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Insomnia Sleep Disorder

This research paper examines insomnia, also known as dypsomania, the inability to sleep or wakefulness. Insomnia is the most common of all sleep disorders and can be either an occasional problem or a chronic problem. The basic definition of an insomniac is a person who has a chronic inability to sleep or to remain asleep during the night or feel refreshed by sleep. The causes of insomnia are many and wide-ranging, including everything from depression and grief, to anxiety and stress, to disease and medication, to stimulants at bedtime.

In order to appreciate the significance of insomnia, it is useful to be aware of the importance of sleep to maintenance of a healthy organism. There exists a large body of professional literature on the subject of sleep function, behavior, and malfunction, starting with Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, but by no means ending there; Freud emphasized the psychological features of sleep and dreaming in his classic work. But since Freud there has been marked disagreement over whether and to what extent dreaming is primarily psychological or physiological. The discovery in 1952-53 of rapid eye movement (REM) during dreams and non-REM sleep (NREM) in nondreaming periods, noted in Aserinsky and Kleitman's work (1953; cited by Jones, 1978), fostered a significant body of research into the connection rather that distinction between the physiology and psychology of sleep. Consider Ullman and Zimmerman's (1979, p. 70) "vigilance hypothesis" for the function of sleeping and dreaming, that "a biological arrangement insure[s] fixed periods when the animal was closer to arousal, even though asleep: somewhat like having a built-in watchman check out the situation for possible dangers." Ullman and Zimmerman emphasize man's status as a psychosocial and psychophysiological animal who during the waking state is vigilant to both physical and psychological needs. In the sleeping state, the more purely physical needs of ...

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Insomnia Sleep Disorder. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 20:07, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1683225.html