the pointer finger. Unless a person who suffers an isolated sleep paralysis event had previously researched the phenomenon, he or she would not have the advantage of having a memory of this technique working during previous episodes like a person who suffers recurrent episodes. A second way in which memory and recognition of the condition can be influential during the event is that the person will choose to simply fall back into the state of sleep rather than to stay attempt to fight to reach a state of complete alertness and agility. Reentering a state of sleep could have a profound impact upon the way in which the patient remembers the episode or if he or she in fact even remembers the event occurred upon fully waking up.