Remedies for Improving Sleep

There are plenty of folk remedies for improving sleep, and maxims, adages and proverbs concerning sleep give some insight into received views. My Afri-kaaner grandfather was fond of repeating that 'a man needs six hours, a woman seven, and a bloody fool eight' hours of sleep - a sentiment that nicely incorporated both his simple male chauvinism and the Calvinist abomination of indulgence. The common English proverb 'Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise' is less concerned with self-denial than with a prescription for regular habits. Similarly the Welsh 'Go to bed with the lamb and rise with the lark' allows a generous amount of time asleep, and is more concerned with its timing.

The idea that sleep is especially important for growing children, that it may somehow be essential to growth and development, has always been prevalent. The notion that 'one hour's sleep before midnight is worth two afterwards' has been perennially invoked to get children to bed early (although only 10 per cent of the survey sample believed it to be true). Young ladies proverbially make sure they have their 'beauty sleep' - the statement 'a good night's sleep improves one's appearance' was endorsed by over two thirds of the sample. Similarly, improvement from infectious illnesses accompanied by fever has been commonly held to be intimately connected with sleeping, so that a fever typically 'breaks' during the night, when the temperature reaches a maximal high, and then reverts to near-normal as the patient falls into a deep restorative sleep. The common sense view of sleep is that it is good for you because it enables recovery from fatigue, is essential for growth and is crucial for recovery from illness.

Coexisting with this view of sleep as a benign restorative is a certain apprehensiveness about it. We are obviously vulnerable during sleep. This is primarily a physical vulnerability to enemies, both animal and human, because of our obliviousness to our surroundings and the confused, inert state we can be in when we first wake up. The vampire legend, for example, gains much of its power from the helplessness of the sleeping victim. At one time the collective solution to this sort of worry was to employ somebody to patrol the streets all night, calling out 'Three o'clock and all's well!' or whatever, at regular intervals, providing reassurance to citizens sleeping in their beds and even more so to insomniacs.

Apprehension is also aroused by the fact that during sleep we seem to lose control of our minds. Consciousness during wakefulness in a sane person is pretty well ordered and familiar. The happy impression (perhaps totally illusory) that we have when awake that we are somehow in control of our mental processes deserts us when we are dreaming. On the contrary, while asleep our consciousness seems to happen to us, rather than being under our control. This is particularly disturbing for people who subscribe to the Christian view that sinful thoughts are as wicked as the corresponding deeds, since we sometimes dream of performing venial if not mortal sins.

In order to understand what is 'obvious' about sleep and dreaming it is necessary to examine some of the conventional ideological baggage that most Westerners carry about with them, and its historical origins. It will also be useful to examine the idea that preliterate societies, either in antiquity or those existing in the contemporary world, have more (or more far-fetched) mystical ideas about dreaming than our own.