WHEN SLEEP DOES NOT COME: WHAT PERSISTS AT NIGHT?

It is 3:17 a.m. You look at the time and make the first calculation: “If I fall asleep now, I still have four hours and forty minutes.” At 3:29 you look again. At 3:46 the calculation has become more ominous. Now you are no longer only trying to sleep; you are monitoring whether you are asleep. Somewhere around this point, a paradox may begin: sleep, something that usually happens when we stop trying to control it, turns into a task that has to be completed.

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Insomnia can, of course, be connected with many biological, physical, environmental or psychological factors and, when insomnia persists, it is important to investigate these factors. The psychoanalytic approach does not seek to replace that investigation with a ready-made “psychological cause”. It does, however, pose a different question: what position has insomnia come to occupy in this particular person’s life? Two people may say exactly the same thing—“I cannot sleep”—and be speaking about two entirely different experiences.

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This article does not suggest that we look for one hidden cause behind every case of insomnia. It asks us to notice the form our own wakefulness takes: do we count, anticipate, rehearse conversations, listen, wait, dream, wake, settle accounts—or simply remain awake without words? Sleep requires more than tiredness. It asks us to step back, even temporarily, from the position from which we control, answer or keep watch. The article considers what happens when that withdrawal becomes difficult.

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WHEN SLEEP BECOMES A DEMAND

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Today sleep is measured: hours, awakenings, deep sleep, REM, a “sleep score”. In the morning, a device may announce that we slept badly, even if until then we had not decided that the night was a failure. Darian Leader makes a more specific observation here. The problem is not only that contemporary sleep is measured and evaluated. It is that, once sleep becomes something that absolutely must happen, it can turn into the object around which expectation, anxiety, control and demand are organised. We wait for it from the afternoon onwards, fear that it will not come, monitor it when we lie down and calculate it the following morning. Insomnia is then no longer confined to the night; an entire discourse gathers around it (Leader, 2019).

 

The psychoanalytic point is not that “deep down, we want” to remain awake. The paradox lies elsewhere: when the conscious wish “I want to sleep” hardens into an imperative—“I must sleep now”—the imperative itself can become what keeps us awake. We remain in the position of the one who checks, waits and demands an outcome from their own body. Sleep, however, does not readily obey this command.

 

The difficulty may begin not only when we wake at three in the morning, but when we think: “I should not be awake.” From that moment, waking is no longer simply something that happened; it becomes a mistake that must urgently be corrected. When, then, did night cease to be a time of rest and become a test we have to pass? And what happens when sleep finally comes, but a dream wakes us?

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THE DREAM GUARDS SLEEP—UNTIL IT WAKES US

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The pressure to sleep has so far kept us on the side of wakefulness. But what happens when sleep finally comes? The mind does not switch off. Contemporary research finds evidence of mental activity during different stages of sleep, and dreaming cannot simply be equated with REM sleep. Psychoanalysis posed a different question: not only when we dream, but what the dream does for sleep (Barbato, 2025). For Freud (1900/2010), the dream is the guardian of sleep. A noise, a bodily sensation or a persisting wish could wake us. The dream attempts to weave these into a scene that allows the sleeper to go on sleeping. It is not a random film projected while the organism rests; it is a work of transformation.

 

Freud’s proposition that the dream fulfils a wish is easily misunderstood. It does not mean that every dream is pleasant or that it realises something we consciously want. What we desire without knowing it does not necessarily coincide with pleasure. If something appears in the dream too directly, or in a form that is difficult to bear, anxiety may arise and wake us. The very work that protects sleep can therefore reach its limit and interrupt it. Freud proposed that we read a dream as a personal rebus, a kind of picture-puzzle: images can function like words, sounds or syllables. The dream brings people and places together, shifts emphasis from something crucial to a small detail, and plays with sounds and double meanings (Bazan et al., 2019; Koukoumaki, 2008). An image does not mean the same thing for everyone; its meaning depends on the dreamer’s own words and associations (Freud, 1900/2010).

 

This is why the psychoanalytic question is not “what does this symbol mean in general?” but “what words appear when this particular person recounts the dream?” Something that was not visible in the image may be heard only when the dream is put into words. There, an image may acquire an unexpected sound, a word may divide into two meanings, and a minor detail may lead to an entirely personal association. Words work even in sleep.

 

The same guardian, however, may wake us. Lacan pushes the paradox further: sometimes the dream is interrupted precisely when it encounters a point that it cannot weave into a story bearable for the dreamer. We wake in the familiar room, and everyday reality may serve as a shelter from what interrupted the dream. From here comes the provocative formulation that we may wake in order to go on dreaming: not because reality does not exist, but because our experience of it is also organised by meanings, fantasies and wishes (Lacan, 1973/1998a; Koretzky, 2020).

