stephaniecontextual

[stephaniecontextual]

This project was really interesting, because I learned so much more about sleep paralysis! Even if the writing part was hard in the beginning, I managed to do it pretty well I think <3

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My last picture of the designed outcome  AND I AM DONE <3

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A rough screenshot of my layout for the artsy part ! 

[stephaniecontextual]

Well, I finished my writing part already for the submission 2 or 3 weeks ago, and just corrected some small things Sam had advised me! It turned out better than expected! <3 

[stephaniecontextual]

So I animated for my last year in Cologne my personal experience of sleep paralysis. I think it fits here, even if I won't use it for this research project !

the tex in the beginning is in german and just explains really simple what sleep paralysis is.  Also its my first animation soooooooo:D 

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Here are three of four paintings I will use for my artistic part!  I am still working on the last one an the layout for the zin 

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Also I decided to use a traditional “dissertation” format for the essay and add an artistic part of experiences from sleep paralysis sufferers to the end of it.  I received first hand information about sleep paralysis experiences from my personal survey.  It went pretty well in my opinion! 21 participants took part in it and I think that’s an awesome result, since sleep paralysis is not such a known thing amongst many people ! 

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After buying the best book I could ever find about sleep paralysis:

“Sleep Paralysis: Historical, Psychological, and Medical Perspectives”

 -Brian A. Sharpless and Karl Doghramji  

I finally got proper scientific information about sleep paralysis in every way I needed  about sleep paralysis itself, in myths and folklore, some psychological infos and the present view on sleep paralysis. I basically just started writing the whole thing chapter by chapter 

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So I went to the wellcome collection and found finally 2 books which are just about sleep paralysis <3 I bought one of them, because I had either to buy it or copy the whole thing!  I decided to throw out the part about archetypes and put in how sleep paralysis already occurred in old myths through time.  Furthermore I will ask a psychologist who wrote some books about dream analysis some questions about SP. With him and my survey I will have a nice part of primary research and can furthermore use my books as secondary research.  I wrote in a short paragraph what I will now actually write my essay about : I will write about sleep paralysis in my essay and how it was already discovered in ancient times in different mythologies and cultures, but was of course misunderstood and not seen as such. I try to combine different images of SP in mythology with the ones I’ll find in my survey. I will either underline this with separate short graphic novels or try to fit suitable pictures I’ll draw about it in the text.Furthermore I’ll discuss the work of some artists who dealt with SP or other sleeping disorders. Hopefully with help of secondary and primary research I will be able to analyze these works or just be able to find out how the artists tried to process with their disorders in their artwork.The conclusion should show how society changed their view and knowledge about sleep paralysis! It would be interesting to see whether there are connections between the imagery of the mythological view on SP and the images people perceive while being sleep paralyzed nowadays to show how the unconscious pictures actually didn’t or did change !

[stephaniecontextual]

I texted the wellcome collection to get some information about the exhibition „States of Mind: Tracing the Edges of Consciousness“.

They replied immediately and sent me a complete guide of the exhibition !!

There is one video that catched my attention.

Carla Mackinnon is a British director and made this video about sleep paralyses and the experiences while being paralyzed. There it is said that she felt “like being hugged to death” and “There’s this presence that’s holding me here” which can lead to the collective experience of not being able to breathe or a sensed presence during sleep paralyses. 

Once more one can see the recurring collective perceptions people experience during sleep paralyses.

Here you can find the video 

https://www.nowness.com/story/squeezed-by-shadows-carla-mackinnon-wellcome-collection

[stephaniecontextual]

I found an interesting discovery from Freud and Josef Breuer how „neurotic symptoms - hysteria, certain types of pain, and abnormal behavior- are in fact symbolically meaningful“ ( Jung 1990, p. 26 )

He describes several instances of patients who suffer different physical symptoms.

One „patient has an attack of asthma. He „can’t breathe the atmosphere at home“Another „suffers from a peculiar paralysis of the legs : He can’t walk, i.e. „ he can’t go on any more.“ “ ( Jung 1990, p. 26 )  

Physical reactions are also one way to express problems that trouble us unconsciously, must as dreams. Of course dreams have a much grater variety than physical symptoms.

It’s fascinating that  this specific examples of the body reacting to our unconscious are similar to what people perceive during sleep paralysis.

• the asthma attack = not being able to breath

• paralysis of legs, disability to walk = complete paralysis of the body, not able to move

- Jung, C.G 1990, Man and his Symbols, Arkana, Spain

[stephaniecontextual]

Archetypes

Elements that cannot be deduced from personal experience often occur in dreams.

These elements are called "archaic remains" by Freud, which are apparently innate to the human mind.

"Just as the human body is a whole museum of organs, each of which has a long history of development, we can expect our mind to be organized in a similar way." ( Jung 1998, p.71 ) ( Translated from german )

By „history  of development“ Jung means the prehistoric unconscious development of the spirit of archaic man, whose psyche still resembles that of the animal.

The basis of our mind is formed by this ancient psyche.

The experienced researcher can recognize traces of an original pattern in our mind and in a comparable way " the analogies between the dream images of modern man and the products of the primitive mind, its "collective images" and its mythological motives" ( Jung 1998, p.72 )( Translated from german ).

Jung calls these "archaic remains" in our psyche "archetypes" ( Jung 1998, p.72 ). Archetypes are also seen as an innate tendency to form conscious motif images. These representations can differ very much from each other, but do not give up their basic structure.

They are not conscious ideas, so we are often confused or amazed when they appear in our consciousness because they are instinctive tendencies, much like as an impulse.

