Amalia [not her real name], a 30-year-old plastic artist, always sleeps with a Mickey Mouse that she describes as “quite ugly.” There was a time when the doll carried a battery on its back and its head would light up, but about 25 years ago the battery died and no one bothered to change it. Amalia's Mickey has survived everything: moves, trips and couples. “It is true that if I had to bring home a one-night stand, I hid it, because they wouldn't understand it and I didn't want to give explanations. He is not like broccoli from Ikea, which everyone has,” she explains.
In his case, the stuffed Mickey has a story full of drama. Her father bought it in a neighborhood stationery store when she was two years old and she spent three months hospitalized with very serious and atypical meningitis. The doctors even told her parents that she was likely to die. When they returned home, after several months of admission and some physical consequences – he lost hearing in one ear – Mickey was still there, already imbued with a kind of talismanic power that he has never lost. “I didn't even play with him, he only has that symbolic function. My mother always warns me that I should never lose it. It is also very important for her.”
Like Amalia, there are many adults who still sleep with dolls, for different reasons, not always so traceable. It is said that King Charles of England always sleeps with his teddy bear, named Mabel Anderson, who accompanied him during the hard years he spent at Gordonstoun boarding school. His son Prince Harry talked about it in his controversial memoir: “Teddy went everywhere with Pa. He was a disastrous object, with broken arms and parts hanging off, with holes patched here and there. “He looked like he must have looked when the bullies had taken him down at school.”
The monarch would share a habit with 35% of his subjects, according to a relative reliability survey carried out by the Travelodge hotel chain. In the United States, the only entity that has started to count this is not very rigorous either: the Build-a-bear store chain, where you make your own teddy bear, asked its customers in 2017 and 40% of adults answered that they continued sleeping with a doll.
Surely, the real number is not that high, but it is not small either. “I often meet them, especially young people around 25 years old, who keep dolls from their childhood and sleep with them,” confirms psychologist Núria Casanovas. “The first thing I do when they tell me is to find out if this is an adaptive or maladaptive behavior. If the adult cannot sleep even one night away from home without his stuffed animal, which is something that makes his daily life difficult and deregulates, then we would have to work on why he does it and what it brings him, but it is not problematic from the start. .
Dolls, the therapist also explains, can be defined as “transitional objects,” according to D.W. Winnicott, one of the fathers of evolutionary psychology. “In that sense – explains Casanovas – the doll, or the pillow or the piece of cloth is an element that provides comfort, because it takes the place of the child/mother bond. When we are with the mother it gives us a feeling of protection and security and when we begin to see that the mother does not belong to us, that she is not the same person as the baby, the object occupies this place. Surely, those who cling the most to their childhood dolls are people who need a greater sense of protection.
At Lizeth Cumares' house, transitional objects run in the family. She, who is 54 years old and owns a cafeteria in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has slept with a crib-sized pillow since she was a baby, although she has been replacing them. The current one is about 25 years old. Her 83-year-old mother still sleeps with her first baby pillow. “My aunts died sleeping with her pillows, my cousin also uses it and one of her children, who is 21 years old, also uses it.”
When he met his current girlfriend, his friends recommended that he hide her, as it would look strange. But now the couple also get their own crib-sized cushion, and cover them with some children's fabric covers that their mother-in-law makes them. “We change the cover, but the filling stays as it is. I am more manic and I use the little corners. I caress my ear so I can sleep, it comforts me. I always carry it with me. If I fly, in my carry-on bag, and sometimes I take it out to sleep on the plane.”
That is another common function, incorporating that doll or pillow into the sleep ritual, in the same way that other people need the bedroom door to be closed, have a pack of tissues under the pillow, put on white noise machines or a mask. to block the light. Jana Fernández, sleep advisor and author of the book Learn to Rest (Current Platform) frames it within the rituals that help the brain understand that there is a safe ground that encourages falling asleep.
“To go from wakefulness to sleep we need an environment that is as safe as possible, physically and emotionally,” he says. “When we are children, all those elements that create a safe environment for us, that remind us of our parents, are wonderful for sleeping. As an adult, it is not a pathology, but we would have to ask ourselves at what point it stops being a calming habit and when it becomes a conditioning factor, something that borders on mania a little."
Maniacs or not, a recent article in The Guardian listed hyper-specific behaviors its readers practice to fall asleep. Actress Julia Fox said that she sleeps with a hair dryer on. One reader explains that she installed an indoor fountain that runs for two hours from the time she goes to bed. At least two of the participants pose mathematical problems in their heads when they go to sleep – a sophisticated version of counting sheep – and another plays mental games with the alphabet, thinking of words related to an area that begin with A, then with B, etc.
In the same article, a sleep specialist, professor of clinical psychiatry at Stanford University, confirms that sleep in animals, including humans, is inherently a dangerous activity. “During sleep, you let your guard down, you give up control and anything can happen. To surrender to this vulnerable state, you have to feel comfortable and loved.” It makes perfect sense, then, to surround yourself with stuffed animals that, in addition to being soft and sensorially pleasant, are usually designed with anthropomorphic and friendly shapes, with large heads, soft hair, and soft bellies.
Understanding them as a company superior to any other object is related, believes psychologist Núria Casanovas, to the fear of loneliness. “In our society, we live very alone. Before, in a house that was not rich, there was only one room and everyone was together. Now from a very early age the child sleeps alone, and often without siblings. In this way, the dolls make him feel accompanied, the gregarious instinct is activated.”
She has worked as a psychologist specializing in childhood and family in both Spain and France and believes that dolls are more prevalent in the neighboring country. “It is rare to find a child who sleeps without her doudou. Families suffer a lot the day they are lost.” She would not incorporate it into the routine of someone who does not use it, neither child nor adult, but she has used dolls on occasions to unblock trauma. “I can provide them as a therapeutic element to investigate this child's world. What I do recommend are sensory objects that provide well-being. Buy a soft sweater, for example, and wear it in stressful situations, or use a handkerchief that you put in your pocket and can calm when touched.”
Art director Cito Ballesta, 45, found his own doll in a globally stressful situation. As a child he had slept with a stuffed animal, a care bear, until he was 14 years old. Then, on March 1, 2020, a friend gave her a bag that had a stuffed animal inside, a small dog. “Two weeks later the confinement began, I had just moved to an apartment to live alone and I started sleeping with him.” Later, he added some more stuffed animals to the collection, until he had about five, and he also put them in bed, but only the little dog, who still has no name, goes with him on all the trips. “He comes with me to my parents' house and on vacation.” And he has an enviable hotel photo album.
