It is reliably proven that sleep is essential in any species of animal life. In men, spontaneous sleep hours must exceed a minimum of 4 or 5 hours every 24 hours because otherwise symptoms of sleep deficit will appear (for example: stress), being the ideal for an adult to sleep 8 hours a day.
The human organism has an activity that is not constant throughout the day, calling this alternation of sleep and wakefulness compatible with life "circadian or nictameral rhythm". During waking hours there is a psychosomatic activation, while during sleep hours there is a deactivation that allows rest.
Sleep has a restorative capacity throughout the 5 phases it goes through, both of the energy reserves associated with muscle fatigue and those of mental fatigue.
In recent years, and in particular the inhabitant of urban conglomerates, it would seem to give more importance to the annual rest period, that is to say, to holidays, than to night rest. It is then worth asking if they respond to a biological or psychological need. And there is no doubt that vacations are psychosocial needs.
Let's take a look at the term "vacation." It derives from the Latin vacatio-tionis which means "suspension of business or work for some time. Duration of the cessation of work. Action of vacating a job or position."
Given their origin in the industrial societies of the 20th century, they constitute a socio-economic phenomenon. It has to do with vacations paid annually, "to vast nuclei of the working population and the tertiary sector", progress in means of transportation; the accelerated process of deterioration of living conditions in large cities (environmental pollution, noise, etc.); the hardening of working conditions; the increasing demand to increase consumer goods that force man to multiply his efforts in order to obtain more resources, etc..
Therefore, we have to think that vacations are a necessity created and imposed by society that has also generated the tourism industry around it..
Accepting as an unavoidable fact the almost equalization of this sociological "need" to take vacations with the other psychobiological ones such as sleeping, it will be necessary to resignify the importance of leisure time in the human being as the one that most resembles the game in the child. Just as the child elaborates his frustrations in the inexhaustible repetition of his games, the adult uses his free time to give free rein to his imagination, thus being able not only to elaborate the "annual" frustrations but also making creative that time to recover himself and himself. your most precious emotional ties.
It is in free time that human beings develop projects that have to do with the meaning they want to give to their life; he rests and dreams of the utopias that he will try to capture throughout the year in an effort to materialize his wishes ... And after they will return and "he will earn his bread with the sweat of his brow".
Iris pugliese
Lic. In Psychology
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