SEX AND DREAMS

THE LANGUAGE OF DEEAMS

BY
DR.

WILLIAM STEKEL
(VIENNA)

Authorized translation by

JAMES
(For

S.

VAN TESLAAR,
to

M.D.

sale only

Members of the

Medical Profession)

3.

BOSTON

RICHARD

G.

BADGER

THE GORHAM PRESS

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY RICHARD G. BADGER

All Rights Reserved

Made
Press of
J.

in the United States of

America
S.

J. Little

&

Ives

Company, New York, U.

A.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
Language of Dreams, of which herewith portion presented to the English reading professional ranks, is intended as a guide to the interpretation of the Unconscious for those
Stekel's
is

Dr.

Wm.

the

first

who are concerned professionally with nervous disorders. The balance of the work will appear as soon as the demand for it will make itself felt. The interpretation of dreams has become an indispensable aid. Without the information it yields
regarding the operations of man's Unconscious, the rational management of nervous ills is well-nigh in-

The art of dream interpretation has of application and elsewhere Dr. Stekel himself has applied the revelations of dream analysis to other fields of scientific But the inquiry.
conceivable.

a wider

field

present work, The Language of Dreams, is devoted almost entirely to correlating the subjects* dreams with the neurotic character traits which confront
the psychotherapeutist, the general practitioner and the specialist alike, and which often baffle their best
efforts in the absence

of the kind of knowledge re-

vealed through this very art of dream interpretation. As one of the pioneers in this great work Dr. 5

Translator's Preface
is

Stekel, of course,

well versed in the theoretical im-

plications and in the theories which form the foundation of dream analysis. Nevertheless in his Lan-

guage of Dreams he has kept strictly to the practical task of showing "how the analysis is done." The principles of dream interpretation are not discussed They are revealed and outlined briefly abstractly.
in

connection

with

typical

illustrative
is

dreams.
practice.

Throughout the work the emphasis

upon

Abstract speculation is reduced to a minimum. Moreover, in preparing this volume, the author

must be made serviceable to who have had little or no premany practitioners vious training in this kind of work. The contents
appreciated that
it

are carefully graded, the interpretations proceeding from the simpler dream elements to the more complex,

and from the

superficial to the deeper layers

the same time the author himof symbolization. self warns us that the whole art of dream analysis
is

At

but a recent

scientific

procedure.

tails

remain to be worked out.

Numerous deThe accepted gener-

alizations, he points out, should be regarded in the

of working hypotheses rather than as final principles, and the consulting psychologist should
light
test

them out for himself.

interpretation of dreams is far from being There as easy a task as appears at first glance. are numerous pitfalls for the unwary. Dream analysis is

The

a task that

calls for

unusual candor and pa-

Translator's Preface
tience.

do the work successfully presupposes an immense amount of general knowledge and a broad It is an art that involves cultural background.

To

Above all, one qualifications of the highest order. must be willing to go through a rigorous mental discipline in order to approach the task of dream interpretation without any preconceived bias and without the handicap of subtle emotional resistances.

But after one has schooled himself to the task the

results are

most gratifying. Properly carried out the analysis of dreams reveals depths of the human It fortifies our professoul hitherto unsuspected. with sional endeavours knowledge of the highest orthe latest scientific methods thus inour creasing professional efficiency and enlarging our capacity for serving our fellow-men is a grati-

der.

To adopt

fying achievement.
tation, so skilfully presented

The psychology and technique of dream interpreby Dr. Stekel in the

work of which the present volume is the first portion, constitutes a most important method for getting at
the vital facts underlying our mental functions during health and disease.

time has come for the English reading professional ranks to profit by Dr. StekePs expert application of psychoanalytic principles. Those who desire to penetrate the riddle of dreams as a means

The

towards increasing their knowledge of human nature as it portrays itself reflected in nervous ills should

8
find the present

Translator's Preface

work an invaluable

aid.

The prepa-

ration of the English version has been undertaken with that end in view.

VAN TESLAAB
August 10, 1922,
Brookline, Mass.

CONTENTS
CHAPTBR
PAQB

-^

The meaning of symbolism What is a symbol? The dream about the slain woman Lovesick humanity Dream of the jealous father and myth

Dream
15

II

The

analysis of a simple dream The dream about the telephone The ballad of the poor eagle What Mrs. A. thinks of the act of telephoning

55

Ill

Superficial aspects of

moon and

the earth

dream interpretation The The "Rathaus" dream

life

Representation of unbridled

73

IV Symbolism of

Mother Earth

the sinking tree Representation of The fear of self

93

Dream

masks Pursuit dreams The political dream about Bismarck The wonderful villa The dream about the baker Contrary meaning of aboriginal words The psychology of the Don Juan type Savings bankbook and love Evil thoughts of childhood The skillful fencer The
dark man, a symbol for death
107

VI Dream

masks, Cont. Transposition from below, upwards, and from the front, backwards Scorn under the mask of gentility A dream which must be interpreted in reverse sense The second symbolic equation The symbolization of scornful love

Why
dream

the child calls "Papa!"

bio-

graphic

139

10
CHAPTER

Contents
PAGE

VII

Dream

masks

brave servant

fusion Displacement and Criminal (asocial) instincts

The
.
.

161

VIII

The splitting of personality in the dream The dream of a judge: villa and prison The museum dream
Transformations and bisexuality
five fingers

175

^A

IX

An

old

dream

in a

The meaning of new light Bi-

sexual symbols

All dreams are bisexual

How
. .

the dreamer seeks the male in the

woman

187

Symbolism of

left and right in dreams as substitute for incest The father

The cousin must leave

diplo-

Symbolism of the spiral matic behavior

Dream about

213

XI The dreams
sweets

of

doubter

The dream about

stolen books

The dream about The sec237

ond version

XII

The symbolism of life and death in the dream The long sharp sword in the dream Masturbation represented by pocket The matricide idea
Blood for spermatic
fluid

251

XIII

Speech in dreams The symbolism of conversation Color symbolism of Mr. S

Representation of the emotions in the dream The dream of "getting ready" A clergyman's dream The root of foot fetichism Triumph over the
father

271

XIV

Dream

Infantile roots of the fear of contact

thoughts and compulsive images Why the

281

dreamer "wonders"
Index of Subjects

315 318
319

Index of Names
Index of Symbols

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Every mental activity is dominated by the law of "bipolarity" to every instinct there corresponds a counter-instinct; to every virtue, a vice; to every manifestation of strength, some weakness. One can
:

never understand the nature of

fails to

man so long as one take into consideration this fact.

work treats of the secrets of the human soul. It would be unfair to appraise humanity on the basis of the results of these investigations. For this work deals specifically with the evil in human naBut we must not forture, and only with the evil.

My

get that there

is

also another side.

Perhaps

I can

make myself

clear best through

stranger comes into some town unfamiliar to him; he looks over very thoroughly and with great enthusiasm its monuments of art ; he

an example:

is

charmed by' the beautiful sights which culture has provided. He then departs believing he has become Another thoroughly acquainted with the town.
traveller

after having gone says to himself, through the program suggested by the usual traveller's guide : Now I want to look into the reverse side
11

12
of the
life

Author's Preface
of this place!

He knows

that the pom-

pous formal life has its seamy side, and he discovers once more that only he is able truly to appraise the light side of the picture who has familiarized himself also

with

its

shadows.

My

tions of the

investigations are concerned with the foundahuman soul. They are not intended for

inexperienced lay persons whose minds may be confused rather than enlightened by these investigations.

Physicians, jurists, mental hygienists, edu-

psychologists will undoubtedly find herein a certain amount of inspiration and their

cators

and

high time that we devote greater attention to the facts of our dream life. This field opens to us the opportunity

mental horizon

will

be enlarged.

It

is

of acquiring insight into the very depths of the human soul and thus enables us, for the first time,
to penetrate the true character of human nature. In the conception of this book, the result of many

years of diligent labour, I have been guided pri-

marily by practical requirements.

The

theoretical

aspects and the past literature concerning dreams have been covered so well by Freud that I must refer all those interested to that author's

fundamental

and highly instructive work. My work should not be merely read,

tested out.
is

it

must be

I welcome every criticism so long as it not dictated by blind prejudice, for the person

Author's Preface

13

unfamiliar with the problem of dream interpretation will be inclined to look upon some of the state-

ments in the book as somewhat forced and perhaps

artificial.

experience, when I first began to devote myself to the subject of dreams. Conviction cannot arise through reading alone; it fol-

This was

my own

lows

only after personally testing out the prin-

ciples.

I may point out, additionally, one fact the interpretation of dreams is a science in the process of formation. Everything about it is in a state of flux,
:

everything This book

at this

is
is

in the process of

but a rung in

becoming formulated. the ladder. Who can

time measure the majestic heights evento be attained by the structure to which the tually present work is but a stepping stone?

STEKEL.

THE

MEANING OF THE SYMBOLISM WHAT IS A SYMBOL? THE DREAM ABOUT THE SLAIN WOMAN LOVESICK HUMANITY DREAM OF THE JEALOUS FATHER DREAM AND MYTH

Wahrlich, wdren die Menschen sinniger, die feinen Winken der Natur zu beobachten und zu deuten,
dieses

Traumleben miisste

sie

aufmerksam machen.

Sie milssten finden, dass von dem grossen Rdtsel, nach dessen Losung sie dilrsten, die Natur uns hier
scJion die erste Sible eingefltistert hat.

{Truly
interpret

',

if

men were more

delicate

sensitive to observe
hints,

nature's

roused by their dream life. here nature has already disclosed the first hint of the great riddle which man is so thirsty to solve.]

and be would they that would They -find

Kurnburger

SEX AND DREAMS

dream interpretation is a most anSome of the oldest documents relate to dream interpretations. The dream was considered
art of
cient one.

The

an intermediary between the higher forces of nature and mankind. Usually it was the voice of divinity
that was speaking through the medium of dreams.

But demons and

coming
life.

evil

into contact with

powers, too, were capable of man through the dream

That was a period which we, belonging to a sophisticated age, can hardly visualize. "The lights

and shadows and the coloring, at any rate, have changed," says Nietzsche. "We no longer understand precisely how ancient mankind felt about the most ordinary and common facts of life about daylight and about waking up; for instance: because
the ancients believed in dreams, their waking life had another coloring." Contrary to the learned men, the simple folk have never looked upon dreams as "foam." Within their
soul there persisted a belief in the reality of this
15

16
psychic

Sex and Dreams

experience.

But the

belief

rested

stub-

bornly on what might be termed the "historic" background: the people wanted to interpret the
future through the dream. The dream was looked upon as the infallible prophet. Whoever could interpret dreams possessed the gift to solve the riddle of the future. derivation of this belief is the

application of the dream to mercenary ends.

transposition of the
diligently
role

The

dream pictures into figures is practiced to this day and plays a great

among
it

gard

the people. 1 The "cultured" classes reas their duty superiorily to smile at such

practices.
ingless

They look upon

the

dream

as a

mean-

sciousness.

play of the phantasy uncontrolled by conEven so, ordinary reflection should have

suggested the thought that here was raw material of great psychic value, though in a distorted form.

We

ought to see what we can make out of it. Here and there an investigator occasionally tried to penetrate the riddle of dreams.

But these promising

2

beginnings only led to far-fetched theories.

1

1 want to take this opportunity to state that I have not disdained to look over the various Egyptian and Persian dream I wanted to find out whether our knowledge derived books. through the modern analysis of dreams is in any way corroborated in the old writings. That is but rarely the case. The dream books, so-called, which circulate among the people, impress me as being deliberate artefacts. The transposition of dream pictures into numbers is clearly traceable to the lottery which is only a few centuries old. game * The extensive literature on dreams has been adequately considered by Freud to whose work the interested reader is

referred.

Meanmg
Anatole France
is

of Dreams

17
states
:

justified

when he

"I

am

firmly convinced that the

than that of reality."

power of dreams is greater The dream is the bridge be-

tween the real and the supersensory world. The ancient peoples knew this better than we. They be-

dreams and through the dream they felt themselves nearer their divinity. Divinity is the projection of our ideal into inlieved in
finity.

What we demand
command.

to us as God's

of our ideal self appears All appearances of self

are continually referred to an ideal that stands supreme. Hence the first conception about the origins
of dreams,
the gods.

that the dream

The

divine voice

annunciates and praises dream interpreter of former ages claimed the gift of understanding that secret language and to be able
thereby to foretell the future. But not only is the ideal self projected into inThe evil self is also refracted outwardly and finity.
it reflects

is a gift sent down by commands and warns, it through the dream. The

back as temptation or as the influence of

demonic powers.
dle ages

The

naive conception of the mid-

was that the dream represents a struggle between heaven and hell, a contest between God and Satan. That combat has always fascinated man's From Job and Jesus down to Faust and fancy. what a wealth of poetic creations! Parsifal,
It
is

the eternal warfare between instinct and re-

pression, between

man,

in his

primordial character,

18

Sex and Dreams

tinsel of culture,

and himself, under the

which breaks

forth in this wonderful symbolic picture.

Our

cul-

ture requires the continual repression of our cravThe higher man ascends upon the cultural ings.
scale the stricter

are the laws which impose the

ethical strictures of the society in which he finds

himself.

Culture means smooth-working inhibition.

the social freedom,
i.e.,

The greater

the stronger the

social rights of the individual, the smaller becomes the span of his individual freedom; the stricter also

the limitations which the individual must impose upon himself for the benefit of all. Social progress
is

based on the annihilation of individualism.

represents an indulgence in fancies without the intervention of consciousness or under a

limited control
lucination.
tions.

The dream

by the

latter.
is

The dream

is

a hal-

Consciousness

the bearer of inhibi-

The

ethical self first assumes control of conit

sciousness

and then
of

attempts to penetrate into

the depths

the unconscious.

Hence the

cleft

which arises between the pictures of the waking self and the hallucinations of the dream. Conscience is
the

sum

character.
it

of all inhibitions of a religious and ethical The term conscience in itself shows that
evil.

pertains to a knowledge of good and

The

primitive man has so such knowledge. He is familiar only with the promptings of his cravings; with unpleasure, which arises out of the non-fulfillment of

wishes and with the pleasure which accompanies and

The Wish-Fulfilment Theory

19

follows their gratification. The primordial man in us lives again in the dream. But the tremendous gap which exists between the
requisites of
self leads

our cultural and those of our elemental

The

cultural self

eventually to a strange state of affairs. knows not, or assumes not to know,

It fails to recognize the lanthe primordial self. and of the dream thus carries out more comguage
pletely its attitude of "innocent" ignorance.

For

that reason, too, the dream portrays

secret symbolic language.
Its

its images in a language is the Ianguage of the primordial man. For man's aborigi-

nal

ancestor

form.

The

writings.

expressed himself in symbolic earliest written documents are symbolic sword signifies fight, a tree nature,
also

lightning divinity, etc. The art of dream interpret tation consists of transposing this symbolic lan-

guage into everyday terms.

pass conception according to which the dream was merely a senseless play of mental eleover the
old

What

is

the function of the dream?

We

ments

we disregard

likewise the ancient hypotheses

which were based on the premise of an intervention of evil powers. We turn directly to the theory of
Freud, who regards the dream as a wish fulfillment.

"Our

relations to the world," states

latest writing

on dreams, 1

"is

Freud in his from the outset such

*Vorlesungen

iiber

Psychoanalyse (Wien, 1920).

20

Sex and Dreams

that we cannot endure it without a break. Therefore we withdraw from time to time into the primthat state which is characteristic of ordial state, our intra-uterine existence. At least we create for ourselves an environment very close to it: warmth, darkness, and absence of stimuli. Some of us curl up and actually assume during sleep a position very close to that which is characteristic of the infant when resting within the mother-body. It looks as if the world does not possess us wholly as adults, it can lay claim only to two thirds of us: for one third of our existence we are as if we were yet unborn. Every rising in the morning is thus like a new
birth."

Hebbel has expressed

fittingly

the

same thought more

the dubious

without

recourse to

notion

sinking back into the intra-uterine state: I have ex"Sleep is a sinking into one's self." pressed the same idea in my monograph, The Will to
of

Sleep, as follows: "Sleep

past, forgetting one's present,

means reexperiencing and pre-feeling

one's one's

future."

This one example from Freud's latest work is enough to show the one-sided character of his conception of dreams. The dream is and remains for him a wish fulfillment. Into this procrustean bed
of wish he wedges in every dream.
lects altogether the telepathic

Thus he negdoes not beaside also

dreams which do not

happen to

fit

in with his theory.

He

lieve in telepathic

dreams.

But he brushes

The Wish^FulfUment Theory

all

21

other dreams, which we must recognize as denoting warning or anxiety as well as the dreams which

we may

call "instructive."

Anxiety

is

always for him

the sign of a repressed wish. But knowing that the dream portrays the eternal warfare between craving

and

inhibition,
his

under

the struggle of man with himself dual aspect as the heir of primordial in-

stincts and as the representative of culture, we must look upon the dream as a picture of both sides of the combat, a dramatization in which the cravings as well as the inhibitions find pictorial representa-

which even foreign thoughts may crop tion, out through telepathic means. If one sees only they cravings, one may be easily led to the erroneous conin

and

ception which I myself have held for a time, that the dream is merely a wish fulfillment. For back of

every wish there always stands some craving: the sexual instinct, the nutritional instinct, the craving
for power, for self-aggrandizement, etc. But if we investigate the inhibitions we find back of them also
the influences of culture: warnings, preparation for

the future, foreshawdoings, restrictions of every kind.

religiosity

and moral

Perhaps
trast
it

conception will be more clear if I conwith Freud's in connection with a concrete

my

illustration.

relates a peculiar
tion.

In the work mentioned above Freud dream and adds his interpreta-

He

states:

22

Sex and Dreams

"One of my patients had lost her father during the treatment. Since then she takes every opporIn one tunity to find him again in her dreams. of her dreams the father appears in a certain and says: 'It is a quarter past connection . eleven, half past eleven, it is a quarter of twelve.' Towards the solution of this strange dream feature the patient recalls merely that the father always wanted to see the children gather for their meals on That undoubtedly had something to do with time. the dream element in question but this association On account of ceryields no light on its meaning. tain considerations which arose in the course of the treatment the suspicion seemed justified at the time that a carefully repressed, critical revulsion against the beloved and honored father had its share in this dream. Continuing further her associations, apparently in a direction remote from the dream proper, the subject relates that she had listened the day before to a lengthy psychologic discussion when a relative said 'The primordial man lives in each of now think we understand her. That gave us !' her an excellent chance to conjure into life once more her deceased father. She made him in the dream the primordial man, by having him call out the quarter hours for the noon meal. (Urmensch. .
:

We

Uhrmensch, a play on words!)"

Any one finding this play of words between Uhrmensch, clock man, and Urmensch, primordial man, rather forced, will be informed by the genial master
that the dream
is

dreamer wishes to

capable of punning and wit. The see her father, and the obliging

The Wish-Fulfilment Theory

23

dream fulfills her wish. Therefore, a typical clear wish fulfillment, according to Freud. I would have conceived this dream as a warning. The death of
her father had strongly influenced the patient and caused her thoughts to shift from worldly to super-

mundane themes.
of
life

She

is

interested in the question

life
is

after death.

This earthly

must be but a
as
if

preparation for the life eternal. It cried out to her: "Life is short!
well!

the father

Use your days

(the ghost hour).

Soon twelve
flight of

bells will strike

Soon your day

will

be over!"

is very ingeniously indicated "a quarter past admonition: by progressive eleven, half past eleven, a quarter of twelve." Since the neurosis expresses the struggle between craving

The

time

the

and repression under the form of an ailment, we may A power draws appreciate the patient's trouble. her towards indulgence and enjoyment and another pulls her in the direction of renunciation and selffather appears as the representative of authority (also of the divine) and admonishes her: "Renounce all earthly joys and prepare thycontrol.

The

for God's judgment, for the life eternal. The day of judgment is near." But is this dream a wish fulfillment? If the
self

father appeared in response to her wish, conjured up (hallucinatorily) by her yearning to see him
again, would he have

found no other words, no

kindlier attitude, with which to

approach

his child?

24
I see in this

Sex and Dreams

dream merely the power of

conscience.

I sense the torturing anxiety, I note the racking regret over a life misspent or lost, I hear an anguish-

ing outcry which fills me with compassion. This dream is a warning and it foreshadows at the same time the subject's future. She will continue
to wander on the path of asceticism and self-denial.

Letters of flame proclaim in the subject's dream the approach of that end which overtakes every one.

And,
It
is

what about the character

of the

dream?

wish or a warning, according to the power The (craving or inhibition) which pervades it.

dream seeks solutions for unsolvable problems. It is an apposition of past and present and a foreshadowing of the future. Its realm is inexhaustible and it is not to be encased within the narrow limits
of a formula.
as the riddle of

The dream

is

in fact as inexhaustible

yet as transparent as man, not start out with any precondoes one provided Are the thoughts of a person in ceived notions.

man and

the waking state reducible to a single formula? Do we think merely in terms of wish fulfillment? This question is rendered superfluous when we take into
consideration the factor of conscience alone.

The

dream

is

the stream of our mental

life as it flows

out of the unexplored depths through the filter of conscience and up to the level of awareness.

Every

falling asleep
is

is

waking up

a rebirth.

a dying for the day. Every The thought of death re-

Death
veals
itself

in

Dreams
in

25
the

in

curious

pictures

dreams.

Though we forget the fact of death during the day, and though the bustle of daily existence may stifle the voice of conscience, the dream brings back to our mind the eternal "memento mori !" Each one of
us hears the admonishing voice: "It is a quarter of twelve!" And we hear it in the midst of our en-

tangling wishes, we hear the swan song in the midst of all the frivolous cravings. And thus we
die

many

times,

the last accounting,

critically,

and we pass again and again through thus we look over our past appraisingly, amidst fears and regrets.

Every night provides a cleansing purgatory for our world of thoughts. Within ius Bes heaven and within us earth, judge and defendant alike. It is if the ideal as which we have shifted to infinity at night finds the path back to us again, as if we are trying every night to overcome once more the demons which incite us from one indulgence to another and which fill our childish heart with envy and with feelings of revenge, with treacherous selfseeking and forbidden cravings. And every dream
dramatizes

dream

is

of itself

plastically this bitter combat, every a proof that humanity strives to grow out and up towards unsuspected heights. In
1

Grillparzer's

wonderful drama,

Traum

ein Leben,

1 Vid. Analysis of this drama in my: Poetry and Neurosis, Contributions to the Psychology of the Artist and of Creative Activity. English version by Dr. James S. Van Teslaar.

26

Sex and Dreams

we find a wonderful expression of this function of the dream as a warning, as a picture of the struggle The artist has between craving and inhibition.
furnished us in this poetic derstanding of dreams.

drama

the key to the un-

But we must be grateful to Freud for having

shown us the path leading into the realm of dreams and for having been the first to penetrate with the pioneer's keen eye the veil which has kept the dream a secret. To-day the interpretation of dreams has become an indispensable aid in the practice of psyone intending to be helpful as a psychotherapeutist must familiarize himself with
chotherapy.

Any

the art of dream interpretation. It is not an easy art to acquire.

cial training

It requires speIt in-

and a great deal of patience.

volves careful testing for one's self of the results thus far gained until one acquires the requisite

knowledge and conviction through personal observation

and experience.
schooling for the interpretation of

The proper

dreams involves an appropriate new conception of language, the keen tracing of double meanings and
familiarity with symbolisms and with the processes of dream distortion.

symbolism in human life is not yet "All art is symbolism," appreciated. states Feuchtersleben. "The most important task of
role of
sufficiently

The

my

career," states Hebbel, speaking as

an

artist,

Symbolism

27

"I regard the symbolization of my inner life." Symbolism pervades all our existence. Language, customs, beliefs and thoughts are more or less cryptic

symbolisms.

Without knowledge of symbolism the interpretation of dreams is an impossible task. The proper training for dream interpretation
consists of learning to read aright its language, of tracing the double meanings and of becoming famil-

iar with the

distortion.

symbolisms and processes of dream

The
still

significance of symbolism in

human

life
is

is

but insufficiently recognized.

"All art

but

symbolism," states Feuchtersleben. "The most important task of my life" declares Hebbel, "I re-

gard the symbolization of my inner life." Symbolism pervades all our life. Language, customs, peculiariall are more or less hidden symbolties, thought,
belongs the credit of having shown up the tremendous significance of symbolism, through his various works, particularly, his
isms.

To Rudolf Klempaul

Sprache ohne Worte (Language without Words) and his more elaborate work entitled, Das Leben der

Sprache (Leipzig,

Wm.

Friedrich, 1888).

What
8

is truly a symbol? Riklin states 3

:

(Wienu.

Schrift en zur angewandten Seelenkunde, II Franz Deutike Leipzig, 1909).

28

Sex and Dreams

symbol
is

a sign, an abbreviation for someWhen I look over a railroad time table and find a 'postal sign* in the form of the familiar horn mark, against the name of a station, it enables me to know that the station has postal connections with places not on that line. "But the symbol stands for more than that. Why does not some other sign stand for postal connections in the railroad time guide? The postal horn is something that originally belonged to the postal service. Although no longer an essential part of that service it was formerly one of its most conthing more
elaborate.

"A

spicuous signs, impressive both to the eye and to the ear. Thus we find here two additional features which belong to the symbol. The sign chosen for a symbol stands in associative inner, as well as outer, relationship to the thing it signifies and is

meaningful.

It is particularly fitting as a symbol of its history and development in connection with the thing it signifies, although its im-

on account

is not without its flucthe present time we no longer have the long-distance drivers lustily blowing their horn. But the horn persists as a sign in the railroad time guides, in military service denoting the field postal station, and in various other connections. "Usually the concept symbol embodies also something mystical (or mysterious). Symbols are

portance in that connection

tuations.

At

frequently used as signs of recognition among members of secret organizations, as for instance, the signs among the Freemasons. The 'mysterious' feature consists of the fact that only the initiated is That was familiar with the meaning of the sign. the case, for instance, with the Runic Characters,

Symbolism

29

which only certain persons could read; that, too, is their power of impressing the human sensitive mind. Developmental

what lends churchly ceremonials

history and the changes in meaning incidental thereto are enough to obscure the true meaning of the symbol to all but the initiated. "Because the symbol is only a sign, only a part of the original thing which it stands for, in the course of its developmental history it may gradually assume varied significance and stand for a number of things: the postal horn may be variously taken, in a psychologic sense, and may mean any one of a number of things according to the locality, or cirit may mean 'junction* when placed the station name in a railroad time guide, against or 'postal connection* when found in a circular. In a distant mountain village it means one thing, on a uniform sleeve it stands for something else. "This indication of possible meanings shows that the sign or symbol stands for a summation or fusion of all the possible associations. It is characteristic of the dream symbol, for instance, that it takes in thousands of association paths. This leads to of the symand the sense* 'shadowy many-sidedness bol lends itself, for that reason, to a number of

cumstances:

plausible interpretations.

Any one who

is

not ex-

perienced and does not know the symbol in all its possible applications, may interpret it falsely or only in a sense with which he happens to be familiar. The Bible, for instance, has the advantage and disadvantage at the same time, of containing

numerous symbols which may be interpreted in any one of various ways." (Wunscherfiillung und Symbolik im Mdrchen.)

30

Sex cmd Dreams

Without a knowledge of symbolism the interpretation of dreams

is

impossible.

The great

fault of

modern dream interpreters was precisely the fact that they knew nothing about symbolism. The anwere further advanced in that respect. How impressive is the symbolism of dreams set forth in
cients

the Bible

And how

completely rounded out appears

entitled

the symbolism of Artemidoros of Daldis, whose book The Symbolism of Dreams is worthy of

the modern psychoanalyst's attention. 4 Before beginning to describe the art of dream

interpretation proper let

briefly to the Bible

us turn

our attention

dreams and to the Greek art of I know no more fitting examples interpretation. for introducing the subject of dream symbolism. The best known is the dream interpretation of
Joseph, found in the
first

book of Moses.

Joseph

high position entirely to his extraordinary ability to interpret properly his master's dreams. The first dream which he told his brothers, was
his
:

owed

on the field and my sheaf stood (1) and upright; your sheafs bowed before my sheaf. The brothers at once interpreted the dream to
tied sheafs

We

mean that Joseph

"Shalt thou will surpass them: be our king and rule over us?" Even we children of this age could not interpret the dream otherwise.
4 There is an excellent German translation of this work by Friedr. 8. Krauss (Hartleben, Vienna, 1881). Unfortunately, the most significant portion, The Symbolism of the Sexual Processes, has been omitted.

Symbolism

31

Only we are able to conclude from it that it is the dream of an ambitious person. And since ambition carries one far, especially when one is endowed with the necessary wisdom and with indefatigable energy, we are justified to surmise favorable augury regarding the future of any one whose youth
is filled

with such dreams. 5

also denotes sim-

The second of Joseph's dreams

ilar ambition:

stars

(%) I thought the sun and the bowed before me.

moon and

the eleven

This dream led to his supposed perdition and was the beginning of his miraculous good luck. Equally remarkable are Joseph's further interpretations of dreams
:

(3) The seven ugly starved cows, which eat up

the seven fat cows

he genially interpreted as seven years of famine which were to follow seven years of abundance.

These interpretations exhibit a remarkable grasp of dream symbolism. The art of dream interpretation was similarly

among the Greeks, and I quote two exfrom Artemidoros (loc. cit., p. 236) amples (4) Some one dreamed of being tied with a chain
developed
:

8 In modern dreams "ambition" is symbolized by modern means: the ambitious person flies high above the heads of all others in a balloon, aeroplane, or according to the good old fashion, as an angel. Sometimes the flight through air is carried on without wings, merely by swaying the limbs or the

body.

32

Sex cmd Dreams

He became a priest of to the post of Poseidon. Poseidon ; for in that position he covld not get away
from the holy
place.

This glimpse into the future is as clever as the next prophecy of Artemidoros which I shall presently relate.
first

wish

it,

one becomes a priest who did not unless he were coerced. .

.

No

The second dream from

the work of Artemidoros

shows a symbolism to which we will have occasion In that dream picture the frequently to revert. sexual is represented as flesh: the sensuous in man, through the flesh of an animal.

Some one dreamed of seduc'mg and sacrificing own his wife, of bartering with and offering her flesh for sale, and that he earned a great sum thereby.
(5)

Thereupon he dreamed that he was very joyful over and he attempted to hide the money he had gained, on account of the jealousy of those around. "That man eventually sold his own wife and made money out of the shameful deed. That source of income proved very profitable but he found it necesit

sary to keep the matter from any one's knowledge." In the case of that man, too, wish was father to
the thought,
first

and that, long before the deed. He dreamed what he lacked the courage of carrying out. As he could look upon the dream as an order from the Gods, that dream led to a course of
action which he might have adopted even in the absence of the dream. Possibly only in a short time.

Impatience

33

T% The dream
rl

is

a dream of impatience.
sell

can hardly wait to

gain.

his wife

The dreamer and acquire the

From

the art of dream interpretation of the East

one might also draw some excellent examples. I limit myself to one account of a jest of Buadem (lit-

man"), a name which, according to Dr. Mullendorf, is only a pseudonym devised by Mehemed
erally "that

Tewfik, the publisher, for the well

known

Jester-

This Turkish Eulenspiegel is Poet, Nassr-ed-dm. supposed to have "flourished" during the fourteenth
century.
quite five or six years of age, the when he related following dream to his father: (6) "Father, last night I have seen fancy cakes

Buadem was not

good meaning. (Jokingly:) "Give me ten paras (the smallest monetary unit current m Constantinople) and I will interpret the dream for you." "If I had ten paras, I would not be dreaming of
cakes."
6

my "My

dream."
son, that has a
99

Let us now take a long jump all the way into the sixteenth century and turn our attention to a dream of the famous physician, philosopher and mathematician, Cardanus, author of a book, De
Somniis, and whose faith in the prophetic truth of
6

Die Schwanke des Nas*r-ed-din und Buadem. Reklam Bib-

liothek, 2736.

34
his

Sex and Dreams

dreams was so unshakable that he chose
his wife,

the daughter of a highway robber, after a resemblance with a face he had seen in dreams ; the dream

had prophesied for him the awakening of

previously
in

his passion,

dormant, particular woman's been company. impotent up to his thirtyfourth year. That an impotent man should crave

that

He had

entrance into the "garden of love" any one may Here is how Cardanus relates easily understand.
the story:

(7) One night I found myself in a beautiful garden of flowers and fruit. A soft air pervaded everything so that no painter, no poet, no human thought
could have conjured up anything more charming. I was at the entrance to that garden. The gate was

open and I saw a

girl clad in white. I

embraced and

kissed her; but at the very first kiss the gardener bolted the gate close. I begged him most fervently to leave the gate open. It seemed to me that I felt

sad about

it

and I was

still

clmging to the girl when

I was locked out.

What is a man of rich imagery likely to dream about when the garden of love closes on him? This beautiful example shows us the day wish in a symbolism but partly covered up. But the symbolism is not always so obvious and plain as in this example. Often the whole dream is devoted to a symbolic dramatization.

I want to avoid for the pres-

Garden of Love

35

ent the more complicated problems which we shall have to consider later. I shall merely quote an example from Freud's Interpretation of Dreams show-

ing

how

the

dream expresses colloquialisms through

pictures.

lady dreams: (8) A servant girl climbs on the ladder, as if preparing for window cleaning and carries a chimpanzee and a gorilla cat (later corrected to angora cat) with her.

She throws the animals at the dreamer;

the chimpanzee clings to the latter,

who

finds this

end through the simby taking a colloquialism literally and representing the picture to which it 'Monkey,' like almost any animal name, gives rise.
its

very disagreeable. "This dream has achieved

plest of means, namely,

a derogatory term, and the dream situation merely depicts the colloquialism 'mit Schimpfworten um sich
is

werfen,' 'hurling insult'."

(Freud, Interpretation

of Dreams, translated by Brill.) Occasionally we are compelled thus to reduce the situations and pictures of a dream back to Redewendungen, "colloquialisms." The dream takes words in

we must conceive the processes pictorially. That requires a special art and particular practice. Both must be acquired. In order to illustrate what I have just stated I record now a brief dream with a very significant
a
literal sense;

36
content.

Sex and Dreams

Beta,
7

man

suffering of anxiety has the

following dream:
Christ.

(9) 1 see before me a large wooden picture of the I take a chip out of it.
is

This dream
bolic sense.

The

also to be understood in a symdreamer is still a believer at heart,

even strongly so, though outwardly a fanatic free The day before the dream he had read a thinker.

(The Insanity of Jesus). Suddenly he had to give up the reading. He is unable to state why. It was a compulsiveLike a commandment: Now, quit reading! like act.
book, entitled
8

La

Folie de Jesus

The deeper
seine

reasons for this compulsion-like act are Er hat sich etwas gegen revealed in this dream.
Gottheit

Jierausgenommen (a German colour "chip on the shoulder" unlike not loquialism

expression) . The further significance of this dream and the relationship between anxiety and wish need not be

taken up at this time.

For the present I have

merely attempted to indicate in a few general lines The underthe foundations of dream symbolism.
standing of symbolism forms the basis of dream interpretation. We have had even before Freud some
For the subjects whose dreams are repeatedly quoted I have adopted substitutive designations in the form of Greek The names of all persons are changed so as to make letters. their recognition impossible. That is a strong disadvantage in a work of this character. But it cannot be done otherwise. Discretion is the first duty of the psychotherapeutist. 8 Dr. r. Binet-SangU, La Folie de Jesus (Paris, Maloine, 1908).
T

Language Symbols

37

intimation of the role of symbolism in human life. Schubert and Kleinpaul, for instance, have dwelt on
the symbolic conception of life as a whole. These investigators have also boldly pointed out the sexual

symbolism. Is it not remarkable that our language (the author here refers, naturally, to the German)
distinguishes words according to their gender? When we take up the dream analysis we are im-

pressed with the far-reaching extent of our symbolic thinking and particularly of sexual symbolism. In the dream anything oblong may represent the penis

and anything round many stand for the vagina. But is that the case only in dreams? One should consult what Klempaul has to say on the subject in his work entitled Das Leben der Sprache, already mentioned, particularly in the chapter on Die Psychopathia Sexualis des Volkes (loc. cit., vol ii, p. 490). He points out that language as a whole is
sexualized

and symbolized.

Language
is

is

full

of

sexual symbols.

"Indeed, the
paul.

human

race

love-mad/' say Kleinr

"Whichever way we turn we meet perpetually

her phantasy, half morbidly, half foolishly centered on the sexual sphere. The race seems to have It cannot put the male and female lost its reason! out of its mind, it cannot see an elevation or a hole without thinking of sex and if it is a tower in which prisoners are languishing away, it is called il

maschio di Volt erra.

"The

iris is

called 'das

Mddchen des AugesS

lit-

38

Sex and Dreams

erally, the 'girl of the eye,' not because of any resemblance to a girl. The iris itself is a girl. Be-

cause it has a hole in the middle no anatomy is needed for that the black mid-spot in the middle of the eye looks like a hole. Hole, trypa, rpvira, trou, in all languages is the name for woman, so also in Genesis (i. 27) ; and because the eye is small, it was

regarded as a

little girl.

"Reflection or thought assumes this erotic bent particularly when something fits into a hole, like the foot into the shoe, or the knife into the sheath,
in pairs and one sticks into the All such 'paired' things evoke the 'great luck' of sexual beings, sexual union, that which is called lingam in the Ganges region.

when things come

other.

verb, or, as Fischart

is an Italian proonce remarked, es war eben em Zapf fur diese Flasche, denn faule Eier und stinkende Butter gehoren zusammen,' 'the right stopper for the bottle, for bad eggs and rancid butter belong together'; a popular German saying expresses the same thought: 'Auf jedes Topfchen gehort sein Es 1st Deckelchen,' 'every vessel has its cover.' eben recht dahinterher," continues Kleinpaul, "and numberless technical expressions can be explained only through their reverberation of the old Adam and Eve theme. The numerous mothers, matrices, etc., in the various technical industries have the

"

Qual Buco,

tal Cavicchio,'

same

origin.

"Mutter, Nonne, Weib and Schnecke, mother, nun, female, screw; on the other side Vater, Monch and

Mann,

father, monk and male, represent here only the important parts. There is deep significance in such terms: monk and nun. Often it happens the

<anguage Symbols

39

male half bears also a particularly significant name, like stamp, or spwdle, while the typically female parts are poetically cohered up. The screw seems to imply a marital relationship (spindle and female)."

Truly, Kleinpaul's statement

is

correct:

Lan-

guage is full of sexual symbols. In fact, it is enough to perceive the true spirit of the language in order to interpret quite a number of dreams. A young boy, sixteen years of age, whose father is a famous artist and a very popular Don

Juan much admired by the

ladies, tells

me

the fol-

lowing dream: (10) Father finds various holes in the rooms. I am worried because he alone wants to stop them up. When I ask him why it worried him, he answered,

"Because father took

help him.

all

that trouble alone.

