ABSTRACT
Patients sometimes complain of sleepiness during analysis (at the height of resistance), and even threaten that they will go to sleep. In this way they express their dissatisfaction with the aimless, senseless, and wearisome treatment. The doctor explains the significance of their threat, upon which they mostly cheer up again in proof that the right nail has been hit on the head. One of my patients, however, was not content with the threat, but really fell asleep once or twice. I quietly let him be and waited, knowing (if only from consideration of the expense of the time slept away) that he could not sleep peacefully for long—knowing, too, that this time he intended to reduce ad absurdum my method of letting him talk and of keeping silence myself. I kept silent, therefore, and the patient slept quietly enough for about five minutes; then, however, he started up and continued the work. He repeated this three or four times. On the last occasion of this kind he had a dream the interpretation of which justified the assumption that the patient chose this peculiar form of resistance because by it he could also give expression to unconscious passive homo-erotic phantasies. (A phantasy of being overpowered during sleep.) The wish of many patients that one should hypnotize them is to be explained similarly.
