Why Can't We Sleep

1. Sleep is a Commodity Shaped by Societal Pressures

Once considered a natural state, sleep has now become a commodity, something that we must fight to acquire and which we are never quite sure of possessing.

The sleep industry boom. In today's world, sleep is heavily marketed, with the sleep aid industry generating billions annually. Mattresses, once simple rectangles, are now sold as holistic health machines, and sleep clinics are increasingly common. This commodification is driven by societal pressures to sleep "correctly," leading to anxieties about not meeting sleep norms.

Media influence and sleep disorders. The media constantly spotlights sleep-related stories, creating norms and anxieties. Deviations from these norms are increasingly seen as disorders, leading to a proliferation of sleep-related diagnoses and treatments. This creates a cycle where the pressure to sleep correctly interferes with the ability to sleep.

Echoes of the Church. The modern health discourse around sleep mirrors the role of the Church, with biomedicine dictating how we should live and think. Just as the Church counted sins, we now count hours of sleep, creating a calculus of self-reproach and salvation. This constant quantification and redefinition of bodily thresholds reflect a desire to define the body using numbers, even if these numbers are frequently questioned or revised.

2. Sleep Science: Objectivity vs. Subjective Experience

Sleep has moved away from the individual’s experience to become an objectified, external object.

Shift from individual experience. Modern sleep science often disregards individual experiences, focusing instead on objective measurements. Sleep journals rarely quote patients, and experiences like insomnia are defined without considering personal descriptions. This shift transforms sleep into an artifact manipulated and dissected without introspection.

Clock time vs. subjective time. Sleep scientists often dismiss insomniacs' overestimation of wakefulness, failing to recognize the difference between clock time and subjective time. Measuring devices cannot record how long a person experiences wakefulness, where minutes can feel like hours. Labels like "sleep state misperception" are symptomatic of this impotence, highlighting the incommensurable meanings of "sleep" for insomniacs and scientists.

The importance of listening. Disciplines that prioritize listening over measuring, such as talking therapies, rarely present insomnia as the initial reason for consultation. This raises the question of whether there's a function in avoiding the topic, suggesting that we need the right pointers to speak about it. Listening to individual narratives can clarify the sources of each person's difficulty with sleep, offering a more nuanced understanding than normative views.

3. The Industrial Revolution Reshaped Sleep Patterns

Prescriptive notions of sleep became widespread during and after the Industrial Revolution, with the implementation of the factory day in the 1840s.

Quantifying sleep for productivity. The Industrial Revolution led to the quantification of sleep as an adjunct to work. Continuous and unbroken performance became the ideal, driven by the demands of factory schedules and production processes. Industries requiring 24-hour production needed workers who could function effectively, leading to the calculation of minimum necessary sleep time.

Corporate-funded research. Sleep research became increasingly funded by businesses and the military, aiming to maximize worker and soldier efficiency. Even the idea of a single unit of sleep is a relatively recent invention, dating back a couple of hundred years. This quantification of sleep was driven not by concern for well-being but by the demands of factory schedules and production processes.

The ideal of optimal performance. Even well-intentioned sleep research often posits "optimal performance" as a benchmark, treating humans as workers who must function as fruitfully as possible. The idea that underperformance could itself be a benchmark seems unthinkable, reflecting a market-driven vision where sleep is a tool for economic productivity. This neglects the human costs and pressures introduced by reward systems, turning sleep into another task to be monitored and optimized.

4. Time Perception and the Division of Labor

When today’s insomniac is told that they overestimate their time awake, are we not dealing with a form of this very division of time?

Two forms of time. The split between clock time and subjective time mirrors the division of labor introduced during the Industrial Revolution. There are two times here, one of which is dominant and "correct," and the other relegated to individual perception. This clash of discourses reflects the difference between the time of the slave and the time of the master.

Social and political divisions. The division of times has often symbolized social and political divisions. Uniform working hours and the monetization of time were accentuated by the spread of timekeeping devices and public clocks. The time of industry meant that the clocks changed, representing the loss of a whole way of experiencing time itself.

Circadian rhythms and the work-sleep cycle. Sleep science documents circadian rhythms, cycles regulated by internal body clocks, often dividing human life between "working" and "sleeping." This division mirrors what factory owners introduced, neglecting napping habits or variations in sleep patterns. The constant pressure to conform to the master's time can lead to a solitary time, important for those living to the schedules and urgencies of others.

5. Biphasic Sleep: A Lost Biological Rhythm?

Rather than one single consolidated block, humans had a first and then a second sleep.