I could

That

is

not a suitable task for so great

dream to use the But we prefer to take the dream literally. The young man is an Alexander who is worried because Philip leaves him nothing
an
artist."

He

rationalizes his

fitting expression of Jones.

to conquer. the father:

All the

women

in the

house worship
the

the

mother,

the

aunt,

French

teacher, the secretary. relations grossly sexual

He

suspects the father of

justifiedly.

perhaps

The

holes in the walls are to be taken in KleinpauVs literal sense.

We

began with the general neutral symbolisms

40
the sheafs in the

Sex and Dreams

field
9

and already we

find ourselves

in the midst of erotic symbolism. That is inevitable in the case of dream interpretation. Whoever takes

up the subject must be prepared

I

to meet the issue.

may
10

mention
the

here

another

forerunner
of

of

Freud's,

well-known

investigator

dreams,

Scherner,
all

who has conceived the hypothesis that dreams are generated by bodily sensations. That

theory has proven altogether untenable. Nevertheless its founder formulated a fairly correct view of
ulous.

Some details may appear ridicsexual symbolism. But facts lose none of their significance
Regarding sexual symbolism Schemer writes:
"Sexual excitation
is

merely because they seem ridiculous.

symbolized by representa-

tions of the erect organ itself or by pictures and phantasy actions which aroused desire for sexual

But here, too, we meet the masked formulations as preserved by the plastic art of the For instance, one finds on the street phantasy. while on the way to a particular spot, the stem of a clarinet, near by, the similar portion of a pipe, a penny whistle, or a piece of fur. (The stem of clarinet or whistle represents unmistakably the form of the male organ, the stem-like configuration of the found object corresponding to the similar form of
gratification.
Joseph's dream
interpretation.

Dreams of "greatness" and

may

also lend itself to another,

an erotic

the wish for ex-

traordinary potence often go hand in hand. Paranoiacs with delusions of grandeur often claim they have a thousand wives, a thousand sons, etc. 10 Das Leben des Traumes (Berlin, Heinrich Schindler, 1861).

Sex Symbolism

41

the external male sexual organ; but the found objects are always double, on account of the character of the excitation of the double organ of vision, which

primarily involved in the act of finding the respective objects. Finally the fur piece in question stands for the pubic hairs, just as the brush stands for eyebrows and eyelashes, instead of the symbolically more fitting bush; finding the three pictures together means the conjunction of the objects Or as the result of represented through them.) bladder stimuli one finds a curiously crumpled up short stem or cigarette holder which portrays the collapse of the whole male external apparatus. More clearly delineated appears to be the symbolism denoting states of sexual tension, such as usually follow urinary stimuli, the clearer symbolic expression corresponding to the sharper degree of stimulation. For instance, one sees through a clump of trees under which one is standing a near-by tower of great height, and one wonders that the highest peak of the familiar tower (an object known in reality) is crumpled up, and observing the round cupola below, the impression is gained that a second
is

peak (nothing corresponding to reality) must have down there; while thus watching atthe dreamer sees himself standing under tentively, women, or he sees them step over him. The high
flattened out

tower represents the tension of the active organ, its peak seems crumpled or flattened, corresponding to the uppermost portion of the sexual apparatus; phantasy seeks forcefully to find two towers where only one exists in reality, in order thus to express the parity of the lower organ ; it suggests the vision of a high tower through the undergrowth, because

42

Sex and Dreams

the active organ in erection stands forth in the midst of the surrounding pubic hair (underbrush). Tower, peak, double ball, cupola, underbrush, together express a composite thought, because phan-

tasy fuses

all

pictures in one.

(Das Leben des

Traumes, p. 197.)

The next dream year-old woman

:

is

that of an unmarried thirty-

(11) Papa goes around cutting off all the leaf ends to all the plastic figures in the room. I awA
to prevent it. I am thinkturned has he crazy? ing: The girl tells us that her father was always terHe did not allow her so much as to ribly jealous.

angry at that and want

shake hands with a strange man. Young men never called at the house. She could not attend a dance.

That

is

how

she remained unmarried.

This dream we

may

also take in a literal sense.

The

father removes

all ends,

he thus prevents her

from having an opportunity to become familiar with a phallus. In the dream she finds courage to tell him what she, unfortunately, has never dared say to him in actual life. She was the obedient type of daughter. There comes to her mind a figure pronote the tected in front with the usual fig leaf. circumlocution so characteristic of dream thoughts. that covering? What was the fig leaf for,
the ends are clipped off?

We

Why
if

She notes how

senseless

Sex Symbolism
her father's conduct seemed to be.

43
She
is

struck

by

We

the peculiar (crazy) feature of his conduct. thus perceive in connection with two different

dreams the meaning of "hole" and of "end" or peak. The language of dreams makes use of the cryptia forces which have created our everyday language.

That symbolism holds true not only of dreams.

It
is

equally valid in connection with stories, myths,

folklore

and

wit.

The symbolism
clear.

of fairy stories

is

particularly

story! What wonderful association! What the children experience, the adults dream New principles are being evolved. about.

Dream and

We

transpose the old truths and now declare: the obverse is true: what the adults experience, the chil-

dren dream about.

words.

That

is

not a mere play on

dreams.

Freud has furnished us the key to the meaning of Dr. Franz Riklin tries to apply that key
charming realm of fairy
!

to the investigation of the

And lo the attempt proves successful. It stories. turns out that the fairy stories of children bear an intimate inner relationship to the dreams of adults,
that they are pervaded through and through with a cryptic sexual symbolism the significance of which
presents no particular difficulty.

The Wunscherfulim Marclien (Wish Fulfilment lung und Symbolik

44

Sex and Dreams

Riklin,

and Symbolism of the Fairy Story) by

proves that the fairy story has a cryptic sexual meaning. The fairy story, too, represents a "wish
fulfillment" in Freud's sense, like the dream.

simple fairy stories represent relatively simple folk wishes. Riklin brings a number of excellent Who is not familiar with the charmillustrations.

The

ing Marlevn in Becfatein's famous collection of fairy mother weeps three days and three stories?

nights over her most deeply beloved child. At night the door opens softly and the deceased child appears in its nightgown carrying the little tear vessel in

which

all

A few more tears

flowing

the mother's tears are gathered up. and the little vessel is filled to overchild

attains peace and quiet. no more, for thy child is well "Therefore, weep taken care of and little angels are its playmates !"

and the

The
more

child disappears. The child tears.

!

The mother

avoids shedding
in its

must not be disturbed

Riklin very properly observes that heavenly peace the story could equally well be an actual dream of some particular person. But it happens not to be an account of a particular experience; this curative

means (consolation) has become a generalized, psynamely, that excessive chically purposive belief, tears disturb the peace of those who have passed
not a notion helpful to the dead but The same motive is played it is helpful to the living. in the Japanese story variants in numerous up

away

That

is

Wiahrfulfillment

45

about the
other

"Nwn

German

of the Temple of Armida"; in anversion by Grimm as "TodtenhemdIslandic Folktales"; edited

chen"; in the
Ritterhaus.

by Everywhere the wish of the adults to

"New

be rid of their worry sooner reveals itself as the cryptic motive of the weaver of the fairy story.

The

sexual symbolism reveals to us the character

of the story even more penetratingly than the prinHere we first learn that ciple of wish fulfillment.
the adults
tell

the child chiefly

prefer to hear.

what they themselves Naturally they do so in symbolic,

masked, form. We underrate the significance of symbolic acts and of symbolic representations in our everyday
is,

that

life.

As

a matter of fact, existence

is

inconceivable

without symbols. Riklin states: "Is not almost a word The every symbol? writing signs are symbols, the

words are symbols, our mimicry, our ges-

tures are in great part symbolic. geographic chart is a symbol. Noteworthy are the meaningful abstract symbols: God's eye, the scales (as, of
justice, for instance), the cross; the color symbols:

black, red; the symbolism of uniforms, etc."

What
There
stances
is

to the sexual symbol.

tremendous power belongs in the first place It pervades our whole life.

no object, which under certain circumnot represent a sexual symbol. A para deliberate gesture, a wink of

may

ticular intonation,

46

Sex and

D reams
may
give

the eye accompanying an innocent remark the latter a "double meaning."

Sexual symbolism

is

the key which unravels for

us the various myths of the different races. Also the striking example of the religious formulations. latter we have in the concept of the snake, which

Eve

plays also a great role in folklore. A snake seduced in paradise. The snake appears to young girls

(Oda and

the Snake, Becfotein),

and when the

lat-

ter overcome their revulsion into their bed

. .

and take the cold snake

the snake suddenly changes into a wonderful prince who had been bewitched. The slippery, cold, ugly snake is a sexual symbol, like
.

the ugly toad, which climbs into the bed of the king's

daughter (Der Froschkonig and Der Anne Heinrich, Grimm). Here, too, the overcoming of disgust is rewarded with the presence of a wonderful prince. Further illustrations of this type may be found in
of

Riklm's work already mentioned.

the fairy stories mean to the individual, that the folk story or myth represents in its relations to the folk mind.

What

The myth

is

a folk dream

and contains

in a cryptic symbolic

language and ex-

pression of the unconscious wish-excitations and fulfillment-hallucinations of the folk mind. The myth,
too, contains a

more or

less cryptic,

sometimes fairly

overt and rather obvious, sexual symbolism which is remarkably like the similar dream symbolism,-

Symbolism of Fairy and Myth

fact convincingly brought out

4*7

by Abraham

in his

interesting study in folk psychology entitled

Trawm

und Myihus (Dream and Myth). The study of these myths has long been assiduously cultivated by the folk-psychologists who justifiedly expected to find through them a path towards
a better understanding of the mental life of the various people. Just as dreams disclose the secret

thoughts of the individual man, so myths must disclose in unmistakable manner the ideals and wishes
of the people.
It turns out that a

number of myths

which have appeared at different times among the most varied nations on earth show a remarkable sim-

them so that some investigators were led to conclude that the formation of myths depends on mental processes common to all mankind. On
ilarity between

the other hand, many other investigators held that the similarity of myths is due to transference, a

borrowing or transferring of the same myth material. What was lacking until recently in the investigation of the problem of myths was an appreciation of the parables between the process of myth formation and the mental life of the individual.

of the two realms of inquiry, the world of individual dreams and the sphere of folk dreams as

The bridging over

represented in myths,

represents

a gigantic step forward.

It
is

pleasing to record that the connecting links

48

Sea:

and Dreams

between the social and the individual activities of

the psyche have been successfully revealed at least
in one limited field, namely,

The Myth

of the Birth

of the Hero,

in a study

under that

title,

by Otto

Rank, to whom we were already indebted for another excellent study, The Artist (Der Kunstler, Wien und Leipzig, 1907). Rank points out very
convincingly the similarities between the phantasies of individuals and the folk phantasies as revealed in a series of birth myths.

want to lay stress on the mere fact of this parallelism: for dreams and myths, fairy and traditional stories present the same kind of psychic structure. One may contend that the myths about heroes
were
conceived
stories

We

originally by poets, while fairy are creations of the poetic genius of the

whole people. Such a contention may be met best with HebbeVs fitting words in den Dichtern trdumt die Menschheit, whole humanity dreams through
:

its poets.

An
bolism

almost inexhaustible fund of material for symis to be found in the collections gathered by
title

the well-known folklorist F. S. Krauss and his co-

workers, and published under the

Anthropo-

phyteia
schaft).

(Leipzig,

Deutsche

The tremendous

Verlagsaktiengesellmaterial gathered therein

awaits systematic elaboration in the light of dream symbolism. Occasionally I shall refer to the similarities

between folk language and the symbolism of

Sexual Symbolism
dreams.

49

The formations

of wit, too, reveal to us the

11 operations of the unconscious. I have thus far indicated only a few simple examples illustrating the significance of sexual sym-

not possible to give an account of a dream analysis without touching on eroticism. There is, in fact, no anerotic dream.
bolism.
It
is

The power
dous that
it

of the sexual instinct

is

so tremen-

probably never leaves us out of its grip even for a few seconds of time. We shall see later,

when we consider the subject of half dreaming, of hypnagogic pictures (dream pictures before falling asleep, or just before fully waking up, during the
is

so-called "twilight" states) that the sexual instinct momentarily ready to take possession of man's

psyche.

The

symbolism

of

dreams

is

chiefly

sexual.

Though the erotic plays a predominating role in the pages which follow it is not my fault. I cannot
do otherwise than present the material as
veals itself.
it

re-

There

is

another factor which plays a tremenlife:

dous role in the dream

the criminal tendency.

The cryptic criminal within us reveals itself in our But the criminal tendency stands nearly dream.
always in the service of the sexual. Perhaps every I expect criminal is a sexual criminal possibly.
11 Cf. Freud, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious (Translation by Brill, Moffat, Yard & Co.).

50

Sex and Dreams

to prove in the following chapters of this

is

work that

not responsible for the presence the investigator of the erotic features. We do not lay stress on it
It is there. Whoever is endowed with unencumbered eyes cannot fail to see that symbolism plays the most important role in our mental
deliberately.
life.

Why

witticisms and

do persons make free use of symbolism in why do they usually display such a

keen appreciation of the symbolic shadings of meaning employed by the flirt? Hitschmann rightfully observes 12 that, "in the cynical gathering of male festivities, or cabarets, or when reading the hu-

morous papers the same persons suddenly display

sufficient insight into sexual

symbolism !"

be the sense of avoiding these facts This of life simply because we do not like them? book is a record of facts. . . .

What would

The

ancient, eternal struggle between instinct

and

society, between mine and thine (Otto Gross) does not cease in the dream. The wish fulfillment, postu-

lated

by Freud, may
self.

also be a wish fulfillment of the

moral

But there are many dreams which do not

fit

within the range of wish fulfillment, even though we conceive the "conscience dreams" as wishes of the

moral
**

self.

There

are,

above

all,

the telepathic

Hitschmann, Freud's Theories of the Neuroses (translated

by Charles R. Payne, Moffat, Yard

&

Co.)-

Wisk-fulfittment

51

dreams: no objective investigator can doubt any

longer their existence or validity. Enforced with a knowledge of these facts, we now turn our attention to the analysis of a more complex dream.

n
THE ANALYSIS OF A SIMPLE DREAM THE DREAM ABOUT THE TELEPHONE THE BALLAD OF THE POOR EAGLE WHAT MRS. A. THINKS OF THE ACT OF TELEPHONING

II

"A man making Hebbel in his diaries remarks and with regularity mind to record his faithfully up all his dreams, without choice or scruples, and adding
:

thereto a
"

commentary to include everything from

his

life

or reading bearing on the explanation of his dreams would render a great service to humanity. But as humanity stands to-day, it is not likely that
;

any one will undertake to do it worth while for some one to try
personal choice." I have seen such diaries.
ful

still it

would be

it

as a matter of

They are not very usebecause we are unacquainted with the dreamer's

cryptic symbolism.

The great advance of the Freudian dream interpretation consists precisely in the fact that it has added a novel aid to the art of interpreting the dreams the dreamer's thought reactions. The
:

dream material which evoked the dream comes back

to the dreamer's mind through free associations. But the thoughts sometimes do not come up freely.
It repeatedly

happens that on account of inner redream parts evoke no associations in the dreamer's mind. A knowledge of the dream
sistances the
55

56

Sex and Dreams

language and symbolisms helps us over such "dead" The simpler the mental life of a person points.
the simpler also are that person's dreams. many dreams do fit to ebb el's plan. If we

great

know the

dreamer's
tray.

life, we know also what the dreams porThere are also dreams which betray their meaning even before we have become acquainted

with the dreamer's

life history.

is where my investigations deviate from Freud places the greatest emphasis on the material found back of the manifest dream content. I have endeavored to prove that the manifest dream

Here

Freud.

material itself displays the most important content, With this conception the latent dream thoughts.
I have discovI have achieved surprising results. ered relationships (for instance, the symbolism of

death) which I would have never unearthed through the dreamer's thought associations. That is not the case with every dream. For as already stated
:

The dreams
ple.

are variously constructed.

consists of separate

Simple

folk have different dreams than sophisticated peo-

The dream

dream parts

which group themselves into a whole, into a single dream picture. The analysis of a dream must proceed from the separate dream parts. But how is the dream element to be interpreted? What is its meaning? What its relationship to

wish fulfillment?
"Usually, in the case of a dream element,
it is

Sense of

Dream Elements
it

57
should be

a question," states Freud, "whether

taken
:

"(a)

in a positive or negative sense (antithetical

relationship) ; "(&) in a historic sense (as reminiscence)

"(c)

"(d)
sounds."

symbolically; or whether the meaning should be traced to the

word

tion, it

In spite of this manifold possibility of interpretamust be observed that the unraveling of the

dream work, which does not aim to be understood,

presents no greater difficulties to the translator than the old hieroglyphic writings, for instance,

(The Interpretation of Dreams, authorized translation by A. Brill.) The dreams are various. Some are shadowy and intricate and require long and persistent scrutiny.
to its component parts only with the aid of the greatest finesse. As a light educational example let us analyze a phantasy

raise for their readers."

The dream may be reduced

dream, which reduces

bolization.

itself, in fact,

to a single sym-

There are also dreams which may be cleared up

with a single key.

When,

for instance,

goes to the butcher shop, to make some purchases, finds the meat stall exposed, chooses a big, hard piece of meat, shaped as a sausage

(12)

A woman

58
(Wurst), shoves
fits,

Sex and Dreams

it

in Tier pocket; where

it

hardly

as

it

melts in the

every detail of the that it relates to fieischliche Geliiste, lusts of the I want flesh, and to purchases in the love mart.

warmth of the pocket, dream is obvious when we know

dream of this character, in which the telephone has an erotic meaning. It is a long and spectacular dream, containing numerous details
to record here a

which, naturally, are also significant for the analysis but which I must overlook for the present. This

dream
poetic

is

also noteworthy because

it

ends with a

dreams.

in production. Occasional verses are produced in dreams and sometimes they are rather well done. I must

Poetry

is

not

uncommon

forego for the present the temptation of taking up the subject of poetic productions in dreams. Poetry and dreams are alike products of the uncon-

and naturally show inner relationship. pleasant dream of Mrs. Alpha, which ends in a ballad, reads 2
scious

The

(13) I visit

my sister and find only my

The telephone
rings.

brother-in-

law at home.

Astonished, I

wonder since when the instrument had 'been introduced mto the house. My brother-in-law throws
*Cf. my Study entitled Poetry and Neurosis (authorised English Version by James 8. Van Teslaar). 8 1 take this opportunity to remark that all dreams are recorded exactly as the dreamers have written them down for me. The most trivial colloquialism, an error in spelling, some peculiarity of punctuation may have great significance for the analysis.

Telephone Dream

59

a deprecating glance at me and asks whether I do not read the daily papers. 1 answer, saying that I probably do not do so with sufficient attentiveness

do with the telephone. that the whole telephone system is now under'going a radical change and since the stupid, unreliable telephone girls have been reaKnd ask

what that has

tells

to

The

brother-in-law

me

placed by men belonging to the best educated circles who have volunteered to take up the service in .hourly
rotation, there
ships.
is

There

is

no more ground for worry or hardnot a decent family in the whole

its

of Vienna without
are so

own telephone and

since there

many

subscribers, the cost to each has mate-

rially decreased.

of the telephone service

I perceive at once the advantages and I am enthusiastic about

securing

it

at once.

"A

fool,

whoever has no

tele-

phone," I exclaim very eagerly and ask about the charges. "Only one hundred kronen per year,"
brother-in-law. "Ridiculous, so small a I declare, convinced, as I am already, and charge," miraculously extract -from my pocketbook, usually empty, a banknote of the required denomination.

says

my

I press impatiently for the prompt acceptance of brother-in-law takes the my subscription.

My

money and I hear him negotiate over

the telephone.

gentleman appears, beardless, dark, small, with

a repulsive exterior and threatening loud voice. He introduces himself as a bass singer of the Court

Opera and

states that he

is

the

man

in charge of

60

Sex and Dreams

my

telephone number. aside and advises me

tlfa

My
to

brother-in-law takes

me

be very courteous with

man and
1

to

mvite him occasionally to an eve^

will

ning meal and I

sideration.

then be treated with better con-

that terrible

him frankly tha,t I cannot bear man's voice and I would rather give up
tett

mto my ears money" I say

the telephone than have that horrible fellow shout in the -future. "Give me back my
to him, disappointed.
it
it

not do, I have paid With m)e answered.

the highest

in
is

"That I canalready" is what I am always but a step from

burdened with the
tele-

happmess

to the depths of despair and,

disconsolate,

now

that I

am

phone, I ask whether I could not have the Opera Tenor assigned to me. Tenors have voices that are

much more pleasant

to hear.

Again a man appears,

stout, beardless, with red cheeks, introduces himself

as the Imperial Opera tenor, and inquires about the I declare at once that his organ pleases telephone.

me

better than the other man's,

and that I am very

This man is desirous to exchange the gentlemen. accompanied by a woman whom he introduces to me

He looks up my brotheras his sister, an actress. m-law and the bass singer to negotiate the exchange with the latter. The bass smger does it with obvious ill grace and presently, after an exchange of some angry words, the meaning of which I do not
perceive, I see the bass singer muttering insults as

he leaves.

My

misfortune

is

over,

and overflowing

Telephone

Dream

61

with happiness, I now ask the lady and gentleman I try to be courteous and, mindful of to be seated. brother-in-law's advice, I extend my invitation for

"What happy eagerly accepted. evenings we shall have," I think to myself, charmed. The actress holds out the promise of reciting occasupper, which
is

sionally

and

my

joy

is

boundless.

"In

fact, if

you

wish to hear me, I

It is

gladly recite you something right now," says the charming creature and begins.
will

Arme

an unknown poem by Baumbach, called Der Igel, The Poor Eagle, and I listen to its rethe greatest interest.

cital with

Then I wake up

and I note down the poem. 3

This dream, apparently so happy and filled with humor embodies the tragedy of a life. The ballad
of the
is

poor eagle is the story of her marriage. She unhappily married. She dislikes her husband;

she cannot endure his tendernesses.

When

he at-

tempts coitus, she begins to cry out in the middle of She is the act and pushes him away from her.
afraid of her

own

libido.

If she could give herself

so.

without libidinous excitation she would do

But

because she does not want to be roused by him she repulses her husband during the sexual embrace.

She has thought out all sorts of excuses to keep him at a distance. One day she has migraine, another day influenza, a third day she
The original of the poem
chapter.
is

is

perhaps just

reproduced at the end of the

62

Sex and Dreams

in

beginning to menstruate and this keeps up for weeks her case, which of course cannot be true.
Finally the fear of her husband's embrace became an obsessive thought-feeling with her and she fled

into a severe neurosis, which

to live
is

an abstinent

existence.

made it possible for her That her prudery

directed only towards her husband, for whom "fear has repressed love" as the poem expresses it, is shown by the analysis of the telephone dream and

of her other dreams.

One of her

earlier

dreams
sig-

which she brought to me, dealt with a very

nificant situation.

but did not marry

ardent and

she truly loved was in her bed and acted as her

The man whom

I step in but the loving tireless lover. are and not disturbed thereupon I quote the pair verse
:

Zwr lAebe 1st es nie zu spat, Wie man es jetzt gesehen hat.

The

lover retorts at that

Schon
ist

Heil! Heil! Hell!

ihr Hinterteil.*
is

Her
likes.

sexual aversion, therefore,

directed only

against her poor husband, whom she consciously disIn the sad ballad she even has him become

insane and die off in three days. That has a deep meaning. The man, in fact,

is

The lady subject who relates this dream has the habit and the ready knack of improvising verses, and can speak in rhymes for days. The composition of the ballad in the dream is therefore natural in her case.

Interpretation

63

not normal and suffers of a mild progressive paralTheir family physician states that he may ysis.
last possibly another three years. Her first love was a tenor. That explains the

contrast between bass and tenor in that long dream Her husband has a deep sonorous bass picture.

which sounds painful in her ears and seems She has accustomed herself to disgusting to her.
voice,

She simply does not disregard his voice entirely. hear when he speaks. That explains the telephone dream. The sexual
symbolism of the telephone was well known for a time in Vienna and actually current. In one of the popular amusement places devoted to the lighter

Muse a well-known soubrette sang for a year or

of pointed hints. It was, in fact, a plain description of the sexual act, in which the various technical terms of telephony
full

more a telephone song

were

employed with

in charge gives him the "receiver" in hand, he calls up, central answers ; he wants another "number," and telephones so excitedly that he nearly wrecks the apparatus, etc.

young man The girl who has the apparatus

pointedness. wishes to learn the art of telephony.

remarkable

sexual symbolism gives the key for the understanding of this dream.

The same

The dream
brother-in-law

begins with incest thoughts about the

who

is

very happy in his married

life.

She

finds

him alone in the house and the telephone

64

Sex and Dreams

is,

rings at once, that

her sexual longings are roused.

The

brother-in-law, heretofore a solid, conservative

Catholic, opposed to all reform movements likely to weaken Catholic rigor of the marriage ties, that

same brother-in-law who refuses to read the daily

papers devoted to progress, that confirmed clericalminded fellow, now tells her that the sexual life of

humanity is being placed on another, modern basis. This refers to the oft-mentioned theme of free love.

Men of good standing, cultured men (what a contrast to her husband) are volunteering to give telephone service and hourly take their turns at it.

We

note this to be a sort of male service, the man weakened by telephoning being at once replaced by an-

There are thus no fears and no hardships any more, as with her husband, whose potence apother.

pears terribly ill adjusted to his appetite. The act of "telephoning'* is no longer indecent. On the contrary, there is no decent family in the

whole city of Vienna without

its

own

telephone.

smaller in any individual instance, the guilt larger the number of sinners (the number of subis

The

tremendous; therefore the cost is correShe, too, pays one hundred spondingly lowered). kronen for a Sprachrohr (literally, a speaking
scribers
is
5

tube.)
5

That was theretofore

literally

the price of an auto-

"speaking tube" of course, is a note in this connection the tendency of the dream to express all sexual dreams as bisexual, a

The Sprachrohr,

symbol for the penis.

We

Interpretation

65

matic telephone (that is, masturbation automatauto-erotism). ically used sexuality My last bill,

amounted to one hundred kronen, showing that the brother-in-law of the dream is a fusion of myself and the brother-in-law. This process whereby two or more persons or incidents are fused in one
too,

picture will be referred to repeatedly in our work. Noteworthy also is the pocket, "usually empty,"

which means, the empty vagina, which would secure for itself a respectable sympathetic male through
purchase.

The

scription to the telephone. own husband; she was

brother-in-law negotiates the subFirst there appears her

put in

his

charge

the

brother-in-law had witnessed her engagement

(my

telephone number was put in his charge). The advice to invite him to evening meals shows the connections between eating and sexuality. 6 Evening

meals here means night's lodgings. But she preThat really correfers to give up her telephone.

sponds to the actual facts in the case, as we have

suspected from the
first.

She

is

dissatisfied,

she

wants her money back (meaning here the dowry, which has been meanwhile squandered away), she wants a separation, a step which her Catholic
brother-in-law has thus far used his whole influence
to prevent.
tendency which we shall have repeatedly occasion to point out. The telephone has a transmitter and a receiver. Frequently, in German, "einen zvm Abendbrot einladvn" used in same sense.

66

Sex and Dreams

The pleasing tenor, so willing to accept the invitation to supper, who appears next, she finds very
agreeable. for him.

She would

like to

exchange her husband

is

The man whom

she likes so well

un-

(He is accompanied always fortunately married. she turns the antagodream In the a lady.) by
nistic

woman

into a very loving sister, in accordance

with her wish.

a reproach against the tenor's wife and means: she is a comedian and
"actress"
is

The

The bass singer disappears fool of you! at last, muttering harsh words; she is very courteShe thus ous and invites the gentleman to supper. has a man and a woman at her disposal. The picmakes a
ture very clearly hints at the patient's homosexual

Both erotic components, her homoWe her and heterosexuality are coming into play. now understand her enthusiastic feeling: "Nein!
inclinations.

Werden das genussreiche Abende

pleasurable evenings we

sein.

My! what
act

shall have."
recite,

The

actress

will

also

an

which,
"tele-

clearly bears the

same cryptic meaning as

recites the

phoning."

That charming creature now

poem im-

plying scorn for her husband and culminating in the thought that an eagle belongs only to an
eagle.

Further analysis shows that she herself is that charming creature. She had been often so called,

Interpretation
as a girl.

67

She

identifies

herself with the wife of

7 the beloved man.

Finally the act of "telephoning," has also another meaning which is well known to her. In con-

grewu the
at
first

constrictor cunnei was excited into action

and the husband responded with a corresponding muscular motion. During the first part "teleof her married life she was happy and libido afterwards the Soon disappeared phoned." during the act, being replaced by a dread of the
. .

libido.

The "telephoning"

ceased. 8

tions.

Naturally the dream reveals many other associaBut it is not necessary for us to dwell longer
this

dream and instead we turn our attention to other analyses. One further remark I may offer
on
with regard to the character of the dream. I have It means that this called it a phantasy dream.

dream dream
guage.

clearly represents the transposition of a dayinto a slightly veiled form of dream lan-

very frequently found among hystericals. The dreams of this type do not tax at all the interpreter's ingenuity. 'Here we see a proof of her strong self-love, the so-called

This

type of dream

is

narcissism, which was indicated also in connection with the "automatic telephone." The telephone symbolism links up through associations with In vol. VI of Anthropophyteia, receiver, in technical sense. Dr. Aigremont has published a very instructive essay on

Muschel und Schnecke

jetzt.

als Symbole der Vulva ehemals und The Schnecke, moreover, is a bisexual symbol and as

Schneck stands for the penis.

68

Sex and Dreams

DER ARME IGEL

(Ballade)

Em Igel -fond gefalien

Ernst an der Jungfer Maus,

Der putzigsten von alien Im kinderreichen Haus Bevm gut en Feldmausvater,

Dem
Da

Wirt:

"Zum

schwarzen Kater."

hielt,

wie sich gebuhret,

an,
gerilhret,

Mausi Igel Der Voter ward

Um

Gab

seinen Segen dann.

selig fiihrt die liebe

Und
Der

Maus

Igel in sein Igelhaus.

Im Rausch

des Gliicks versunken,

Voll Zartlichkeit den Smn, Naht er sich Liebestrunken Der siissen Mauselin. Sein Herz schlug vor Verlangen

Sie liebend zu empfangen.

Kaum

hat er

Mit treuem,

umfasset starkem Arm,

sie

Voll Schreck er

von ihr

lasset,

Sie piepst, das Gott erbarm. Doch wird's dabei dem Ehmann klar,

Dass er

als Igel stachlig

war.

The Poor Eagle

Trotz
atter Liebesgluten

69

Blieb I gels Gluck beschrdnkt;

Es hat
.

bei

Maus, der guten,

Die Furcht die Lieb' verdrangt Und nimmer durft, o wehe

Der Ma/ws

er in die

Nahe

Dem
Der

Igel stieg zu

Kopfe

Er Und

Stachelungliickswahtn, ward zwn irren Tropfe

krankelnd starb er dran;

Man hat nach dreien Tagen Zu Grabe ihn getragen.

Moral:

Drum

Igel frei in klugem Sinn Stets nur um erne Igelm.

Ill

SUPERFICIAL ASPECTS OF DREAM INTERPRETATION

THE MOON AND THE EARTH THE "RATHAUs" DREAM REPRESENTATION OF UNBRIDLED LIFE

das Irmere jedes Menschen ewzudrmgen; Suche dber gestatte auch jedem anderen in devne Seele
einzugehen.

HI
[Endeavor
self;

to penetrate into every one's inner but allow also the others to look into your soul.]

Marcus

Aurelius.

Let us endeavor once more to bring into relief the superficial aspects of dream life through the analWe turn our attention ysis of a few examples.
again to
symbolism.

a dream which portrays but a simple

is

The
(14)
it.

following

a dream of Miss

Gamma:
I have emptied

laundry bag in
-full

my

hand.
linen.

It

was

of dirty, gray

pillow case,

gray dirty, sanitary napkins (way below), a whole I had to pack of them everything disgusting. empty everything.
symbolic representation of her psychoanalytic treatment. She washes her dirty linen before me. During the last consultation hour she told me about
her menstruation difficulties; the pillow case refers to certain intimate doings which took place in bed.

She has a great disgust for such things. But she has the feeling that she must tell everything (empty entirely the laundry bag) so as to get over her troubles

once for

all.

All her thoughts center on the

73

74

Sex and Dreams

She is at present taking care of a sort of Mohrenwasche. Es grant ihr davor, she abhors it. (Here, a play on
the double meaning of grau, gray, and grauen, aversion, horror; a reference to the dirty linen as well
as to her horror

notions of "clean" and "unclean."

and disgust.)

The whole dream

of

is

typical

symbolic

transposition

her

waking

thoughts. But that interpretation corresponds only to the most superficial layer of the dream. It embodies

some of the recent occurrences. But every dream derives its stimuli from various layers before it becomes a more or less loosely knit unit. It is overdetermined (uberdetermmiert, Freud) and yields additional meaning. It contains also an infantile root.

The earlier layers of the dreamer's associations relate to her sensations during her first menstruation.

She thought she was unclean.

(Among some

people the menstruating woman is considered unclean and is taboo for a time.) Further associations lead
to her youth, when she remembers having searched the parents' bed linen for such spots. Finally there

come to surface

infantile reminiscences

which show

that her disgust of dirt was preceded by a period of intensive mysophilia. Further associations to laundry sack lead to a

sack of a different kind

the scrotum.

Two
The

serious

traumas reveal themselves to her mind's

uncle gave her to hold his phallus.

eye.

An

recall of

Associations

75

is

the ejaculation (I had to empty out everything) associated with a strong reaction of disgust. An

earlier reminiscence relates to a similar incident in

which her younger brother figured.

Noticeable once

the bisexual use of laundry sack, which as is associated with the of symbol practice masturbation.
is

more

We

shall not tarry

but instead

will

proceed to
the most

some other "superficial" analyses.

of associations.

For

part we shall limit ourselves to the uppermost layers

We have

spoken of the simple process of wish ful-

child appears to the mother begging her to weep no more. Her tears I want to disturbs the child's peace in the grave.
fillment in fairy stories.

relate

now a

similar

"consolation"

dream.

An

elderly

woman who
:

has lost her husband two years

useless I see lying

previously dreams (15) Our dog, old and sofa and breathing his last.

on the

My son-in-law suddenly comes home bringing along a little, lovely brown dog. I ask him, "Consoling yourself as soon as that?" He raises his shoulders saying: "Why not?
What
is

the use to keep on mourning.

this

One must

learn to accept the inevitable."

The woman had

of her husband's death.

dream on the anniversary For two years the widow

had worn mourning and permitted herself no distraction. In the dream her son-in-law represents

76
her

Sex and Dreams

own sober judgment:

comes of

What

this everlasting

Don't mourn any longer! mourning? Do the

way wise folks are doing. The objectification of one's own thoughts through
another
thoughts,

person
too,

common. Other extremely themselves through the suggest

is

dream.

The

take another.

old (dog, as sign of scorn) is dead, Further, the fearsome thought, the
if

son-in-law could easily console himself,

his wife

(her

young,
. .

brunette

daughter)
still

was

to

pass

away.

But for the present we

superficial
ciations.

limit ourselves to the

meaning

disclosed

by the simplest

asso-

very

fine, artistically-inclined girl tells

me

that

she has

had during the previous night a "wonder-

dream," which has made a lastShe tells me the dream ing impression upon her. and also writes it out at my request: (16) It seems I had already been with a couple
fully beautiful poetic

of girls in a train, namely at the open door, and t[here was a vague feeling that I was in some har-

monic relationship with one J. K., and there was also something between H. (the other girl) and myself.

Am

sitting later in

a large third class compart*

ment, near the window, far forward

(m

the direction

of the tram) and to the left, back to back with the two. Moreover, it seems there is no one else in the

compartment.

Poetic

Dream

77

/ stand up and through the window L look upon

in the shape of a gigantic egg somewhat her customary size. To the double yolk, left of it a lummous ring fitting it, much like the

the

moon hovermg

Saturn

rings.

I make some remark about how strange it is that the moon should hover so close to the railroad track,

and H. answered saying that

illusion.

it

was but an optical

"Is that so," I say. "I am going to find I lean forward to catch the moon with and out," both hands and draw it into the compartment. The
ring around
it I disregarded, it moved But under my hands the moon was

along.
elastic

and

wavered around. It felt like the pretty yolk swimming in a plateful of soup when one tries to squeeze it with the spoon and the egg yolk cannot be broken

and

shape every time. I gave it up and fell back on my seat exhausted, thinking how presumptuous it would be for me to
it

resumes

its

draw the moon inside and rob the earth of its moon, and I don't know whether I actually said so, but H., at any rate, seemed to say to me: daring it would not be. Only you're inexperienced and don't understand as yet the relations of things. She referred
Everything is distinctly to physiologic relations. intertwmed with endless threads into everything else

and

reverts back to itself again.

silent,

I seated myself again, keeping

ing:

but think-

how strange and

comical.

78

Sex and Dreams

This "innocent dream of a virgin" enables one

to depict the state of her mind.

herself back

One

finds that she

already dimly perceives a great deal and she holds

from certain knowledge.

The

fitting

of one thing into another is perceived as "psychological" and the organic aspect is suppressed. One
also notes
sinful
girl,

and she

that she perceives these excitations as envies her friend H., the simple sweet

who has a lover, on account of the latter's exThe dream does not expose a riddle: it periences.
%

depicts merely a simple, romantically disposed unI state anticipatively that the gratified person.

picture of the moon was soon found to be a symbolism for penis and testicles.

The ring is the engagement ring. She neglects She is, therefore, prepared to conthe ring later. The sider extramarital coitus, like her friend H.
statement,
is

"You

don*t

understand that.

Every-

intertwined with endless threads (spermal thing threads) into everything else and reverts back to
itself,"
is

also that her

It is noteworthy particularly striking. a a is Durchgangscoupe, compartment

"

passage" compartment. The vulgar term for testicles comes to surface in the "Eidotter," the egg

yolk.

Miss

Gamma

relates

an almost identical dream:

(17 ) I saw 'floating in the air a great globe, surrounded with a rmg of blue glass, like a wheel.

The meaning

is

the same.

Her

mother's mar-

Sexual Symbolism

79

The ring on riage ring has a wonderful blue stone. the finger is a symbol of sexual union. The minister

may

puts the ring on the bride's finger ; that is, she now become acquainted with the marital act.

In both dreams we find the bisexual symbol: the

globe and the ring,
in a word the lingam. Another genital symbolism is revealed by the dream of J. N. a widow:
9

(18) I am in the market shopping. Folks going home. Lights are being put out. We went to the room. is not there is missumbrella checking My
ing,

another one
is like

is

there with a broken handle.

The handle
screw nose.
see

a Polish Jew
it

with a great cork-

the

hand to try it out and t& I could on it and think to myself: whether lean umbrella is not so bad as it appears to be.
I take
in
is

The umbrella
ing
it

common

phallic symbol.

