Verified by 
Now that the holiday season is here, it's important to try to keep things in balance psychologically. Sure, as fellow PT blogger Sophia Dembling notes, this festive time of year is an extravert's dream: constant socializing, parties, travel, etc. But even extraverts can get too much of a good thing. This is why, even for them, some quiet time, self-reflection, prayer or meditation can be helpful. And while introverts struggle with the season, it forcibly offers the (distasteful) opportunity to come out of their self-imposed shell and practice employing his or her "inferior function," namely extraversion. Whatever type you happen to tend toward (no one is 100% introverted or extraverted), the secret to surviving the holiday season intact--and maybe even coming out more whole than before--is balance. And the most basic balancing act takes place between the polar opposites of extraversion and introversion, action and inaction, doing and being, waking and sleeping.
Psychiatrist C.G. Jung defined introversion as a basic way of being-in-the-world which is the polar opposite to extraversion. Introversion involves the inward movement of libidinal or life energy and a valuation, preference for and focus on interior over exterior reality. Sleep is the primal form of introversion, a state in which we temporarily but regularly withdraw almost totally from the outer world and journey to the fathomless depths of the inner world. Indeed, temporary paralysis during REM sleep pretty much precludes us from physically interacting significantly with the external environment. (See my previous post on introversion and extraversion.) Living as we do in such an extraverted society, most of us suffer from a chronic insufficiency of sleep. Some studies indicate that people today are sleeping less than they did several decade ago, and that sleep deprivation is a possible risk factor for serious physical conditions including heart disease, atherosclerosis, obesity, insulin resistance, diabetes, and suppression of the immune system. In addition, sleep deprivation and resulting sleepiness play a part in traffic accidents and other dangerous mishaps involving human error.
Moreover, lack of sleep can lead to a transitory mental state known by the French term abaissement du niveau mental: a temporary reduction of consciousness, in which ego defenses are weakened, rendering us more susceptible to the unconscious and our personal complexes. Sleep deprivation induces this state, sometimes causing or exacerbating symptoms such as anxiety, depression, mania, paranoia, irritability, anger and rage. Hence the value, even for hardcore extraverts, of getting enough of the compensatory, restorative introversion sleep provides--especially during times of intense stress. While each person differs in the amount of sleep needed for replenishment, eight hours being about average, it is crucial to get sufficient amounts and adequate quality of sleep, and to do so on a regular schedule. Sleep heals the body, clears the mind, and restores the soul. Recent studies indicate that getting at least 7-8 hours of sleep nightly leads to losing excess pounds. In patients suffering from insomnia or hypersomnia--sometimes secondary symptoms of anxiety and depression-- regulating sleep pharmacologically or otherwise can be crucial to successful psychotherapy.
But the experience of abaissement du niveau mental is a double-edged sword: We may be more susceptible to our unconscious complexes and have a lowered threshold for frustration; but, at the same time, we are more closely connected with the unconscious and its potentially positive and rejuvenating energies. Dreams demonstrate this more open connection with the unconscious during sleep. And there is much to learn from our dreams--if we are willing to listen to what they might be trying to tell us. Of course, that would require taking what occurs during the almost totally introverted process of sleeping seriously. And this is something strongly extraverted types have trouble doing. Indeed, I suspect that if we were to diagnose the psychological type of scientists, psychologists and sleep researchers who insist that dreams are meaningless phenomena--nothing more than random neurological activity in the brain or mere reactions to physiological stimuli such as indigestion, heat or cold--we might well discover that these are largely extraverted types. (Here is a possible dissertation topic for psychology graduate students to consider.) Introverted types, on the other hand, would be much more likely to attribute meaning and importance to their dreams, since they comprise part of their inner life. Whether dreams always have meaning, as both Freud and Jung believed, is debatable: I find it just as possible that dreams sometimes (even usually) are psychologically meaningful, but at times possibly not. In existential psychotherapy, this technical approach to dreams, putting aside any presuppositions or preconceptions as to what, if anything, they might mean, is referred to as phenomenology. In any case, Jung's powerful premise in his book Psychological Types is that we tend to see and interpret the world and our experiences, both outward and inward, through the special lens of our own particular psychological typology.
Another potential and typically unconscious resistance to sleep and the dreams that visit us during sleep is twofold: fear of the unconscious or the unknown, and fear of death. When we are fearful of the unconscious and what it might contain, sleep will be avoided as much as possible. Sleep is like entering a different, foreign land frought with danger and discovery. Not everyone wants such unpredictable nightly adventures. Sleep also resembles death. Each night, we die to the outer world, and each morning we are miraculously reborn. It requires a voluntary relinquishing of control, a willing letting go of outer reality, and a complete surrender to unconsciousness. Individuals with excessive death anxiety dread sleep for this very reason. Like the famous "Energizer Bunny," they just try to keep going and going until sleep can no longer be avoided. But their unconscious death anxiety constantly pursues them like some demon, often manifesting during sleep in the form of frightening nightmares. What we run from during daylight always returns to haunt us in the shadowy darkness of night.
From the extraverted perspective, sleep and dreaming seems a total and utter waste of time. Why spend eight hours each day sleeping, wonders the extravert, when you could be doing chores, seeing people, making money, traveling, accomplishing goals, etc.? Given the choice, most extraverts probably would never sleep if that were humanly possible! But from the introverted point of view, sleep is a welcome and requisite retreat from the outer world. Sleep is a specified time for just being rather than doing. While there are no scientific studies on this subject of which I'm aware, I would venture to speculate that introverted types both like and need more sleep than extraverted types. (For any psychology graduate students or sleep researchers reading this, my hypothesis might make for an interesting thesis or dissertation.)
So, if a little extra sleep helps you to feel refreshed and reinvigorated, that may mean you tend more naturally toward introversion. Or you could just be a very tuckered out extravert whose psyche and body are trying to tell you something terribly important: Slow down, spend some time with yourself, draw the curtains to close out the world for a while, and surrender to the replenishing introversion of sleep. Whatever your psychological typology, sleep--when not used excessively to escape problems and avoid life--can be healing. In psychotherapy, for the extravert, learning to value sleep and the helpful power of dreams is a way of counterbalancing or compensating his or her one-sided extraverted development. An extra hour of sleep, a nap, or maybe some meditation--a form of conscious introversion--might be nourishing and therapeutic. For the introvert, sleep and dreaming is a welcome way of connecting to his or her true nature, and receiving the requisite energy, power and wisdom to be in the outer world more meaningfully, authentically and successfully. As you enjoy your holidays this year, don't forget to try to stay centered, balancing extraverted behavior with a little introverted time, and introverted time with a little extraverted behavior. You might just enjoy the season even more!
