By Rob Meadows
Of fellowship in all-disastrous flight;
‘I suffer mute and lonely, yet another
Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother
Travels the same wild paths through out of sight’
(The City of Dreadful Night; see Summers-Bremner 2008)
We are a nation of insomniacs. One in four people is dissatisfied with their sleep and one in 10 suffers from a sleep disorder (The Independent 2015)
Insomnia is an interesting thing. At the same time as being an ‘epidemic’, it is considered a very private/privatised form of suffering; we lay there waiting for sleep to come, staring at the clock in growing frustration and lamenting the morning sun for coming too early. This individualised view is dominant within popular media. As Williams et al (2008: 263-264) found in their analysis of newspaper reports:
Insomnia sufferers, moreover, underlining this particular reading of the problem, are often constructed through discourses, which while sympathetic to their plight, none the less emphasize personal responsibility. People with insomnia, as such, are often seen to be ‘their own worst enemies’ when it comes to their sleep, with ‘poor psychological habits’ and a tendency to ‘exaggerate’ their plight: a problem to themselves in other words. The nocturnal recordings of the sleep laboratory, as such, become the ultimate benchmark against which these sufferers’ testimonies are judged, though few sufferers of course ever make it to the sleep lab. People with insomnia, in short, are fully and painfully aware of their malaise, but this it seems is part of the problem.
I have been thinking more and more about how sociologists might consider and frame ‘insomnia’. A couple of answers come quickly to mind: (i) we might take a ‘social causation’ approach; arguing that lifestyle changes and social stressors trigger the insomnia. In doing so, we immediately embed insomnia in something more than the individual (mind); or (ii) we might walk the ‘social constructionist’ path; stressing that insomnia is a diagnostic category which varies across time and place. Indeed, DSM-V has recently shifted the diagnostic category yet again and we could argue that insomnia can only exist in cultures which have a particular view of ‘society’ and ‘individual’.
Neither of these explanations feels completely satisfactory to me. ‘Social causation’ ideas never really bother to state what they mean by the ‘social’ – which is a bit of a problem given that mainstream sociology has continued to question the idea of ‘society’ (Outhwaite 2006). Insomnia also cannot be said to be entirely caused or constructed by cultural arrangements. As Summers-Bremner (2008) notes: “Insomnia’s doubling of a crucial absence – the absence of unconsciousness, of sleep – indicates where society loses its purchase on the individual, because it doubles the place where the individual loses purchase on his – or herself”.
As a micro-theorist with a secret love for Durkheim, I have recently found myself drawn to Randall Collins’ (2004) concept of ‘interaction ritual chains’ and can’t help but think it may be useful in our understandings of insomnia. It is early days – but Collins’ micro sociology appears to rest on the idea that individuals are attracted towards some interactions and away from others on the basis of ‘emotional energy’. Put another way, some interactions give us good ‘emotional energy’ and others don’t. So what determines whether they are good or bad? For Collins it depends on such things as (i) group assembly; (ii) barriers to outsiders; (iii) a mutual focus of attention; (iv) a shared mood. My biography, as I sit here, is the sum total of the interactions I have encountered. Much more could be said here, but it might be useful to simply point towards a nice description of interaction ritual chains which can be found in Professor Goss’ paper [links to pdf].
Can we see sleep (and insomnia) as an ‘interaction ritual chain’? As Williams and Crossley (2008) have argued, sleep is a practice/ritual. After the night-time news, we might pour ourselves a glass of water, go upstairs and clean our teeth and then put on our pyjamas. If anything like my young son, once in bed you will kick your legs up and down until sleep finally comes. It is also a shared practice/ritual. This is most obvious when the sleeping environment is shared but also relates to the fact that we live at close quarters to others, and we might worry about other family members. For some the emotional energy of this interaction ritual chain is positive; for others less so. The interesting thing is, we can’t avoid sleep per se either way.
If seeing sleep as an ‘interaction ritual chain’ appears a step too far, perhaps we can use Collins’ ideas on individualism and inwardness. When we walk away from interactions we carry a residual of emotions and symbols. The important point here is that rather than focus on the insomniac’s cognition, we would examine the situations they are in, their degree of centrality in each interaction, the degree of ritual intensity and to what extent the individual is repeatedly in the same types of interaction rituals and the same position within them (cf. Collins 2004: 347). If nothing else, this would usefully bring power and status to the forefront of our thinking.
Or perhaps we complicate things further. Rather than use interaction ritual chains to explain insomnia, we use insomnia to explain different emotional energies within interactions. This then suggests a ‘feedback loop’; where it is all of these things at the same time. Consider the following, for example:
One of the mantras at the sleep centre is that insomniacs don’t have problems sleeping, they have problems living. My problems were beginning to mount up. My feet hurt when I walked, there was an ache in my back and I had a constant shivery feeling. At least when I was taking orders and serving food I had something to concentrate on – the rest of the time I felt a weird sense of alienation, like I was a visitor to the world. Normal life was something I was looking at, not taking part in. On Thursday I had a pathetic urge to ring a loved one and whinge at them, but I didn’t because of a fear that they wouldn’t know who I was. Very odd (The Guardian 2011)
I don’t have any answers yet but I think it is important that we keep problematizing current notions of insomnia. As noted above, insomnia is considered to be an individual problem with insomniacs positioned as their own worst enemy. Offering those with insomnia ‘self-help’ advice simply perpetuates this idea.
References
Collins, R. (2014). Interaction ritual chains. Princeton university press.
Outhwaite, W. (2008). The future of society. John Wiley & Sons.
Summers-Bremner, E. (2008). Insomnia: a cultural history. Reaktion books.
Williams, Simon J., and Nick Crossley. 2008. “Introduction: Sleeping Bodies.” Body &Society 14(No.4):1–13
Williams, S. J., Seale, C., Boden, S., Lowe, P., & Steinberg, D. L. (2008). Medicalization and beyond: the social construction of insomnia and snoring in the news. Health:, 12(2), 251-268.
*Thanks to Dr Andy King for help with title and for more general comments
Please note: Blog entries reflect the personal views of contributors and are not moderated or edited before publication. However, we may make subsequent amendments to correct errors or inaccuracies