Open-

up corresponds to erection. The poor woman had lost her husband (light going out). She has no umbrella any more (my umbrella is not Her best friend is a Jew. (The "broken there).
handle" and the "cut" handle are play words on The meaning of the dream is: "In circumcision.)
case of need the devil eats
is
flies.

Try

the Jew; he

your only consolation in your misery. he turns out better than you think."
related to

Perhaps

Somewhat more complicated is the next dream, me by X. Z., a philosopher: I dream ( 19) of a triangle supposed to symbolize

80

Sex and Dreams

some philosophic principle and which serves me, perhaps others also, as a sort of support. The triangle grows gradually smaller and more angular finally it is but a spear and therefore it is no longer fit to serve as a support and I am about to fall into a I awake with a terrible loud outcry terrible abyss. and all my body is shaking.

He
ship.

lives

best friend.

with a married couple. The man is his He maintains a triangular relationfriend

is

That

the basis of that relationship. He basis disappears, that is, the friend dies.

The

unites himself with the

woman.

The death

is

posed to have been deliberately induced.

He

suphas

murderous thoughts (spear, Spiess Spiessgesette), and the fall into the abyss is the terrific crime of
which
his

most secret

self is

dreaming.

The lingam

after the death of the husband explains the riddle Associations of a unit growing out of a triangle.

lead here
ity).

upon the path of religious scruples The philosophic thoughts are masked

(trinerotic

Deeper layers reveal the relationship the child to the parents.

wishes.

of

Mr. Dalton dreams:

(W) I have two different shoes: a yellow one on the left foot, on the right, a black one. He loves two women: one is blond, the other is
dark.

More

significant yet the

gelb, yellowish-black.

He

is

meaning: schwarzan Austrian and wears

on

his feet the colors of his

emperor (father).

He

Sexual Symbolism
is

81

a typical skeptic.

He

vacillates continuously be-

tween

man

mother).

His desire

(the dark father) and woman (the blond is to satisfy both. His .
. .

psychic hermaphroditism (Adler) wonderfully well in Also this most powerful his picture. expressed
is

passions: jealousy (yellow) and his dark thought of

revenge (black). Sometimes a dream brings to light unusual wish fulfillments. It mediates transposing sinful wishes
into respectable realities. devoted to her husband,
writer.

A
is

prudish woman,
interested in a

much
young

She would

like

to meet him.

The dream

She dreams: conjures up the desired opportunity. (21) I am confined to bed after a serious internal
operation.

My

husband stands at the

Jiead of the

bed, looking at me sympathetically and kindly, his hand on my shoulder. Bending over me and looking

me

I am comstraight in the eye is the young poet. a out or narcosis out of deep slumber. of ing

Seeing

my

husband and the poet, I

is

feel in the

dream
say to
at

that the blood

rushing to
9

"You here!' the poet: and exclaims: "Thank

you,

my cheeks and I He gazes lovingly

is

me

God! She
91

saved."

"And

"I

am

how do you happen to a physician, madam,

99

be here, now?" I ask.

he says, "I have ascheeks redden, I turn

sisted at the operation.

My

my my

head sideways and hide in the pillows and shut

eyes.

All wishes are gratified.

She has a wonderful

82
white body. her naked.

Sex and Dreams

The poet

He

is physician and has seen has operated on her, he has saved

her (both symbolic expressions for sexual congress). Everything occurred in respectable fashion. Her
lated at

husband was present. Her bashfulness was not vio1 all. Everything occurred during narcosis. One of the following dreams (24) brings up a similar situation under neurotic distortion.

We

turn our attention now to the analysis of a

is

beautiful, so-called political dream.

The dream
symbolism.

clear insight into the

a very lively one and permits a most common forms of dream

the (Rathaus) Assembly House: Great (8) uproar in the Assembly House. Tine Thousands of people beis also present. Emperor

The dream of

Emperor's departure. It is eveHouse square is -feerically ilthe and Assembly ning lumined for the occasion. Three figures stand
low, awaiting the

watch in front of the mam entrance. In the middle stands a gigantic figure dressed as ihe iron man, a

At ihe blinding white light emanatmg from him. a each and at the left figure similarly clad in right
golden attire. These two are very quiet, almost motionless, but the iron man is nervous, he is i/mpatiemt for the moment to arrive when he should
1

have known for a long time that the post-narcotic neuroses

and psychoses are traceable back to such unconscious phantasies involving violence. Cf. similar example in my Nervose
Angstzustande,
p. 96.

Assembly House Dream

83

cry out to the assembled populace, the Emperor is coming! The people have been waiting for hours.
I and a few others, were* lucky enough to be admitted within. We shall see the Emperor at close
the thought causes my heart to beat fast. range, I become very nervous and I run breathlessly up and down the steps. I am a prey of undescribable ex-

outside,

citement; suddenly I hear a tremendous noise rising like the roar of an oceantide breaking

against the wonderful building and echoing within. Scared, I ask the servant what happened. He says:

"The

three at the door got tired waiting

and

left

Assembly House, the people became more impatient than ever at that, hence
their outcries."

their post swearing at the

At

that

moment

the

haU doors are

I light assaults my eyes. see the burgomaster (mayor) with the great golden chain and the red colored order ribbons hurrying

thrown open, an ocean of

down

the steps; he passes very close to me, so that I can almost feel his breath; he draws me along, I

run after him, the great door of the hall springs

The burgomasajar, as if opened by magic hands. ter calls excitedly: "Where is the Emperor?" He is told the Emperor had left the Assembly House
through a side door and was being carried along the Burg theater (Municipal Theater Building).
I see very clearly the carriage disappearing in the midst of the crowd. But no sound is now heard . .
then I awake.

84

Sex and Dreams

The dream of a poet, full of dramatic incidents, of plastic imageries, and apparently dealing with It was dreamed by a young political conditions.

man who
helpless

expects to

marry a poor

girl.

His parents

it. His father (the Emperor) is now and dependent upon him for support. On the evening before the dream he kept reflecting for a long time how he might extricate himself from the unpleasant situation. The dream has shown him a solution. In the girl's house wo er sich gut beraten wdhnt (Rathaus) where he considers himself

are against

well counseled, a great reception

is

being held.

The

analysis brings

up by

association a dance, a maris

riage

ceremony.

He

getting

married (Empthen the

must

fangniss, reception). first leave (abfahren, sterben, die)

will

But the father (Emperor)

be out of the way. death stumblingblock wish against the father. The tremendous mass of
people, the contrary circumstances. Three guardians are watching before at the Assembly House.

again the father (iiberlebensgrosse, unnaturally big) who in spite of his vigor earns nothHence the vigor. The blinding white light ing.
iron
is

The

man

which emanates from him

his bald
tellect.

is

a scornful reference to

pate and

his limited,

homely, philistine inis

The

quiet figure in golden accouterments

dear mother (also doubled) who does not reproach him; the iron man (iron constitution) is nervous and always plays the role of the house
his precious,

Assembly House Dream

85

tyrant: the Emperor is coming! This remarkable dream structure carries out further the feelings in
the breast of the

young man; the father must give

the deciding word, the circumstances speak loudly The father has lost his potheir unfavorable tone.
sition as employee (the watchmen at the gate abandon their post), that is why the circumstances have become unbearable. Now comes the wish fulfillment

in glorious form.

An

ocean of light blinds his eyes.

is

The burgomaster (mayor)

his

sweetheart,

the

mistress of his heart, the golden chain, the marriage these, analysis finds tie, and the red order insignia How does he describe the power to stand for blood.

of attraction which the beloved exercises over him?

(her) breath, he (she) drags me along, I follow him (her), all obstacles are overcome, the gate door of the great house springs ajar

"I almost

feel his

as

if

opened by magic hands."

across the Municipal

The Emperor

is

carried

Theater.

On

that

square he saw a few days ago a great funeral procession.

The Municipal Theater

as symbol for the

parental home is now conquered region. and Burg theater, both are overcome.

Emperor

He was

in ordinary life

tremendously excited in the dream. But Emperor and Burgomaster do not

affect him. Only because here they are symbols, because the Emperor represents his greatest obstacle and the burgomaster symbolizes his most cherished
ideal, his beloved, are these

dream thoughts linked

86

Sex cmd Dreams

Very interesting
is

to such tremendous affects.

the

The burgomaster calls out excitedly: where is the Emperor? That is the very climax of the little drama which is portrayed before us, the
observation:

great scene between the father and the beloved. Naturally she is the one who comes out victorious.

But any one who thinks

exhaustive
is

this analysis is

at

all

badly mistaken. The dream shows us the problem of his love affair. He has carried out an identification of his mother with the beloved.

The Assembly House

as for the bride
;

stands for the mother as well

the beloved mother, or

it signifies

the beloved,

who

shall be the

mother of

his children.

The mother
bellious

receives the father

(Emperor)

nat-

urally evening.

The mass

of people signify the re-

evil thoughts, and for that reason, naturally, by way of contrast, a secret. The three figures on guard, symbolize, like most trinities, the penis and pair of testicles. Here

wishes, the numberless

the penis
ticles

is

the "iron

man" with

the lance; the tes-

(egg-yellow) are characterized by golden garments. 2 One on the right, the other, on the left.
is

It

an old dream symbolism that the father means

is,

also the generating one, that

ticles
is

the penis.

The

tes-

are naturally immovable, quiet, only the penis impatient for the "arrival."

/ and a few others

'The "golden
p. 142.

we are lucky to be

allowed.

balls" as testicles: Anthropophyteia, vol. II.,

Assembly House Dream

to get in.
3

87

Naturally, he was within the maternal

past becomes the present. (This theme, maternal body phantasies will preoccupy us at different times in the course of our present
body.
study.)

The

The

Another's

wishes become progressively more pressing. three become his trinity. 4 The Emis,

peror leaves through a side door (that

his carriage disappears in the

he

dies,

situacrowd). tion resembles more closely the act of coitus (up and down the steps) and the dreamer wakes up.

The

birth phantasy naturally commingles with the defloration phantasy. He does not want to wait so long.

The

The

iron

man

is

impatient.

Another picture:
of the Unbridled Life: (23) I am in a street car which is bound for the Franz-Joseph Station. One horse is harnessed with a bridle of thin rope. The rope breaks.

The Dream

This dream I dreamed in the

of

fall

after the return

wife through the Franz-Joseph Station from a Summer vacation. clear wish fulfillment, to con-

my

tinue the care-free existence of a "grass" widower

"There are three children in the family. Interesting material on symbolism is found in the work entitled, Ancient, Pagan and Modern Christian Symbolism, by Thomas Jnman, M.D. (2d ed., New York, Peter Ecker, Publisher). According to this author the cross represents the union of 4 phalli, it is of Phoenician origin and has nothing to do with the essence of Christianity. In the beginning the cross represented the fusion of trinity and unity. It is a symbol commonly met in Egyptian art.
4

88

Sex and Dreams

(expressed in one of the slang popular songs of a few years ago, in the sentiment "My wife has gone to the Country, hurrah, hurrah!") obviously the In reality welling up of an unconscious thought.
:

was happy for my wife to take again the household affairs in hand so that I could live once more
I

under orderly conditions.

had not taken advan-

tage of my supposed state of freedom. But the secret wish must have been there, nevertheless.

Of course, I am the draft horse. That is a common symbol for the husband, in contrast with the woman who is represented preferably as the guardThe ties which bind me to carriage are repian. The resented in this dream as being very weak.
rope breaks (double meaning: the horse, that is, the flighty-minded fellow breaks away). The death wish also shows itself in the dream thoughts. The

Farces cut the thread of

breaks
off.

life.

The thread of

life

infantile layer is represented through the Franz- Joseph Station idea (Emperor Franz Joseph I return again to the realm of youth, father).

The

I return to mother

and

leave

my

wife.

6 The "life thread" in the folk thought represents also the penis: Anthropophyteia, vol. II, p. 112. The guilty conscience on account of shortening one's life thread or span of existence through masturbation (drawing off the life thread) is also a latent dream thought. Self-reproaches on account of infantile onanism play a great role in the neuroses and, like death thoughts, are found in most dreams in caricatured forms difficult to unravel.

Infantile Substratum

89

have seen that the dream fulfills our secret or ... reveals our secret fears. Fears and wishes are sisters. There is no fear represented in dreams which was not once a wish. In my work,
wishes

We

Nervose Angst zustdnde, I have proven in connection

with a large number of anxiety dreams, that the cryptic wish of neurotics appears in dream as fear

or anxiety.
I
structive

want to close this chapter with a short but indream which illustrates in very clear manserichil-

ner the bearing on anxiety. man, about thirty years of age, suffers of a ous perversion. He craves contact only with

dren below ten years of age. He has fought against this weakness with energy and successfully. He

knew how

to control the beast in himself.

One of

his favorite fancies

which indulgence in not seem a sinful

was to think up situations in his particular perversion would

act.

For

instance,
. .
.

suppose a

He would highwayman should force him to it not be responsible and would stand exculpated before human and divine law alike on the score of vis
major (coercion).
This

man dreams: (24) I am followed

in the

open

a very powerful fellow. He to have sexual girl. I was afraid he might force me

by a tramp, has with him a small

-field

intercourse with the girl, but I thought to myself: I should not really let that weigh very heavily on my

90
conscience

Sex and Dreams

Ms

time.

I ran off

and came across some

people so that I

was saved.

The dreamer, thus, is ready to carry out a sinful act under circumstances which would absolve him
responsibility. He looks for the force majeure of fate, in the form of a Pulcher (Viennese expression for "Strolch"). But even this old wish has now

from

turned into fear on account of inhibitions. 6

This dream shows the transference of a waking phantasy to the dream life. It illustrates a strange
borderland wherein wish and fear commingle in a
single affect.
Cf. the case of a Rabbi
in,

Nervose Angstzustande,

p. 165.

IV
SYMBOLISM OF THE SINKING TREE REPEESENTATION OF MOTHER EARTH THE FEAR OF SELF

Tilrchterlich tief leuchtet der

Traum

'den

m
die

uns gebauten Epikurs wir sehen in der Nacht

alle die

und Augias stall hinem, und wilden Grabtiere und

Abendwolfe ledig umherstreifen, die Vernunft auf die Kette hielt.

am Tage

[The dream penetrates

our Epicurean nature,
within us and
at
it

to

gruesome depths into

lights

up
see t

the

Augean

stable

freely prowling around, the wild beasts, the ferocious wolves which reason keeps enchained during the day.]

night we

Jean Paul

IV

The examples chosen from the Bible and from Artemldoros as well as various other dreams have
shown us that symbolism furnishes the key to dream One would think therefore that an interpretation. accurate knowledge of dream symbols is all that is
necessary to enable one to clear up the meaning of any dream. But the matter is not so simple. Now

and then it may be possible to recognize the content of a dream merely by a superficial survey of its But only now and then. Generally it imagery.
cannot be done.

And

even

if

a certain meaning has

value?

been recognized what is has multiple meanings.

its

Every dream
is

The dream

distorted

through various mechanisms, with some of which we have already become familiar, while others we will
learn to
later. According to Freud we must two categories of data: the manifest distinguish dream content and the latent dream content. In

know

many

cases the latent content cannot be recognized

For the symbols have only conditionally a fixed meaning. And anything may serve as a symbol. Also, the symbolism A violin player uses varies with different persons.
without the aid of the dreamer.
93

94*

Sex and Dreams

a different symbolic language than a grocer. Every one draws his symbolisms from his own sphere of In dream, the father, for instance, is knowledge.

always represented as an authority,

and so most

persons think of him as the Kaiser, the chorus singer in the opera as the conductor, the perpetual student as the teacher, the politician as the chair-

man, the peasant as the government

official,

the

tramp as the officer, the Viennese "Spieser" as the Mayor, the "religious gentleman" as the Pope, although others, too, may represent the father through the Pope (papa).

made this point so as to a one sided overvaluation of the guard against dream symbols. Now we turn to an apparently
I have anticipatively

easy, simple analysis of a dream:

Mrs. Delta dreams

(25) I was in an open quadrangular space (it was a garden? or a Court? A tree not an enclosure) at one end, slowly disappeared before our eyes, as if
gradually sinking into water. I was clever enough to notice that tree and Court alike also underwent a

shaking motion: "Here we see how the changes upon 9 the earth surface are brought about.''

dream

This dream was followed by another, forgotten picture, which ended with a light anxiety

feeling.

We

see that the

dream represents

in fact, the

occurrence of an earthquake.

Recollections of the

Earthquake Dream
terrible catastrophe of

95

Messina have had something

to do with the excitation of the dream picture (reOn that cent factor uppermost dream layer).

occasion a village disappeared almost completely during the earthquake, in places the coast lines were
altered.

The dreamer had

also read a few days

before a novel by Ganghofer, entitled "Der Laufende Berg" (The Moving Mountain), which described

how a hut sank deeper and deeper

into the

thus have, apparently, a simple reground. of a newspaper account and of a scene production described in a story and the fear might express the
fear of earthquakes which so
in the public eye. If

We

many

when the Messina and San Francisco

persons showed disasters were

we could prove, with Swoboda* that the

woman had

read the novel twenty-eight days prethat some multiple of twenty-eight days viously, or passed since she read about the earthquake in the

newspapers, we might quietly maintain that the dream was merely a periodic repetition of a strong Admitting impression received some time before. that this might be the case what have we gained thereby towards the understanding of the dream? We must really try to penetrate more deeply into

The woman recalls the symbolism of the dream. that during an earthquake an island once made its
Studien zur Orundlegung der Psychologic. very interesting work in which the proof is brought forth that certain impressions are periodically given expression in the dream.
1

96
appearance

Sex and Dreams

in midocean, in other words, the earthto it. We birth at once that suspect gave quake the theme of the dream revolves around the bipolar contrast, birth and death, such contrasts being fre-

quently represented in dreams through the same symbols. Let us look into that. Another association of ideas bring to the dreamer's mind the last Vienna earthquake. On that occasion a satirical wit played a joke and sent to the daily paper a scientific sounding but confusing account of the
his

occurrence as coming from a specialist and ended conglomeration with the remark: Meine Frau
literally,

verspiirte auch einige Stosse,

*

some shakings,' but the newspaper editor, of course, changed that to "shakes." We are now coming a little closer to the meaning of the dream.
too, felt

"

"My

wife,

big

tree

which
does

disappears,

shakings,

shakes,
is

birth.

What

it all

mean?

The answer

not

difficult.

The whole dream assumes a

different aspect.

It

represents an infantile scene from the earliest childhood, when the woman dreamer had observed the She had but act of coitus between the parents.

heard the rhythmic motions of the bed. The quadrilateral space was the bedroom of her parents and 2 The the marital bed, which is also quadrilateral.
a ln this sense of "vier-eckig," quadrangular, four-cornered, Note the expression: . . "having left table stands for bed. . . . bed and board"; in German, literally, "table and bed"
.

(Trennung von Tisch und Bett).

Birth Symbolism

97

further addition, "it was not a closed space garden or Court?" serves partly as dream distortion,

partly as overde termination, a means of fusing room and bed. Just as two negatives result in an affirmathe emphasis here (it was not closed) must be looked upon as an affirmation. Freud very properly states: "There is no negation in dream." If a
tive,

dream

raises the positive contention

"My

wife was

not there" the statement means the exact opposite, namely that the presence of the wife was painful and

has to be covered up as much as possible. We have here, then, the representation of a shaking motion of the bed (or a room). What has that The wellto do with a tree sinking into water?

known dream symbolism comes to our aid at this Water always stands for a reference to point. 3 Children come from the water, that is the birth.
first infantile

theory of sex.

Infants before birth

float

in water,

we adults

learn.

And

the tree?

What! does it signify other than the life-bestowing Birth and death, both are principle, the penis? the penis. represented through

The mother
mother earth.
abdomen).

is

here represented as the earth, Changes in the "earth surface"

as
is

symbolic reference to pregnancy (swelling of the

Here we encounter a strange problem: the prob*A subsequent chapter will be devoted to a systematic account of birth dreams.

98
lem of
life

Sex and Dreams

and death

in the dream.

Is it not re-

meaning?
veals

markable that contraries should carry the same For a further analysis of the dream rethat
it
is

symbolization of death.

We

shafl revert to that later.

Here I want merely to point out that a German

has studied this relationship long ago. In the peculiar, somewhat flowery language character4 istic of his day, Schubert states
scientist
:

"What we find in the language of dreams, every tone of irony, every peculiar association of ideas and the spirit of prophecy, all that we find preeminently also in the original of the dream world, in nature. In fact, nature appears to be in concordance with our cryptic poet and to ridicule with him our pathetic joys and our joyful pathos, as when she mocks us in our graves at one time, wails in our ear when we are in the marital bed at another time, thus pairing in wonderful fashion pleasure and pain, joy and sadness, like that nature voice, the air music of Ceylon which sings wonderfully joyful menuets in tones of harrowing, heartbreaking sadness. It is love time and joy time when the nightsong is at its best, lamenting the rose over the grave, according to a poetic expression, and when all joyful notes in Nature have a wailing quality and reversely, a certain ephemeral bird is said always to celebrate its marriage on the^ grave, on the day of its death. Death and marriage,^ marriage and death, lie so closely associated in naSymbolism of Dreams, ^Leipzig, F. A. Brockhaus, 1840.
ingale's wailing

Symbolization of Opposites

99

ture, as in dreams, often the one seems to signify the other, to conjure up or to imply the presence of the

other; in nature's language they usually appear as ideas of equal weight, either of which may, on occaAs already observed elsesion, replace the other. where, the creation and the last dissolution of our bodies are processes everywhere in nature inti-

mately related and identical with reference to the substances and changes involved; phosphorus is morning and evening star? alike, marriage and death candle at the same time, and while a portion of the
continuously revolving cycle of metabolic processes engaged in building up, another portion is engaged in tearing down. Pain and pleasure, pleasure and pain, are similarly related; the child of joy is born in pain; with the highest degree of sensory dysphoria and torture, even in the midst of fainting and apparent death, comes the supreme pleasure; reversely, too, sensory pleasure is a messenger of
is

pain.

"That strange association seems not to have escaped the attention of the prehistoric race which has raised the phallus, or its colossal symbol, the pyramid, to mark the grave, and has celebrated the death divinity with ceremonials around the phallus as if every act of a sensuous character contained also the raw indication of a deeper understanding. In the midst of the death ceremonials and mourning wails of the ancient mysteries there resounded also, as in some Shakespearian tragedy, the laughter over Baubo and Jacchus; back of the largely comical and joyful festivities there was often discernible a very earnest and tragic note" (Loc. cit., p. 38).
;

100

Sex and Dreams

must look
in

We
dream

our dream, too, for a deeper

meaning.
is

We

discover a further sense to it: the

a death phantasy. She lies in the grave. planted tree, such as she has seen in cemeteries, here sinks gradually into the earth. The four-cor-

nered place in which she lies is the grave. 5 As the earth spirit announces in Faiwt:

Geburt wnd Grab,

Em
Em
She thus
lies

ewiges Meer,
gltihend Leben.

Ein wecluelnd Weben,

in the closed grave, in the cemetery,

where flowers bloom (garden) and memorial trees

are planted eventually to disappear. On the great judgment day the graves open up and the dead awaken. Woe! How has she spent

her

life?

Was

it

Here we
anxiety.

see the deep feeling of guilt,

not a chain of sinful thoughts? which must

break forth at the end of the dream in the form of

That does not yet exhaust the meaning of the The most important feature is yet to be revealed. The fear at the end (anxiety) shows supdream.
5 "A woman dreams of going to visit a lady of her acquaintance who was really on her death bed at the time, following a prolonged illness; upon her arrival she is not a little surprised to find the woman in childbirth, a thing she cannot understand considering the sick woman's advanced age and her grown up son who was standing nearby. Here the incident of lying bedridden furnishes the associative link between childbirth and dying." (Da* Leben des Traumes, by Karl Albert Scherner, Berlin. Verl. Heinr. Sdiindler, 1861, p. 147.)

Fear
pressed sexuality;
reachable,
it

101

reveals wishes which being un-

unfulfillable,

and

unsocial

turn

into

discover that her husband, fearing the anxiety. care and responsibility of children, has practiced for years coitus interrupts. That fear of preg-

We

nancy shows

itself also in the

the fear that her husband,

dream who is in

Also picture. fact a healthy

and powerful man, may

true, etc.
6

die suddenly, or prove un-

Here an association of ideas leads to the most important of the dream thoughts. She has a single child, a son, who is to marry during the next few months. On the evening before the dream her future daughter-in-law came to her and they planned the
necessary bridal outfit. They inspected various waist models and the girl favored a shirt which buttons in
front,

"That is very convenient. If I saying: should have to nurse, I could use just that kind of a waist." She was surprised at the freedom with
girl

which the modern

girl she

speaks of such things.

.

She felt was entirely different. for the wave of aversion glowing, young, mentary healthy girl who had robbed her of her son's
. .

As a a mo-

heart.

Now we
dream.
The fear

understand the third significance of the

tree disappearing in the

The

ground

is

man

We
is,

the man may die expresses her cryptic wish. The a prisoner and must not leave her for a moment alone. can understand the motive: he must not go from her, that
is

die.

102
her son. 7

Sex and Dreams

She sees him during the bridal night (in her spirit), she sees anticipatively her daughter-inlaw's pregnancy. She is jealous and that jealousy
causes her keen suffering.

The

little

son,

whose

nurse she had been, in the dream is often represented as the penis. Here he symbolizes both. The

dream means, therefore:

love!

I foresee the end of

my

son will marry soon. He will gradually wean himself away from me. I mean less and less

My

to him.

He

is

becoming entirely absorbed in

his

love (the sinking tree).

He

will

render his wife

pregnant, he will be a father. That is how times bring on changes. It would be very interesting to find out what the
continuation of the dream indicates.
herself of these difficulties.

How
it

she frees
is

That, of course,
is

the

chief theme of the

pletely hidden

dream and therefore

com-

from view. But from analogy with similar previous dreams of this patient we are dealing with such a one we may infer that the missing part deals with the death of the young rival. Such a rival once died and because of the off that was four years ago
reproaches which she her neurosis developed.
felt

Now

unconsciously over it, her phantasies play

with the same thought and the feeling of guilt reacts with the expatiation of anxiety.
'She "planted" it, raised must be her support.
it,

took care of

it.

The

tree,

i.e.,

son,

Fear of Self
4

103

The anxiety in the last analysis is fear of self. 8 The most important thought, in this connection,
the one most deeply hidden.
It
is

is

the thought of

Rather than not begrudge her own beloved son to her future daughter-in-law, she would see him
death.

he should be out of the way. grave is dug and a body is laid in. That is for her the most important change in the earth surface.
dead.

He

should

die,

Such evil thoughts encounter inhibition and become expressed as anxiety. For she truly loves her son. She does not want to lose him. In every dream the thought of death is also woven m. There is no dream which does not contain an adumbration of death.

Our woman patient

is

lives

rich in spirits (play of words, a

only with the dead. She pun on: geistthis

reich, spiritual).

Further

associations

of

dream

lead

to

thoughts of masturbation (shaking motions) and 9 But it might confuse the reader to go bisexuality.

The dream has already become complicated. But there are no simple dreams.
on.
8 Cf. the words of Richard III about the terrible dream before the battle. The so-called "maternal body phantasy," i.e., the illusion of being within the body (coffin) of the mother and of watching the details of marital experience, too, comes here to surface. She is afraid of "bring buried alive"

DEEAM MASKS PURSUIT DREAMS THE POLITICAL DREAM ABOUT BISMARCK THE WONDERFUL VILLA THE DREAM ABOUT THE BAKER CONTRARY MEANING OF ABORIGINAL WORDS THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DON JUAN TYPE SAVINGS BANKBOOK AND LOVE EVIL THOUGHTS OF CHILDHOOD THE SKILLFUL FENCER THE DARK MAN, A SYMBOL FOR DEATH

Glaubt mir, des Menschen wahrster

Wahn
come
true,

Wird ihm im Traume aufgetan.

[Believe me, man sees his wildest fancy in his dreams.]

Richard Wagner

Numerous examples have shown us that the dream speaks a symbolic language and that the unraveling
of the symbols yields a partial explanation of the dream. I must underscore again, a partial explanation only, because in addition to the symbolism various processes involved in the dream distortion play a role to which I must next call attention.

One of the most important forms

tortion
is

of

dream

dis-

the transposition into the antithetical.

The

dream interpreters were already aware of that process and the popular mind has also perIf one dreamed of death, the ceived the truth. book dream explained it as meaning birth ; Egyptian if one met great misfortune in dreams the ancient interpreters took that to mean the presaging of good luck. These popular attempts at interpretation have been treated with ridicule by some of our scientists ; but it appears, as Freud rightly remarks, that the folk mind was nearer the truth in these
oldest

matters than the learned scientist.

Many

dreams

may

be interpreted as signifying an antithetical

transposition of material. "Excrement means gold. Gold and excrement are antithetical, that is why the
107

108
devil's

Sex and Dreams

gold turns into excrement. But
is it

a peculi-

arity of dreams to represent objects by their contraries.

Thus,

dress, quarrel

it means illness when one is in full when one makes love, and keen sensu-.

ous pleasure in dreams not infrequently is a forerunner of actual pain vae tibi ridenti, qma mox post gaudia flebis." (Kleinpaul, Sprache ohne Worte.)
:

I record

now

has come to

my

the most instructive example that attention. woman said to me:

"Dreams are nonsense !" For the fourth time I have had the following ridiculous dream: (27) A little, old, ugly woman chases me around the table; I am afraid and wake up with fear. The meaning is very simple. If we translate the little old ugly woman into the opposite we find that in the dream she is being pursued around the table

by a

big, attractive young man, an experience which corresponds to a wish on the part of this attractive woman who is married to a very weak,

delicate

man, and a wish which through repression account of its "forbidden" character) is turned (on The continuation of the dream is reinto a fear.
called

by the woman only after my interpretation and corroborates the interpretation. The alleged
old

woman

in

the

dream tears
stick

off

the

subject's

blouse and wants to

her hand between the

breasts a procedure wholly illogical on the part of an old woman but perfectly intelligible on the part of a young man in the same situation, which really

Dream

Distortion

109

On the other hand, it is depicts a rape phantasy. also conceivable that the picture represents a reverse act, that she struggles with a wish to run after
a big man; but the end seems to make that illogical. Why should she want to tear open the man's waistcoat? Here we learn another dream process, the
so-called In many transposition "from below. dreams what takes place below is represented above and reversely. That is an extraordinarily common

form of dream distortion, a process which, moreover, plays also a tremendous role in the symptomatology of the neuroses. Applying the principle of transposition from below above we arrive at the
wish to act aggressively and tear apart a man's trousers. Both interpretations, the aggressive and
the defensive,
there
is
fit

into one another very well; for

is not also a masochist, no not a voyeur at the same time. "All instincts appear in pairs.'* * Thus nature her-

no sadist who

exhibitionist

who

is

self upholds the law of opposites. The dream must bear a meaning also in a positive sense. She fears the mother. She has homosexual leanings and

wishes the assault which, moreover, signifies a question about her motherhood.
Alfred Adler, Der Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose, Fortsehritte der Medizin, 1908, No. 19: "In the healthy, the perverse, and the neurotics, alike, the motive power is generated by two originally disparate instincts which are later drawn together and, as a consequence, the sadistic-masochistic manifestation corresponds, alike, to two instincts, the sexual instinct and the instinct of aggression (Aggressionstrieb)
1

110

Sex and Dreams

the

For

in her breast.

woman is sterile. She will never have milk And now we arrive at the most signifilie

cant meaning.

mpther and
the breasts

at the nurse's breast.

first

She wishes to be again with the The grip on

pleasurable contact of infancy. plays upon various motives.
old

is

the

The dream thus More than that! The

the heart
is

woman who

seizes

her at

ancient symIn fact, in bol. Every fear is also a fear of death. roundabout ways, always the fear of death! Thus we see an interplay of the yearning for life

the symbol of death.

An

and the fear of death, the fear of

living

and the

yearning after death, commingled. Moreover, these forms of dream distortion are

supported by linguistic characteristics. Linguists have pointed out that in man's aboriginal language

many words had

double meaning,

signifying one concept and at the same time the exact opposite.

This feature of language was known already to

Schubert, who in his Symbolik des Traumes (Symbolism of Dream) maintains
:

"Recent, more penetrating linguistic investigaproven everywhere the prevalence of interchangeable terms in the articulated language and the kinship of words. First we frequently find that
tions has

words having contrary meanings originate from the same root as if, in expressing itself, the soul emphasized the inner organic double sense, rather than
;

Life and Death

111

some external particularized manifestation thereof. Words designating warm and cold are not only similarly sounding in some modern languages: for instance, Italian caldo, English cold, and Ger. .
.

kalt, meaning the opposite ; but within the realm of the same language we find words for warm and for cold derived from the same root (gelu, gelidus, cold; and caelo, calidus, warm); and the God of the tropical South has descended from the cold North. Just as frequently in myth and language the good divinity is fused with the evil one and reversely, the evil divinity is taken for good, so in Persian, although the corresponding myth makes a strong division between the two principles, the name of the evil Ahriman and that of the god of light, Orim-Asdes, both come from the same root ; so

man

also 'epos (eros), love, and epts (eris, quarrel; and in various other languages the words for unity and union and enemy and division are the same. (Swe-

denborg elaborated a theory that sensuous love generates in heaven the crassest hatred.) Light, too, the symbol of truth, and falsehood, or lying, in some languages are derived from the same root, because light (the beautiful morning star, as it is called somewhere, after flaring up in a scorching flame, becomes the rapacious wolf, the evil Loghe, who elsewhere appears also as dog and bitch, in That double quality unpleasant connotations. and of lighting) light is played upon in (scorching the jargon of myth everywhere. Blood, too, appears in double sense, as poison, anger, raging madness,

and as expatiation, appeasement, peace. Rage and meekness, darkness and light, the heavy metal and the light bird, air and iron, the generating of joy

112

Sex and Dreams

and sadness, low and high, sensuality and impotence, and many other concepts of similar antithetical character are traceable likewise to the same
roots the lamb as well as the beast, which are often met as symbols of the creative logos first appear
;

as ram expressing the generative principle, then as representing the grossest sensualism (here, too, lamb and flame, from same root) ; or as snake either in a beneficial or in a fearfully evil sense."

Not

infrequently we are in a position to trace in

a remarkable manner precisely how words came to be used in a sense exactly contrary to their original
meaning.
few examples will suffice. The kinship of knowing and generating has been traced already

in a very remarkable

manner by Franz Baeder:

"In

language and myth, dove, too, which as the holy spirit puts in motion the water of life as well as
man's cognitive spirit, is identical with the bird The phoenix and with the palm (tree or leaf).
palm, also the flower of night at the fountain of life, or, in other versions of myth, the acorn, vine, or fig tree becomes the tree of knowledge, which is
Finally the tree of knowledge becomes the lingam, the apparatus and symbol of sensuous delights^ In the same manner the seeing eye, the fountain of light, the Word, becomes on the one side the building, creating hand, on the other, with the hand signifies the organ of physical generation.
itself,

at the same time also the tree of contention.

The

Contrary Meanings
vitalizing eye
eye,

113
evil

becomes at the same time the

the
truth-generating,

oath-yielding (killing) * the of waste. falsehood, Thus, hand, lying, organ that young prudish virgin who in the myth was

never touched by the breath of a sensuous wish becomes the sophisticated goddess of the most unrestrained and wildest sensuality; the creative, spiritually cognitive, word undergoes a terrible change

under the picture of the horrible ram Mendes, whose cult includes all the shameful deeds relating to the most bestial animal lust; the fish and the snake of
indulgence generate also that terrible poison, which has corrupted the world and life. The word of love, the holy name, the law become punish-

sensuous

ment, anger, revenge.

Just as linguistic catastroevil, light

phes change good into

tions, evil turning into

into darkness, so

the same mechanisms effect the reverse transforma-

good; and many examples in myth and language, show evil and poison transformed into lovely figures or beneficial agencies."
Freud, in the
ungen, called
Abel, entitled the Contrary

econd volume of the Jahrbuch

fiir

psychoanalytisclie

und psychopathologische Forschour attention to a pamphlet by Karl Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte (On

Meaning of Aboriginal Words, pub-

lished in 1889).

In that work Abel points out:

"In
relic

the Egyptian language . . that unique of a primitive world, there are a fairly large
.

114*

Sex and Dreams

number of words with double meaning, each the

exact contrary of the other. Consider the apparent nonsense of having to bear in mind that the word strong, for instance, in our language, means strong and weak at the same time; that the noun light

means

light as well as darkness; etc.,

and there we

have a concrete picture of what the Egyptians were accustomed to meet in their daily language. Who can be blamed for an inclination to shake one's head
incredulously?
.
.

"Considering this and many similar instances of antithetical meaning, there can be no doubt that there was at least one language containing a multitude of words signifying one thing and at the same time the exact opposite. Strange as it may seem the fact is plain and we must take it into consideration.

"Among all the eccentricities of the Egyptian lexicon the most extraordinary perhaps is the fact that, in addition to words which cover opposite meanings, the language contains also compound words, formed of a couple of syllables of contrary meaning, but standing as a unit the meaning of which disregards entirely the sense of one of the component parts. In that remarkable language there are, thus, not merely words which signify strong as
well as weak, commanding as well obeying; there are also composite terms such as old-young, distant-

near, uniting-dividing, outside-inside, which in spite of their double and antithetical source, signify, reThese spectively, old, distant, uniting, outside.
. . .

deliberately bring together contrary meanings, not for the purpose of forming a new meaning, as is done occasionally in the Chinese

compound words

Contrary Meanings

115

language, but merely in order* to use the composite term in the sense of one of its antithetical components, when the latter would have carried the same ." meaning, if taken by itself.
. .

riddle is more easily solved than may Our concepts arise through the surface. on appear "If it were always light," states contrasts.

But the

Freud, in his interpretative abstract of Abel's essay mentioned above, "we should not distinguish between
light

and darkness, and consequently we would have

neither the concept nor the

clear, everything

word

light.

...

It

is

on

this planet is relative

and has

independent existence only insofar as it stands in relation to, and differs from, other objects. . . .
Since every concept is thus the twin of its opposite, how could it be perceived, how could it be communiit, except its contrast with or opposite?" through comparison In dreams this contrast or antithesis plays a great

cated at

all

to another trying to acquire

role.

The most wonderful

extremely
is

peculiarity

of

human
through
re-

nature, man's bipolarity, expresses

this

itself

interesting

psychic

phenomenon.
also

There
marks.

no "negative"

in dreams, as

Freud aptly

But in that sense there is The dream divinity is the arch-type

In some dreams

no "yes."

of the doubter.

this contrariness is deliberately

expressed, and specifically through doubt, as in the following dream of an artist suffering of a professional neurosis:

116
I

Sex and

Drearns
else

am

running away from some one, or

pursuing somebody through water, over steps, into the room. It occurs to him that there was some
one

am

else in the dream; we try to inform ourselves who that could be, and he replies it was a colleague, a piano player like himself, who tried to enter the tech-

nical school; he

was not accepted and that worried

him very much.

