Volitional Regress and Egress

Abstract

Before putting this book to bed, a few final words. We have heretofore traced the contours of insomnia into a multitude of overlapping topographic maps. We have considered the disorder’s paradoxes of volition, its vicious-cyclic phenomenologies, and its relation to attention’s concentration and distraction in modern, technologized environments. Thus we have amended some commonplace current views about how modern stimulus bears upon our perceptual capacities and, consequently, upon our ability to sleep. Etiologies of insomnia reveal that our perceptions are not merely passive receptacles that can be easily overfilled with input, but rather are active principles that always involuntarily and occasionally voluntarily block out a good deal of the range of our environmental stimulation by necessity in order to concentrate on a narrower range.