The history of biphasic sleep. Historian Roger Ekirch argues that before the Industrial Revolution, human sleep was primarily biphasic, consisting of a first and second sleep separated by an hour or two of wakefulness. This period, known as "watching," involved activities like sex, needlework, or reflecting on dreams. By the mid-1800s, references to two sleeps were waning, and consolidated sleep became the norm.

Artificial lighting and social changes. Ekirch initially linked the shift to artificial lighting, which allowed shops and businesses to stay open later, creating a new culture of nighttime. He later added social and economic dimensions, including shifts in work understanding, the rise of shift work, and the concept of time management. These factors combined to create the move to consolidated sleep.

Experiments and controversy. Sleep researcher Thomas Wehr's experiments seemed to confirm Ekirch's thesis, showing that subjects isolated from artificial light often slept in two segments. However, other researchers have had ambiguous results, and the idea that isolating the body reveals its natural state is questionable. Sleep, like language, may be something we have to learn, shaped by social relations with others.

6. The Illusion of Switching Off in a Hyper-Connected World

In today’s marketplace, and indeed, in our personal lives, there is no longer any real state of rest, and pauses must be artificially generated – and paid for.

The unsleeping world. We inhabit an unsleeping world of commerce and information, yet are increasingly told to get the right amount of uninterrupted sleep. This contradiction creates opportunities for professionals to reprogram your sleep and pharmaceutical companies to sell you pills. Rather than recognizing the impossible reconciliation of imperatives, it becomes the very principle for marketization.

The pressure to pretend. Many people report that they can switch off from work demands after hours, but this indicates the pressure to pretend that everything is okay. In today's society, negativity is seen as a sign of pathology, and expressions of withdrawal or discontent are collapsed back into the situation itself. We are coerced into well-being-speak, constantly demonstrating positivity and enthusiasm.

The expansion of "looping." Erving Goffman's concept of "looping," where defensive responses are taken as the next target of attack, has expanded from prisons and asylums to all social spaces. We have to feign enthusiasm for mundane tasks and detested colleagues, accompanied by continuous self-evaluation. This pressure to perform and be evaluated extends into our sleep, as we lie in bed asking ourselves, "How have I done today?"

7. The Dangers of Normative Views on Sleep

Staying alive is today seen as a personal choice, a duty we must continually work at, so that existing is now just as much a task or product of our efficiency as work used to be.

Health as a moral imperative. Staying alive is increasingly seen as a personal choice, blurring the lines between health and illness and right and wrong. Avoiding illness and remaining alive take on a moral value, driven by the pressure to be as productive as possible and stay alive as long as possible. This creates a market-driven vision where sleep is a tool for productivity and health.

The privileged elite. Many sleep hygienists dispense advice that is only for a privileged elite, neglecting the realities of most of the world's population. Pressure on poor people to sleep like the rich will not necessarily improve their sleep, and reward systems for getting more sleep can introduce new pressures and anxieties. This market-driven vision of the future fails to factor in the human costs of not meeting sleep targets.

The human experience of clock change. Epidemiological data linking the hour shift in spring to increased car accidents may be due to increased anger, irritability, and frustration, not just fatigue. The human experience of clock change must be included in the equation, recognizing the effects of socio-economic burdens and internal pain. Human difficulties are redefined through the lens of unbroken sleep, neglecting the narrative of individual lives.

8. Memory, Trauma, and the Erasure of Complexity

Staying alive is today seen as a personal choice, a duty we must continually work at, so that existing is now just as much a task or product of our efficiency as work used to be.

The reduction of memory. Sleep research often reduces human memory to word retrieval, neglecting the richness and complexity of the phenomenon. This reductive model contrasts with the classical and Renaissance theories of memory, which made memory a kind of architectural space that we live inside. The focus on fact consolidation in sleep serves an evolutionary purpose, but it misses the point that people often repeat the same painful mistakes.

Trauma and the external event. Trauma is increasingly thought of as a purely external event affecting an autonomous subject, eclipsing notions like "identification with the aggressor" and "survivor guilt." This shift reinforces a strict dichotomy between victim and agent, with phenomena like nightmares and flashbacks taken as direct material replicas of what happened. There is no place here for the unconscious, for phantasy or for the compulsion to repeat.

The danger of memory deletion. Some sleep scientists advocate memory deletion, tapping into the segregative logic that underpins some of the most questionable human excesses. It is more important to refind one's place within memories, rewriting them and resituating them within a history. Memories are not like photos stored on a phone but are constantly in the process of being rewritten, reshaped, and recrafted.