The person he pursued he does not recall, but we know from previous analyses that it can be only his own mother, and in fact it was his habit as a child to run off over the steps and into the room when she
threatened
to

punish

him.

He remembers

such

scenes, he recalls also that during the previous year

he and his mother bathed together in a river. The men's dressing cabins were on one side, the women's

In spite of the great distance he swam to his mother, whom he nearly reached in a state of exhaustion. We see that both

on the other.

one half hour

incidents are fixed in the dream.

from

his mother, as

an adult

As a child he ran he swam across the

river to her side.

dream?

He

is

What is great Don

the meaning of this

phantasy; but if would become the kind of character called

a Steiger

Juan, mostly in his he followed his inclination, he

in

Vienna

Hence the mean(literally, a "stepper"). of or stairway). The rooms, as ing Stiege (steps, usual in dreams, signify women (in German, Zimmer-Frauenzimmer, rooms

women)

to climb after

Colloquial Expressions

117

Frauenzimmer (women)

that

is,

indeed, his chief

women, one after preoccupation. be true to cannot any one. But why another, and
runs after
all

He

women without being true to running away from one woman who cannot be a wife to him his mother.
does he run after
all

one?

Because he

is

This brief dream discloses the psychology of the Don Juan. Because of his perpetual fidelity Don

Juan

is

untrue.

He

is

eternally true to his infan-

and because he looks everywhere for this ideal, and never finds her, every woman rouses him and promptly disappoints him. What interests him in the end is the woman's retile ideal,

the mother,

sure of disappointment, he concentrates his whole attention on the task of overcomsistance and,

ing the resistance and of making the conquest.

The

two opposite tendencies, the running

plies pursuit, or, if

off,

which im-

we

prefer, the pursuit, which

similarly designates a running away are strikingly Dreams of water are well expressed in this dream.

usually birth dreams and it was not an accident, therefore, that in this case the dream evoked the
recollection

of

the
is

dreamer's

swimming

to

his

mother.
cepted?

the colleague who was not acHis younger brother. He wishes to be the

But who

only child in his mother's "technical school." That the master is the father, even the tyro in analysis will have surmised. Mr. X. is also the father (condensation)

who thus appears excluded from

the

118

Sex and Dreams

school, like the brother.

Piano playing is a common for "sexual intercourse" or for "masturbasymbol tion," like all other acts involving the notion of

"playing." I continue this series of dreams by giving next a very interesting dream in which transposition

This is a so-called political plays a great role. dream. Indeed, dream life conceives nothing as The greatest and loftiest personages of the holy.

world of high politics are utilized by the dream as

let

But symbols for commonplace homely thoughts. us not anticipate the interpretation but relate
the dream, which on

first perusal gives the imof something logical, and that is seldom the pression case with dreams. political dream is as fol-

first

My

lows:

(29) I am m the Hofburg and see Bismarck. With others I shout: Hoch! Some one starts the
anthem. I join lustily. Several fall on their knees. I see Bismarck again. We speak about the
.
.

incident , also about the books which he carries.

tell

him that our library shows a striking gap whenHe ever we take out a few books on a journey. thinks he never had that feeling, and I explain that

by the fact that in his tremendously large library a few books more or less makes no difference. We have here a political dream, in which some

German

nationalists persistently acclaim Bismarck;

call forth

they become noisy and partly as reaction

Word
the answer of
all

Associations

119

good patriots, the people's hymn.

And yet! Like most political dreams this dream, too, has nothing to do with politics.
I had the dream in P., a beautiful rural place at the sea.

had our summer place there. But unOne week fortunately my vacation was disturbed.

We

before the projected removal to the place I received

lives.

disquieting news from F., where my aged mother telegram called me to her. I found her in

ence near her.

a serious condition which required my constant presUnder such circumstances vacationing at P. was out of question. I determined quickly to remove my family from P. to Abbazia, where

I could see also

my

mother

daily.

I also thought

that the presence of my family would bring joy to the bedridden patient and aid her recovery. (That actually was the case. There is no physician
I remained for a few days at F., until like joy.) her condition improved somewhat, and then went to P., which I was sorry to have to leave. On the sec-

ond night of
dream.

my

sojourn there I had

my

"political"

And now / am in
pleased

the analysis. the Hofburg.

It

My
was a

summer
villa

residence

me immensely.

with a long

veranda permitting a beautiful view across MariaWorth. Everything was so pleasant and comfortable, that

my

little

one said: "The Kaiser could not

have

it

any

nicer!'*

Hofburg, then, means the best

120

Sex and Dreams

residence.

summer name of
is

further association
is

is

the

the owner.

His name

Schweinburg.

He

the architect

who has

built the

Burg

theater at

Vienna, which some one called jestingly the Schwein-

burg theater. The Hofburg of my dream, then, is my villa, and the beginning of the dream signifies: I am at P., in my fine, beautifully situated summer
residence.

And

I see Bismarck.

What

has Bismarck to do

with P.?

That

is

also easy to understand.

tall,

The
thin

Bismarck of the dream was a strikingly

man

with yellowish-muddy complexion and white mustache. The dream here carries out the wit-

ticism so

common

in dreams, of covering

up the con-

tent

by

transposition into the opposite.

The

big,

lean

man

plexion is a dark mustache, my friend Dr. M., whose summer residence in P. so pleased me the year before that
I chose one in the same place.

with white mustache and yellowish coma small, heavy, florid appearing man with

Dr. M. had an un-

pleasant controversy with a society to which we both belonged and he adjusted it with such diplomatic
skill

that I assured him at the time: Bismarck him-

self

could not have done better!

Moreover, another

colleague told me of Dr. M. that he was very clever and experienced, a second Bismarck in his vocation.

The dream now act as

represents the wish that he should skillfully as a Bismarck and help me

Associations

121

get released of the contract for the summer residence without too great a loss, so that I may be
able to return quickly to mother. With the others I shouted: Hoch!
all

We

are a

group praising P. We love the beautiful place at the sea, the clean roads. Whither one walks one
has the impression of moving in a great garden;
there are interesting excursion spots; we praise the bathing, the charming position of the establish-

ment,

etc.

Some one begins the people's anthem. Mr. S., a man of the people, now well-to-do, thought the
place was very expensive. money in a few weeks.

He

has spent a lot of

I jo'm lustily.
at P.

That

is

a fact.

The absence

of a

moderate priced inn might interfere with

my

stay

ridiculous

Several persons fall on their knees: refers to the deference of some persons towards the

proprietor of the establishment. Then I see Bismarck again, we speak of the Incident. Incident is an important word. Wech$el

Em

der den

Zug auf

andere Geleise bringt: a change

It
is

which makes for a different turn.

the illness

which causes painful experience to a being most dear to me. But that will carry us into another
channel of our dream thoughts. Let us beware of digressing and continue the interpretation on the

122

Sex and Dreams

path on which we have already started. I spoke with Dr. M. about my difficulty and he promised me
his assistance in canceling the contract.

Also about the books which he carries. I him that our library shows a marked gap whenHd ever we take out a few books on a journey. thinks he never had that feeling, and I explam that his tremendous large library, a by the fact that, make no difference. or less more books few This is a reference to the savings bank account
. .
.

tell

on which I drew before undertaking the journey.

My
I

wife,

always the economical, thrifty influence

in our household, thought that the

summer expense
six

weeks in the had at first intended to spend country would cause a marked gap in our modest resources. Dr. M., who was also to stay six weeks at the place, is well-to-do and can more easily afford The dream plays upon this thought. the luxury. In fact, I had spoken to Dr. M. about the vacation
2

expenses.

have interpreted the dream thus far. It contains to a certain extent regrets that I had chosen
so expensive a
a

We

summer

resort.

It

is,

as

if

had said

Savings bank account here means also woman. In my monograph, Keuschheit und Gesundheit (Prudery and Health) I have stated: "There is no savings box for the spermatozoa." Dr. M. figures as an admirer of the fair sex. I accuse him of maintaining a harem, while I have but one wife. According to the "symbolic parallelism" of which we shall speak at length in the next chapter, "spermatic fluid" means also "money." (Consider also the expression "striking gap" and "tremendous large library," from that standpoint.)

Associations
to Dr.
live at

123

M.

in the

dream:

"Yes, you can afford to

the Hofburg. What does it matter if you do make some inroads into your savings bank account? I am a man of the people, for whom a sim-

ple country place would be good enough. But let us investigate further. I have already mentioned that the word Vorfall, "incident," refers

now take up

to the change leading in another direction. the other path.. . . .

Let us

There are a number of dream symbols almost

regularly permitting a particular translation. symbol of that type is also the Emperor in the dream,

who, as I have already said, usually represents the father. Applying that key, the Hofburg becomes

my

father's residence
fits

and Bismarck

is

my

mother.

That

even better.

strikingly tall, thin

man-

stands antithetically for a small, heavy woman, like my mother, whom father always called his Bismarck.

Wisdom

is

her most striking characteristic.

The

yellowish complexion due to illness also corresponds. I found my mother very ill and I was distressed to Bissee her face drawn and distorted with pain.

marck,

thus,

represents

two persons,

a process

called Verdichtung (condensation),

by Freud.

I join other persons shouting, Hoch! We wish her a speedy recovery. "Kopf hoch Mutterchen, keep up your courage, mother dear, you will get better," I told the dear aged patient when she

began talking about a

will

and about dying.

Some

124

Sex and Dreams

It goes:

one starts the anthem:

keep, of course, mother
!

Gott erhalte

Gott

beschiitze

God

God protect"

in this case,

Several persons fatt on their knees: that an actual occurrence at the meeting.

refers to

speak of the occurrence: that reproduces a Also about the books he cardaily experience. ries along, etc. gives the solution to the dream. I
. .

We

made a great sacrifice She with the journey (savings bank account). her about the distribution of which we jewelry spoke cherish not for its monetary value but on account of
confessed to mother that I
its associations.

But

in

my dream

I see

mother as an immensely

wealthy woman "library." The

possessing a tremendously large wish fulfillment is clear. We, her

children, are the heirs.

Instead of

relics
is

we

receive

tremendous sums of money, for she

Princess (Bismarck).
ugly,

as rich as a

The dream

reveals to

me an

unpleasant, painful thought, which I have never entertained in waking life, but which must

have been slumbering in my breast. While mother was speaking about the distribution of her humble goods, I must have repressed an emotion which, expressed in words, may sound approximately as follows: "Why are you talking about your pitiful possessions, as if you were leaving behind, who

knows what great and valuable inheritance! won't even cover the expenses of my journey

You
here.'*

Unbidden Thoughts

125

sciousness

I need hardly emphasize that my waking conI am anyis unaware of such a thought.

thing but careful in money matters and I am exBut such unconscious thoughts tremely sensitive. are linked with the most delicate feelings in good

men, a fact which should make us more thoughtful about all those persons whom we are disposed to consider as "bad" without knowing more closely
their circumstances.

analysis thus far has not shown the relationBut the of the dream to the infantile root. ship one of the connection is there. It reminds me of

The

most unpleasant experiences of my childhood. I was a small boy and was standing in front of the library, which a brother's pride and mine had built up (the brother was six years older). Suddenly the thought came to me: "If your brother should die now, this library would be wholly yours!" I ran away shocked. I thought I was a terrible sinner,

and the
caused

recollection of this

occurrence has often

my

cheeks to flush with shame.

(Sudermann

relates a similar experience in his novel, Die Geschwister.) I believe that I also struggled at the time

with the temptation of stealing some of the books and selling them to the second hand dealer, a thing I often did with my own books.

The pretty
I

political

meaning-motivation.

dream thus has also a deeper My mother is wealthy. But

brother does not enter into

am

the only heir.

My

126

Sex and Dreams

the situation. The boy's selfish wish has still retained the power of influencing the plastic pictures of the dream (library).

Three weeks later in Abbazia I had a dream which was a continuation of the former. A proof that the dream thoughts play variants on the same theme.
(30) I am in Neuwaldegg. One of the last houses a is wonderful villa belonging to my mother. I ascend a marble stairway and come into a gigantic

"Oh"

reception room exquisitely furnished in red and gold. I say, "there is comfortable space for every-

body here."

The history of the preliminary circumstances of the dream is partly known. I rented a residence at Abbazia where we were in fact rather cramped for
space.

I also secured for mother a

room which

In the seemed to me not well enough furnished. dream I am again in Vienna. One cannot be more
comfortable than traveling to Neuwaldegg, a suburb of Vienna, instead of traveling to distant Abbazia.

My mother is a wealthy lady. In her reception room we are comfortable. Here the continuation of the dream comes to my mind:
W. wants to give our servant a krone as a tip, but the latter scornfully disregards the gift. 3
* Further determination reveals hidden thoughts, a longing for the return to the mother-body, where there is "comfortable room for all" (?). The tip or gratuity, in German, "Trinkgeld," literally "drink-money," leads back to wet-nurse mem-

ories.

Interpretation

127

On
the

the previous day I had lost a crown playing game of Tarok with W. That very night even

our servant refuses that sum as a gratuity.

The

dream speaks volumes.

This dream, like the other, lends itself, of course, to a deeper analysis. But I must forego the task. As it is, I have already disclosed about myself much
of what most persons prefer to keep hidden. The Dream about the Confectioner:

big no, a middlesized, rather diminutive man, with a black mustache

(31) I

am on

the street.

pointing downwards, hold me by the hand and does not want to let go. He wants to squeeze me. 1 say: let me off, or I'll call the policeman standing there,

near

my

children.

loudly: police,

But he still squeezes me. I shout The officer does not hear my police.

outcry.
this

way
f

squeezes me harder. I struggle and that and I shake the hand so hard that

The man

squeezing does not hurt me. Meanwhile I shout again: Police, police! The officer sees us
the

man s

and comes running in our direction. The man is arrested (?). Suddenly we find ourselves in the Liliengasse (street). I and my two children in the room, and in the kitchen the dark man who now
wears a big black beard.
us.

small hallway between

The man

able

memory

has

name is Pellmann and his remarkmade an impression in the Court.

While he
into
is

1 cannot shut the doors.

to lock up.

outside I try

But he comes

my

room from be-

128
hind.

Sex and Dreams

I say to him, laughingly: "Of course, I can't

do anything with so good a gymnast."

Socrates

He looks

like

the "SturmgeseUe." strange, nonsensical dream.

into the gist of the dream thought the warp and woof of its structure.

Let us penetrate and take apart

The dream
previous day.

is

linked to two occurrences of the

R. told me that he has looked up the Egyptian dream book because he has found therein many resemblances to Pellmann's system of
at a restaurant I saw an illustration of

memory culture; Sudermann s

9

"Sokrates der Sturmgeselle"; also a satirical picture: Sudermann takes up the warfare against
critics.

So much for the recent

inciters.

Now we

This brings to my mind the and the spot where the acLandesgerichtsstrasse tion takes place in the little park in front of the
ated.

begin the analysis. / am on the street.

Czernin palace, where the Czernin gallery is situThe road leads from my house directly past

there and to the Secession Building (an art gallery). In the Czernin gallery I learned to appreciate the

art of painting.

I recall particularly

an incident

were standing in front of the painting of Paulus Puter, no, it should be Potter. My companion exclaimed: this picture has
with Professor E.
Luft, Luft, Luft,

We

big

no,

atmosphere! (literally, air!). a middle-sized, rather diminutive man,

Associations

129

with a black mustache pointing downwards holds me by the hand and does not want to let go. This!
brings to my mind, Mr. Hummel, confectioner in my old home town, whom I have seen only a few This times, the last time some fifteen years ago. fellow Hummel had once written a rather shallow

femlleton under the pseudonym Lemur (a transposition of Rummel) which stirred me to an imitation
of Lesswg's verse:

Wer wird nicht einen Lemur lesen Doch wird ihn jemand loben? Nein. Wir wotten weniger gelesen Und mehr belobet sein.

[Who would
But
will

not read a

Lemur
No.

We
What
all

any one praise him? would rather be less read

better liked.]

And
is

rather diminutive

the meaning of a big, no, a middle-sized, man? Clearly a person who fuses

these qualities, in the present case, I myself. Perhaps I imagine I am a big, no, a middle-sized

investigator when in truth I am rather a small one. Now I understand the "confectioner." I put my

"sugar wares'* before my readers, like Mr. Rummel, In fact I was busy feuilletonist and confectioner.
with

my book
it

on the evening before the dream.

feared

was not "deep" enough, only "Zueker-

130

Sex and Dreams

tidbits.

werk," confectionery

I decided to cast off

these sweets, these "bonbons," as a colleague once called them. And now the next passage:
let me go. He wants to down of me the level (i.e., keep my achievesqueeze ments). The watchman who stands by my children

He

does not want to

is

a watchwoman, namely

my

wife,

who

takes a keen

interest in

my

work and

is

not easily

satisfied.

She

must help me

The
in

get that "Hummel" off my breast. watchman does not hear my outcry. My wife

my

opinion does not pay sufficient attention to

my

writings.

/ struggle this

way and

that

way and

1 shake the

hand so vigorously that the squeezing does not hurt I cover up my superficiality, I get along well that way, earn money Professor E. and Professor I I got along well. F. warmly shake my hand. know now something about oil paintings, I won't mistake a print for an oil painting. The man is arrested: That leads to an overstressing of the dream picture, an overdeterminame.
;

tion and the analysis of this point would carry us too far afield.

Very interesting is the recall error Puter instead of Potter. In the forgotten dialect of childhood
"Puter" means being rid of, that is, free. This first part of the dream, then, portrays the desire to get
rid of the petty confectionery tidbits with the aid of the wife and of Professors E. and F.

Associations

131

like every

Suddenly we find ourselves in Cz. The dream, dream, stretches its roots down into the I and my two children in the room infantile life.

and

in the kitchen the

dark man who now wears a

big black beard. I have now reached a step higher; for I seem myself in the dream. I am a Pellmann
possessing a wonderful memory. For days I have been thinking over a plan to write on the subject of

memory. His remarkable memory has made an impression A roundabout self-praise. I before the Court.
think a great deal of my last appearance as expert at Court, where my testimony engaged the closest
attention
of

those

present.

Now

Pellmann

is

changed into

Sudermann who takes up the cudgels

against critics. I wish to get rid of my self-criticism. I am Socrates who is also "a drawer of water

and hewer of wood"; Socrates

criticizes the latter.

is

The

criticism openly resented

felt

in a round-

about way.
\So skillful

brings to

my

9 a gymnast can t be kept down: It mind the nursery room of K., in the

watchtower, connected by a subterranean passage with the gymnasium room, so that the children should not catch cold during inclement weather. I

am

the gymnast and the dream reassures

me

that I

shall free myself of all unpleasantnesses in life, that

I will find

my way

out of

all difficulties.

Irrational

dreams of greatness about

my

forthcoming book!

132
Infantile,

Sex and

Bream
!

vague sexual reminiscences! Unpleasant Doubts concernexperiences of the last few years
ing

my

personal ability!

Endless

self -adulation

All that condensed, Disregard of all criticism! fused in a single web! Here we see how richly the

dream
dream.

is

determined.

Not only

two, or three or four

in the

strands,

any number of them may be fused

Moreover, how well suited
is

the choice of

Rummel, the

feuilletonist, the confectioner!

analysis thus far does not include the most important features. Who holds me down to the
affliction

The

of

my

unconscious?

Naturally

my

wife.

I feel myself held down by the marriage tie. The wife and the two children are a stumblingblock I against carrying out the polygamic instincts. wish to be Socrates and at the same time to enjoy

the adventurous "storm and stress"

life.

does a big dark man play here a role? That brings to my mind a strikingly handsome colleague with whom I have
is

Another feature

noteworthy.

Why

Clearly homosexual leanpracticed gymnastics. are breaking through in the dream, leanings ings

against which my wife must protect me, for they may land one in Court That is why he steals into
!

my

In the dream all caution and all watchfulness proves useless. Here the anal complex links itself. That was to
behind.

room from

be suspected already with the recall of the association, Luff, Luft, Luft! atmosphere, that is, air!

Associations

133

I have reached thus far without doubling on the Now it occurs to me that the trail of associations.

pseudonym Lemur

is

the reverse of

Rummel.

That
lo
!

suggests a return to the great dark man.

And,

thinking of a little blonde girl, Presently I first love! Bertha. On the very day when the Lemur "fewlleton had appeared, I saw her standing

am

My
of

in

front

the

confectioner's

shop window,

my

hero of the day, and I suddenly fell in love with her. One can imagine the excitement of a high school boy

who produces

lyrics

by the ream and who

is finally

lucky enough to have an unfortunate love affair a love unrequited. That first love truly was an un-

happy one. I never spoke to the lady of my heart But she once turned around to tell me that she finds

my

everlasting dogging her steps foolish. . . . Nevertheless I remained faithful to her for years. Indeed, perhaps I have never outgrown that first

love.

There was a sweet sorrow to

my

passion.

The

squeezing did not hurt me in the dream, although she did not let go of my hand. Note the wish fulfillment.

She grabs me and does not She holds on to me.

let

me

off.

Now
dream

discloses against

I understand the cryptic hatred which the my wife. I revenge myself

on women for the scornful rejection I experienced on the occasion of my unforgettable first love affair.
This process
the
is

illustrated also in the psychology of

Don Juan

type (in addition to the features

al-

Sex and Dreams

ready mentioned).

Only

in that sense

can I under-

stand the contrast between

unconscious attitude towards
self

my my

conscious and
wife.

my
my-

I say to

repeatedly:

if

you were now once more free to

choose, you would again choose your wife. That, of course, is the highest compliment that can be paid to a woman. In the unconscious I see myself back in the

There is where I lived Liliengasse without her. when I fell so passionately in love. The watchman is by antithesis (of the imperative: watch out!) the

command

sleep on, wife

very strongly indicated. wife) at home in Cz. with

first

That seems to^ me to be For I am (without the

love

and with

my

two children, with my mother. Truly a remarkable

my

Pellmann re("astonishing memory"). minds me of a psychiatrist by that name, who wrote an interesting book and of Pekelmann, a boyhood friend. He was a diminutive fellow an actor
loyalty
of

medium ("middle-sized") quality and an

ekelhafter

excel-

lent genial reciter.

(Observe the association series:

Stekel

Mann

Pekelmann

Pell-

mann.)
frain,

My

friend repeatedly recited a ballad

by

Meissnef called The Jewess, and ending with the re-

"Her grave The dark man is

it

waits."

death.

When

considering sys-

tematically the subject of death symbolism I shall take the opportunity of speaking at greater length

Interpretation

135
I refer

about the "black man."

Death wants me.

him to

my

wife

who,

through association with

Socrates, receives the uncomplimentary and undeserved appellation of a Xantippe. Death cannot

harm me.
I

I do not fear death

and never feared

it.

Socrates, draining with philosophic calm the hemlock cup. Now it strikes me that the great Turner whose picture occurs in the dream was really
it brings to my mind a gigantic and school colleague, who is already dead.) powerful The associations Landesgerichtsstrasse, Wachmann,

am

Richter (Also

Richter (Court Street,

criminal realm.

officer,

The laughter

Judge) lead into the at the end of the

dream, too, is to be understood in reverse sense. It a sad dream with depressing thoughts. Pellmann is the criminal against whom I shut the door to my
is

heart.

Now

associations

overwhelm me.

The

deepest

dream But we must abandon the analysis at this point. Let us emphasize first the fact that t}ie dark man is a composite picture of a number of persons. They
layers of the

are ready to break to surface.

are Rummel, Bertha, Richter, Pellmann, Pekelmann,

:

death, and, finally, my own inferiority. All the persons of the dream are divisions of my selfhood and
vitalized with

thoughts. The process of condensation depends on the capacity of the psyche of Further identifying itself with various persons.

my

136

Sex and Dreams

found in the folwant to point out that has a pronounced bisexual charI only

illustrations of that process will be

lowing chapters.
this

Here

acter and

dream, too, is a proof of "psychic hermaphroditism."

VI

DREAM

TRANSPOSITION FROM AND FROM THE BACKBELOW, UPWARDS, FRONT, WARDS SCORN UNDER THE MASK OF GENTILITY A DREAM WHICH MUST BE INTERPRETED IN REVERSE SENSE THE SECOND SYMBOLIC EQUATION THE SYMBOLIZATION OF SCORNFUL LOVE WHY THE CHILD CALLS "PAPA !" A BIOGRAPHIC DREAM
MASKS,

CONT.

Es

ist

mit

mehr er
Tiefe,

dem Menschen me mit dem Bourn. Je die Hohe und Helle will, um so starker

streben seine Wurzeln erdwdrts, abwdrts, ins dunkle,

ins Base.
is like

\Man

a tree; the more he strives upwards

and towards the light, the stronger his roots drag him downwards, earthwards, mto darkness and the
abyss,
into the pit of evil.]

Nietzsche

VI
principle of "transposition into the opposit e" is carried out in various ways in the dream.

The

preferable means for the substitution is the displacement from below. Anything referring to the bodily region below the umbilicus, morally abhorrent,

may

be transposed to the upper part.

first

Thus,
en-

the

mouth may represent the vagina.

the

Here we

counter

symbolic

parallel

(Gleichung).

These symbolic parallels are a great aid to any one who knows them, at times indispensable in the interparallelism reads: All bodily openings (in the dream) are equal to each other and may substitute one another. Thus,

pretation of dreams.

The

mouth, eyes, ears, nasal opening, anus, vagina, urethra and navel * may substitute each other.

An

example

will illustrate this principle of

symbor-

bolic parallelism.

girl

dreams:
to allow so

(32)-

Mama

has told

me not

much

ing in the nose,

*Nabeln for coire; vid. Anthropophyteia, vol. VII, p. 13. For instance, anus is called the "Cyclopean eye": Ibid., p. 44. Also, Fr. "Cy elope" ; the "one-eyed affair" das "ein-augige Oeschdft" means homosexuality: Anthropophyteia, vol. II, p. 428. The vagina is also called the "ear between the legs" das "Ohr zwischen den Beinen": Anthropophyteia, vol. I, p. 339.
139

140

Sex and Dreams

and she wonders at the meaningless "allow." She had the ugly habit of boring her nose, which in most cases is a symbolic displacement from below. Here
the introitus of the nose replaces the one below. Let us analyze another dream which shows even

more plainly than the former one, from below. Mr. Theta dreams:

this displacement

(S3) I am engaged in conversation with J. L. and I become aware of the fact that I have a flat fleshly growth at the back of my head and I reach my right

hand back
I don't
get rid of

to

it.

like its
it.

presence there and I reflect

how

to

Now
ing.

it

has the appearance of a smooth soft swell-

I press on it with the left hand and at first there appears a little bloody drop and on pressing further

a bloody fluid trickles forth and the swelling goes down. I look around for something to soak up the fluid; I >am using for the purpose perhaps a handkerchief in

my right hand but what I want is a sufficent quantity of cotton. Mr. J. L. offers to go down and fetch some for me.
There must be some in Dr. Stekel's office. Meanwhile I am busy with the swelling, cleaning and throwing the soaking cotton into the chamber

it

pot, which stands under the bed, fllled with urine. But I have the feeling it will shock J. L,'s sense of

Transposition
propriety when he returns and finds use of his chamber pot.

141

me

thus making

I also believe now that he

is

present in the room.

Our conversation room was originally an office and has changed into a living room while I was busy
cleansing

my

wound.

THE PLAN

OP THE

ROOM

J. L.

Myself

Wash

basin

Bed

I
Room
exit

This dream represents chiefly a symbolic account The dreamer is conversing with of the treatment.
J. L.,

who afterwards changes

into Dr. Stekel.

His

"head is not in order.

hoti.

He

carries his neurosis like a

boil.

I must free him of that

the

I must clean

I must show away filth (matter, blood, urine. him another path, I must direct him (the room was
Incidentally he originally a Direktionsgebaude) wishes an intimate preoccupation with his various
.

Sekreten ("secreta" and "secrets"). Here we enAll counter the second symbolic parallelism.

142
secreta

Sex and Dreams

and excreta are equal to one another. Mucous secretion (nasal, cerumen, etc.) blood, ether, urine, bowel excreta, spermatic fluid, milk, sweat and tears are equal.
This symbolic parallelism
fully later.
parallels.
will

be considered more

We

shall then take

up

the particular
the

We

return to our dream.

The soaking up of

running matter rouses the suggestion that

this rep-

resents suckling at the nurse's breast (pus for milk).

This dreamer has not yet forgotten his nurse. Nearly all his dreams are concerned with the nurse
(cp. in the chapter on Nurse Dreams the dream No. 249). Here the swelling is also the breast. Thus, we have a transposition from below upwards and backwards. In this connection we become ac-

quainted with a third symbolic parallelism:

Breast,

arm, hand, foot, loin, and penis must be considered equal to one another. 2

thumb,

toe,

The
is

patient's

mouth

is

his erogenous zone.

likes eatables

He

a "taster" and "mincer," he a refined palate.

and has

Now we proceed further with the analysis. / become aware of a flat fleshly growth at the back of my head and I reach my right hand back to it.
find this to represent
1

Bearing in mind the displacement from below we a touch on the posterior parts.
Testicles

and ears should

all

of the penis,

also be added. are paired organs.

With the exception

Displacement

14<3

This sort of contact plays an important role in the man's rude love life. Taking into consideration
also the displacement behind

(from the front), the

swelling

is his

too often.
still

penis, which he has thus touched only In spite of his 39 years of age he is

masturbating. / don't like its presence there and I

it.

reflect hots)

best to get rid of

This part of the dream reveals

He "psychic hermaphroditism" would prefer to have no penis. He would like to Castrations phantasies have played be a woman.
the

dreamer's

an important

role in his

mental

life.

further course of the dream portrays a masturbatory act which was always a "milking" to him.

The
is

being "milked." This 3 Puellae publicae betrays his fellatio phantasy. have repeatedly carried out fellatio on him. But the
the wet nurse
is

He

who

wish refers specificially to fellatio by a

friend J. L.).

man

(his

further condensation

is

proven by the recall

of a serious gonorrheal infection. For a long time squeezing the urethra brought forth suppuration

and for a

time, also blood.

He

used cotton at the

time to avoid spotting the linen; the handkerchief,

after masturbating (SelbstbeflecJcung). J. L.'s offering to go down is the critical point. He must go down (TiiniintergeTien) and replace the

"Watta" (he
He
plays both

called his
role's:

father "Atta")

with his

nurse and nursling.

144

Sex and Dreams

his

hand and with

and
father.

mouth.

In this treatment I play

I

the role of J. L. and the father.

am

his friend

of the dream clearly I am preoccudiscloses scatological phantasies. He filth. wants with his to himself preoccupy pied with mine.

The continuation

The "chamber pot"

That

of J. L.

is

the latter's wife.

(Moltke's cynical expression: woman is a w. c. !). is why he does not want to be seen in the act.

Naturally the well-known infantile constellation of associations are roused at this point. The plan
of the

room

is

really that of his nursery.

The

first

traumatic incidents take place in that room. (The with the and chamber the cotton pot preoccupation
as sanitary napkin.) Here I discontinue the analysis. I merely wanted to illustrate the problem of displacement.

Let us now analyze another example of a

placement upwards (from below).

dis-

(34) I visited
there.

relatives.

Although

it

was Sum-

mer I wore a winter

coat.

I expected to find father

As

I stepped in I saw mother in the place. she was the first one sitting nearest the door t

As

Then I saw father. I greeted him and greeted her. kissed his hand. Thought the relatives will imagine
under compulsion only because I am In fact I had to force myself to in their presence.
I

am

doing
I

it

do

it.

am

struck with father's red swollen hand

kiss.

which I find repulsive and unpleasant to

Displacement

145

He enters the parental home (visit to relatives). He hates the father yet must show himself cordial towards him. He should be warm, instead of that
he
is

freezing,

that
in

is

the winter coat

Summer

the meaning of his wearing time (scornful love).

is at the door. Transposition. He That is why he at the (mother's) door. father afterwards. He comfirst the her and greets The red, swollen hand pels himself to feel affection.

The mother
first

was

inspires

him with disgust. That feeling of disgust now find out that he rouses our suspicion. as he hates him. The red loves his father as much

We

hand is the red swollen (erect) penis (displacement from below). "Er soil den Penis kilssen"
swollen

that is a reference to kissing the penis," his suppressed perversion, to carry on fellatio with

"he

is

a man. In fact, this craving is shown in other dreams very plainly and without any masking. Here, as in the previous dream, we find a remarkThere the intimation was raised able displacement.
that Dr. Stekel

may

feel

ashamed.

Here another

thought

is

ascribed to the relatives:

"They may

think I do this under coercion!*'

Both processes

In the are displacements. of shame because he has to

such filth")
is

first
tell

instance the feeling

things ("all transferred upon me. In the latter instance the dreamer's own feeling of untruthfulness

me such

and

insincerity

is

ascribed to the relatives.

"They
affect

may

think!"

The

displacement

of

the

146

Sex and Dreams

affect

(Affektverschiebungen) and the transference of the are processes to (Affektiibertragungen)

will

which we

have frequently occasion to

:

refer.

A patient

dreams

(35) A palace of the high tower and a park and a lodge of Baron Rosenfeld. In the park I find Rosenfeld, Jr. and speak with him. I fell in love
with him.

The dream is vain worship and adAnalysis: miration of Baron Rosenfeld. But the Jewish name is enough to awaken our suspicion. The dreamer
is

sure this

is

a reference to Baroness Rosenfeld, an

old

nobility.

But further

associations

prove his

assurance

word is Laws" (a pair of

Palais brings to his mind that the expressly pronounced Palaiss, "ein paar
false.

lice)

Park evokes the name of a

Jewish horse dealer, Parcheles ("Parch" is a Jewish slurring expression for "Grindkopf," bald pate;

"Zimhaus" suggests to Zmsen that is, usury.

:

mind Zins, meaning here, Auf der hohen Warte (the high watch tower) the young Rosenfeld, who owns a villa auf der hohen Warte, too, is a "Parch" (bald pate) in his dream. Ich war ganz verliebt in Him I was wholly smitten on him, expresses the deepest scorn and is intended to cover the feeling: "what a
his

The fresh, arrogant, unbearable Jewish boy !" dream is a dream of revenge against his physician and the latter's son. The phantasies of revenge are
due to unrequited
love.

He

is,

in fact, in love with

Interpretation
le

147
"the
little

son (symbol for the penis,

does not want to

one!").

He

pay any more without com-

pensation in the form of physical love. But the dream must also have a meaning in the

He loves Baron Rosenfeld. This positive sense. leads to us another symbolism the palace, like path
:

The the symbol for the body. every dwelling, park stands for the hairy growth around the genitals. The son is the phallic symbol, already well
known
to
us.

The hohe Warte,

high tower,

is

therefore a reference to the act of erection.

Speaking corresponds to the sexual act. And the Zinsthe lodge? haus, Before discussing that more minutely we must
refer

again to the second symbolic parallelism (which we may call S. P. II). This parallelism requires restatement in broader

terms, as follows: All secretions and excreta, also

blood, urine, pus, water are equal to each other in the dream (and in the unconscious). They are also to be considered equivalent to the soul, air, (breath^
flatus), speech,

money and

poison.

Bethe

(Die Dorische Knabenliebe,

vol.

Rhemisches

Museum,

LXII, 1902 ;
f.

cp.

my

extensive abstract

in the Zentralblatt

Psychoanalyse, 1910, vol. I. No. 1-2) brings up many examples proving that according to primitive conceptions man looked upon
his various secretions
soul.

The

vital

and excreta as containing the power resided for him in the urine,

148

Sex and Dreams

ter the soul

excrement, blood, or spermatic fluid. With the latwas introduced into the body. The language of the people also takes cognizance

of such a relationship. Blood, for instance, stands for gold. 4 usurer is a blood-sucker; one bleeds for another when becoming poor for his sake. To

pump means

to borrow money.
'

A man is

said to be

"pumped spent, when he

out"
is

ausgepumpter Mensch), that is, The Gulden (monetary impotent.

unit, therefore,

money)

also the penis.

5

is called Spiess or Speer Similarly "gun" means money and

phallus.

assumes this equation: Milk, oil, peIn the seven volumes of Antroleum, tears, etc.

Every

fluid

thropophyteia there are numerous examples of this

S. P. II.

Indeed, the penis

is

directly designated as

money

( Anthropophyteia,

vol. VI., p.

spermatic fluid
the penis
is

(ibid.,

p. 9).

15) or oil is Ejaculation means:

vomiting (Anthropophyteia, vol. I., p. is or 146), spitting (ibid., vol. I., p. 74, 142, 143, Elsewhere: the penis weeps (Anthropophy144).
teia, vol. I., p.

364) Einem Mddchen

. . .

in die Miitze
(literally

spucken*, spit a girl in the v or net, cap), for coitus, etc.

bon-

If

we apply
fluid.

S. P. II here,

matic

The

Zms stands for speract of speaking refers to the par-

4 In the fairy story about Little Meta blood drops turn into golden ducats. The analogy with the Ducatenscheisser and with the Golden Ass at once suggest themselves. 6 The bride receives a gift.

Symbolic Parallels

149

ticipation of the mouth, as an important erogenous He zone, in the love act portrayed by the dream.

dreams of himself in the

role of a loving girl.

His

hatred wakes in him the male energies (Adler). Love makes him a woman. The dream (like all

dreams)
I

is

bisexual.

want to show here some other forms of trans-

position (Umkehrung). First a dream of Mrs. Alpha. The Dream of the Suffocating Child

(36)

strange child comes

to

me.

It

looks

badly and gazes at me with sad eyes. I let it come The child devours an to the table and give it food. and amount seems to be getting unbelievably large satiated. One can see the eating does it good, its livens face up and rounds out and I am pleased over it. Suddenly the child begins to choke and I notice that

bite is sticking in its throat.

It turns

the face, its eyes pop out and to my conblue sternation I see the child in greatest danger of sufThe child turns to me for help in its terfocating.
rible distress.

I
call.

know

there

is

whom What

I can
shall I

If only Dr.

no one nearby on Stekel were here!

do?

Any

minute the child

may

stran-

Determinedly I pry open the child's gle to death. mouth, in spite of the child's struggles, and I see a
great piece of meat sticking in its throat, but so far down that I do not think it possible to reach it with

my

fingers.

There

is

a cooking spoon on the

table;

150

Sex and Dreams

I grab that quickly and

obstruction.

ram

it

with courage

the child's throaty so as to at least

down push down the

streaked with blood and I

On withdrawing the spoon I find it am not a little scared that

I hurt the

But the child regains its natural child. breathes I color, quietly and does not seem in pain. am glad but, stitt uneasy over the child's silence, 1
it

press
it

to say something, I

want to know whether

in pain. Then the child calls out twice in succession: Papa! and I wake up -from my
is
'

dream.
Analysis:

A
is

wonderfully well carried out dis-

placement from below.

The "strange"
6
;

child

she

would feed

her vagina

means lying
gets "meat."
tic

in bed.

The

"sitting at the table," "starving child" at last

Further, the phantasy is of a giganwhich gets stuck. phallus How nice it must be to be able to help! is a referI must solve her sexual misery.

ence to me.

