Sleep and Self-Destruction: A Phenomenological Approach (IN: Essays in Self-Destruction by E S Shneidman)

The author discusses the possible relationships between what he calls cessation & interruption phenomena & describes a study of the phenomenological aspects of the sleep behavior of 7 individuals over a 365-day period. He concludes that sleep itself is rarely self-destructive but can be viewed as the silent therapist of disturbance, balancing & leveling the individual’s perturbation. 45 Refs. (LH)