 |
|
Sleep DeprivationTransactional and Subjective Observations
GARY O. MORRIS, M.D., Ph.D.;
MARGARET THALER SINGER, Ph.D.
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1961;5(5):453-461.
|
|
| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
|
|
|
The importance of subjective changes during sleep deprivation has been recognized since the first experimental studies in 1896.1 * The essential step in understanding the subjective changes and experiences is to examine the context of consciousness  in which they occur and the environmental interactions wherein they are experienced, revealed, and discussed. Also, factors other than sheer sleep loss per se are important variables. 
This paper focuses upon the impact of transactions between staff and sleep-deprived subjects and the influences of the subjects upon one another. The major conclusions reached are as follows: The subjective experiences of sleep-deprived subjects must be evaluated in the context of the total environment; a purely intrapsychic view is insufficient if not misleading. Further, the subjective experiences in these subjects were not alien and inexplicable events, but extensions of already present, usually covert, personality features. Finally, the degree
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
WASHINGTON, D.C.; BERKELEY, CALIF.
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
Footnotes
Submitted for publication May 4, 1961.
The early results have been reviewed by Kleitman2 in 1939 and in 1949 by a group at Tufts College.3 Recent investigators include Tyler,4 Laughlin,5 Bliss,6 Koranyi,7 and Morris.10
George Klein, in his recent paper on the role of consciousness in analytic theory,8 also stressed that it is essential to consider the state of consciousness in which subjective events occur.
Loveland and Singer9 have summarized most of the major variables which are in condensed form: (1) Definition of the stress stimulus (e.g., a certain number of hours of sleep deprivation) does not constitute an adequate operational definition of the stress, since it is variably experienced, reacted to, and communicated by different subjects. (2) Reactions attributed to sleep loss have not been adequately screened from reactions to the experimental setting which also is variably experienced . . . Various methods of handling the subjects . . . may affect the kind of "personality changes found . . . The incidence and kind of hallucinatory experiences may be affected. Myths about what happens to subjects during prolonged sleep loss are transmitted in the literature and may affect the results through both staff and subjects. Further, the interview methods used may channel what is communicated so that stereotyped interactions are set up which elicit biased answers. For example, what one examiner asks may influence a sleepdeprived subject to reply in ways that will class his experience as a hallucination, whereas another questioner in another setting may elicit mere sensory disturbance reports from him. Similarly, the questioner may inadvertently affect the incidence of hallucinations reported in the different sensoria. (3) Precise definitions of the nonverbal, behaviorally nonovert, subjectively felt changes are especially hampered by linguistic limitations and here, just the process of describing to another person may alter the felt state. (4) Testing . . . may alter the state being tested. Those who have worked with people subjected to prolonged sleep loss have been impressed, as we were, with the subject's capacity to pull himself together, alerted by the stimuli of test and tester, and to respond more or less as he did before sleep deprivation, no matter how he appeared or behaved between tests.
 CiteULike  Connotea  Del.icio.us  Digg  Reddit  Technorati  Twitter
What's this?
|