These transparent phantasies are linked with reminiscences about masturbation, in which the "finger"
cannot reach the "child" and various objects (cooking spoon) substitute the penis. Finally the dream reveals the transference. The child calls for papa!
It

wants a father, (father, again in the sense of genhast a

virilis).

erating father

But the true

father,

or

common symbolism: the child or "the little one," (male Further details in the female) for the genital organ. chapter on The Role of Relatives in Dreams.

Symbolic Parallels

151

as well as too, plays a great role in the neurosis the phantasy of fellatio, in which the child represents the mouth.

The
past.

patient had quit eating meat for some months She has the fear (which naturally corre-

sponds to a wish) that "the meat might stick in her

throat."

The
I

onanistic manipulations ("I shove it in lively push it in") are often accompanied by such re-

actions of nausea.

The masturbation
("The

is

linked with
cried

various

incest

phantasies

child

out

'papa!' twice") during two periods: before the tenth Once she inyear, and after the onset of puberty.

jured herself during the act. Now "fear has re(Cp. the dream of the pressed in her the love." No. Masturbation was always vig13.) telephone,
orously indulged in and sometimes carried on until orgasm was attained twice ("The child cried out
'papa!' twice").

The "psychic hermaphroditism"

played.
love.

is

strikingly dis-

cally, "like a

She shows that she could behave energetiman," if a strange woman entreated ("How nice it would be to help others, if

I were a physician.") She helped so energetically that she hurt the child. She is a "different kind of

man" than
tifies

She knows at once what her physician. She idenchild. was the distressed the trouble with
herself with her
skillful

"papa" who

is

a well-known

and

surgeon.

152

Sex and Dreams

The displacement may go so far that there are dreams which should be read in a reverse sense. Freud once remarked at a meeting of the Vienna, Psychoanalytic Society that there are dreams which
can be seen only in that sense. 7 I record herewith such a dream of Miss Etta, especially as it shows also other important features. (37 ) 1 I found myself in a gigantic, castle-like,
theatrical building
tation.

and dimly witnessed a represen-

Then I climbed some gigantic stairway in that building and I perceived Mr. X. as he loomed into view a few times and wondered that he lived here.
2
I greeted him cordially, he answered curtly and "I must put an coolly and I thought to myself: end to that, he doesn't do anything for me anyway."

Then I

held in

my

right

hand a crumpled up

white paper, a white apple in my left hand and I enThe folks there wanted to take the tered a room.

apple from me and I fooled them with the ball-

shaped paper.

I talked haltingly and hysterically

actress) about
it

woman (an when and thought: "I don't really do

I told the Rosen

it

well,

it

should

go smoother, 7 don't put my whole self into the task" And further: "if I can't protect myself
1 Artemidoros states: "When interpreting the story of a dream one must look it over from beginning to end and again from the end backwards towards the beginning. For it may happen that the beginning clears up the vague and not easily

penetrable end, or the reverse

may be

the case, etc,"

Reverse Sense

153

against those people, I'll simply strike my brow a blow and wake up." 4 Then I sat on a window sill, next to Dr.
Stekel's

grown up son and

later next to himself.

held the son in tight embrace. "Aha," said Dr. Stekel laughing "again a bit of homosexuality." Then I let go of the young man.

And now

I was at N's.

red-haired girl sat

next to

me and I thought and present lover. Her

she was Rudolph's relative hair was deranged on one

and I thought he surely had kissed her there. Then she stepped out and I was impatient to be alone with Mrs. N. Her husband sat mutely at the I jumped at her, threw my arms around her table. hissed between my clenched teeth: "/ am aland ways thinking of him kissing her and I cannot bear it. I won't stand for it! That red-haired scarecrow!" Next I had thrown myself, weeping and exhausted, on a divan. Rudolf was there, also the red-haired girl; Rudolf said to me: "I love you
side
still,

up

though not as formerly." Horrified I so that he should not see my tears.

jumped

Next clad

in white I walked

through a garden
little

feeling bitterly cold.

Karl went a
at once but,

ways along

and I
that
self,

tried unostentatiously to snuggle

up

to him;

warmed me up
it

I thought to

my-

was not nice, and mother was also angry about it; so I walked on all alone and my teeth clattered with the cold.

154

Sex and Dreams

gives

The dream

an account of her

life

history

and begins with a phantasy regarding the future; we must read it backwards in order to understand it. In her childhood she had a little erotic adventure with a young boy (Karl). She was twelve years of age and suffered terribly of chills ; a typical symptom of anxiety neurosis, and particularly of
sexual expectancy. boy lodger, who lived in their fourteen of house, years age, came for a number of weeks to her bed, kissed her (without doing anything

more to her) until the mother caught him at it and ordered him out of the house. The episode about the white dress (innocence) and the freezing, refers to that experience. Six years previously she was engaged to a young man, a musician (Rudolph), who
after a few weeks confessed to her that he did not

was unhappy, he did not love her as formerly. She looked upon the red-haired girl who was more to him in the dream than she herself as the cause of his cooling off. Events similar to those portrayed in the dream had actually occurred. The man who sits silently at the table and
to do, he

know what

cannot help her, is her father who she loved with supreme devotion.

is

dead and whom She became seri-

ously neurotic on account of going through these exHow she periences and came to me for treatment.
fancies the cure in this dream is portrayed in the fourth part of it: she holds in strong embrace my grown-up son (one I do not actually have). The

Reverse Sense
son
is

155

naturally my erect phallus (the patient althe feeling that something ponderous is has ways about to descend upon her, or that she is about to

out something big; when she opens her eyes and gazes up to the sky, she regrets that her eyes are too
fill

small to take in the whole expanse of the sky).

was able to prove repeatedly her homosexual inclinations, among them also a certain inclination towards my wife. A form of transference, but little

upon the physician's family, which plays a tremendous role. Even my little dog thus became the object of a transference as the result of a displacement from the physiBut the fact cian to a member of the household. that in the dream I goad her about her homosexualis

studied thus far,

the transference

ity has a particular significance.

I do not act like

a woman, for I give her no opportunity to clasp tightly my son. Consequently, now, after her recovery, she again thinks of marriage ; the third a man, I

am

part of the dream refers to that. The crumpled up white paper in her right hand, which, as she after-

wards recollects, many persons are trying to grab, is the marriage certificate. She does not yield to any one the white apple which she holds in her left hand
later she thought the apple might have been red until the paper has been first accepted, i. e., she can

She is not be possessed only by way of the altar. satisfied with herself, she has found as yet no suitable substitute for her lost lover: sie legt sich nlcht

156
ordentlich hinein
8

Sex and Dreams

she does not put her whole self into it. Naturally we find here also (Anspielungen) references to masturbation, the latter bear ing a certain definite relationship to hysteria. The
last statement in this portion of the

dream

reveals

tragic thoughts ("if I can't protect myself against these people I'll simply strike my brow a blow and

wake up"). She

legal

is

in to her overpowering cravings,

firmly determined, should she give i. e., in an extracertificate,

manner, without marriage

promptly

to shoot herself the next day. She will simply press the revolver against her forehead and never wake

up again

or, rather,

wake up
life

in heaven;

I.

e.,

then

only will her real

begin,

while

the revolver

phantasy represents also a phantasy of playing with the penis, the phantasy which introduces the
fourth part of her dream. For she has become acquainted with new moral

standards a friendly actress thought one could not become an opera singer with her antiquated views. She is a singer and expects to join the opera stage
;

within a year.

Finally
is

she climbs

up a

certain

height from which she

the moral handicaps.

8

able to disregard some of She sees X., the agent, loom-

is why she can "put herself in." Only accusing her of homosexuality become in dream wie sie She shows me this sick "hineinintelligible. legen" wiirde, if she were a man. The agent X., that brutal, cynical man, would count for a bashful fellow in contrast with In the end she triumphs. her. {Psychic hermaphroditism) She is above (Adler).

She

is

a man.

That

in that sense does

my

Interpretation

ing up, a

man who anyway

does not seem to her

energetic enough; although she greets him cordially he acknowledges the greeting curtly and seems not

Her waking dream thoughts are with an unmotivated fear of this man's preoccupied raw conduct, a behavior on account of which he is
to care for her.
distrusted

by

all actresses.

Here in

this

dream he

behaves with unusual decency. That much she has already accomplished with her exercises in climbing
stairway. And finally she accomher she is an actress, and has a dim end, plishes vision of the unfettered life of an actress.

the

gigantic

Part I contains also a remarkable experience dating back to her earliest years. The first activities
of childhood take place mostly in a "Hoftheater" (Court Theater). The memory of it is unclear and

contains a dim prophecy of the future: she an actress at the Court theater.

is

now

VII
DISPLACEMENT AND FUSION DREAM MASKS CRIMINAL (ASOCIAL) THE BRAVE SERVANT
INSTINCTS

Wie im Auge em
in jeder Seele

PunJct

ist,

der nicht

sieht, so 1st

em

dunkler Punkt, der den

Keim

des

innern Verderbens enthdlt.

depths of every one's soul there is a dark spot which is the center of all inner corruption.]

[As the eye has

its blind spot, so in the

Feuch tersleben

VII
Displacement and fusion are among the means revealed
distortion.

by Freud as part of the process of dream Some dreams represent a murderer.

The

analysis discloses that the dreamer harbors thoughts of murder and revenge and that he is en-

deavoring to repress these unpleasant tendencies. The dream ascribes these evil impulses to some other
note further that in the dream a perperson. son is the composite of a number of persons. This process is called "fusion" by Freud.

We

We

are introducing
It
is

now a very

instructive illus-

tration.

a so-called "first" dream; that is, the first dream which a neurotic patient brought up when submitting to analysis. These first dreams are very important. Usually they have some bearing on the relations between the patient and the
analyst and as a rule they portray the whole picture of the neurosis.

Mr. Thetcfs dream is as follows (38) I placed on watch within my room, at the left of the door, a policeman who I knew had a re:

volver.

At

the

left,

there was a box but that

beyond his observation post, was not enough to cover

161

162
hiim

Sex and Dreams

from exposure to the outside. I had placed him there for protection agamst any one breaking m. I reflected: it would be unpleasant for me to be the first to get in there. I must send some one ahead. Then I thought: I could take along a servant or some acquaintance if need be, otherwise I should have to go in. It occurred to me that he

who would break in first might be shot by the watchman. But the thought flashed through my mind only for a second.

A
The

second dream comes to the subject's mind in a

supplementary way: (39) There was a great

watt

fire.

I went to the watt.

was so low, I jumped on top of it. dream This portrays various emotions. First the fear of some one breaking in, obviously a dream speSecondly, the fear of the pothe dread of being the first "to Thirdly, get in" and fourthly, concern over what will happen to the servant.
cifically

"feminine."

liceman.

allow the subject to give his associations to "policeman." In his childhood an officer stood for

We

the personality requiring highest respect. Whenever he misbehaved he was threatened with "police-

man."

He

still

he meets

an

darme, as if But he also

has an unpleasant feeling whenever officer, whether policeman or genhe were guilty of some wrong doing.
himself innocent.

feels

He

has done

nothing wrong.

Fusion
This occurrence, this dread of
sentatives of law,
is

163
officials

and repreneurotics.

fairly

common among

It betrays

That

is

an uneasy conscience to some extent. also the case with our subject. The high

"policeman" here is the father whom he fears: er konnte ihm auf seine Streiche kommen, he might catch him at his pranks. All "watchful" persons

may appear

in the

dream

as "policemen."

The

hus-

band (in the case of a woman) or the wife (in the case of a man), the strict governess, the tutor, the At this point the subject is led by overseer, etc.
his association to the person claiming his highest

esteem: the father. Formerly his father had watched him very rigorously. An episode dating back to his third year strangely comes to his mind. He was lying in his father's bed when he suddenly

came

in touch with the

membrwm

erection.

He

seized it to play with

in a high state of But his it.

"what are you doing?" These are also the words with which a policeman accosted him once when he started
father woke

up and

called severely to him:

to pluck some roses surreptitiously in a garden. But, to return to his further associations.

He

was strongly under the influence of a certain woman, a friend of his father's whom they called "aunt." This "aunt" watched over him very carefully and saw to it that he always kept his hands in sight.
She, too, called out to him: "what are you doing?" one morning when she caught him masturbating.

164

Sex and Dreams

"Policeman" also reminds him that he was parThe ticularly fond of an uncle, too, named Franz.
latter

was a physician and died of syphilis. It occurs to him further that there was another Franz, a
shot himself, and finally, a third Franz,

man who
his

own

brother.

note that the policeman in the dream is a composite figure consisting of a number of real perThus far we find that the figsons fused together.

We thus

ure consists of: "policeman," as representative of the law, the father, the aunt, the brother and two It is always uncles, of whom one was a physician. safe to surmise that the first dream has some bearing on the subject's relation to the analyst. The policeman also stands for me. But this theme we

up later. The policeman seems to bear to the brother. resemblance strongest We are informed about the recent dream inciters.
shall take

They are rather

with his brother.

significant.

While here he

lives

He

has been here two days.

sister of his brother's wife, a very pretty girl, a She student at the Conservatory, also rooms there.
is

preparing herself for the stage. She is rather Now he discloses some of his phantasies. He expects to remain in Vienna several weeks. It

flirt.

the

occurred to him: "you could start something with But another thought sister-in-law's sister!"

made

unpleasant: "suppose your Also: "suppose she catches you at it!"

this

brother
is

virgo

Dream Thought
intacta?"

165

That would make

it

most unpleasant for

reflected,
first
it

him; hence the dream thought: "I would be unpleasant for me to be the
get in."

one to

He
tices

is

extremely mistrusting.
of
all

He

is

(in his unconscious)

his

relatives.

suspicious He no-

that his brother

sister-in-law.

Can
in

it

is very cordial towards his be that the latter maintains

an

affair with her?

The

sister-in-law

is

represented

by the "box"
drawer,

the dream.
furniture

Box, trunk, chest,

cabinet,

(old furniture), table,

woman (German, box at the brother's left. is Frauenzimmer!). The That designation has a certain meaning as we shall
also room, are often symbols for
see later.

It indicates the forbidden character of

the relationship. The expression "not enough to cover him from exposure to the outside" refers to

that fact;

it

means that he has been able to

is

see

no cover possible for that affair. through. above The expression, in the original, "durch den er
dber nach aussen gegen Sicht nicht gedeckt war" includes the terms Sicht (sight) and DecJcung A draft (cover), each carrying a double meaning.
at sight must be honored,
i.

There

e.,

covered at once. 1

Draft, German, Wechsel, literally, a change; his brother has drawn a Wechsel, i. e., carried out, or made a change from the wife to the sister-in-law.

He, too, wants to love her,

1

like his brother.

Cover, Decken, bedecken

begatten, impregnating.

166

Sex and Dreams

frequently a symbol for the penis. the younger brother. This is true
is

The brother
Particularly
here.

Now we

understand why he sets up

aufstettt

the policeman twice and what that individual stands for. It is a scornful representation, a displacement. He turns the aggression into an act of
protection.

That

is

common

occurrence

in

dreams.

The dreamer

protects himself against in-

truders and robbers with canes, umbrellas, or reall symbols for the membrum. That is volvers,
the

manner

in which homosexual

acts

are repre-

sented.

This dream

is

bisexual and so are

all

dreams, a

fact which has been pointed out by Alfred Adler 2 It discloses sexual intentions with in particular.

reference to the brother and the

first

intimation of

a leaning towards me, or transference. The female The male symbolizes in the dream seeks male ideals. his heterosexual objective as "room" and as "box."
In the dream he must send some one into the room a servant. 3 This servant, again, is his penis. All
:

the various designations for servant, Diener, Knecht, Dienstbote, Dienstmann, Dienstmadchen, or Stubervtn'ddchen are symbols for the genitalia.

In his Tagebuch (Diary) Goethe refers to his

membrum
*

virile as follows:
in

Vid. :

Der psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und

der Neurose. Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16. 'Servant for peniS, vid.: Anthropophyteia, vol. I, p. 41.

Bisexuality

167

Nach Buhlenart

wie wir oft sodann im Raub genossen des Ehstands heilige Rechte,

Von reifer Saat umwogt, vom Rohr umschlossen, An manchem Unort, wo ich mich erfrechte, Wir waren augenblicklich, unverdrossen

Und

wiederholt bedient

vom

b raven Knechte!

Verfluchter Knecht, me unerwecklich liegst du! Und deinen Herrn urns schonste Gluck betrugst
du.

Symbolism can hardly express itself more plainly. Thus our Dienstmann, our servant, is also the penis. It is a clever dream distortion to ascribe the sin to

some one else and to represent one's self as exposed to the danger. "Or some acquaintance, if need be," He has no other oprefers to the charming girl.
portunity for coitus and hopes ouch hier nicht ungelegen zu kommen. The fear that the brother may
be displeased is expressed in the phrase: "The first intruder Eindringling (to be taken literally)

might be shot by the watchman!"

infection also enters into his

light fear of

reflections.

One of

the

first

persons that occurred to him associatively

syphilis.

was the uncle who died of

The heat of passion

a great
state.
fire:

is

indicated

by the notion

of

ing within.

The

He is burn"there was a great fire." is in the same the that girl hopes difficulties are not great, there is lesser

He

168
resistance

Sex and Dreams

when the woman is also burning with de4 sire. He jumps on top of the low wall The dream-forming unconscious and conscious thoughts lead us thus far. But the dream permits
.

a deeper insight into this subject's conflicts. Why the fear of the operation of law? Has he committed

no crime?

At this point various episodes from his life come to surface under a display of some resistance. On
his

account
his advice

on

girl once became pregnant and had a midwife bring on an abortion.

He

was worried to distraction over the

result of

the operation and very impatient.

serious legal complications.

He

wanted to

go and make personal inquiries but was afraid of

Therefore he sent a
while he stood

messenger who

did not

know him

trembling on a street corner waiting for the answer. That affair left him for a time somewhat nervous

and with a certain dread of legal complications. But the affair is linked to various other episodes. He had once a liaison with a married woman (box on the left side) who, pressed by her husband, made
a confession.

On

that occasion he feared that the

After that the jealous husband would shoot him. husband watched his wife at every step. He also communicated with that woman through a messenShe, too, sent a messenger to him to exger.
4 The walls also symbolize the protective defenses raised by the phobia against the criminal tendencies. Our dreamer is decidedly criminal in his trends.

Dream Thought

169

plain away and cancel the effect of a letter which she had written lain at the command of her husband

at the

moment when

she

made her

confession.

Another episode about an abortion enters into the dream thoughts. Indeed, his fear of policemen

and gendarmes was not unfounded.

derived from events long since past. a guilty conscience.

The

affect

It arose

was from

Now we know who

feels

the policeman is. he must watch out for himself.

The
It
is

subject

an

in-

stance of so-called "split personality" ; we shall have opportunity to refer to a number of similar cases.

He must look out sharply and guard himself. He must protect himself against his lower instincts,
against his secret cravings. Indeed, he has another reason for watching himself most carefully and for holding himself under
control.
fight

During the

last few years he has

had to

down within himself strong murder impulses

against his chief (he is a post office clerk) because he has been twice denied promotion. His chief has

a large bald pate. For some time he has been unable to meet a bald pate without reflecting how convenient it would be to knock it with a club. His

Here is revealed his deepest conflict. His father and he once went after the same woman and his father, a vigorous widower with a better social position, came out the
father, too, has a large bald pate.

170
victor.

Sex and Dreams

That

is

a conflict already set in during the

all willing

infantile life of the neurotic.

He
I

was not at

to

tell

me

these matters.

am

the police officer to

whom

he wants to transmit

a strange message, i. e., he proposes not to tell me the most important things. Thus we see that the dream employs the most extraordinary processes of
fusion in order to bring about distortion at the behest of the censorship. The policeman is the father, the brother, the physician, his penis, he himself.

The Dienstmann

his penis,

the true Dienstmann,

he himself, and finally the Dienstmddchen, servant girl, bisdem er als der erste eingedrungen and who

had to have an abortion in consequence. The pois also the aunt and his sister-in-law so that the dream leads to an ambisexual interpretation. The supplementary dream discloses also a homoliceman
sexual phantasy. Every "wall" or smooth partition has the meaning of man. (There is no door.) In short dream discloses the whole extent of

Ms

the subject's neurosis.

analysis acquires a new depth when we recall that "watchman" in the dream means death. That

The

true also of soldier, gendarme, knight, or officer. They stand for death which watches over us, never
is

leaving us out of sight, as it were. The box symbolizes the grave and the coffin. He does not want to be the first to die off: "it would be

unpleasant for

me

to be the first

..." He wants

Interpretation
to send in some one else
his
first, i. e.,

171
send some one to

death.
fire

great

He

The wall is the cemetery wall. The symbolizes life: the self-consuming flame. accepts the stumbling block and jumps on the
of suicide.

wall: he struggles with thoughts wants to shoot himself.

He

the most deepest and the most significant meaning of the dream*

That, indeed,

is

vni
THE SPLITTING OF PERSONALITY IN THE DREAM DREAM OP A JUDGE: VILLA AND PRISON MUSEUM DREAM.
THE THE

Dass wir uns im Traume

selbst

sehen,

kommt

daher, dass wir uns oft im Spiegel sehen, ohne daran zu denken*, dass es ein Spiegel ist. Es ist aber im

Traume die VorsteUung lebhafter und das Bewusstsem und Denken germger.
[That we
see ourselves in the

dream

is

not unlike

seeing ourselves in the mirror without reflecting that But in the dream the image is more it is a mirror.
lively while consciousness

and thought are subdued.}

Lichtenberg

VIII
Splitting of the personality in the dream is a special form of displacement. The dreamer splits up
into his

good and
:

his evil self.

Literally writers

Freud, very properly, observes "It is an experience to which I know no exception, that every dream represents the dreamer himDreams are absolutely egoistic. When some self.
other person than myself appears in the dream I must assume decidedly that my personality figures

have always made use of

this device. 1

through

identification

with

that

person.

am
when

rounding out

my

personality.

At other

times,

myself appears in the dream, the situation therein shows that some other person is hidden back of and identified with me. The dream warns me to trans-

pose from that person to myself something belonging to that person, to look in the dream interpretation for to ascribe to myself by certain features hidden
*

some masked common peculiarity. I am means of this identification from plain view by the op-

Cp. in this connection my work, Poetry and Neurosis, transby James 8. Vaxn Teslaar. Among such pairs we have Mephisto and Faust, Zanga and Rustan, Franz and Karl Moor, Skule and Hakon, etc.
lated

175

176

Sex and Dreams

It is therefore possible eration of the censorship. for myself to appear variously in the dream, first

directly,

and again through

identification with vari-

ous other persons.

Several identifications of this

type permit the fusion of an unusually rich of data." 2

amount

We

now turn our attention

ing displacements; it is illustration of the splitting of the personality in the dream:

dream portrayat the same time a fitting

to a

A
it

judge has the following dream: (40) I had a villa next to a prison and presently appeared that a room of that villa became a sort

of veranda which led to the roof of that prison mNext I knew that an inmate had escaped stitution.

from there and there was some talk about it. It seemed to be an uncomfortable situation, the escaped prisoner might break in on us. In fact, as I sat alone in the room looking out through the veranda I saw on the roof a miserable looking, thin emaciated, pale-faced prisoner; his eyes were sunk, he was shaved, and I had at once the impression, dieser this pris* Strafling wird sich da hinausschwingen
That is virtually an infantile reaction. At the question: "who did that?" the child always points to "another" person. The dream likewise shifts all evil thoughts unto some one else and attempts in that manner to purge the sense of guilt from consciousness. Similar mental processes are observed among the primitive and simple minded people. "The devil did it!" "It is the work of the evil spirit !" But even persons of higher
cultural levels cannot resist always the temptation to project outwardly their inner sense of guilt.

Splitting of Personality

177

oner will break away (literally: swing himself out!). Next I had the impression that the man attacked me unter Umstanden, / seized a knife lying on the table, went into a little room separated by a glass door from the first, locked myself up there and watched through the glass door. Great God! I

thought to myself, he may perhaps break through the glass door and I should have to drive him off with the knife.

This

Of

is a very characteristic dream for a judge. course the neurotic's feeling of guilt breaks

through this dream with great energy. The dreamer has a number of things on his conscience, naturally of a sexual character; his standing fear is
that his wife will find out about his erotic adventures and that would disturb their marital happiThis would be particularly the case if one

ness.

his adventures.

of his paramours became pregnant as the result of Some of his escapades directly en-

He could not express his social position. that more clearly in the dream than by conjuring see in this dream up a prison next to his villa.
danger

We

the splitting of the personality to which I have already referred (Faust, Mephisto, etc.) and the process is

very beautifully illustrated. He sitting comfortably in his villa, but he

is

the

man

is

also the

prison inmate, the inconsiderate light-minded individual breaking in and disturbing the peace and hapHe would like to prevent the piness of his home.

178

Sex and Dreams

intruder from breaking in. This leads to the image of closed door, a picture typically recurring whenever persons are afraid of temptations ; the dream shows that they can always draw the latch so as

not to allow the passions to break through. In such instances the passions are represented as wild beasts,
horses or criminals.

Moreover
In his

this
office

dream
there

carries also another

is

mean-

a woman, of rosy appearing. ance, well-nourished, with red cheeks, with light Basedow-eyes and a rich growth of hair (compare
the inversion in the dream: miserable looking, emaeyes sunk, shaved, Sclvww<gen (HwiausscTiwingen) leads to schwangern, and to Umstanden; 3 both terms refer to pregnancy.
ciated, pale-faced
. .

the office he is separated from the woman only a Their relations at the time are by glass door. merely platonic, a small partition still divides them

At

but he proposes to attack that prisoner with his knife: Hence the expression in the dream: "Great

God! he may perhaps break through the glass door ..." That the defense really means an attack
is

indicated

the dream.

by the course of the wish fulfillment of The splitting of the personality in this
it

dream becomes of particular importance because

and
free,

enables the dreamer to retain his conscious self clear

although he

is

also the prisoner.

The

lat-

8 The expression "unter Umstanden" refers to pregnancy. Cp. the colloquialism: "In andere Umstande kommen"

Splitting of Personality
ter with his pale, deep-seated eyes of death.
is

179

also the symbol

The
worthy.

bisexual

character of the dream

is

noteis

The

struggle with the prison inmate

punishable homosexual deed; considered inversely it is an act of aggression (with his phallus) upon the

woman

in the office

who

rouses his passion.

may

take this opportunity to point out a remarkable

and attorneys bea "criminal complex" in their tray very commonly dreams. Our judge is really a double personality,
fact: judges, prosecuting officers,

a fact very clearly expressed in the dream.

Such

dreams
dreams
(4,1 )
:

are

common

occurrence.

woman

cross

it.

I see a great boggy field and Miss M. must I warn her saying: "One usually sinks
Nevertheless she runs ahead, "becomes

down

there!"

covered with dirt but laughs over it and calls bacJc I know I should not sink and to me: "Try it!"

although

it

did not seem] to

me

quite right,

went)

fearlessly ahead.

She struggles with temptation and personifies that She warns self through Miss M. herself against the large City "bog," but her untrend of her inner
conscious makes light of the dangers, it urges hel not to mind the dirt and to go ahead. Finally she does so, without injury to herself. She would like
to experience and taste a great deal but she is afraid Her case is a very fitting illusof the consequences.

180

Sex and Dreams

tration of the cynical witticism: Morality is the fear that something will happen (Simplicissimus.) Following are two beautiful illustrations of the
!

splitting of personality in the dream: (4) I $aiw myself as in a vision which disapthe open. I saw myself peared rapidly. It was

but with the traits of a grown-up A couand hands feet nailed on the cross. person men also to drive some nails wanted through ple of my head. I said: "That is too much. It was
smaller

much

only a crown of thorns." "In the dream it seemed to

me

that I was looking

on thoughtfully leaning on
self

my

arm."

She

sees her-

She is still a child, so The suffer so much! must and she already young,
nailed to the cross.

neurotic cross in her case

is

a severe neuralgia in-

volving the whole trigeminus and extending across the back.* The two men are her two sexual ideals,

The nails sie eine Defloration wunscht. a from and are below the head transposition through The crown of thorns is the signify congressus.
von denen
Jungfernkranz,
the crown of virginity,

and she

would not be pained at its loss. The Jungfernkranz was for her but a crown of thorns. The two souls in her breast, the strictly moral and the passionate, are very fittingly expressed in this dream.
4 Or, as she expressed it: bis ins Kreuz (cross). Her severe neuralgia fortifies the phantasy of being nailed to the cross, which is fused with phantasies of defloration as a form of

expatiation.

Splitting of Personality

181

great sin weighs upon her shoulders.

She loves

two men and is passionately yearning for them. 5 These sinful "yearnings" have burdened her with
the
cross

of

her

neurosis.

Here her
.

sadistic
. .

masochistic trend comes also into play These trends are expressed even more plainly in the following dream:

(43) I was in a museum (Panoptikum) standing before a glass box containing a very beautiful wom-

She said: "You see such are the low depths we drift when we do not control ourselves. Now I must expose my misery and shame to public gaze!" I looked at her and she turned greenish, I kept like a corpse or wax figure. yellowish^ was in two her (an upper and a, body looking and lower part) and there was a snake curling within. The snake grew and the split between the two parts (of the body) spread gradually larger. A man was standing near her he was much more horrible lookan.

to which

with terrible, great, blue glass eyes, yellow He said, that was nothing! When only the face. passions turn into crimes! I really do not belong

ing

to the Panoptikum, but

the torture chamber.

am
6

a criminal, only I have carried out

my

misdeeds

Of among

course fancies of being overpowered, so common "virtuous" girls, also play a rdle. She wants to achieve gratification without guilt and without having to overcome her feeling 6T shame. More than that: she wants two men at the same time. An obscene picture roused this phantasy of a congressus d trois. Nail, naturally is a phallic symbol. Nageln for coire, vid.: Anthropophyteia, vol. II, p. 89.

182

Sex and Dreams

the trophies.

such a way that no one Is aware. I have kept He shows me a fish bladder like a

transparent (like the inflated balloons glass globe The trophies consisted of a finger sold at fairs). and also an eye, 9 among other things. It was like

a glass eye automatically moving its lid; up and down, continuously. The wax figures kept changing
size,

becoming alternately larger and smaller;

they rose high and collapsed again. Suddenly the I made for the hall turned much more spacious. door which I saw at a distance. I was like paralyzed,

myself near door knob.

But suddenly I found only I was unable to take hold of the Finally I found myself out-of-doors and I saw a long corridor 7 ran and ran and I
I could not move.
it

saw the wax

At last / figures staring at me. reached the stairway which seemed endless. I could not go on, I sank down. I thought to myself: You arts plat z anyway! There was a wax figare on

ure standing below. I reflected: I am that! Then I said: No, that is Salome! She held a bumpkin in her hand and as she threw it after me I awoke.
Analysis
:

She

sees the course of her life.

The

museum

is

the treatment.

She

lies

stretched in a

Eye as symbol for vagina: first symbolic equation. Finger displaces penis: third symbolic equation. An eye automatically moving up and down refers to the reflex movements during coitus: displacement from below. Moreover, the eye, like most sexual symbols, is bisexual and signifies also the scrotum: the Anthropophyteia, vol. I, p. 215. finger and two eyes

male

genitalia.

Interpretation
glass box

183

and must allow me to look through her. The snake which divides the body in two so that the
split

grows gradually larger hardly requires inThe division is on a horiterpretation on my part.

zontal plane as
it

and body.
weak.

The

spirit is

symbolizes the split between soul strong, but the flesh is

the

"The human race or

human being

is like

the

noble Melusina," states Hebbel, "passably tolerable down to the umbilicus below that, a monstrosity.'*

Similar expressions are found in Nietzsche and in

Shakespeare. Our dreamer, too, sees herself divided through sin (snake) into a noble and an un-

moral part.
pronounced.
neurosis

This division becomes gradually more That points to the tragedy of the
literally, too, this

the repression.
her.

But taken
virginity,

an important meaning for

secretly

dream picture bears She dreams of lost

sacrificed.

The

fish

bladder

must protect against the danger of pregnancy. She dreams of doing it secretly behind her parents'
back.

The name

of the beloved

man who

should

Salome again repreis Karl (Karlsplatz). a splitting of herself but stands also for This woman Karl's wife whose wrath she dreads.
do that
sents

told her once that Karl, her husband, is using fish bladders as a protective measure because they do not want to have any more children. Fertile as she
is

(bumpkin) she would otherwise have a dozen

chil-

184
dren.

Sex and Dreams

She went once with that woman to the opera "Salome."

ducer.

The man with the fish bladder is vice her seThe "finger" is also playing a role in the seduction. The automatic eyes are the eyes of a

prostitute luring men. Die Schweindeln symbolisieren die Schweinerei. The wax figures, die Wachs-

figurenwachsenden Figuren sind Penisse. She does not go on, she sinks down. She is a fallen woman,

A
is

birth phantasy

is

linked with that.

its

It seems the

fish

bladder has failed to do

duty.

The bumpkin

a symbol of fertility. The dreamer really sees only herself but under five different forms: (1) the woman whose body is divided by the snake; (2) the experienced prostitute; (3) the masturbator
(4) the cruel sadist reveling in bloody phantasies; (5) the male who turns into a criminal. have here again a bisexual dream with strong The wax figures, like love of criminalistic trends.
(the finger)
;

We

7 statues indicate a repressed necrophilia.

Necropliiliac trends are very common among neurotics and break forth as a dread of dead bodies or graves and is sublimated as love for statues, wax figures and dead objects. The motive for the infantile phantasies of necrophiliac character is found in the defenselessness of the dead: Anthropophyteia, vol. VI, p. 249. A proof of the persistence of these phantasies may be seen in the necrophiliac oaths of people standing on a somewhat higher cultural level. Cf. the Oaths of Croatians, Anthropophyteia, vol. I. That is also true of the oaths common among the Roumanians. Vid.: Anthrop., vol. II, p. 293.
T

IX
TEANSFORMATIONS AND BISEXUALITY THE MEANING OF FIVE FINGEES AN OLD DREAM IN A NEW LIGHT BISEXUAL SYMBOLS ALL DREAMS ARE
BISEXUAL
IN

HOW THE DREAMEE THE WOMAN

SEEKS THE MALE

Es

er trdumt

gekort unter die Vorzilge des Menschen class und es weiss. Man hat schwerlich noch

den rechten Gebrauch davon gemacht. Der Traum ist ein Leben, das mit dem unserigen zusammengesetzt das wird, was wir menschliches Leben nennen.
[It is part of man's advantages that he dreams,

and he knows
of the fact.

have hardly made proper use Dreaming is a life which together with
it.

We

ordinary living forms the whole of what we

call

hu-

man

existence.]

Lichtenberg

IX
of the various persons and. even of things appearing in the dream has alwayf been known as characteristic of the dream. Some-

The transformations

one plays the piano. Suddenly the piano is a piano no longer, it is a woman. The woman changes into a tiger. In this manner the dream expresses processes of identification.

Piano,

woman and
!

tiger are
:

to be considered identical.

In other words

one can
is

play on

this

woman

as on a piano

But

she

very

emotional.

rather

She would minute

I should not care to rouse her jealousy. show herself at once a tiger-cat. This

association

of

ideas

is

expressed

through transformations. Sometimes through such a change the dream expresses doubt or vacillation between two wishes.

When, for
(44)

instance,

an anxiety hysteric dreams:

bird bit

me on

changed these two

into a cat which

Then the bird the finger. at me. jumped

different creatures express psychic her-

maphroditism.

bird (penis), the

she
exhibits

The man is expressed through the woman through the cat (vagina).
of a naked

Or some one dreams

woman.

a gigantic penis. changes into a bearded man.

187

At

the

Suddenly emd she

188

Sex and Dreams

Other dreams express transformation in the form

of doubt.

(4&) I saw Mr. N. in the dream. I was not sure. Later it occurred to me, perhaps it was Mr. X. We may profitably examine this phenomenon in
connection with a few examples.

A woman

patient
:

dreams as follows after the fourth day of treatment (46) Uncle Charles brings Paul home after dark.

I was tremendously scared and asked whether we ought to put Paul to bed at once. Charles turned

around to me but when I looked at him, it was not Paul, I saw instead Dr. StekePs dark face. On account of the fright I had just gone through I felt exhausted and leaned my head on my arm. Analysis: Part of the situation is true to life. Her uncle did bring his wife "Paula" to the house after a serious injury in an automobile accident. Paula was her best friend. Charles, her strongest An unhappy love which was soon at an end. love. An end, in an external sense. She broke off all reBut inwardly she still loves him lations with him.
with
self
all

the affection of a lonely girl

who

feels her-

tion.

getting on in years and who yearns for affecHer next strongest attachment is to her

brother Paul.
ously injured,
concerned.

He
i.

too

e.,

a symbolic sense.

is brought to the house serihe dies soon. Naturally only in He dies so far as her heart is

I inherit all the affection.

She trans-

Transformations
fers to

189

me

all

the love she had felt for Charles and

I must encourage and uphold her. The transformation of Charles into my person is the symbolic expression of the emotional transferPaul.
ence.

Our

with Charles and

I am identified pictures blend into one. as is shown by another dream

with Paul.
brother

(All the wishes of death against the

now flare up again.) Miss Etha dreams j (47) We are to move from our
rooms.

rible disorder in all the

old dwelling; terThe servant girl

suddenly brings in a couple of calling cards and says: "I have shown the gentlemen to the front room." It is Hugo with a strange man. He

brought the stranger along,

so as to

J think to myself

with

wenti of being received. It looked dusty and bare, mama passed by Hugo without a word. I began to talk with him. "You are wholly changed in ap-

make sure

Mama

me

to the front room.

pearance," he said. "My appearance any concern of yours," I answered.

denly
felt

is

no longer

Then I sud-

sorry and began to caress his hair.

side

We
now I

sat side

by

on an upturned

sofa.

"See,

almost well," I said. He looked incredulously at me. "And I was very seriously ill, nervousness," I contmued, thinking to myself at the sa'me time, "and that is for the most part your fault."

am

Then

I told him about Dr. Stekel.

"It

is

aU non-

190

Sex and Dreams

sense" growled Hugo. "So," I said, "the other physicians pay no attention to the soul; yet that
is

the chief factor in every case of illness."

I held

him in embrace, he changed into a big hound, gradsize and suddenly It was Schary 1 ually shrunk was holding In my arms and caressing. This dream becomes intelligible when we find out that Hugo was the young man to whom she had been engaged and that he had broken the engageHe calls accompanied by a strange man. ment.

That

is

fact that

the manner in which the dream portrays the Hugo has become estranged. The over-

determination of the idea of a strange man is also shown by the fact that he is to be received in the
front room.