Jung gave a nice example: "[...] like the impulse for birds to build nests, or for ants to form organized colonies. ( Jung 1998, p.73 )( Translated from german )

Again Jung has a very good example to show in what kind of diverse pictures these collective symbols of the unconscious (here in a dream) can appear.

A psychiatrist showed Jung a small handwritten booklet, which he had received as a Christmas present from his ten-year-old daughter.

There she had collected a series of dreams she had at the age of 8 years.

One dream was about an "evil animal" which was a snake-like monster with many horns that killed and devoured all other animals. Then God comes in the form of four separate gods from four corners and gives life back to the dead animals.

This dream describes how God gives life back to the animals through a divine apokatastasis. Already the early Greek church fathers believed in the idea that at the end of times the saviour would return everything to its original state. Although the girl's parents were Protestants, they had never read the Bible themselves. It is highly unlikely that the girl or her parents had ever heard of the image of apokatastasis.

Here one can understand very well, I think, what Jung means by the archaic part of the psyche of every human being. This phenomenon of collective symbols occurs worldwide.

The book from which I have this information is about dreams and their symbols.

I would like to explain briefly why I still find this information very useful in relation to my subject.

Sleep paralysis is of course a different phenomenon than dreaming, but I would call it an intermediate phase. One sleeps and the mind is awake. Nevertheless, there is a dreamy factor - the hallucinations.

And these hallucinations during sleep paralysis do have "images" and "perceptions" that have a collective appearance of the sufferers, just like in dreams. Furthermore, these perceptions also come from our unconscious.

My goal is to find archetypes that can be traced back to the different images and sensations of hallucinations in sleep paralysis. However, I am optimistic that I will be at least halfway successful, since the state of sleep paralysis has a lot to do with the unconscious just as the archetypes.

- Jung, C.G 1998, Symbole und Traumdeutung, Patmos Verlag der Schwabenverlag AG, Ostfildern

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Furthermore

I would like to find a connection between archetypes and the images people see or feel during sleep paralyses !

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I love that painting from Johann Heinrich Füssli. it is called “ the nightmare” 

It shows an actual “night-mare” sitting on a women. In old folklore tales it is said that the “nightmare” (in german we say night hob) was sitting on the sleeping person and frightening the person. 

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Some years/months ago I saw an article about a guy who processed his sleep paralyses and nightmares with photography. 

The photos deal with the images he sees during sleep paralyses. 

http://resourcemagonline.com/2018/03/the-horrors-of-sleep-paralysis-are-captured-in-nicolas-brunos-photography-series/87758/

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sleep paralyses

My essay will be about sleep paralyses. I’ve been suffering from it since I am 12 which gives me huge personal motivation to research about this topic. 

What is sleep paralyses?

It is the state in which your body sleeps, but your mind is fully conscious.

During REM-phase our body is set to a motionlessness, so we won’t actually execute the movement we are dreaming of. And that is basically the sleep paralyses. 

Shelley R. Adler “It is important to remember that sleep paralysis is a normal physiological correlate of REM sleep; it is the consciousness of the paralysis that is ‘abnormal’“ ( Fuhrmann and Mayer, 2016, p.279 )

The experience of sleep paralyses is an overlapping of ( the REM-phase typical) muscle atony and the awake consciousness. A high percentage is accompanied by strong hallucination experiences.

Sleep paralyses has three basic characteristics- Atony, hallucination and fear. 

Atony

describes the complete inability to move. The atony seems to have certain effects on the perception of breathing, as sufferers often describe breathing problems and even suffocation. Furthermore pressure on the chest and or body are typical for sleep paralyses. One is also unable to talk, while lightly moaning is partially possible. 

Hallucination 

75-88,5% of all sleep paralyses are accompanied by hallucinations. Sharpness and Doghramji categorize the hallucination into the following four:

• auditive hallucinations • „ sensed presence“ • tactile and kinesthetic hallucinations • visual hallucinations 

auditive hallucinations 

The perception of humming, rushing, understandable and non-understandable talking, whispering and screams. 

„sensed presence“

people feel someone/something is in the room, mostly of evil nature. Often experienced as „distinctly non-human“ 

tactile and kinesthetic hallucinations

tactile hallucination describes the perception of cold, warm , pressure and weight- often typical on the chest and partially also the feeling of being strangled. Other sources ( Blackmore, 1999;Hufford, 1982:242) report about the feeling of vibration and „electrical sensations“. Kinesthetic hallucinations include feelings of movement of one's own body, e.g. feelings of falling, flying, floating, slinging or turning. Also there are experiences of ones body or parts of it being externally controlled. Out-of-body experiences are also possible. 

visual hallucinations

there are two categories of visual hallucinations

1. nonliving objects as, shadows, lights, geometric figures etc. 

2. hallucination of beings. Most of the beings are humanoid, but there are always exceptions.

typical examples are dead or living relatives, strangers, masked people, ghosts, demons and aliens. It can come to an interaction ( agressive/sexual) with those beings, which is extremely frightening and evokes intense fear and anxiety 

Fear 

Sleep paralyses is ( in most of the cases) a frightening experience. Some people e.g. are afraid that the motionlessness will stay permanent. It can also cause the fear of going to bed or even being afraid of your bedroom.

 Furthermore there is a connection between sleep paralyses and other extraordinary experiences as lucid dreams, out-of body experiences and getting abducted by aliens ( alien abduction experience, AAE). An actual sleep paralyses could be the answer for a lot of AAEs. 

https://www.anomalistik.de/images/pdf/zfa/zfa2016_3_275_fuhrmann_mayer.pdf