 

This limit becomes clearer in the nightmare and the traumatic dream, although the two are not the same. In some traumatic dreams, the same scene returns almost unchanged. Repetition may be an attempt to give form and put into words what was unbearable. At the same time, it shows that part of the experience has not yet found a place in a narrative. The dream, then, does not always offer a clear message; it can also reveal the point at which images and words are not enough (Koretzky, 2012).

 

The useful question is therefore not “what does my dream mean?” as though there were one correct translation. We can ask something more precise: were there dreams or nightmares around the time my sleep began to change? When I wake abruptly, what remains from the moment of awakening—a sound, an image, a phrase or a bodily sensation? Not so that we can interpret the night in haste, but so that, in the light of day, we can see what thread might connect the dream, the awakening and our life. Sometimes something similar appears in wakefulness: the conversation continues even though no one is speaking to us.

 

 

WHOM AM I STILL ANSWERING?

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The room has gone dark, but the conversation continues without anyone there. It is two in the morning. The email has already been sent, but you mentally rewrite your reply. The conversation with your partner ended hours ago, but now you find the phrase you “should” have said. There is a difficult meeting tomorrow and, lying in the dark, you have already staged it in your mind for the fifth time. No one is actually in front of you. Whom, then, are you still answering?

 

Sometimes we are not answering only the person who was in front of us. We are also answering what we believe is expected of us: what we should say, how we should behave, what we mean to the other person. We try to guess what they wanted, whether we disappointed them, or whether they still recognise us. No answer, however, can give us final assurance of what we are for others. This is why a conversation may have ended and still continue within us.

 

When we ask something of another person, we are often not asking only for the thing itself. We may also be asking to be heard, noticed, or shown that the bond remains. No answer can fully satisfy everything carried by a demand (Soler, 2009). Thus, behind “what did they say to me?” may persist “what did they want from me?”—and with it, “what am I for them?” The conversation has ended, but the question remains open. Words, however, do not affect us only through their meaning. A form of address, a tone of voice, an ambiguous phrase or an old command may touch us before we understand what it means for us. It may leave a trace in the way the body tightens, waits or remains on alert. Psychoanalysis pays particular attention to this close relation between words and the body (Lacan, 1975/1998b; Soler, 2014).

 

This is why it is not always enough to ask only “what am I thinking?” A phrase may have been forgotten as a story and yet persist as a way of waiting, tensing or remaining vigilant. The body may continue to react even when we cannot find the right words to explain what is happening (Soler, 2016). Perhaps, then, a second question might be: “What, among the things I have heard and keep repeating, will not let me disengage?”

 

 

WHEN THE BODY IS STILL KEEPING WATCH

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The house may have fallen quiet. The body, however, is still keeping watch. Some people once had a genuine reason not to sleep deeply. A child listened for signs that their parents were arguing in the next room. A mother waited to hear the baby. Someone cared for a person who was ill. Someone else had learnt to stay awake until someone returned home. In some families, “sleeping with one ear open” was not a metaphor but a way of life. At one time, vigilance was necessary. Years later, there may no longer be anyone who needs watching over. Psychoanalysis is interested in this persistence: not because every present-day insomnia is explained by an event in the past, but because a way of being in the world may continue to function after the conditions that created it have ceased to exist.

 

In one example discussed by Darian Leader, a man remembered that, as a child, he would lie awake at night, listening to the sounds from the next room and trying to work out what was happening between his mother and her partner. He was not keeping watch only for a possible danger. He was outside the scene yet captive to its sounds; excluded from what was happening, but feeling that he must not miss anything. As associations emerged in therapy, falling asleep could mean that he would not know—perhaps even that he was abandoning something he felt responsible for watching over. Later the people and circumstances changed, but a similar way of remaining alert returned. Insomnia brought him back to the same position: outside the scene, bound to the question of what was happening to others, and unable to withdraw (Leader, 2019).

 

A difficulty such as insomnia does not necessarily remain tied to one single meaning. It may shift and become connected with different experiences over time. The question is therefore not only “what old event is being repeated?” but “what position do I find myself in again whenever the night requires me to remain awake?” These are possible paths towards understanding, not a fixed psychological portrait of the person who cannot sleep. What appears to be the same insomnia may have an entirely different function in someone else’s life.

 

And what if staying awake does something for me? The usual question is “what keeps me from sleeping?” Psychoanalysis sometimes invites a more unsettling reversal: “what would I not have to face while I remain awake?” This does not mean that someone chooses their insomnia or that, deep down, they “want” not to sleep. It means that a difficulty can torment us and, at the same time, acquire a function: keeping something at a distance, preserving a sense of control, or placing us once again in a familiar position. Psychoanalysis therefore does not treat insomnia only as a hidden message to be deciphered. It also examines what is maintained through its repetition (Nikolaidou, 2008; Soler, 2014, 2016). This is why understanding the “why” is not always enough to change what is happening.

 

Taking Soler’s (1988) proposition about the dream as a starting point, we can consider one possibility—not a general explanation: in some cases, wakefulness may keep at a distance something that the dream could bring to the fore. We do not need to know in advance what that is. What matters is the shift in the question: from “how can I get rid of insomnia?” to “what happens to me when I do not sleep?”