Hugo

has never acted towards her as

is

a real man.
1

The stranger

here also a phallic

symbol. We note a number of transformations in this

dream.
is

Hugo

is

to the changed. great contrast between the past and the present*
testifies

The

a stranger to her. 2 upturned sofa also

But

she, too,

Once they spooned on the

he
sit

near her.

sofa. She would lie down, Sometimes he turned wild and be-

gan embracing her passionately. She would be all astir thinking: what next? But nothing happened.
*An additional overdetermination, the significance of "strange man," or "the stranger," as representative of death, will be explained later in connection with our systematic account of death symbols. * The psychic mechanism of this occurrence is explained more fully in the chapter entitled "The Feeling of Strangeness."

Transformations

191

Hugo is no man. Less now than ever. He needs, no sofa. What for? It is no use lying down either. They both sit on the upturned sofa. (References to "sitzenbleiben" literally to "remain sitting," a German colloquialism for remaining single and to the
"Umsturzen" or upset conditions.)

Her
very

illness is

a matter of the past.

she
is well.
. . .

She had been

ill.

Now

the situation.

Next, I enter into She points out that I am concerned

the chief thing, she says disturns into a big dog (scorn?).
is

with the soul.

dainfully.

That

Hugo

Suddenly he becomes

who

is

present at
3

sents me.
sonality.

dog, the dear little Schary the analyses. The dog repreSpecifically he stands for my animal per-

my

all

The

series

of transformations

Hugo
ex-

great

dog

little

dog

Schary

Dr.

Stekel

presses the emotional transference from the unfaithful young man to me.

The next two dreams

are those of Mr. Omikron, a

compulsion neurotic. They also show a transformation which is the clearest proof of identification.

The
tient's

first part of the dream shows that the pamasturbation is linked with secret incestuous

shall presently find out on phantasies. these phantasies are centered:

We

whom

(48) I went down some stairway accompanied "by a girl whom I recently met. She says to me I must Dogs in the dream represent "shameless" sexuality. Mopseln coire deln."

(Anthropophyteia,

vol.

Ill, p. 222.);

Also "Pu-

192

Sex and Dreams

this will

bring Dr. Stekel's servant girl an apron, probably be an easy thing for me to do as
carries aprons in stock.

my

sister

An apron

like that is

prob-

ably worth about fifteen kreuzer. I promise to do so, the while thinking to myself that such aprons a$
she has in mind cost thirty-jive kreuzer a piece. I coddle up to her; in that moment I see it is my sister.

I was about to kiss her but hesitate.

She says
kiss her.

Jf

must be joyous

it is all

right.

may

The
lows:
toes)

figures are explained

by the patient
fiinf

as fol(five

15

funf-zehn

(fifteen),
signifies

Zehen

five fingers

and

onanism.

Thirty-five, according to him means "mit den Fiinfen reiss ich" and also points to masturbation

(Sich einen herunterreissen). The sister urges him to kiss her, it does not matter. That was once a

He was six years of age ( 15=5 -f- 1=6), the was eight (35=3 +5 =8) when they were together in bed and were playing with one another. She had then asked him to kiss her.
fact.
sister

He

loves his sister very dearly to this day.

his

poem by Paul Heyse comes to

mind:

Em

bruder und ein Schwester

Nichts treueres kent die Welt

Kein Goldkettlein halt fester

Als das zusammenhalt.

Transformations

193
.

The apron

has various associations.

presently he brings a second dream which portrays more deeply the sense of guilt linked to
certain infantile incestuous episodes.

And

(49) I passed by a show window and wholly unaware of what I was doing I opened it up and removed some gold chains. I am scared when I reflect on what I have really done. I ran into a jewelry store where I found my sister selling something to the gold worker (or was she there to purchase something herself?). I feared I would be arrested and at the same time I wished it would happen so that I

might be able to
did
it.

state, that

I do not 'know

why I

himself is the gold worker who wishes to tell the story of his trauma. Various intimacies had taken place between himself and his sister. He re-

He

me

calls

having been told by his

sister that

during their
(Urine,

childhood he had urinated into her mouth.

excreta,

Second symbolic equation.) gold: Recollections of passionate kisses and hugging also

come to mind.

The parents were imprudent enough

to allow the children to sleep together for years. He remembers that he told his sister lewd things.

There is also some history of fellatio. A girl told him about this when he was ten years of age. He
4

is

German, ScMrze (apron), a vulgarism for woman,

like the

"Americanese"

"skirt,"

194 was
to

Sex and Dreams

terribly shocked

tell his

mother.

and wondered whether he ought Finally he did so and felt very

much

relieved after that.

He

suffered of a prosev-

nounced polyuria at the time. He had to run eral times hourly to the bathroom.
.
. .

The dream records that he has robbed

his sister

His conscience of the precious jewel, innocence. troubles him on that account as well as because
of his incestuous
analysis cp.

thoughts.

(For more

detailed

Dreams Nos. 34, 102, 314, 315, 318.) transposition of my servant girl into his sister shows that back of all his female ideals stands

The

The dream airs the ideal of his youth, his sister. the riddle of the choice of an objective. serv-

My

girl (who wears a white apron) attracts him because she reminds him of his sister.

ant

I close this account of transformations with a

dream by Epsllon, an
sexual dream.

artist.

It

is

a typical bi-

(50) I walk along through a "joy" street and I approach a girl. When I am near her she changes
into a

man who

is

He

says: "es geniert Sie doch nicht": "It won't discommode you," or "it surely makes no difference to you (that

"Es wird

lying on a sofa half undressed. dich doch nicht genieren" oder

am

really a

man").
elderly,

The man seemed

which were gray.
of papa's.

he wore side whiskers

He

reminded

me

of a

good friend

Transformations

195 a friend of his

The
father's

prostitute

changes

into

and then into

his father

whom

he thus surof the girl

prises in a bawdy house. into the father shows the

The changing

mechanism of transformaHe plays the role of the father when he goes tion. to women. He seeks the father when he identifies His vacillation between himself with the mother. man and woman is exhibited in the dream through
the transformation.

The

bird which changed into a

cat, too, illustrated the

same thing.

have analyzed, thus far, fifty dreams; rather Practical considerations lightly and superficially.

We

make
the

it

necessary that I should limit myself only to

most significant and most pertinent details. But in every dream where we took the trouble to investigate this point,
bisexuality.

we came upon the problem

of

termmed.
ible

now conclude: Att dreams are bisexu^jh/^J^ Where the^Bisexual character is not visit belongs to the latent dream thought. On this

point

my

experience
5

coincides

with the view

sees

of
in

Alfred Adler

who goes farther and who

every dream the trend of the female towards the male directive tendency, the so-called "male protest."

We shall

speak of that

later.

Now

I propose

to

give a few examples

illustrating
itself in the

how psychic
dream.

hermaphroditism expresses
zin,

"Der psychische Hermaphroditismus, Fortschritte der Medi1910.

196

Sex and Dreams

take
first

We

an old example.

Dream

nine of

Mr. Beta:
(9) I see a great wooden image of Christ before me. I chip off a piece. We have interpreted that metaphor and found
that the dreamer had "taken a chip" out of his divinity. But further analysis shows that he chipped
off the

middle part,

i.e.,

the genitals.

It

means that

he transforms his god into his goddess. Or else he emasculates his god. We shall see later how powerfully Mr. Beta's neurosis is influenced by active and

The bisexual passive phantasies of castration. character of this dream is implied in this emasculation.

The bisexuality of the neurotic, a discovery in connection with which Fliess, Freud, Sadger, Weininger and Swoboda have rendered great services expresses itself in the dreams as plainly as in the "hysterical symptoms" or in the hysterical character.

(Adler.)

But how masked bisexuality asserts itself in the Let us examine dream, how dimly, how cryptically
!

a few examples.

Miss
sion:

Gamma had

a couple of dreams in succes-

(51) I wandered back and forth, undecided whether to put on my blouse or my nightgown, was restless and fact could not understand what was

the matter with me.

Bisexuality

197

ettes in a

Charles came and offered me some cigarbox but I did not take any as it was foredesire to smoke.

noon and I had no

Blouse or nightgown (Schlafrock) signifies here the restless question: Man or woman? "Do I feel to-day like a man or like a woman?" Her second

dream

denies her female tendencies.

She

is

a male,

therefore she refuses the proffered penis (cigarette). The statement: "I did not understand what was

the matter with

me" expresses her

vacillation be-

tween male and female.

maleness.

These two dreams show

clearly a male protest, a trend in the direction of

The
clearer

next,
:

a dream of a thirty-year-old
sits

man

is

(53) Dr. X.
clothes,

in room,

dressed in women's

and seems very

. . .

stout.

He

wears a gray
as a

blouse.
S.

T. sees Dr. X., his

office colleague,

woman.

Here we

find that blouse stands for

woman

a female

symbol. In the previous dream (fifty-one) blouse was a male symbol. I disclose an open secret: all sexual symbols are origmally bisexual.

Mr. X. dreams
also a' girl's suit.
latter

(54) For everyday wear I have male clothes, but I go for a walk dressed in the,

and look

so well the part of

a
.

girl,

no one
t

suspects that I

am

really a

man.

How

cleverly the

dreamer (53) has perceived the

198

Sex and Dreams

feminine character of Dr.

X.

His dream discloses

Dr. X.

as a genuine transvestite.

The

latter

is

term introduced by Magnus Hirschfeld, who calls transvestites "persons who have a strong inclination to dress themselves in wearing apparel of the sex to which they do not physically belong." Dis-

regarding the qualification of a "strong inclination" and considering merely the tendency to wear All neurotics are peculiar apparel, we may say:
transvestites, because all alike are psychic

hermaph*
constit-

bisexuality uent of their character.

rodites

and

is

an important

why peculiar wearing apparel plays an important role in the neurotic's dreams as well as in his actual life. There are, of course, variis
1

That

the reason

ous transitional phases. Among men, long clothes have a special significance. The category includes,
therefore: priests, judges, lawyers, bathing room attendants, and generally the handsome young men

who
ists

resemble the feminine -tjEge..

:

The other

sex

shows

stage

women

in rolled

down

stockings, tour-

and bicycle riders in "uniform," women with a hairy growth on the upper lip, or with deep voice! and male mannerisms; also old women because they These categories include resemble the male type.
also

men with long

hair or with braids (Chinese)

* Magnus Hirschfeld, Die Transvestiten: Eine Untersuchung uber den erotischen Verkleidungstrieb (Mediz. Verlag, Alfred Pulvermacher und Co., Berlin, 1910).

Bisexuatity

199

and women with short hair, the long haired poet and the "emancipated" Mignon with her bobbed
curls.

Bisexuality

is

dream.
even

Where

pivotal in the neurosis and in the is there a symbol which may not be

used in a male and female sense at the same time

if
!

the cooperation of the phantasy be ever so

slight

Let us examine a few examples: The snake is an exquisite male sexual symbol and
represents the phallus. a female symbol, like

But

it

may

also be used as

all smooth, moist, slippery creatures and represent the vulva. Shellfish and snail are female symbols. Snail, Schnecke, stands

for vulva.

But Schnecke
der form,
lieber

(Vid. Anthropophyteia, vol. Ill, p. 98.) is a term which has also its male gen-

der Schneck.

The

latter

form

is

some-

times applied to a

Schneck!"

woman, as in the expression, "ein But der Schneck also means the

penis.

(Anthrop., vol. VI, p. 50.) Schneck enhaus (cockle- shell), as a receiver, should be female.

Nevertheless

189).
er,
is

The

used for the penis (Ibid., Ill, p. plural form of this term die Schneckit is

bisexual

and means: the pudendal

I,

hair.

Mouse and
sense.

rat are terms also used in a bisexual

(Vid. Anthropophyteia, vol.

pp. 143-144;

ibid., vol. Ill, p.

52, p. 186.) This is also true of broom (Anthrop., II, p. 26) ; of lamp and its constituent parts (ibid., p. 141,

200

Sex and Dreams

230) ; of fish (fishing-coire; vid. Anthrop., I, p. 251) ; of toad and frog (ibid., II, p, 132), etc. This widespread double use of sexual symbols is a vestige of pagan hermaphroditism ; of that early
period when divinities were represented (and, of course, thought of,) as giantesque females with a
large penis or as males with full grown breasts.
bolic

Sym-

essential identities. comparisons express "Einem penis melken" means masturbating. The Such details disclose penis is treated as a teat.

psychic hermaphroditism.
bisexual divinity is disclosed also in the dream images of the neurotics. Probably not all dreams

The

are as transparent as the following, obtained from a twenty-year-old neurotic:

(55) I dream that I lie in bed with mother and I embrace her warmly. As I move my hand downwards I discover to jny consternation a tremenan outcry. douslyf^Sg^^ectpejn^f^J awake with

He

This neurotic has a peculiar fixation of his is attracted by large, muscular leg calves.

libido.

This

sexual objective rouses his libido irrespective of the sex. He wears women's stockings which must reach at least to the knee and, in spite of a heavy

growth of
self

hair, he takes great pains to shave him-

very smoothly.

Other men wear arm bands, or

are interested in toilette articles, use perfumes, etc. These traits may be shown in the dream.

Even more

interesting

is

the

tracing

of

the

Eisexuality
peculiarities of character perceived either as

201
male

Dr. Alfred Adler, 7 of Vienna, has rendered a great service to science by pointing out this
or female.
significant fact and he has made thereby an important contribution towards our better understanding of dreams. He points out that the psychic hermaph-

roditism shows

itself

among male

neurotics

even

physically in the form of a female habitus and that All the reverse is also true of female neurotics.
of a feeling of inferiority 8 and attempt to overcome their trivial female traits by their "male protest." Psychoanalysis must be able
neurotics
suffer

to trace in every case (1) the female traits; (2) the male protest and (3) the formulations which represent the compromise between these two tendencies. Adler has analyzed, among others of the kind, the

following "two dreams of a prostitute" (56) I saw before me a man with a

9
:

comb

inci-

I had a feelvng of dentally sticking in Ms hair. that the creature I which increased as realized dread

had horns and a

"It
is

tail.

obvious that we have in this dream-thought the the well-known symbol found in all religions,
devil.

character of the dream.

But that does not disclose much about the One does not need to have

''Der psyschische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose. Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16. 9 A. Adler, Studie fiber die Minderwertigkeit der Organen

(Urban-Schwarzenberg, Wien, Berlin, 1907).

"Zeitschrift
f.

Sexualwissenschaft, 1908, p. 103.

202
recourse to

Sex and Dreams

dreaming to conjure up the mental

image of the devil. Freud, whose conception of the nature of the dream I am able to corroborate in most
essentials, sets

up

as the test that the

dream anal-

ysis has been carried out properly, the tracing out of the wish concealed in the dream. At the same

time the anxiety which accompanied the dream reminds us that we must expect to find the wish fulfill-

ment deeply concealed and protected against discovery by a resistance which could not be overcome during the waking state. During the dream the psychic process of dream formation must have been able to overcome that resistance and the accompanying persistent feeling of dread must be viewed as
as standing for a wish repressed in the but attaining its maximal intensity in the unconscious. We need to bear in mind one more

the obverse,
life

waking

point in order to appreciate, at least approximately, the character of that wish. The anxiety bears only
briefly it indicates that partially on that point, the repressed wish belongs to the sexual realm. refer back to the peculiar incident that the person

We

in the

dream wears a comb in the hair, a positive emblem of femininity; the person thus represents a she-devil rather than the devil. The explanation of the she-devil is easy. In all probability the dream image under consideration may be traced to the repressed Lesbian trend, and the wish fulfillment conThe sists in the replacement of man by woman.

Bisexuality

203

demoniac attributes refer back to the dreamer's childhood when all sexual excitations were consid-

by the devil (religion, confession). the Interesting linking together of religiosity and perversity which here rouses the suspicion that either
is

ered as roused

may

stand for the other."

(57 ) I thought that I started to cross a river in a boat. With me in the boat there was a young boy

whose face was covered with numerous pustules. When we landed 1 ran up the hitt and saw a ceme-

down before a monument repthe resenting Holy Mary, I embraced and kissed her and in the end I bit off her nose. After that I had
tery.

I threw myself

a feeling of dread.

"Numerous pustules on the face, any prostitute, and even others, would interpret as meaning syphilis.

It often

happens that the physician

finds it

necessary to explain to some acne subject that he is not a victim of syphilitic infection. Or else, the physician is urged to cure the trouble as quickly as possible because the patient's acquaintances suspect
the acne to be a sign of syphilis. The cemetery where the journey ends signifies the fear of dying

through
easily

luetic infection.

The

loss

of the nose

is

explained, when we

recall that this

dread on

the part of syphilitics is not an infrequent complication of tertiary syphilis. note again, images borrowed from the realm of religion ; and a fusion of

We

woman and

religion

is

presented before our eyes in

204

Sex and Dreams

Here the Lesbian trend apthe statue of Mary. with the religious trait; that fused entirely pears
is

why

the

dream portrays what wakink

activity

holds wholly under repression. If we should ata to formulate out of the revealed synthesis tempt it must be approximately as folpsychic processes
lows:

As a Lesbian

I should not be in such great

danger of luetic infection, at the most I might 10 bite off the nose of my beloved through love."
Since the publication of the above dream analyses Adler has applied the principle of bisexuality to
all

dreams.

We now
ysis

turn our attention to a later dream anal-

by Adler. (Vid.: Die psychische Behandlung der Trigeminusneuralgie, Zentrble. f. PsychoanalNo.

1.)

yse, Vol. I,

twenty-six-year old man, suffering of trigem-

inal neuralgia

dreams:
in

( 58) I
bites

am naked

a room with the beloved.

up "The
had
10

the thigh. I give an outcry and with a severe paroxysm of my neuralgia.

inciter to this

me on

She wake

dream was an event

which,

occurred the previous evening, as follows: patient

received

from Graz an

illustrated postcard

on

opinion "necrophiliac" trends also break through here. The holy mother of God, too, is bisexual, representing God and, next, the father. The dream seems to indicate castration and fellatio-phantasies. "The young boy" is again the prostitute herself; and the boat carries her into eternity, where she will have to account for her sins. (One source of her anxiety state: the fear of hell.) For her life of sin she

In

my

is

plunged in

hell.

Bisexuality

205

which there were a number of signatures including

his brother's

dream.
tite

and that of the girl who figured in the During the evening meal he had no appeslight attack.

and he suffered a
:

Concerning

the dream he relates

sweetheart.

But

the girl had been one time his he tired of her and in a short time

he lost altogether his interest in her. A short time ago his brother became acquainted with her. He

warned his brother but without any result, as was shown by the joint signatures on the card. That hurt him especially as he otherwise had a strong influence

upon his brother and, since the death, he had assumed, so to speak, the
"Naked'
9

father's
latter's

place to the brother."

:

the women.
genitals.

He disliked undressing himself before He particularly avoided exposing his

his

That, undoubtedly, was due to

cryp-

torchism.

This rouses merely the following association: the girl had all sorts of she had also bitten him. The someperverse ways,
bit

"She

him in the thigh."

what suggestive question whether he had ever heard

11 The experienced analyst will have no difficulty to understand this passage. We have here a patient whose illness aims to cause him to fear pain. Other data in the course of the analysis revealed a precocious knowledge on his part of the pain involved in child-bearing. And during his childhood that pain was made plausible for him by the idea: the stork has

bitten

mother in the

leg!

"She bit him in the thigh," in

this

connection means practically: she has degraded him to the level of a woman, she has humiliated him through her relation with his brother. Similarly, with other neurotics: "to be bitten" by a dog, or by insects.

206

Sex and Dreams

of any one being bitten in the thigh, he answered referring to the fable about the stork.

by

"7 cried out":

oxysms.

He

Then

his

does so during severe parmother rushes to his side from

the neighboring room to quiet him down, sometimes to give him a morphine injection.

dream is sufficiently transand therefore extensive parent attempts at synthesis are hardly necessary. The dream expresses
believe that the

"We

a feeling of being degraded, but it also on an attack; that enables him to attain a brings aim: to get close to mother. In other symbolic words, from a woman (he is being bitten) he turns
clearly

into a man.

torchism,

His stigma of unmanliness, his crypmust also give way in this connection, so

he appears "naked." cringe before anybody,

a man, he need not but he is that only through the bypath of neuralgic pains. And he secures for himself this feeling of male superiority precisely
is

He

as in the childish morbid situation

through pain."

12

While I

believe that the analysis of this

dream

should have been pursued more deeply, I want to illustrate in connection with some of my own dream
material the viewpoint of Adler which is important for the psychoanalysis of dreams, and this will serve to illustrate the foundation as well as the limitations

of his method of inquiry.

13

I accept unreservedly the concept of "psychic hermaphroditism," but I find

Pains here mean, of course, "female" weapons.

Bisexuatity

207

that the principle of the "male protest" has only

partial validity.
.

When we appreciate the continuous swaying of the neurotic between the male and the female ideal,
many
into

of the transformations of the dreams become

at once clear to us

woman

particularly the change of and the reverse transformation.

:

man The

dreamer who

finds his father as a puella publica No. (dream 50) betrays through that dream his own psychic hermaphroditism. He seeks the male

in

woman

13

and he
is

seeks the

male.

Just as he

woman through the woman at the same and man,

For every
find

time, he seeks a similar ideal in others.

one seeks himself in others.

"To

love

means to

one's self in others," says Hebbel.

unbelievably subtle the expression of psychic hermaphroditism may be, and how clever the search
of

How

the male ideal,

portrayed in the dream,

is

shown by the following dream of Mr. Zamara. The analysis is furnished by the cured subject himself. It is here reported in his own words First, the dream:
:

friend invited me to spend Christmas evening with him. I accepted the invitation. I saw in a hall an exhibition of Christmas gifts for sale,

(59)

especially little horses, which were being packed up during the evening. The Christmas trees, too, were
"Finally he triumphs over the father.
(Adier).

For he

is

above

208

Sex and Dreams

loaded with toy horses; I helped packing up the Then, when I thought of looking up my things. friend it turned out that I had lost his address. I

asked a girl in the hall for the man's address; but

I could not understand the

girl's talk,

although she

repeated the address several times. I thought, how very strange, we (Austrians and Germans) speak the same language and still we fail to understand

one another.

and women.

Presently I saw a large group of men I wanted to ask one of these women,

for the address, thinking she must know; but, to my joy, I see my friend among those present. I walk up
t(o

him with the question:

this

"Have you

also

madd
his

your purchases

evening?"

On

receiving

"I would have been affirmative answer I added: unable to look you up because I had forgotten your address." He picked up a box of cigars and offered

me one. The dreamer

writes:

A "Thfi^analysis of this dream is very easy. a friend invites me to spend 'weihevolle Nacht' with him. First I come across some Christmas shopping.
The Christmas
understood as
t*ees

and the

little

horses are to be

representing the male and flemale genitalia; the hall, where I see all these wonderful gifts, refers to incest fancies and to birth phantasies
;

it is

to be regarded as a symbol for the

ma-

ternal body. homosexual trend, weakly intimated at the beginning of the dream, is very adroitly

My

Bisexuality

209

and most

fittingly expressed in the conversation with

the girl: 'how very strange! speak the same we still and fail to understand one anlanguage

We

other/

Thus,

it is

never 'arrive at

a case of misdirected love; I will an understanding' with the girl ; the

link that ties us is nothing less

than the male, for

whom

I yearn with all I look without avail

my

heart and for

whom

alone

through woman.

The dream

does not end at this point ; it carries out openly the thought of homosexuality and at the end it porI am happy trays the complete wish fulfillment. that I am not forced to get in touch first with a woman for my man's address; I need not have re-

course to this round-about manner for sexual gratification, for I see the man I am after, himself, stand-

ing in the

hall.

And how can

we,

joyful Christmas now for me! the friend and I, celebrate the

holiday of love more fittingly than by uniting ourselves in love? The homosexual union is actually " carried the friend 'offers me a
out,
cigar.'

Thus far the whole raw side

meets

patient's analysis. of psychic hermaphroditism.

It displays the

He

them. 14

women, an acquaintance among In every woman he looks for the man. He He and asks her for the male friend's address.

many

14 In other words, the women have a familiar face, his beloved mother! The expression "darunter" is to be taken not only as meaning "among them," but literally. The image of the sweetheart covers the overdrawn memory-picture of his own youth.

210
the

Sex and Dreams

stand

woman speak different jargons. We now underwhy this subject never married, indeed he
blos-

had never had a serious love affair. He is a Don Juan wandering from blossom to
som.
self,

continually searching, looking for himbecause he identifies himself with the mother.

He is

He

plays the role of the mother searching for her

only child.

Another point towards the elucidation of the was unaware was the source of it of his homosexuality although
case: before the analysis the subject
his neurotic

symptoms.

Now

he knows his enemy

it.

within and this insight enables him to cope with It is the triumph of light over darkness.

SYMBOLISM OF LEFT AND EIGHT IN DEEAMS THE COUSIN AS SUBSTITUTE FOE INCEST THE FATHEE MUST LEAVE SYMBOLISM OF THE SPIEAL DEEAM ABOUT DIPLOMATIC BEHAVIOE

wahre Symbolik, wo das Besondere das AUgemeinere reprdsentiert, nicht als Trawm und

Das

ist die

Schat ten,

als lebendige des Unerforschlichen. Offenbarung

sondern

augenblickliche

[True symbolism is the representation of the whole by the part, not as dream, or shadow, but as the tivmg momentary revelation of the Uriknow1

able.}

Goethe

We find very often that it is of significance whether the dreamer walks to the left or to the
The road to the right always right in his dream. means the right road; the left road, is the path of
crime. 1

Left

may mean

incest, homosexuality, peretc.

version, while right

means marriage,

The

im-

plied values always reproduce the subject's own scale of moral standards. For instance, intercourse

with a prostitute may be symbolized by the left path in the case of a minister of the gospel, while in the
repressing incestuous fancies the same relationship may be represented by the right road. This symbolism of position has been
case of a free thinker
is

who

known

In his ballad where the for a long time. angel is represented as standing at the right and "Lass dich vom the devil at the left, Burger says
:

guten Engel warnen und von dem Bosen nicht umgarnen" "He who gets out of bed with his left foot first will meet with ill luck," is a popular belief, signifying of course, the membrum virile on that
side.

The

legal wife
is

is

at the right; left, means

an
cit.,

*This fact
p. 50.

fully dwelt

upon by Artemidoros,
213

loc.

214

Sex and Dreams

I have always found that the irregular liaison. neurotic vertigo is always to the left and I consider that an important point in differential diagnosis.

Dizziness to the right is suspicious of organic disorder. One often hears the neurotic complain that

he

feels himself

drawn

to one side.

Ask him towards

In
left

which side and he invariably answers: the left. 2 left-handed persons the symbolism of right and

be reversed, as I have had occasion to find. Whether this may be actually a factor conditioning the psychic determination of left-handedness itself

may

is

a problem which remains to be investigated and

further analyses of left-handed persons are required to decide the point.

of right as male and of left as even more important (Adler). Fliess 3 who has endeavored to formulate a biologic basis
is

The perception

female,

for bisexuality

found that the right side means

homosexuality, the left side heterosexuality. Aigremont has some very interesting remarks

about the symbolism of right and

left

in his

ex-

tremely edifying and fascinating study entitled: Fuss- und Schuh- Symbolik und -Erotik (Deutsche
Verlagsaktiengesellschaft, Leipzig, 1909).
Occasionally there are variants: the patient, for instance, turns to the right and claws the air in the attempt to reach some support. Sometimes this symptom is to be interpreted as signifying lack of confidence in the marital partner or in one's relatives. Also, the thought: I have lost all support in life! may be thus dramatized. *W. Fliess, Der Ablauf des Lebens (. Deuticke, Wien).

Right and Left

215

The dream makes

right and

left, as I shall

copious use of the symbolism of now prove by a few ex-

A patient (compulsion neurosis) dreams: I meet Miss F. K., who comes towards me (60) arm in arm with a man. I greet her with great
amples.
It gave me a jolt at first and I prepared myself for the greeting at the proper moment, namely, I changed my cane from, the left to my right hand. The gentleman and I exchanged a

politeness as I pass by.

peculiar look.

The man who comes

to his

mind

is

an employee in

Sammenkontrolstation had been erected by his father who also instructed him about the evils of masturbation and
the Sammenkontrolstation.
first

The

Konig mother, who comes queen, (King) towards him, which is precisely what he wishes secretly; he also bears great respect for his mother: "I greet her with great politeness while passing by." Further: "It gave me a jolt at first," i.e., his love
carefully
is

looked

over

his

laundry.

Miss

the

his

goes back to childhood, to the time when his mother bathed him and put him to bed. If he misbehaved,
his

mother gave him a

little

push and shoved him to

the middle of the bed, between herself and the father, an observation post which seems well adopted to lay

the foundation for neurosis.

His hatred of the

father dates back to these early opportunities for observation: "The gentleman and I exchanged a
peculiar look."

The gentleman,

as

the "owner,"

216

Sex and Dreams

has the right to give a peculiar look. On the other hand, Fritzi King is the only girl that pleases him enough so as to think of acquiring her through marriage.

Having become familiar with the foundation

of the neurosis through my treatment, he wants his cousin, i.e., he transfers his cane from the left to
the right hand.
tion; the cousin

The
is

girl cousin

is

typically a com-

promise between incest and permissible love attrachis sister's best friend

and the

two bear the same

in the

first

name.

He may

thus indulge

fancy of carrying out the

It
is

incest, without

coming into
code.

conflict with the laws or with the

moral

the same thing, only he has "transferred the cane from his left to his right hand."

Here
neurotic

is
:

the dream of another, severe compulsion

cycle keeps twisting to the left; finally I swing it to the right with all my might and descend. The cycle turns into an animal

(61) I ride a cycle.

My

which seems beside

finger in the

itself

with anger and

it.

it

mouth

as if to bite

Then

grabs my it seems

that the animal has only its fore-part, as if the hind quarter or a portion of its hide, were missing; therefore the creature must soon perish"
following is another dream of this patient (62) I was paralyzed on the right side of my body, I was unable to open my right eye.
:

The

'Vid. Abraham, Die Stellung der Verwandtenehe in der Psychologic der Neurosen. Jahrb. f. psychoanalytische Forschungen.

Right and Left

217

is still

This unfortunate man, already in the later fifties, fixed on his seventy-year-old mother with all
emotions

his

and yearnings.
with a

He
girl,

cannot marry.

One day he

falls in love

and the next day

she becomes wholly indifferent to him. He is like one paralyzed on the right side, he has no eye for perceiving the charm of other women. He is unable

we may

to use the right eye, he sees only with the left. Now also understand his dream about cycling.
cycle,

The

which turns into a beast,

is

his passion,

which persistently swings him to the left. The mother draws him to herself. He holds himself "to
the right with to prostitutes
is

all his

might,"

i.e.,

he has recourse

for his

sexual gratification.

The

the opposite of the mother type; she prostitute is not a woman to him, she is a stranger. But he can meet one only once. If he goes to the woman a

second time, a certain relationship asserts

itself be-

tween them, she becomes an acquaintance and reminds him of his mother. Er ist dann unfahig zu The creature which takes his finger in koitieren.
the mouth, as
if to bite it, is his

mother who had the

habit of sucking his bisexual "Lutscher"

fellatio

little fingers.
5

He

himself

is

on a man.

and would readily carry out His most significant infantile

phantasies relate to the anal zone. the animal's hind part is indistinct.

That is why The phantasies

6 Many a mother's boy is a Don Juan with strong homosexual components. Cp. the remarks on the psychology of Don Juanism in connection with case 28.

218

Sex and Dreams

very old.

His mother, too, is She once possessed an impressive wellbuilt figure but now her body is shrunk; he is particularly struck

are in fact wholly repressed.

by the fact that her hips are lean;

she

is

now
its

wrinkled, too; her skin, once so smooth, is withered ; "as if the hind quarter or a portion of

is missing; the creature must soon perish." has a friend, a painter, who always refers to women's skin as their hide. (Cp. Fell, Ger., skin,

hide

He

and

fellatio.)

The same
(63) I
sit
it

patient brings a third dream: astride on an old piano as on a horse

It starts to

and give

a shake.

trot along

a shore almost

moving and thus I the house. I can even

play the piano at the same time. I meet a young girl at the right, on the left I come across a man. I am
afraid that the thing will suddenly break. The old piano is again the mother; the shore
refers to a birth

phantasy the shaking, or trotting, and the playing need no explanation. The young girl whom he meets, is some one with whom he was once in love, a very wealthy girl, and he
;

could have married her, but for his awkwardness.

The man he passes by is whom he has therefore

his father,

outlived.

who is dead and The fear that

* tfberholen, to overtake, or, to outrun, very common in the sense of uberleben, to outlive, "Jemanden auf dem Lebenswege eiriholen" is the picture which individual existence suggests to many a fellow traveler on the pathway of life. The end of the "long lane" is death's dark door.

Right and Left

"the thing
will

219

The prospect with

suddenly break," is wholly justified. the girl broke up on account of

is

his incestuous fixation; as a child he

dous fear of his father, which

in the dream, since he plays

had a trementhe more justified

father's old
ill,

upon the
very

piano.
die

His mother

is

fragile,

she

may

any day.

Again we

see the interplay of birth

and death; the mother, who had given him life, is to die. His birth was such a severe labor that his mother nearly lost her life. In this dream, too, the right side, on which he meets the girl, represents what is permitted, heterosexual married relations, while the man on the left represents the subject's homosexual leaning. The dream of another patient is as follows: (64) My -father, Miss N. and I were at a place on the southern railroad (Hinterbriihl). We travelled afoot and met a man leading a very ungoverndble horse. The horse reared and hit me; I urged Miss father (and N.) to hurry out of the way but in spite of that they did not move from their spot to the right. I fell down, but I had been hit only very lightly and I merely felt a roaring in the right

now about

ear.

ent

The dream does not end here. But for the preswe must limit ourselves to a brief analysis of

portion of the dream. Frdulein N. was a governess who had relations with his father. Southern
this

railroad, like all southern places, denotes deep pas-

220
sion.

Sex and Dreams

References to sun,
fire,

Spain, Italy indicate

the heat of passion. the name of the place: Hinterbruhl.

Here

this is also indicated

by

The

patient's

immediate

association is bruler (Fr., burning). a reference to a place where he has made certain intimate observations and where der Hint ere

This

is

(the posterior part) plays a great role: am Abort. suffers of a troublesome itching of the parts and he is a confirmed anal erotic. The expression "we

He

traveled afoot" refers to his strongest passion, The man they meet is his teacher foot fetichism.

who was

also his first seducer.

Through that man

he has experienced a number of serious traumata,

partly relating to the posterior parts, and these episodes furnished the occasion for his first homosexual pleasurable feelings.

Uncontrollable horses

always mean passion,

tigers,

also all wild animals: lions,

mad

dogs, etc.

Strict oversight

by

his father

and the governess disturbed

his relations

with the

male teacher, with whom another person is also fused: a slightly older playfellow, who indulged with him in various erotic games ; they were caught

by the father and the governess-teacher and That experience inspired him with punished.
at
it

thoughts of revenge against his father and these are expressed in the dream with the thought: "I urged (him) to hurry out of the way but (he) did
." Later this patient not move from the spot. developed an attachment to the father which was
.
.

Right and Left

morbidly intense.

221
insane when his

He was

like

father died; his anguish was immeasurable. We see that his extreme love rested on a foundation of

dream the father

equally deep hatred and was compensatory. In the lives too long, he asks his father

to hurry off but his father does not stir from his place. His injury is on the right side of the breast,
i.e.,

the experiences of his youth have disturbed his feeling-attitude towards woman. Those occurrences

are linked with his pronounced impotence forming a closely knit complex; for his first act of sexual

aggression was prevented by his father; he was severely punished when he was caught (playing
erotic

"games" with the young man).

These com-

plexes are unpleasant. Popular belief holds that clanging, ringing in the ears has a meaning. "Did not your ears ring?" is a question sometimes addressed to one who was the

subject of a conversation. The ringing in the right ear means that he must think of the childhood epi-

He is (sexually) sode when going with women. lame on the right side. But that serious trauma "I fell down is portrayed in the dream as trivial:
but I had been hit only very lightly," is the way the situation is expressed. This dream shows that
references to homosexuality are associated with the left side of the body. (This corroborates the observations of Fliess

who holds that many homosexAccording to Fliess the

left

uals are left-handed.

222

Sex and Dreams

always represents that side. In a case of neurotic anxiety he found an enlargement of the left pupil.)

and

In the various compulsions the symbolism of right left plays the same role as in the dreams. The

patient with the characteristic dream of being injured on the right side by a small horse, also suffered of a compulsion which manifested
itself as fol-

lows: he solemnly resolved to sleep on the left side until he passed his final examinations. This resolution he has carried out to the letter:
sleep except lying on the tion dream, a theme which
left side. will

now he cannot The examinaal-

be taken up later,

ways means the sexual

does not quote

my

woman. Freud 1 view correctly when he states that

test with
is:

my

interpretation

the patient dreams

such a

dream because he looks forward to an adventure The fact (sexual) and fears he will not succeed. is he dreads the whole theme of love. The test dream
of this patient showed itself, after the tions, as a typical recurring dream:
final

examina-

(65)

He

is

in high school facing the examinations

in physics

and mathematics and that causes him

great anxiety. But I do not want to dwell here on this dream and
its

associations

his compulsion state has been

want merely to point out that somewhat anticipated

in this test dream.

patient resolved to sleep exclusively on the left side, in other words he pro*The Interpretation of Dreams, translation by A. Brill.
:

The

Test

223

posed to have to do only with a man, specially until the Maturitatsprufung, 8 the final test, when he may

perhaps discover the path to woman.

symbolism
of left

Thus the
his

and right here reproduces

The compulsion was peculiar compulsive thought. a sort of expiatory deed, a punishment for his Like the flagellants he undertook to punish sins.
himself through an act which in turn became a source of gratification for him.

The symbolism of even and uneven (or, straight and crooked) has the same significance as left and Crooked paths in the dream mean precisely right. what they figuratively suggest, evil ways, and they often stand for the subject's perversions and for
incest.

The path

of sin
9

is

frequently represented
subjects have these

as a serpentine winding. dreams very often, the

10

Some

become stereoI consider the dreams Such stereotypic typic. subject's typical dreams, i.e., the dreams which recur often in the same or in a similar form usually they Somecontain the pattern-motive of the neurosis.
;

dreams

times these dreams penetrate into the consciousness,

examination, upon the completion of the high if successfully Maturitatsprufung, which passed, entitles the holder of the respective certificate to join the University and grants him other privileges (especially The dream here is a with reference to military service). Maturitdtstraum. The literal meaning of Matura is obvious.
final

"The

school

course,

[Transl.]

'Serpentine paths are also representative of snake as the

name
10

implies.

Cp. Chapter

XLII of

this

work.

224

Sea:

and Dreams

they appear as day dreams and yield a sense of

gratification.

dream of

this type,

which ended in pollution,

is

the following: (66) I dreamed I was climbing a mountain on which there was standing a ruin. When I reached
the top it seemed to me I was but a rice kernel, or a millet seed and the whole mountain seemed made up I let myself slide down and the stuff. an exquisite pleasure so that motion me gave rapid I had a pollution. I was able to rouse this feeling also in the day-time by fixing my gaze on a given point; I would think I am a seed rolling down, in

of the same

serpentine fashion.