9. Dreaming: Beyond Simple Recall and Retrieval

Rapid eye movement sleep – on which more later – helped man gain his ‘rapid evolutionary rise to power’ and constitute a ‘globally dominant social superclass’.

The scanning hypothesis. The initial excitement around REM sleep was linked to the idea that eye movements corresponded to the scanning of dream images. However, this hypothesis proved doubtful, as newborns and blind people have extensive REM periods. The violent and consistent twisting of eyeballs in some cases is also difficult to reconcile with any viewing experience that we might have in waking life.

Dream recall and NREM sleep. While REM sleep was initially associated with dream recall, NREM awakenings also produced dream reports, which were often dismissed as "mentation." However, many NREM dream reports did not conform to these criteria, and dream recall was found to be affected by the sex of the experimenter and financial incentives. This challenges the neat separation of REM and NREM sleep.

The dreamwork and unconscious themes. Dreaming is a process that continues throughout sleep, with a "dreamwork" that binds daytime experiences to unconscious themes and motifs. What we imagine to be a localized dream may just be some part of this much more extended sequence. This brings us back to the question of the relation between REM and NREM sleep, with REM potentially serving as a treatment or elaboration of what is being processed in NREM.

10. The Interplay of Language, Thought, and Sleep

As we let our thoughts wander, they may take disturbing directions, before being encrypted by the dreamwork.

The interpellative nature of language. We are continually at the receiving end of messages, questions, communications, and imperatives, requiring us to reply and respond. This interpellative function of language is what we find on the borders of sleep, as we are unable to turn off the function of being addressed. Bedtime stories are effective because we do not have to respond to them, allowing an escape from what would otherwise keep us awake.

Hypnagogic phenomena. If we are woken up suddenly while falling asleep, we may be left with vivid images or phrases that seem intensely significant. These hypnagogic phenomena are the last gatepost of the interpellative function, the transition point between being addressed and not being addressed. They are either a call to action or a release from the summoning function of speech.

The role of the unconscious. The unconscious is a reader, interpreting new material and absorbing it in pre-existing structures. Dreams are a treatment of a problem, creating different configurations and permutations of material around an impossible point. This could involve desire and also traces of traumatic experience, offering an interpretation of a relationship and how we relate to some significant Other.

11. Guilt, Debt, and the Impossibility of Perfect Sleep

Sleep is the most innocent creature and sleepless man the most guilty.

Sleep and a clear conscience. Literature has often linked rejections and disappointments in love to the arrest of sleep, but the motif of guilt is far more frequent. The association of sleep with innocence suggests that to sleep well, we need a clear conscience. This is linked to the Christian conception of sleep as purification, where sins had to be repented before sleep could be a reward for Christian behavior.

The burden of responsibility. The day residues that haunt us at night often revolve around what we have left undone, failed to finish, or left incomplete. These day residues act like magnets for the unconscious material, which revolves equally around what has not been done, what is left unfinished, what remains unresolved. Sins of omission and unfulfilled duties become magnified, perfect correlates for a guilt at impulses that we may ourselves have repudiated.

The myth of perfect sleep. The relatively recent invention of the neat block of eight hours' sleep does not sit well with the realities of human life. A gap opens up between what a norm tells us to do and our reality, creating economic opportunities for purveyors of sleep aids. The more that the healthy eight-hour block is insisted upon, the more that pathologies of sleep will be generated as deviations from this norm.

12. Waking Up: A Relational Act

We sleep, then, by identifying with a sleeper, as if copying what we imagine them to be doing is what actually allows us to become like them.

Waking up to someone or something. Waking up is fused from the very start of life to the question of who and what we wake up to. There is a massive difference between waking up to find mother there and waking up to no one. The low spirits and misery that many people experience when they wake up later in life may not just be the result of the expectation of another day of drudgery at the workplace, but to this feeling of someone not being there.

The face of the mother. Just as infants seek the face of the mother in feeding, so too do we seek it at moments of waking. The face in the mirror becomes a substitute for the maternal face, a way of re-establishing our sense of self. This relational aspect is crucial, as sleep is never truly solitary but always involves some index of others.

The lethal act of waking. In the film Passengers, the act of waking someone is equated with murder, highlighting the power dynamics inherent in the act of awakening. The decision to wake someone up is a decision to alter their destiny, to bring them into a world that may be filled with pain and suffering. This underscores the responsibility we have to each other, even in the seemingly simple act of waking.

Last updated: March 16, 2025