Friday, in "Without appointment", the psychoanalyst and sexologist Catherine Blanc answered the question of a listener, astonished that one of her friends cannot sleep without a blanket.

For our specialist, this requirement can be seen as a quest for safety during the loss of control that sleep can represent. 

Tell me how you sleep, and I'll tell you who you are.

If things are obviously not so simple, our behavior in bed, but also our relationship to sleep, can tell a lot about us, as recalled Friday in Without appointment the sexologist and psychoanalyst Catherine Blanc, who answered to the question of a listener from Europe 1, surprised that one of her friends could not sleep without a blanket.

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Naïma's question 

A friend told me that he can never sleep without a blanket, otherwise he doesn't feel safe.

Is this normal? 

Catherine Blanc's response 

When we fall asleep, we lose control of what is happening in our environment, and we fold up inside ourselves, in a bubble.

And it takes a lot of confidence to let what could happen outside, like the gaze of others on this body that has been abandoned in bed, and especially on everything that concerns our genitality.

Because beyond the example of the sheet and the blanket, there are people who go to sleep with underpants, panties, pajamas. 

Wanting to sleep covered or dressed, a sign of insecurity?

Yes, it can be a sign of insecurity.

But we have the right to have our insecurities, we all have them.

It is not pathological.

There is also the fact that we have this kind of return to the state of the maternal womb in which we were wrapped.

So we are looking for envelopment, which is the place of security. 

Sleeping is all the same going to flirt with the idea of ​​death.

There is therefore a need for security through an environment.

We protect ourselves, both from the outside which could attack us, and from the idea that we have of our own fantasies, since when we sleep, we dream.

We are afraid of our own urges, including sexual urges and aggressive urges.

So being protected is like putting a veil on this place of expression that our sexuality represents. 

Should we conclude that someone who sleeps naked does not have a feeling of insecurity? 

Let us not be fooled.

There are people who sleep naked, but on condition that there is someone next to them, who acts as protection.

In some couples, for example, once one of the two has gone on a trip, the one who slept naked no longer does so, because trust was given to his partner, who, by his very presence, is a framework of protection. .

There are not on the one hand those who make it through and on the other those who do not, the freed and the stuck.

There are also those who sleep peacefully and those who are always on watch.

And between those who are naked, but under surveillance, and those who are dressed but sleep peacefully, perhaps it is then necessary to choose pajamas and deep sleep, for a better quality of life.