The
lows:

patient represented the rolling

down

as fol-

The meaning is Schamberg, Mons

bladder.

simple enough. On an elevation, urine, Veneris, there is the ruin,

is

secondary determination

as

fol-

lows: the ruin

the decrepit old father, who has the on top, is ready to tumble down to be there right or fall to pieces, according to the patient's wish, What rolls down is the seed, and it rolls i.e., die.

with lightning rapidity. It is therefore, the representation of a sexual act and naturally ends in a

During the day time, through the autohypnosis induced by staring fixedly at a given point, he is able to bring up the same phantasy and induce the same result.
pollution.

Compulsive Thoughts

225
birth,

Another neurotic, who

lost his

mother at

turned his mind very precociously to reflections on 11 This leads eternity, which he conceived as a spiral.

we must consider later, the representation of life and death in the dream. The analysis showed that the subject was always preoccupied with his birth, which also marked the death of another being. Eternity, death, coitus and birth A compulsive thus became for him fused images. he of which suffered I come was: wherever thought I bring misfortune! He became a murderer in the very act of his coming into the world and he fights off violent fancies which at bottom are nothing but
us to a theme which

In his dreams the representation of sexual act. snakes play a great role, he sees snakes everyso that an acquaintance has facetiously where,

nicknamed him the "snake man."

left

The symbolism of
dreams as well

and right

is

also utilized in his

as in his compulsions.
left,

If he takes a step to the

he must compensate by taking three steps to

life
is

the right.

The theme of death and

in its relation to the

illustrated in a short

symbolism of right and left dream of Mr. Theta:

"I recall an abstinent subject who thought he discovered the solution of the world riddle and of all existence in the In this case, too, the spiral was the symbol of spiral form. the "Ewig Weibliche," the Eternal Feminine. Spiral, screw, winding stairway, etc., express sinfulness and birth. Turning of the spiral brings the s-me side into view. (Neurotic phantasy of the eternal return des Gleich&n! of sameness!)

226
-.

Sex and Dreams

of lanterns (Japanese?) hang one at the left catches fire and burns up.
lanterns

(67 )

A number

a row

The

are

a number of women.

This

dreamer is already known to us through his interesting dream about policemen (No. 38; cf. also No. 37). The "burning lanterns" are his sisters-inlaw and sisters, his aunt and the servant girl. The
left

That represents
flame goes dying.)
off,

(in the analysis the sister-in-law) "burns up." The fittingly love and death.

the person

is

dead.

(The aunt

is

The

flame consumes itself: the sister-in-

law loves him.

Lantern (in which a candle is stuck), for woman, like lamp and candles. symbol I bring to an end this series by reproducing the dream of a cultured, aristocratic person of high

standing, whose dreams are so complex that they tax to the utmost the interpreter's ingenuity. His dreams portray the strangest combinations and the

most peculiar transformations. Thus he once had the following dream: (68) He was in a city where everything was topsyturvy: the law of gravity was reversed, the people walked backwards, etc. Having alluded to the difficulties we may be excused for not dwelling at length upon the analysis.

Another dream
(69)
Little

German

residential

town.

While

strolling through the wide park stretching across the hitt I meet two women, one is young, the other

Transformations

227

I am a professional diplomat, a the cabinet (perhaps Billow). I regret, member of very deeply that on account of a previous engage-

appears

elderly.

ment I am unable

to escort the ladies.

But we con-

verse standing; I entertain them for about forty or forty-five minutes. Then I pass on to the right, tak-

ing the broad

pathway towards

the temple of the

Muses.
Naples.
.
. .

Climbing up some stone steps.

.
.

Geld (money)

schlagen (striking)

Riga. "Sie hat mir ja nle gesagt dass sle mlch lieb hat." "But she never told me that she cared for me."

When he told me the dream, he related first that the ladies had asked him to go to the left instead of going to the right; later he corrected himself: he
was asked to go straight ahead. Subsequently he It led recalled also precisely how the road looked. at first straight through a forest and upon the
heights
ever

branches into a number of winding paths. Serpentine (winding) has a definite meaning whenit

means a "snaky" path; in this case it would be the path to the left, incest; it would be seduction by a daughter of Eve, through the snake, as in paradise. But the biblical story recalls also the temple and the right path leading In thereto, distinctly a reference to marriage.
it

occurs.

It

fact the subject

is

interested in a Jewish
it

woman

and,

being a Christian, he finds

unpleasant.

228
woman's mother
Nauheim,

Sex and Dreams

in particular

and
is

all

her Jewish

relations he finds intolerable.

He

about to go to

the roads about the place remind him of to become formally engaged. serpentine windings He has pronounced resistances against this step.

Billow refers to that.

The day

before he read that

Billow had announced his resignation from office. He too, would like to resign, but only if he could

carry out this step in a very diplomatic manner. This wish is the theme of his dream, for as he recalls, he conducted himself with the utmost courtesy

when he expressed

his inability to join the ladies.

provincial town is Gotha. That place Billow has married an suggests new associations. Italian Countess. For some time he, too, has mainlittle

The

tained intimate relations with an Italian Countess;

they were practically engaged. The Italian Countess would be more acceptable to his family than
the

woman who owes

little

allegiance

to

the

temple.

represents the place provincial where he expects to be called as professor. He expects the brevet of a regular professorship; to be-

The

town

come a regular professor

licher,

he

is

now ausserordent-

depends on his receiving a call. In the dream he is a professional diplomat.

The

depends on the Secretary of the State Department of Education (or minister) who has full discall

cretionary power over his nomination.

Billow also

Interpretation

229

means the musician who was active in Meiningen and who left that town. "Meinige" (mine) is what he calls his bride and he wishes to leave her. But Billow, the musician, found it easier: for Richard Wagner simply took Cosima away from him. Cosima reference to cosinus, angle of 40 to 45 degrees ;
:

here too the question

grees).

is
,

one of Gradminuten, deLiszt,

Cosima Wagner the daughter of

again a reference to diplomacy, zwm Listigen (to stands here in contrast to trickery) cunning,

Mathilde Wessendonk.

Wagner,

too, has renounced

a love ; he abandoned Mathilde Wessendorik when she

grew old and chose another. The subject is also being robbed of a love: one of his sisters, the
favorite

among his sisters we find out who the two ladies were in now Only the dream. They are a fusion of the young woman
!

to

whom

he

is

about to become engaged and the fu-

ture mother-in-law with his sister and mother.

Nat-

urally he cannot join the latter through their path in life. He can only entertain them for a time; he did it standing. Forty to forty-five degrees brings

up by association the thermometric degrees; no

man can
(Celsius)

a degree of forty-five of heat Forty degrees is the proves fatal. he had. wrote him she has His sweetheart highest is feverish; he is thus allowing her to be consumed

stand
it

with fever.

He

has allowed himself too, to be con-

230

Sex and Dreams

his youth, with the strong-

sumed with fever during

almost ruined him.

est passion possible: his senseless incestuous

fever

In the dream he does not allow himself to be enticed to the left

path road.

Instead he strikes out

but also more pleasant road upon to the right which leads upwards and towards the There all the muses are waiting. temple of love. He intends to build a home which shall be a home
the
difficult

more

for art.

aims to attain high, lofty, genuine love and to extricate himself out of his present pre-

He

carious sexual situation.

At any

rate the temple

pathway to his highest ardor. The lowermost depths he reaches across the stony steps at Naples. Shall the marriage come to naught after
road
is

also the

all?

Or should he marry the Italian countess? "But she never told me that she cared for me."
.

The words

seem irrelevant.

Riga striking money But forty degrees brings forth by

. . .

association, Regiomontanus, the thinker of KonigsHe does not know berg, and that leads to Kant.

whether the Ding an

worth the

sacrifice it

the thing-in-itself is involves; he must subject the

sich,

matter to the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, the Criher. tique of pure reason, if he is to be through with

Riga

Rigorosum

Rigoros,

these

associations

lead "diplomatically" to erection, erect, and refer also to potentia, a theme already intimated in the

expression "standing up."

Interpretation

231

The moment he comes

vagina (broad path)

into contact with a large

his potence is at once at

an

He looks perennially for something diminuend. That leads assotive: "a little residential town."
ciatively to the least, the narrowest object he looks the anus. The term Geld, for, and it proves to be

juncture a mass of early reminiscences disclose anal eroticism. The temple bears a definite relation to his anal

money

is

a reference to that.

At

this

eroticism
ill

reminds him of a story a Jew was once with diarrhea. Nothing helped so he had tittim
;

it

(psalms) read for him at the temple and that helped at once. The next day his wife was standing at the window looking out and saw another Jewess hasten-

"Where are you running?" ing along the street. she asked. "I am hastening to the temple," to have tiUim said for my poor husband; he has been constipated

now

for the past ten days."

first

"You poor
Don't

woman," shouted the

do
it.

one, "nonsense!

know

better: tillim constipates."

In

his case, too, there

was something that had to

specifically his

be loosened up or freed, upon the anus.

fixation

understand why everything in his earlier dream was represented topsy-turvy. He lives in a large city, he is anything but diplomatic, he runs
he meets, escorts her, and he is not always satisfied to entertain her standing; he does not "burn" intensely enough and he is drifting
after every

Now we

woman

232
downgrade.
left,

Sex and Dreams

The right path in the dream is really and the latter leads into the temple through a small opening; and now for the first time we find out the history of an abortion. At Naples he had the chance to secure a boy, and had he not been
the
strict with himself that episode

might easily have

stony steps of to occurs dass er bei/m letzten him, Naples." Koitus unwillkurlich mit dem Finger nach dem Anus
led

him

downwards,

"over

the

Now

it

Es fdUt ihm ein, dass er nie die Vaweil er sie immer tiefer vermutet. kann, gma treffen is he Obviously seeking something else, namely the
gegriffen hat.
anus. Es fattt ihm ferner ew, dass er beim Koitieren wederholt die Empfindung hatte, er befindet sich in einem zu weiten Raume, and whenever that happens

he

is

unable to attain ejaculatio.

experience,
this

professional

According to my form of coitus sine

desire is centered -upon

his actual possession.

ejaculations occurs only when the subject's sexual some other objective than

In der Vagina dachte er an

den Anus.
In this dream, the straight path, the left one, respectively, to which the women want to turn him,

woman

by the incestuous feelings. Every mother or of his one his sisters. part He had to make a turn of forty-five degrees, as was
is

mediated
is

in

indicated already in a previous dream, where the

face about.

turn was fully ninety degrees, i.e., a right angle This time the turn about is but par-

Interpretation
tial, i.e.,

233

what he seeks as

his ideal is

between

man and woman.

a compromise Such a bisexual being

(Mannweib), capable of replacing at once brother and sister in his life, is the bride waiting for him at

Nauheim; therefore, in spite of all resistances, he must marry her and carry her to the temple of the
muses.

THE DREAMS OF A DOUBTER THE DREAM ABOUT SWEETS THE DREAM ABOUT STOLEN BOOKS THE SECOND VERSION

'kerne furchtbaren Wahrheiten, gibt immer wirkt Wahrheit belebend, wohltuend.

Es

die

[There are no gruesome truths, truth

helpful and
refreshing.]

is

always

Swoboda

XI
Before relating the dreams to be analyzed in the present chapter I must tell something about the subject's preliminary history.

He

is

a severe neurotic,

Mr. Sigma, very punctilious

girl
self

in his professional call-

ing, forty years of age, in love with a pretty

young who is poor. A typical doubter, he feels himbound by his engagement to the girl. Taking

advantage of her absence he wrote her a parting But we learn that this letter, breaking up letter.
the engagement, had been dictated by his sister, Rose. (Regarding his relations to the sister, tnd.

Dreams 82 and 83.) His great worry is that his bride is poor. Like all those who have been brought up under modest
circumstances he
all
is

anxious to
life.

live well,

to enjoy

the comforts and joys of

Soon after writing

to his bride the parting letter he found himself no longer able to give to his professional duties the
requisite attention

and energy.

For

instance, he

found himself compelled to read a document over ten times before grasping its import. While listening to people he found his mind wandering away

from what they were saying or he asked them

237

irrel-

238
evant questions.

Sex and Dreams

He

learned the Bohemian lan-

guage

as

an aid to

his profession

and he had at-

tained a high degree of proficiency in understanding and speaking the language. Suddenly he found that
this

knowledge had

fled

from him and he was help-

less in

the presence of Bohemians.

He

suffered of

sleeplessness and gastric disorder; his disposition was morose, he feared insanity and sought a psy-

chiatrist

who diagnosed

his

condition as neuras-

thenia.

his

In the midst of these worries he began to regret treatment of the bride. He reproached his sister so bitterly that the latter finally wrote the girl
suggesting

brother.

renewal of her engagement to the Though this was actually done, he still
a

worse.

continued to feel depressed and his condition grew In this state he came to me.

I want to report now the subject's first dreams because these give us a deep insight into the character of this neurosis and of the complex mental
processes, which our psychiatrists diagnose as neurasthenia. Incidentally, I may mention that

become accustomed to look for the which are responsible for the neuI roses have not seen any neurasthenia. All our previous ideas about overwork and hereditary taint are false; and the notion that excessive venery or massince I have

psychic conflicts

turbation

be responsible for neurasthenia, or for the condition hertetofore called neurasthenia,

may

Conflict

239

in the absence of

a psychic conflict, seems to me also I have discussed this theme at to be untenable.

1 greater length elsewhere.

The
table

patient's first

dream
it

is

as follows

(70) I

am

standing with

and I drop on

Mary in front of a sweets out of a box.

little

The

candies look tike great pearls and little stars, white and rose-red in color. I arrange the little stars

a row and say to Mary: now choose!

What

does the dream represent?

He

offers can-

dies to his bride bidding her to

make a

choice.

He

has in fact suggested to her an early marriage and he expected that they will soon taste the joys of

married

life.

The

and candy drops

terienanalyse.

The pearls is a bed. Bruchstiick ciner Hys(cf. Freud, Beit rage zur Neurosenlehre, vol. II)
little

table

are spermatic fluid. But in the dream the whole is tinctured with scorn. For the first assopicture
ciation which

occurs to the dreamer

case,

is

the well

known Hofrichter

an army

officer

who

sent

sugared pills to his colleagues to put them out of the way. The pills while supposed to be aphrodisiacs contained poison. This association reveals that
the dream thought conceals the idea that the bride 1 The condition which physicians designate as neurasthenia is a composite state. The conception includes anxiety neurosis,
anxiety
neurosis,
hysteria,
lighter forms of melancholia, compulsion Dementia praecox and Cyclothemia. In addition to a

disturbance of their sexual life, these psychic conflict and that constitutes neurosis. Cf. my monograph, The authorized English Version by James

persons always display a the deepest root of the Causes of Nervousness,

8.

Van

Teslaar.

240

Sex and Dreams

should poison herself through the sweets. Poisoning, in the language of dreams, means becoming pregnant; he entertains unconsciously the idea of
extramarital relationship and the thought has also consciously flashed through his mind; the fear of

pregnancy and of

its serious consequences breaks out in the manifest dream content.

The
when

intent of the

dream becomes even

subject's

clearer

we

obtain

the

associations

to

"pearls" and

"little stars."

Pearls suggest to him tears; this is an old symbolism mentioned also in KlempauVs little dream
lexicon appended to his interesting

work Spraclie

ohne Worte (Language without Words).

Little stars first suggests comet, the star "with

the long tail." Next there comes to surface a remarkable symbolism: sun as father, moon as mother

and the stars as the children; again, therefore, the thought of pregnancy. Lastly the most important
features of the starlets occur to him: their sharp
edges, the points

and

pricks.

The dream
tears,

represents

him as

if

he were saying to his bride: Look what

awaits you in marriage:

many

much worry,
all

abundant needle pricks and hurts and

that to

pay merely for a bit of pleasure (sweets). The rose-red color is important. Rose
name of
his sister.

is

the

He

hesitates between white (the

pure bride, Mary,) and Rose, his sister; and his doubt, whether to marry or not, goes back to the

Indecision
inability to decide between
conflict will be explained

241

Rose and Mary. (This more fully in the analysis

of subsequent dreams.)

Finally row (arranging the little stars in a row) reminds him that the bonbons are arranged thus in

Mary was previously to an officer. the dream he again In army engaged offers her the choice between himself and the army
officer.

rows, like soldiers, and that

Reue, regret
riage.
sister

Reihe (row) also brings up by association ; he thinks, she may yet regret the maris

His trouble

his inability, to choose

between

and

bride.

In the dream he leaves to his

bride the task of choosing, thus extricating himself from the dilemma.

Let us now attempt to penetrate more deeply into the psychic mechanism. I reproduce here three additional dreams of this subject:
I "have borrowed one or more books from But I also had a the library of deputy V. v. Z.

(71)

I.

vague idea that perhaps it was my mother who had secured and brought these books for me. I want to keep the books for myself. I approach stealthily the box where the records are kept of all outstanding books, and watching for an opportunity when I

am

unobserved I remove therefrom and tear up the record of the books given to me.

I sneak along the corridor of V. v. Z.'s residence is situated in a great and wonderful apart^ ment building. I feel I have done something wrong,

which

242

Sex and Dreams

evil,

something unspeakably

the Reeling of guilt op-

presses me, and I would like to remove the traces of my misdeed. But some young boys are standing

around along the opposite side of the corridor. I think they are talking about me and watching me. I want to break into the room (library). An unexplainable dread holds me back. (72) II. There are two books. One is at my

home; the other I took to Mary, or rather I hid in

her home without her knowledge. I ask Mary for the book. She answers: "Yes, I thought it belonged to you, I brought it down to you
several times; but

every time.

you have carried it back to us Moreover I know nothing about the

does not concern

whole thing,

it

me

at all

"

(73) III.

am summoned

to Court.

soldier

I tear open the envelope brings and I gather from the summons that I am to appear before the Court to account for my deed.

me

the summons.

I am trying to think of means of defense. I shall declare before the Court: "I have not destroyed But my mother did that. the library record,

mother has not done it with evil intent; she does not understand these matters; she is not guilty." A new person appears in these dreams, his mother. His guilty conscience, as if he had committed some crime, pervades strongly the whole dream fabric. Whenever we find such a feeling of
guilt, or the

dramatization in the dream of court

Indecision

243

complaints and accusations of theft, the analysis that the subject is reproaching himself for something which strikes him as wrong or 4own~
discloses

right criminal. I have already mentioned elsewhere the significance of books. Here the same interpretation as indicated in the previous dream is applicable; the books refer to the man's avarice.

He

is
9

worried because his bride has no SparkassenbiicTier no Savings Bank books ; moreover he reproaches himself

because he

is

forced to accept the aid of her sav-

She has one ings on account of his failing health. bank account that and has she placed at savings
his disposal.

mother

to explain the dream. His she has no connection with the bride's poor, bank the second meaning of book. Here savings book which any book clearly comes into play:
is

But that does not seem

one

may

read

is

a symbol for prostitute.

is

Book

as

symbol for prostitute

basis.
official

on another A woman who turns prostitute receives an "record book" from the police department
explained also

(under the European rules for the regulation of The Viennese expression, "she has prostitution).
a book" (or "a booklet") when applied to a woman means that she is under the control of the Morals

Department of the

police.

Finally the term book brings up the word number 2 a very common term in the sexual jargon. In
a

In a large library every book has

its

record number.

244

Sex and Dreams

the dream he seems to reproach his mother for something. He would like to wipe out the memory
of some occurrence in the mother's past
life

(den

Empfangschein zerreissen). I drew his attention to this fact. A number of traumatic incidents from his childhood come to his mind. He once surprised his mother in a rather intimate tete-a-tete with a lodger, whose name bears a certain resemblance to the previously mentioned word, Reihe. His name was something like Reihental. Ritter V. v. Z. is associated

man has the reputation of a loose also his wife. When they life, very leading built a new villa, this man said to his friends: "I
with the fact that the

have here two

floors. My wife receives on the first and I on the second. Or, "my wife has her bordello on the first floor, and I keep my harem on the sec-

ond."
Associations lead from this
ter
y

man

to another, Rit-

von X. with whom his mother was on rather intimate terms. They were neighbors. Once during a
terrible quarrel his sister accused the

mother of hav-

ing repeatedly sneaked over to the "R&tter" at Here he identifies himself with his mother night.

and would
deed ;
it

wipe out the memory of this misfor he thinks that the whole town knew about
like to
:

and made fun of it "Some young boys are standing around along the opposite side of the corridor.
I think they are talking about

me and

are watching

me."

Indecision

245

But the reproaches pertain to another, more painful thought. They are generated by the incestuous
leaning towards the mother.
library with

She
is

is

the room, the

many

numbers, she
the

the box in which

the

Empfangsscheinen

entries

are

kept

(Empfdngniss is synonymous with gravidity). He is dominated by an impulse to break into that room and we may now appreciate the meaning of the last
observation in the dream:
holds
ing.

me

back.

'

The

unexplainable dread expression has a double mean-

"An

His compulsive hesitation keeps him back from his mother as well as from his bride ; for love of his
mother, and its parallel outgrowth, love of his sister, which also plays a great role, is his greatest stumbling-block, preventing him from taking the
step of consummating a marriage. The second dream portrays a second component of his hesitation, namely doubts concerning his
bride.

On

his childhood

account of the painful reminiscences of he fears a second edition of the same

She, too, episodes through the person of his bride. may prove unfaithful and commit various misdeeds

behind his back.

All the mistrust, the scorn and

doubt generated towards his mother he transfers upon his bride. No matter how often he says to
himself that
his

bride

is

not responsible for his

mother's conduct, in contrast with his powerful affects, his intellect proves weak. Any one reading the dream over carefully must discern at once what

246
it

Sex and Dreams

his bride;

was that he had hidden with

and her

become clear:

defense as well as the honesty of her declaration also "Moreover I know nothing about the

whole thing, it does not concern me at all !" In the third dream he is cited to Court and he

must defend

himself.

It would lead us too far to

attempt a complete analysis of this dream. The associations disclosed intimate relations with another

army

officer.

The most

significant feature

is

the dramatization of the thought that he must defend himself for the commission of incest (his

The Landwehrgestrongest wish) with the mother. richt is his mother; the Vorladung, citation to
court,
3

It seems he

corresponds to an invitation, EMadung. We are is trying to excuse his mother.

terrible family

tragedy, some horrible infantile drama, such as does not appear improbable in the case of an advanced psychopathic

on the tracks of a

personality of the type he describes his mother to "But my mother has not done it with evil inbe:
tent; she does not understand these matters; she
is

not guilty!"

Moreover the "citation into Court" incident in the dream corresponds to an actual threat on the
mother's part.

He brings to light terrible family scenes surpassing nearly everything that the master
*Gerichte, Court, in a double sense;

riicht,

rumor.

it stands also for GeThere were ugly rumors current about his

mother.

Interpretation

247

hand of a Zola has

described.

He and

his sister

in the endeavor to put a stop to their mother's scandalous hysterical conduct have had to resort to

Horrible fights broke out and his physical force. mother threatened to complain to the police. . . . Thus appear at close range the persons who sit in

judgment over others.

XII
THE SYMBOLISM OF LIFE AND DEATH IN THE DREAM THE LONG SHARP SWORD IN THE DREAM MASTURBATION REPRESENTED BY POCKET THE
MATRICIDE IDEA
>

BLOOD FOR SPERMATIC FLUID

Vivre, enfin, c'est mourir.

\To

Ivoe,

at bottom, means dying off.]

Maupassant

XII
In his memoirs of the Russian-Japanese war a Russian military surgeon relates an interesting epiIt was just before a great decisive battle. sode.
His regiment was to be among the first to enter the The sleepless soldiers slaughter at early dawn.
pressed around his tent with the request to be given

some remedy against painful

erections.

prescribe drastic cathartics to towards the bowels.

He had to draw the hyperemia

last

made during the Messina earthquake. While the houses toppled over and the flames broke forth, love indulged in its
Similar observations have been

most abandoned

orgies.

No

chaste virgin, no re-

spectable wife thought of resisting the desires of the frantic men. The proximity of death had

roused in

all

the instincts of

life.

Recently the newspaper related a touching episode. girl, fatally wounded, spoke up to a pass-

ing workingman:
love before I die !"

"Kiss me!

That I may know

last words.
life
1

These were her

Where death looms

*

forth the instinct of

this

also

Arthur Schmtzler has dramatized Lebens (The Call of Life).

251

motive in his

Ruf

252
asserts itself.

Sex and Dreams

In the fairy story about Old Uncle

Death and the Healer, who asks for a new flame to replace the declining flame of' his life what does Death answer ? "I cannot do it Some flame must
!

go out so that another may be lit." These observations have led Swoboda to formulate a law of "the Conservation of Life."
sists
2

"It con-

of the equivalence between

life
it

and death,"
the shedding

states

Swoboda, "and

in virtue of

for every sexual act need not neclead to increase of life involves but a temessarily decrease of life." He porary quotes very properly
of sexual cells

the dictum of Celsius:

Seminis emissio est partis

animae

jacttira.

Thus we begin

to understand

why

the dream often

represents coitus under the picture of dying; also the remarkable fact that in the dream murder may

be a psychic equivalent of the sexual act. It means possession raised to the nth degree, exclusive and
last possession.

Let us turn to these principles as disclosed

actual analysis of dreams.

in the

very
:

fine-minded,

genial

woman,

painter,

dreams

(74) In a primitive forest there stands a tall, spreading tree. From a branch of the tree spread-

mg

far out there hangs a long, sharp sword.

Be-

9 Hermann Swoboda, Die Periode im menschlichen Organismus (F. Deutfcke, Wien u. Leipzig, 1904).

Life and Death

fore

253
I

me

there stands a

man whom

am

unable to

distinguish clearly.

The sword hangs between u*

and we cannot therefore see and recognize one an~ other. Stronger and warmer grows our mutual
longing; with a powerful grip the sword determined to drag it down;

man

seizes

the

/ shout exult"

He has seized ingly and throw both arms in the air. the sword too hastily, it slips from his hand and
I sink down with pierces me through the heart. breast. The figure of the in the sword sticking my

man

dissolves like

a shadow and I

am

alone lying

on the ground, mortally wounded. Does this dream really portray only death through an accident? Through a man's lack of Not at all. This is not a death dream adroitness ?
it is

a dream of

life.
is

"The

tall,

spreading tree

The erection the penis. is represented as a long sharp sword. "Stronger and warmer grows our longing" und nun fuhrt er
in the primitive forest"

den erigierten Penis in die Vagina. Heart and breast serve as displacement from below.
.

The "shadowy

dissipation of the figure" relates to

a dead person. Her greatest love! It is also a raw by-play on ejaculation. Remarkable picture! At the moment when she
. .

begins to live, when she begins to know life, she dies. Just as the dream knows no negative in general, In the dream dying it recognizes no denial of life.

means usually the same as

living

and often the

254?

Sex and Dreams

greatest life urge is expressed as a death wish. Similar psychologic considerations hold true also of
suicide ;
3

even the choice of the manner of self-deis

struction

influenced

by

certain

erotic

factors.

This thought has been repeatedly expressed by the poets ; philosophers, too, have dwelt on the intimate

and Thanatos. 4 In the dream, as in actual life, murder is often a crime passionelle representing nothing more than a sexual act with a strongly sadistic coloring. A typical dream of young girls: they are standing naked on the street, a big man attacks them or sticks_a_kmfe into
relations

between Eros

their abdomen.

dream.

I have already analyzed such a In such cases the murderous attack por-

trays a forceful defloration,

off irretrievably is the

what
it is

honor;

is being killed the death knell

of virginity which, again, means the inauguration of woman's life. Homosexuals dream of attacking a man whom they knock down with a cane. Dreams of this character require no further elucidation on

my part.
I

turn now to the representation of death in

:

dreams
(75)

My brother is

to leave Vienna (?).

He

has

*Cf. my statements concerning suicide in: Ueber den Selbstmord, Diskussionen, vol. I, 1910 (J. F. Bergmann, Wiesbaden). 4 The well-known thought of Euripides is an excellent illustration:

Tfs

oZ5e;>, el

r6

$r\v ftkv

tari KaraSctvelv r6 KctTaSavelv 81

Who

knows whether

life is

not a dying and death living?

Symbolism of Death

255

already packed up his things in a couple of trunks and several hand grips. Then he was not to leave
till late at night he went to the Club. Meanwhile, I stepped into the rooms while he was away and found furniture and things stored on the ground

and the second floors. I was accompanied by an old watchman who looked like a mu~ seum attendant and who wore a Bordeaux-red uniform; also he carried a bunch of keys. He explained many things to me in a side room extending backwards, which was very dark, there were a number of red covered mattresses; the covers had white
floor, the first

mother-of-pearl buttons. He unbuttoned one of the covers, the mattress underneath was also red but

museum at" "That is like the conception we Norwegians have of life and death; the cover is life. The buttons are the pleasthere were no buttons on
it.

Now

the

tendant began to talk very animatedly:

antnesses

and the unpleasantnesses of our existence. When we die the cover slips off and what remains is an uninterrupted, uniform state of absolute peace. That is the highest happiness. Sleep continues

without the least sensation, unpleasant or pleasant, with the knowledge that one is dead but that exist*
ence continues beyond our earthly life." Then he again buttoned the cover on the mattress. I was

very deeply moved by his speech, and I felt a strong longing after that promised state of absolute peace

and there came over me that

feeling of rest which

256

Sex and Dreams

partakes somewhat of the majesty of death. Meanwhile we climbed up to the next floor, which was the

There we found only some old lumber and furniture like the outfit of a carpenter who might be Then we walked down also a collector of antique.
attic.

I found it was late and I wanted the stairs again. I saw him on the street on a to -find my brother.
small square; I was in doubt whether it was G. or my brother; then I recognized it was my brother by his

I returned to the house and I supervised the loading of my brother's belongings upon a hand wagon; the wrong packages were brought down; I
monocle.
said they were mine, not twice; then finally two

my

brother's.

It

happened

men brought

the baggage

down
It

in a hand wagon. would not be possible to give here a full analysis of the dream; that will be done in connection with

But the study of the respective neurotic trouble. the most important features may be pointed out.
Hence patient is to abandon the treatment. He identifies himself with the wish to leave Vienna.

The

his brother
is

who

lives outside

Vienna.

His brother

a lively fellow who always keeps one or two women on the string. He envies him for his numerous
trunks.

But he
indulge

also accuses
his

(handgrips).

Club to
in

members

him of masturbation mind is a place where homosexual pleasures. The

various floors refer to his different erogenous zones: he is a foot fetichist (ground floor), anal eroticist

Symbolism of Death
(first floor)

257

and

fellatio

important
ories

role in his dreams.

(second floor) too, plays an His childhood mem-

are represented here by the old furniture. Especially an old nurse, who had mistreated him for
years, becomes fused with his servant into the

mu-

seum attendant.

Next there appear anal phantasies which revolve around childhood reminiscences. The words, "he
explains
side

many

things to me," refer to that.

The

noteworthy.

room, "extending backwards and very dark," is Mattresses refer to a number of

First the name of the servant, next to the things. name of a certain French woman; there is also a
vivid

association with the old mattress on which

syphilis,

Heine died as the result of

a disease which

one acquires through sowing wild oats carelessly. The subject suffers of syphilidophobia ; "Ratzen"

(Matratzen) suggests a similar train of thought:

rats spread the infection of plague. have anal significance, referring to

The buttons
hemorrhoidal

knots but they also suggest the glans penis, the red

(button) head which is especially hyperesthetic in his case; also the all-important nipples.

The museum

attendant's conversation need be ex-

plained here but briefly. "The cover is life": da$, was auf den Penis drauf Jcommt, die Vagina, to the prceputium.
ist

das Leben.
is

He

Reference, also, afraid to draw it back.

Uberzieher) has

The cover or covering (Uberzug,

258

Sex and Dreams

also its over-determination in a mechanical device

for protection against infection. "The buttons are the pleasantnesses and unpleasantness of our existence": this refers to the pleas-

urable feelings and the pain traceable to his penis and to his hemorrhoids, respectively.
virile subsides it is like

Living: means also erection; when the membrum dead: when we die the cover

an uninterrupted, uniform state of absolute peace, i. e., if our libido subsides, so brauchen wir die Vagina nicht und der Penis bleibt
slips off
is left

and there

ruhig.

"That

is

man's highest happiness'

in that

way

he consoles himself for his impotentia. He has wanted to establish a new religion, founded on ascetof the same opinion as Tolstoy in these matters, or rather he was, for to-day he is nearly well and he has practically abandoned that ascetic
icism
is

and

ideal.

One knows "that one

is

dead but also that

exist-

ence continues beyond earthly life": the quiescent membrum does not trouble the potent man because he is certain of a resurrection.

At

this point there

came to the

subject's
his

mind

homosexual phantasies relating to

Well as to myself
;

brother as

in fact the

museum attendant owed

most of
I

his features to

am

his instructor;

me ; for during the treatment he obtains from me new psyI

chologic information.

am

represented as conclud-

Interpretation

259

ing my treatment with a practical demonstration, intimated in the unbuttoning and rebuttoning. .
.

And
his

his emotions are

not surprising his enthusiasm,

:

blissful peace, finally his conviction that

boundless yearning for the promised state of death must

means

be something majestic. That kind of death merely living the life of a free man, without infantile
is

inhibitions; it

what he wants to attain and did

attain through the treatment. Further phantasies refer to his brother and his

membrum virile. perceive that inhibitions are the cause of his impotentia; the baggage plays here
a great role; wrong baggage means false moral

We

Another views such as have tortured him for years. of is this genitalia; points to masmeaning baggage
turbation, as intimated in the loading of the baggage

upon a "hand" wagon.

woman dreamed:

(76) I was on the street and felt dizzy; very scared I shouted: "Das ist der Riickfall, das ist bestimmt ein Riickfall! I am fatting backwards, I

am

surely falling backwards!

Now

I shall die!"

* Ruck fall, of course, means relapse. In the dream the woman shouts: "I am having a relapse!" The literal transla-

is given in the text, "falling backwards" because the dream, as there shown by the analysis, revolves chiefly around But the idea of "relapse," the latter meaning of the term. with the implied greater ease of falling backwards (in contrast to the woman who has not yet "fallen") and with the additional implication of the wished experience being already something fulfilled also lurks in the background of the dream and supports its main theme. [Translator.]

tion

260
This quiet

Sex and Dreams

little

mother,

fifty-five

years of age,

lived very sedately until her only daughter, thirty-

four years of age, suddenly

fell

in love with a

man
This

who reciprocated her

affection

and married.

roused powerful erotic fancies in her which led to severe depressions. She envied her daughter the husband and her sexual joys. She began to suffer

during the spells she tended to fall towards the left side, at least she grasped for support on the right. The attempt to support herself usually failed; she had a feeling that the support
of dizziness
;

was not strong enough: that support was her husband, a wholly impotent man and the dizziness repfall. Falling backa back on one's and this stretching really in a the neurotic of fear simple way many explains women have of slipping backwards. That she will

resented her dread-and-wish to

is

ward

surely die on account of slipping backwards means The really that she is going to live once more.
I go down the street in dream, interpreted, means search of an opportunity to fall into sin, I fall and
:

taste to

my

heart's content
is

Mrs. Delta, who

the shop.

under

my

treatment, dreams

(77) It is evening, dark.

We

girls want to close hear a great noise, the cry, "Mother-

The

As in the above instance wherever necessary I have not hesitated to translate terms in their literal sense and I have occasionally given preference to a somewhat special rendering whenever the trend of the associations in the original required
it.

(Van

T.)

Symbolism
murderer!" and

261
street.

down

slowly In front the street, carrying strong lights. there are priests, all in white, then there follows a

We

are

many persons run out on the very much afraid; a procession moves

hearse, also covered with white,

on which the murI

derer

is

carried; there follow a throng of people.

am

very badly scared and the fear wakes me. Mrs. Delta is subject to incest phantasies.

has recently married.

dream revolves around her much beloved She witnesses his funeral, she white bier, i. e. she pictures on the sees him stretched

The son who

the bride dressed in white. to herself his marriage, in her judgment involves socially marriage which, at any rate it marks the ruination of her the son,

death of their love.

What
;

was Muttermord (naturally murder

sexual, life-affirming act)

she expected from him in the sense of a

of the daughter-in-law. cret, priests in the dream often mean,

hence her powerful hatred Many persons signify a se-

by a

reversal

Belief of implications, sensuality clothed in white. a similar in and the fear of ghosts betrays sym-

bolism.

Usually

the

dear

departed,

dressed

in

white, are the ones cause consternation.

who reappear

as ghosts

and

The girls want to close shop; in addition to the homosexual phantasies which this evokes the remark
also expresses the subject's regret that her daughters are unable to gratify their sexual needs. (Cf.

Dream No.

25.)

262

Sex and Dreams

Transposed the dream is easily interpreted: It is full daylight. My boy shows tenderness towards me and I am pleased, etc. Mrs. Delta's psychic
is expressed also in this dream. are easily lead astray by the affects disBeginners have already seen that played in the dream.

hermaphroditism

We

love

represent hatred, irony wonder, etc. can go further and state: Here, too, symbolic equation is operative as a valid principle. This, the fourth symbolic equation, may be formulated as
follows:

may

We

other and

All affects in the dream are equal to each may substitute one another.
:

Let us analyze a dream illustrating both features representation of life and death and the fourth symbolic equation.

Miss Delta dreams

(78) I come to the birthday anniversary of my friend Christine. I have not brought along the
birthday present.
I had no time to purchase
it.

like a wax -figure She is bed, looks very pale, and that makes me wonder. But few words are necessary. Christine is the wife of the man she longs for. The dream means:

I come to the burial of

my

friend Christine.

I have

She died so suddenly forgotten the floral wreath. stretched on her was She I had no time for it.
deathbed, pale as

wax and I rejoiced. Here birthday stands for death. The feeling of surprise or wonder stands for joyful satisfaction.

Symbolism

263

woman, thirty-four years of age, obsessed with the fear of apoplexy, relates the following dream: (79) I carried my dead brother, dressed as he was laid in his coffin, with the aid of another person and we were about to place the coffin in the grave I said to the other: with the body still warm. "See, Franz is still alive, we cannot put him down." There were many other burials and many people around. I awoke shuddering. She lost her brother to whom she was attached with all her heart. Her only consolation was an the other person in the dream. She has uncle,
mise ; she
fused brother with uncle, a typical incest comprois so deeply in love with her uncle that she
could. not refuse

him a thing.

The

coffin in

which

every person

first lies, is

the maternal body.

The

same symbolism holds true of grave (das Grab) and in this connection "graben" carries plainly a significant meaning, like "bohren" (boring) and "geboren" (born). Thus the grave stands for heaven; hence the close connection between the grave and
heaven in popular Ruckert :
belief.