 

 

 

WHEN REST FEELS FORBIDDEN

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The day has come to an end, but within the night an account remains open and refuses to close. Then the reckoning begins: what I did not do, whom I did not answer, whom I did not care for enough, what I should have done differently, what remains for tomorrow. For some people, even sleep can feel like a dereliction of duty, as though rest were something to which they were not yet entitled. The imperative then takes the form of a harsh inner voice: I must do more, I must care more, I must not stop. What is distinctive about this command is that it cannot be satisfied. “I did enough” immediately becomes “I could have done more.”

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​In another case discussed by Leader, a man’s insomnia appeared when his mother’s illness retrospectively gave new weight to the night shifts she had worked to pay for his studies. He did not lie awake consciously reflecting on her sacrifice, nor did he tell himself that he owed her. As therapy unfolded, however, her sleepless nights acquired the force of a command: because she had stayed awake for his sake, his own sleep could be experienced as unjustified rest. Insomnia seemed to turn his body into the site of repayment, as though, by remaining awake himself, he could return some of the time she had given and the exhaustion she had endured (Leader, 2019).

 

The guilt here did not testify to any actual wrongdoing. It appeared when his capacity to let himself sleep gave way before a harsh inner command. And the command grew stronger the more he obeyed it: the more he seemed to repay the debt by sacrificing his own sleep, the more he confirmed that he was in debt. Some debts cannot be repaid with money, because guilt does not merely recall the debt—it reproduces it.

 

 

WHEN THERE IS NOT A SINGLE THOUGHT

 

Some commands do not fall silent simply because the day has ended. Yet not every insomnia appears in the form of a phrase, a feeling of guilt, or a thought that repeats. “I am not thinking about anything. I simply cannot sleep.” There are nights when there is no email, argument, problem or meeting the next day. Thought says “nothing”. The body, however, is still waiting. At four in the morning, the house is the same and yet it no longer offers the same familiarity. The refrigerator hums; a pipe sounds; a car passes in the street. Others are sleeping behind closed doors. No one is asking for anything, no one needs an answer—and yet the body remains as though it were still waiting for something.

 

The absence of a clear thought does not mean that the body is at rest. Sometimes anxiety is felt before we can say where it comes from: as proximity, pressure or an undefined anticipation. We do not need to assume that a specific event lies behind every sleepless night. It is enough to recognise that something may affect us without yet having taken the form of a thought. The body may remain on alert even when the mind says, “I am not thinking about anything.” What is the body waiting for when thought says that it expects nothing? (Lacan, 2004/2014; Soler, 2016).

 

 

WHAT PERSISTS AT NIGHT?

 

There is no single psychoanalytic answer to “why can’t I sleep?” Sometimes what persists takes the form of words: something we feel was asked of us and to which we did not respond, a command that does not allow us to stop, a debt that cannot be settled. At other times, a position persists: that of the person who must remain available, listen, pay attention and not miss what may happen to others. And sometimes what mainly persists is a bodily feeling, without any particular phrase taking shape.

 

What matters, then, is not only finding the right “why”. It is noticing what returns: which phrase, which expectation, which bodily tension, which position in relation to others. An old situation may have ended, while the way we learnt to respond to it continues to function (Lacan, 1975/1998b; Soler, 2014).

When we already understand “why” something happens and it nevertheless continues, this does not mean that we have not tried hard enough or that understanding has failed. Understanding matters, but the way words, habits and the body have become bound together may take time to change. Therapeutic work does not search for an explanation that will solve everything; it creates space for this particular way of responding to loosen its hold, or for it to change (Soler, 2014, 2016). This does not mean that every case of insomnia requires psychotherapy. It shows what may be explored when insomnia has come to occupy a significant place in someone’s life.

 

The practical question—“how will I manage to sleep?”—certainly remains important, especially when exhaustion is severe. It is not, however, always the only question. Perhaps, in the light of day, it is worth keeping some others in mind: whom am I still answering when no one is speaking to me? What would be left unguarded if I stopped keeping watch for a few hours? To what demand, debt or enigma would I cease responding if I allowed myself to sleep? These are not questions that need to be answered at 3:17 a.m. The night does not need to become another hour of self-examination. They are questions for the light of day or for a therapeutic space, where they can unfold without haste.

 

Psychoanalytically oriented work does not offer a ready-made explanation such as “you cannot sleep because you are afraid of losing control” or “because you feel guilty”. Such an answer would close the question too quickly. It follows each person’s particular words, ambiguities, repetitions and silences. It also attends to the way the difficulty appears in the body and in everyday life, so that the particular function insomnia has acquired in that person’s life can be understood.

 

Sleep asks us to leave unanswered, for a time, what preoccupies us and to stop keeping watch over the world. When that becomes difficult, the question is not only “what keeps me awake?” but also “what am I struggling to let go of, even for a few hours?”

 

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

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