The

idea

is

expressed by

Du

meine Welt in der ich

lebe,

Mein Himmel du, darein ich schwebe9 O, du mein Grab, in das hinab
Ich ewig meinen

Kummer gab
Schiller:

and even more clearly by

264

Sex and Dreams

Noch kostlicheren Samen bergen Wir trauernd in der Erde Schoss, Und hoffen, dass er aus den Sargen
Erbluhen
soil

zu schb'nerm Los.
sees

In the above dream the patient

the

her brother,

membrum

virile

of her cousin, as

it

was

in the
:

maternal body; (dressed as he was in his coffin) i. e. naked and she wants to put him in the grave
while
fect
still alive,
i.

e.

pertains

to

The accompanying afpotent. the abhorrence roused by the

:

thought of burying some one alive. But the affect has been displaced interpreted it means I do not
;

want to put
uncle.

my

maturely among

prethe dead by changing him for the

living

husband

who

is

still

cannot put him in": this has the double meaning of putting in as well as of betrayal (or un"einen tiichtig hweirilegen," a colloquialism not unlike our "putting something over" on
faithfulness)
;

"We

some one, means to deceive some one. "Many people" means "the secret"; also the challenge to do after all. it, "Many burials" means: everybody lives and tastes the fruits of indulgence und legt die
:

anderen hinein^ why should you alone impose such scruples on yourself?

These dream thoughts are further corroborated through the fact that her present husband did not get along at all well with her deceased brother and

Interpretation

265

he would, in fact, thoroughly deserve the punishment. Her most intense desire is to have a child, She cannot expect a i. e., to be a coffin herself.

from her husband for she knows that he is She wants to get the child from the uncle, sterile. she wants to "carry" him with another person here
child
;

"tragen,"

"carrying" has
(as in English).
6

the

meaning

of being

pregnant

An
sions,

abstinent church

official,

suffering of depres-

dreams:

(80) I sat on a stool in my father's study. Suddenly I felt pain in my body and vomited a stream of blood.
until his father

I cried:

I shall die!"
to masturbation

For many years he was addicted

warned him:
will die.'*

up

the habit,

you

"If you do not give Once he masturbated

so inveterately that he caused a profuse hemorrhage from the urethra. During recent years he was abstinent,
traits
;

but he developed serious neurotic anxiety he has a most uncomfortable feeling of pres-

sure and of pain in his body and the sensation that something sticks inside of him and can neither get

farther in nor out.

The thing that sticks and farther in or out is his penis.

Now

cannot get either he is fighting

"I

with a resolution to have sexual intercourse.

The dream portrays the phantasy far from an infrequent one that she bore and had given birth to her brother. The
effect

(shuddering) is the expression of her general feelingattitude (yearning) rather than of horror of death.

266
shall die"

Sex and Dreams

: this expression in the dream means, my abstinence drags me down, I must begin to live. This resolution he actually adopted shortly after

the dream.

With
dream

equation the

is

the aid of the second symbolic I am with easily interpreted

:

a woman.
fication.

Suddenly I experience enormous gratiI shout: Es lebe das Leben. (Blood for

sperma; dying for living.) His wish to seek regular sexual intercourse was
expressed in a short dream which I reproduce without analyzing the details as it is fairly clear from

what we know already

(81) I strolled along a narrow path bordered Some little distance right and left with bushes.

from the road, to the right, there stood a woman, When I saw that, I apparently waitmg for me.
turned back.
prostitute whom he had been Bushes are the for the past six days. meeting devil's device ; and, like Luther, he would consider it

This

woman was a

the devil's work were he to stumble. (To stumble, German, straucheln and Strauch, bush; there is thus an additional connection between bushes and stumThe bling in the German, based on semantics.)

woman
bolic

stood at the edge of the bush.

of the vagina
is

representation
is

The symnarrow path

edged with bushes

very clear.
also
is

But the subject

cause of his neurosis

homosexual and the chief his leaning towards a sister

Interpretation
in

267

trauma. 7

whose company he has experienced his important The dream shows that he still has a con-

siderable

amount of

resistance to overcome.

few

already mentioned, his action belied days the turning back incident at the end of the dream.
later, as
cause some surprise that I should have occasion to incest. But I cannot do otherwise than record The conscientiously everything that comes to my attention. fact must also be taken into consideration that we are dealing chiefly with subjects burdened with ill health.
It
*

may

dwell so

much on

XIII
SPEECH IN DEEAMS THE SYMBOLISM OF CONVERSATION COLOR SYMBOLISM OF MR. S.

Scldaf

ist

ein

Hmemkriechen des Menschen

in

sich Selbst.

into himself.'] [Sleep means man's withdrawal

Hebbel

XIII
Mr. Sigma, whom we already know through some
analyses (vid. Nos. 70, 71, 72, 73), dreams: (82) Mary offers me a breast-pm as a gift.
decline
it

saying:

"I

thank

you.

You know,

needles bring bad luck as gifts. Moreover you will a needle better from me. (a living, warm) get

rule established

versation in dreams

is

by Freud is as follows: Contaken from some actual dayis

very true here. The dreamer's bride, Mary, brought a number of gifts for his sister; but she retained for herself a very pretty breast-pin. The dreamer thought she should
time conversation.

This

have also given that pin to his sister, Rose. Mary "I cannot do that; you know: needles bring said:

bad luck as gifts.'* Another recent dream instigator may be mentioned: at an outing in the woods the bride (after an embrace) remarked that she lost the breast-pin.

They looked for it but in vain. The dreamer admires handsome

greatest pleasure
is

breasts.

His

to suck the breasts (hence the symbolism: breastpin), an act distinctly and typically infantile, traceable back to the nursing period.
271

272

Sex and Dreams

Until his fifth years he was in the care of his nurse. He slept with her in bed, played with her mammae
1 asleep with the nipple in his mouth. oral region is his strongest erogenous zone.

and

fell

The The

(also consciously entertained) of intercourse with the bride or of proposing fellatio to avoid the danger of pregnancy.

dream portrays the thought

Another observation by Freud must be mentioned

in this connection.

(Bemerkungen iiber Jahrbuch f Psycho"Exanalytische Forschungen, vol. I, 1909) us that dreams sometimes portray perience teaches
einen Fall von Zwangsneurose.
.
:

He

states

the actual theme of the compulsive inhibition,

etc.,
un>-

which during the waking state is traceable only der the cover of a distortion and displacement,

like

a cyphered telegram. These themes appear in the dream as conversations, in spite of the rule that
speeches in dreams are reproduced from day-time conversations."

Sigma, with whose history we are acquainted

through the analysis of previous dreams, suffers of a very serious psychic conflict, which may be sub-

sumed
Rose)
J

in the simple query: bride or sister

?

(Mary or

Every

detail

becomes a theme of doubt

Once when he had a cough the nurse gave him her own urine to drink as a remedy. An example of symbolic equation. a ln all cases of compulsive doubt I have found that the doubter, during childhood, was placed between two persons to whom he was linked equally with ties of love: mother and nurse or nurse girl, mother and aunt, mother and father. Mr. Sigma seeks expression for his conflict in the typical con-

Compulsive Thought

273

to his mind: he doubts himself, his bride, his sister;

he

questions

whether

he

can

make her happy,

whether he can support her, whether he can be true to her, whether he will be able to gratify her, whether
she will be faithful to him, etc.

This dream shows us his

He

wishes that

Mary would

compulsive thought. turn over to Rose the

needle (obvious symbol). She did not do it. He takes his

sister's

side.

a typical incest comThe speech applies to Rose and means: promise. "Be consoled. True, you did not get my bride's a prettier, needle, but I have another one for you,
living,

Mary and Rose are cousins,

warm one!" The compulsive thought,

therefore, of which he
sister!

is

a victim, sounds: love thy

Against

this im-

perative he struggles with all his might and the consequences of the struggle is his severe neurosis.
Is the sister without
his neurotic condition?

a share of responsibility for

the subject's
one's

One reading over carefully other dreams should be able to form

Before he undertook the jour-

own judgment.

ney to Vienna (to be psychoanalyzed) his sister said to him: "You may marry your Mary; but do not
be surprised
if

I should then find a sweetheart for

myself and become intimate with him!" This foolish threat on the part of his sister had worried him
stellation. The old theme mother or nurse now under a new form, bride or sister?
is

brought up

274

Sea:

and Dreams

a great deal. "It would be his greatest misfortune:" Die Schwester soil keine andere Nadel
erhalten.

He

begrudged her having any one.

She

jealous when she entersingle. tains herself in conversation with other gentlemen. Neither does he want to give up his bride. He does

must remain

He

is

not want her, either, to have any one else. He would like to hold on to both. The only solution he can find is suicide: that would end once for all these tortures, wishes, cravings and doubts.

Another dream of the same subject: (83) I see before me, haunched at the right of ihe window sill, a little yellowish-brown monkey caressing a reddish-gray dove in front of him. Gazing at them I have a feeling that the monkey will sink its

claws into the bird at any minute and I say derisively: "You would like to eat her, wouldn't you?"
so

The dove is the kind, bland Mary who causes him much concern (gray dove). He once said to the "You would drown Mary in a spoonful of sister:

water wouldn't you!"

Only the previous day his bride wrote him that is visited daily by the sister who is very cordial with her. But he knows that his sister hates the poor bride and could "devour" her. Er hat seine Braut zum "F res sen" lieb. He wants to marry her.
she

(Right side!) a monkey. He

his sister's

He
is

thinks he himself

is

as ugly as
follows first

but a monkey.

He

and now

his bride's bidding.

He

is

jeal-

Compulsive Thought

275

eus (yellow) and begrudges his sister as well as his bride another man.

The

colors ftave here in this connection special

meaning.
sich

Reddish refers to sadistic trends.

auf die Defloration.

Er

His uncertainty freut whether Mary is virgo Intacta will be solved soon after the marriage ceremony: Sie wird bluten
milssen.

is

Equally significant is "yellowish-brown." Brauner the name of a man who caused an alienation be-

tween himself and a sweetheart.

ous at the time.

He was

very jeal-

Gelb

is

the

name of another man

This

who once lodged with them. "Don Juan" who brought

room.
to his
disturb this

man was a great different women to his

Once the patient took

"Don Juan"

special pleasure to after he had taken just

room an especially attractive woman. As he could he sang the refrain: "Indeed, as loudly love is a wonderful thing!" and other snatches of
songs of like character. How did he know that Gelb was entertaining a woman in his room? "Because the walls were so thin. The door, too, was

not noise proof.

tention to it."

Moreover,

my

sister

drew

my

at-

We

discover, further, that his

sister,

too,

was

rather intimate with that lodger and this again made him very jealous. The singing proved a successful revenge

For the

caller

on the part of brother and sister. supposedly a respectable woman

276

Sex and Dreams

left

was so scared that she

blue

the man's

room at

once.

GeJb threatened to beat him until he was black and

and

yellow.

Reddish-gray recalls various associations. Grauer was an acquaintance who, without his wife's knowledge, turned twenty thousand Kronen over to his sis-

dower out of the money his wife had given him. When the wife found that out she demanded the return of her money and threatened divorce. Roth was a young man who courted Mary
ter for her

and who wanted to marry her. Finally, the last association, Taufoer, was an officer with red cuffs (he had previously mentioned that the dove had a red glimmer around the neck), who saw a great deal of his bride and who had been engaged to her for a
short time.

He

doubts the innocence of his dove.

Thus the

colors "yellowish-brown"

ish-red" show various determinations.

and "yellowTauber was

without means.

account of his military career he had to break the engagement with Mary. That

On

love

was hopeless.
to

is

The thought of giving up his engagement also a part of his own speculations. He
His
rid of the bride.

Mary

will first

have her and then put her aside.

him get

about poisoned candy!)

sister will help Court dream the (See The words addressed to

the sister practically mean: "You would like, best of all, to poison her, like 'Hoffichtef* did his com-

Compulsive Thought

277
She

Mary wanted to poison herself. was prevented from carrying out the deed.

rades." 3

The

dream intimates all these possibilities. The facetious remark addressed to the sister is really a "Take her off my neck and request and means: or her poison her but make me Strangle yours.
free."

Fearful regrets and thoughts of suicide on awak(Lex talionis!) His sadism, almost boundening.
breaks through in this dream. This sadism is he not only tortures his bride, He has achis sisters and all others around him.
less,

not only psychic,

tually broken out with physical violence.

He

has

beaten and choked his mother.

Beating his

sister,

and dragging her by the hair was a common occurrence.

And

he

is

afraid he will also beat his soft

bride once he makes a start.

There are cannibalistic trends slumbering

in the

depths of his soul. He is like a predatory beast that would fight with its teeth. He bites during
coitus
3

he could perhaps devour his bride out of

often compulsions have back of them imperatives reman consults me on lating to the subject's family circle! account of the torturing compulsive idea that he must put brief analysis discloses that his his wife out of the way. mother and his wife dislike each other. Once they had a serious quarrel. They grabbed each other by the hair. His mother said to him at the time: "I do not understand how you can get along with your wife. Another man would have put her out of the way long ago." This hypothetical imperative on the mother's part started the torturing compulsive idea; the latter disappeared after being thus traced to its source.

How

278
love.

Sex and Dreams

He
its

is

the yellowish-brown

monkey ready to
on the dove: to

gratify

cannibalistic instincts

possess and kill her in the act, Sie totend besitzen! Again we come upon the association of life and death; this time an aggressive variant of it: Besitzgreifen wnd Totend
4 1 have no doubt in my own mind that all jealousy murders have a pleasurable affect. When Othello chokes Desdemona he carries out an instinctive urge, er vollzieht an ihr den Thus revenge becomes for him most letzten Geschlechtsakt. Our gratifications involve the destruction of pleasurable. others. We maintain our life through the death of others.

XIV
REPRESENTATION OF THE EMOTIONS IN THE DREAM THE DREAM OF "GETTING READY" A CLERGYMAN^ DREAM THE ROOT OF FOOT FETICHISM

TRIUMPH OVER THE FATHER DREAM THOUGHTS AND COMPULSIVE IMAGES INFANTILE ROOTS OF THE FEAR OF CONTACT WHY THE DREAMER "WONDERS"

Em dienst

zu Nacht

ist

unser Leben

Genuss ist f aider WdcJiter Trawm: For keinem Hirngespinnste beben, So leicht es klingt, kanns einer kaum!
Feuchtersleben

XIV
There are in fact no dreams without
affects.

Dreams unaccompanied by
colored, are not remembered.
ess begins the

affects,

or but slightly
the

That

dream proc-

our eyes seems to few examples in connection with the discussion of hypnagogic picclose

moment we
Later I

me

self-evident.

shall give a

jtures.
ffect
.ess

always dream when asleep. When the becomes so strong as to rouse our conscious -

We

we wake up.

In the same way we remember

only the dreams strongly toned with affects. Only such dreams enlist our attention. In fact, attention
is

an affectative

state, as Bleuler
is

has shown

very convincingly.

The dream

but an interplay

of images in the service of our affects.

The

affects

which break clearly through the dream

are of particular significance because they are the

repressed affects.

(84)
1

A woman

dreams her husband

is

iwfaithful.

Marhold, Suggestibility, Paranoia. Affektivitat, a. S., 1906. Bleuler states: "Our actions are probably and of dysinfluenced exclusively by the feelings of pleasure phoria; logical considerations receive their strength through the effects with which they happen to be linked." In the same
Halle

Carl

way
of

the

dream

is

not an interplay of thoughts, but a struggle

affects.

281

282

Sex and Dreams

knife.

She attacks him with a

epithets at him. In the dream this

She hurls ugly

woman

gives free rein to a tre-

mendous
she
is

When she wakes up feeling of hatred. happy that it was "only a dream." But the

dream discloses to us the fact that she is mistrusting and that she hates her husband. More than that. She seeks some justification for her hatred. "If I should This woman once said to her husband ever find that you are unfaithful to me I would promptly revenge myself." The dream pictures a justification for her hatred and furnishes her an
:

excuse for following the trend of her sexual

stincts.

in-

Thus, whenever an affect breaks through in the open it always yields a deep insight into mental
life.

But

affects, too, are deceptive.

Affects, too,

may

be transposed; substitution plays a great role: respect for scorn, overvaluation for depreciation, love
I take this opportunity to emphasize that for hate. dreams should be plain even without the transposition. The two emotional trends coexist. The neurotic
traries.
like

every human being is moved by conAll symptoms, all the manifestations of

feeling, are bipolar.

human thought and

love, respect

Hate and

hand

in hand.

and scorn, confidence and doubt, go Any affect may appear either ir a

Affects
positive or in negative form,

283
either with a plus is love with a

sign or with a minus sign.

Hatred
recall

minus sign.

We

must

here the fourth

symbolic equation. another.

The

affects

may

replace one

fit

Often the dream displays an affect which does not at all into the content of the dream. Freud has

discussed this theme very carefully and I must refer to his Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of authorized Dreams, English translation by A. Brill).

only that in many cases the dream affect is extremely treacherous and exposes the psychic I am able to conflict almost in its naked terms.
I

may add

corroborate the rule laid down by Freud that in every strongly toned dream the affect is always When interpreting a dream I always justified.

In this way we find out how the dream material has been masked through transstart with the affect.
position, shifting, etc. and how the affect becomes Trivial linked to irrelevant elements in the dream.

data next disclose the

character

of

the

affect.

Since the disturbance of the affectivity is the deepest cause of the neurosis I put greatest weight on
the analysis of the dream affects. f Of course, there are also dreams apparently devoid of affects (Freud). But as is the case with compulsive acts,

they are only apparently devoid of affect. Incidentally, this has led to the erroneous view, still held

284

Sex and Dreams

is

by many

psychiatrists, that the absence of affect characteristic of compulsions. 2

The
dream

following examples will illustrate how the affect enables us to obtain a deeper insight

into the structure of the respective neurosis. woman patient has a number of typical recur-

ring dreams: every time she gets tremendously excited over something which she does not quite attain.

The symbolism
zu
;

is

besonders beim Koitus statt.

obvious: diese Hetze findet Ihre Angst 1st, dass

der

Harm

friih fertlg wird,

:

before she attains

the libido

kommen.
as follows:

her perpetual wish einmal zurecht zu This conflict expresses itself in a dream

(85) Preparations to go out for the evening.1 I rush back and forth full of excitement. I open and close the wardrobe, various bureau drawers, the

Every little while I think The little some additional of thing I had forgotten. over. all round of opening and searching begins Finally I stand before the looking-glass and let
hair preparing to dress it; but it is useI cannot less. get through with the hair dressing. Fatigued by the hopeless strain I lower my arms
helplessly.

writing desk. I lay out various toilet articles.

my

gloves, jewelry

and the

down my

My

husband

is

fully dressed,

ready and

waiting for us, to

go out visiting.

I hurry from
Wurzela und

*Stekel, Zwangszustdnde, Ihre Psychischen ihre Heilwng. Mediz. Klinik., 1910, No. 5-7.

Affects

285

room

to

sible to finish

room out of breath but I do not find it posmy toilette. Finally I wake up ex-

hausted.

The meaning is very simple. She finds that preparations are being made for a private (secret) entertainment (opposite to "Gesellschaft," society,
i. e,.

social call)

by her husband.
(jewels).

She gets ready her

expression:
all

small

things

The

"the
is

round of opening and closing begins 3 She cannot ticularly edifying.

dressing,
i.e.,

over"

finish

her

parhair

she

is

whole
hair

life is

a search for
is

unable to attain libido; her All her thoughts libido.

Frisieren,

revert symbolically to this one theme.

dressing,

well-known

expression

for

coitus.

Preparing
it

one's toilet also

means congres-

sus (sexualis);
ing.

also means,

by contrast, undress-

Her inability to "get through," in contrast to her husband, is the basic theme expressed in this and in all her other affect atively toned dreams. To
go into society,
to be received:

empfangen werden

Her again, leads to Empfangniss; pregnancy. most bitter disappointment: she is childless, there are no children in the home, no companionship, no
no little things. Closet, drawer, these are little desk, things, glove, jewel, writing
KleinigJceiten:
alike symbols

for the female genitalia.

i

Her

hus-

*"Da# b'fnen und Suchen beginnt von vorn:" "the opening (of drawers) and searching begins . . . von vorn, over again," but also: "in the front."

286
band
is

Sex and Dreams

is

already waiting, i. e., he through (fertig) before she is.

ready, or rather

Another one of her dreams may also serve as example (86) I lie abed, HI and inwardly agitated. I am
:

worried because

my

household

does not run smooth-

I muster courage, and disregarding the state ly. of my illness, I wrap a towel around my head and with duster in hand I brush and clean out every corner.

The

effort exhausts

me and

helplessness for in spite of

my

I sigh over my labor and care the

work does not get done. Everywhere I still see the old disorder. My mother appears and she scolds
I beg her to help me, this eternal not-gettmg-through hangs over

me

for trying always to do so much.

me like a curse. The mother who

this

reproaches her stands for

womb
In
is

{Mutter: mother and Gebdrmutter: womb).

dream, too, she cannot get through.
life.

That

the curse of her

sooner.

The husband

is

He

is,

in fact, "all through."

through She sighs

over her husband's impotence der bei der Arbeit Tcaum den Kopf hineinstecht. What is the use of

her keeping herself so clean, would it not be better if she were less averse to moral impurity, per-

haps the frustrated excitations and her phantasies are exhausting her and make her ill? In the next
*

Symbol for the

phallus.

Popular vulgarism: Lass dir deine

Wirtschaft ausbiirsten.

Affects

287

verts back to her premarital state.

dream, which I reproduce as complementary, she reShe is again a

in a position to choose
:

young woman
tent

another

po-

husband

(87) I

am

again a girl at

great feast at the home of

gagement
all sad,

is being but taciturn.

my parental home. A my girl friend; her en* celebrated. I am present, not at

Most
of the persons present
behavior,

misunderstand

my

they whisper

among

themselves saying that I am jealous of my friend. I merely smile with an air of aloofness, for I am

conscious of my moral superiority and inwardly I resolve to marry only when I shall meet the greaty love for which I yearn.
present husband was once interested in that girl friend. She turns her husband over to the friend. Because

few words

will explain this

dream.

Her

of her experiences she does not envy her friend, nor the latter's future joys. On the other hand she herself is

that friend and she sees herself retrospectively

at the time of her

own engagement

as in a vision:

love for which I yearn." It is a dream within the dream; by this means she nullifies her

"The great

hasty marriage, goes back beyond would now marry only through great
love
is

it,

for

she

love.

Great

the love of a great,

i.

gross
sessed

is

both, great and big).

one.

big one (German, She wants to be pose.

by a big

fulfillment, it

a very pretty wish gives her back her youth, her freedom,
is

The dream

288
it

Sex and Dreams

She
is

enables her once again to choose her love.

One word, the little taciturn, einsilbig. word Yes, hastily spoken has brought her lasting This time she wants to draw a great unhappiness. winner in the marriage lottery. Her husband was
single,

a blank.
in which the subjects "do not get are through" very common. The dreamer arrives at the theater too late or he misses the train just as These dreams form a contrast to the it rushes by.

Dreams

type mentioned above,

dreams

in

which the dreamer

finds himself unable to get through.

One of my patients who suffered of a severe neurosis was tortured by the thought that he looked
like

a Jew.

He was

also afraid that his

mother

might be killed during his absence. In order to be ready with an alibi he gathered all sorts of memoranda, car transfer checks, receipts, etc. Analysis
proved that the foundation of his neurosis was his still persisting passionate attachment to his mother.
Jewish was to

To mark him
suality.

mind synonymous with sensuous. Jew meant to recognize his senTherefore he is subject to most uncomhis

for a

fortable feelings when he walks through the streets. He thinks that everybody is looking at him, that and this has caused him the faces show mistrust,

repeatedly the most painful conflicts.

(88) This subject dreams regularly that he arrives at the station just as the train is putting out.

Affects

289

He

hurries excitedly to be on time but he nevei

succeeds.

(89) Or, he runs after an electric car and cannot reach it. He had the habit of jumping on moving

dodge his pursuers, he said. In addition to that he was always obsessed by the Another time he desire to catch a car on the run.
street cars, in order to

dreamed:
(90) that he was following an automobile in a wagon and could not reach it.
All these thoughts are based on the fact that his mother is twenty-eight years older than he. This is the tremendous gap which he is unable to cover. His wish was: "Oh! if I were the father! Oh! if His I had known mother when she was young!" father took her away from under his nose. She is ill: he knows that she may die any day and that he
will

never possess her. Every time he arrives at the station with so much baggage that he cannot

get through.

This baggage

is

particularly typical.

Nearly always although there are no fixed symbols and under certain circumstances a symbol may mean something else it signifies the moral burden which
one carries on one's shoulders. der Siinden Last"

Tannhauser who sing: ("The burden of sin weighs heavily on me.**) On account of his heavy baggage he arrives late. In the dream the moral inhibitions
are also represented as baggage.

Like the pilgrims in "Gar schwer drilcJct mich

290

Sex and Dreams

that he

The thought
is

may

be taken for a murderer

to
his

justified.

This

refers

feeling-attitude

towards

His favorite reading is DosRaskolnikow (Crime and Punishment). tojevsky's

his mother.

Murder

also refers to the symbolic representation of a dagger being stuck into the victim's body ; tak-

ing life means granting cussed this theme.

life.

We

have already

dis-

Another subject's dream dealing with the same theme is the following. But here the objective is a married sister, ten years older than the subject: (91) I am at a railway station and worried because I do not

know whether

it

is

the right one.

worry was over, I thought of buying a In a pocketbook I find a gold com with a ticket. large 10 on it. First I thought I could not use this coin. Then I decide it is att right. At the same time
After
this

I begin to worry whether I should catch the train for I had lost time. Going towards the train I found
Unfortunately, the bagI to was leave behind was notf that willing cfaffi it was left standing at one end of within my reach;
all.
t

that I had entirely too things I did not need at

much baggage. Some of

the

the station,
to do.

at

some

distance.

I did not

know what

Finally I signaled to a porter and told him to take and check my baggage at the "hand-grip"
division.
'As

I shall reclaim

it

there

upon

my

return*
it

soon as 1 was through I rushed to the tram but

late,

was too

the train had just started.

Affects

291
(1)

The baggage

here

is

used in a double sense:

the genitalia and (2) the various inhibitions. His sister, ten years older, has been taken away from

him through marriage. We shall have opportunity to revert to the meaning of the number 10 in
numbers:
connection with our analysis of the symbolism of this number consists of 1, symbol of the
representing the vagina.

penis and 0,

The number

10 symbolizes sexual union, which the subject has not carried out till then, for he was a masturbator. 5 That is the reason why he looks for the coin in a
pocketbook. He thinks first of his sister's. Hence his worry whether he is at the right station, his

doubt whether he can or should use the

too moral to commit incest.
ples

coin.

He

is

Indeed, his

moral scru-

he is a theologian prevent him from carrying our ordinary sexual intercourse. He has never

touched a woman, except his sister, once, when he was twelve years of age, but there was no immissio The expression "was left standing at one penis. end of the station" refers to that. His scruples are clearly expressed in the dream (doubt) (a) through
:

his

worry whether he
his hesitation

is

through

at the right station; (b) whether he ought to spend

Ten also refers to the hands and signifies masturbation. In popular jargon the penis is actually called the "eleventh As this dream belongs to a member of the clergy, finger." ten here has an additional significance: the ten commandments. In connection with the great significance of religion in the determination of the neurotic symptoms, the figure 10, among the numbers, is always important.

292

Sex and Dreams

that coin; and, (c) through the typical expression: "I did not know what to do."

is

This dream already informs us that the subject unable to give up his masturbation habit and to
is

assume regular intercourse with women: that

foundation
of
his
conflict.

the

psychic blocked for him also through his incestuous leanings which cause him to lean to the

The path

towards

woman

is

The missed opposite direction, towards man. train has the same meaning here as in the dreams He will never reach his sispreviously analyzed.
Hand-grip refers to the sexual meaning of 6 "baggage" for genitalia. He has "too much baggage." He is burdened too heavily with sexual cravter.

ings.

He

reverts to masturbation.

He

overcomes

his scruples.

Masturbation
cest.

That

is

the reason

(hang-grip division) replaces inwhy he avoids women. The

practice of masturbation being linked with incestuous thoughts is for him more pleasurable than any

other erotic experience. It should be very edifying to turn now to a dream

in

which the affects are covered up (or distorted).

The male genitalia are called popularly das Pdckchen, dot Gemdchte, das Oepdck (the baggage) and finally, also, das Gewicht, weight or burden: Anthropophyteia, vol. II. In the same way, Kofer, Ranzen, Korb, Kiste, Sack, Rucksack, Tasche and Handtasche are vulgarisms for the female genitalia. The expression "baggage^" used in a sexual sense, is mostly a scornful term.

Nonsense

293

Sometimes things which the dreamer understands perfectly well in the dream appear mere nonsense in
the waking state.
that:
baffles

Here we have the opposite of

in

dream

which

something

apparently

the dreamer:

(92) I read of a complaint by Mr. X. against Weihrich, the high-school principal, who passed away that very day. There were three counts in the indictment and Weihrich was found guilty only on
sandals and of
the third count which accused him of walking in somethmg else. I could not under-

stand that.
Later:
I saw a photo of Gessmann and spoke
it.

with him about

The evening

before the dream Beta ate dark but-

tered rolls, called in Vienna Bosniak, or Hadschileader. loja, after the name of a Bosnian insurgent

Shortly thereafter he vomited and felt pain in the kidney region. He thought it was due to acids.
All acids cause

him to vomit.
if

He

has similar pains

followed

by diarrhea

he eats soft pears.

analysis discloses important associations to First the associations: school principal Weihrich.

The

Weihrich,

Weihe,

Weiher,

Wei

(woe).

Assothe

ciation with

(-feet)

Wei

and Gessmann,

well-known antisemite, His plaint is that the latter has robbed him of the

scorn against his physician.

enjoyment-value of his perversions.

He

feels

as

294
if

Sex and Dreams

plunged into a dizzy, cloudy state (smoke). DizHe recalls that as a small ziness leads to rocking. boy he was once rocked on the knee by a soldier.

That
is

is

the root of his foot fetichism.

Toe-suck-

ing out by Adler.

a part of this condition, as has been pointed

subject yearns to take into his mouth a The especially the great toe. dirty, sweaty foot, foot the for hand, great symbolic equation displaces
toe for the

The

thumb which

in its turn stands for penis

or nipple. This leads to perversion (fellatio) and the nurse complex. Bosniak is a Viennese colloquialism for a Bosnian

Hadschi-loja leads him to hatschen trampHis vomiting, pains and the diarrhea lead back ing. to an old phantasy, sticking, the toe into the mouth and swallowing the perspiration (butylic
soldier.

phantasies just before a big foot. falling asleep swallowing Another determination of the foot fetichism: he
acid
butter).
:

Waking

has been taught to regard the penis as something

disgusting, something to be ashamed of. He transposed all the libido to the erogenously endowed foot.

Gessmann
"guess."
I

leads

back

to

the

English

term

am

the one

who knows

nothing.

who is merely guessing, The photo (my picture)

looked to be a very poor one. It was altogether too Gessmann is dark. White, weiss again light. sweat and to his idiosynleads him to Schweiss,

Nonsense

295

crasy against juicy roast beef. In the hunter's jargon blood means sweat. Roast beef also reminds

him of perspiration,
sandals.
saliva,

avoidable by the wearing of

(Symbolic equation: blood, sweat, pus,

fluid, air,

spermatic

language, money, etc.).

in the

There are three features

English woman,
tion.
(fc) his

dream: (a) his brother, (c) foot perspira-

the first two I have already weaned him the analysis ; now I am about to take him through away from the last. Hence the scornful attitude,

From

hence the reproach: foot,

flat feet,

Weigeschrien

Further associations lead t6 Eugene (outcry). Sue's Wandering Jew, and this again to suer, Fr.,
perspiration. But he himself
orite phantasies
is

the Ahasverus.

One

of his fav-

was the story of Ahasverus, of the Flying Dutchman, or of some other wandering hero. His phantasies about foot are masochistic, revolving around the idea of expiation. What he "cannot" understand is what he learns
through psychoanalysis.
stands
it his

The moment he

under-

compulsive neurosis is over. But the infantile compulsions secure for him much pleasure. He does not want to give them up.

The dream
is

contains a number of deep affects.

It

discloses great scorn of the analyst.

But

all this
is

so covered

up that the dream apparently

dead.

void

of affect.
Finally, I

am

He

relegates

me

to the ranks

296
of the deceased.

Sex and Dreams

Walking

in sandals

means joining

Sometimes he does not understand me. eternity. Er ist ihm etwas zu geistreich. I have also become a
Geistmann). A ghost is white, ghost (Gesstmann I have too much color to suit him. But I exist pale.
for him only in a picture (photo). That opens a new path of associations his belief in the reality of
:

the devil.

am

the devil for him.

am

rendering

him potent, i.e., connecting him with woman. He wants to remain an ascete, a holy man. He is continually dwelling on situations in which he is dealt
with unfairly.
tainment.
builds

He

is

invited to
is

an evening enterImmediately he
it.

The thing

called off.

up a

serious offence out of

for irrelevant troubles.

self as suffering unjustly.

He

likes to

He is looking think of him-

tainment was called

interesting letter:

off

After the evening enterhe wrote me th following

"The cancellation of the entertainment which was due to-morrow, that change followed closely by another change of plans, has caused me considerable depression, although I find the postponement of the hunting trip, on the whole, rather pleasing, for huntIndeed, even the ing always makes me nervous. depression was not without its pleasurable feeling. The disappointment, the setback, brought me a certain measure of satisfaction. I am masochistic.

And man

the masochist
is

is

passive.
is

Woman
why

is

passive,

active.

That

the reason

the maso-

chist has the feelings of a

woman, and wants a man

Day Dreams

297

to dominate over him; he seeks an active person; hence the preference for a soldier, an active solThe chief passive pleasure, the chief gratidier. fication of the masochist is the 'pati,* the 'passion,' hence the ideas of expiation; his worst
Unlust, action,
i.e.,

coitus.

must have been the victim of some great injustice which, nevertheless, gave me pleasure, and now I am evidently always trying to reprochild I

"As a

duce the situation.

"And, in fact, have I not renounced everything worth while? My illness is an expression of comIch koitiere nicht, I live asexplete self denial. I meet a companion, I do not go to hardly ually,
the theater, I shut myself up more and more away from everybody, engrossed in my books. My feel-

ing of dread protects me against gratification. I even have moments when I wish nothing better than to die off and be wholly forgotten: the highest

masochism."

During these deep impressions he has a very remarkable day dream phantasy:
(93) There was a man who was sentenced on a The strange thing was false charge of murder. that he hardly defended himself and he heard the

must be an angel.

sentence with the calm of one who, if not guilty; He is sentenced for life. His behavior in gaol is so wonderful that even the gaol

guards look upon him as a holy man, he consoles those who are ill, heals them, he almost works wonders.

After years and years the story of the man's reaches the gaol commissioner who character holy

298

Sex and Dreams

pardons him, but without lifting the sentence. The news is brought to the man. But the saintly man has lost all contact with life, and all sense of its
pettiness.
self;

He

is

transfigured,

he

is

Christ him-

his greatest

triumph

is

that he has lost his

is

sexuality through saintliness; he

sexless

and

like

an

ray of light drawing heavenwards. The commissioner is speechless, unable to approach'

infinite

him at

all;

he continues his existence in his own

way. This phantasy discloses the roots of his asceticism. He complains that he is leading a sinful life

(Weihr-4ch). The term Weihrich

the unconscious.

is

very ingeniously chosen by

It refers to his devildevil stinks.)

and

smell-

complex.
it

(The

But, as Weihrauch,

also leads to the holiness-complex.

sioner (or director) stands for the father. ter has once punished him unjustly. This

The commisThe latis

the in-

fantile situation which he reproduces in later life:

"Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

For

theirs

is

the kingdom of heaven.'*

He longing for the kingdom of heaven. wants to reach his father. Through his asceticism
is

He

he means to earn for himself a higher place in heaven. At this point we find that Adler's conception
is

corroborated.

He

wants to be a woman,

to possess no penis. But these female trends merely serve the purpose of enabling him to triumph over

Interpretation
the father.

299

He wants
He

to join eternal

triumph over his father. a

sinner.

life and therein He, a holy man, his father

his voice against his divine stool. the before father (director) But what is the reason for his antagonism

wants to raise

towards the father?

his

It

is

the old rivalry,

latter

over

was his greatest English governess. love. After the nurse, the governess was the dearest person to him. She could not be friendly with any one else. That made him mad. His father was
rather more than

The

warm

in his attitude

towards the

English governess.

Beta has had opportunity to

observe and listen to a number of things, small and How could that big, which made his blood boil.

be?

his feelings; it roused in

His Mary kissing some one else? It hurt him bitter thoughts and

fancies of revenge.

A little

child

is

helpless against

the adults.

But with some poison he might easily on his enemies. Hence the nausea himself revenge and vomiting and the diarrhea after eating Hadschihe owned a harem. loja. The father was a Pasha,
His masochistic thoughts are compensations for the
criminal tendencies of his childhood.

Furthermore, I
complains.

(or count)

the director against whom he Chiefly on account of the third point third sex III III point III illness

am

unrequited love. Who would have suspected this array of affects back of that dream?
homosexuality.
is

His hatred

300

Sex and Dreams

is

The next dream

also rich in affective coloring

and belongs to a compulsion neurotic, Mr. Gino: (94) A steamboat arrives in our harbor; I want to dodge to the right, but cannot. I go to the left,

on a country road.

people run around scared, shouting: something terrible is happening! I feel the same way. I am in uniform and I come upon a

Many

little

boy who presses a big dagger in my hand. Terrified I shout: "away with you, dream ghost."
he promptly disappears.
little fellow's
is

And

The

name

is

Teller.

The

affect of

the dream

expressed by

the

many

people runterrible is

ning around and shouting:

"Something

know that "many people" means happening!" a secret. He has the same feeling! The horrible
thing that is about to happen, is a murder; he is given a dagger by the boy. During his early child-

We

hood he had overheard coitus between his parents (Entry of the steamer into port) he wanted to fly
;

away from

this

memory, namely to the

right, but,

instead, he drifted to the left.

He

wears his uni-

form; it reminds him of his military service when he had severe crises of illness and so that he was account of neurasthenia. finally discharged on

Wearing the uniform

naked, for nudity
all
is

dream means bemg the only uniform which makes

in

the

Clean underwear is also equal uniform. as a speckled uniform. dream in the represented During his military service period he also had the

men

Interpretation

301

compulsive thought of knifing some one. The great burden of his compulsion was the murder of his
brother or of his father. .A painful thought, therefore in the dream it is portrayed as a dream ghost. "Away with you, dream ghost !" 'means he does

not at

all

entertain the thought,

it

was only a

dream,

a dream occurrence which we have consid-

ered already in connection with some illustrations.

The
first

little fellow,

whose name was

der

Teller, he at

identifies

as

Amor,

later as representing the

penis,

das

Heinzelmannchen,

Daumling
(

and

finally as the Schneiderlein.

Teller first recalls to

his

mind the act of cutting meat on a plate

;

Teller=

plate)

plate ; also he had sewhere uniforms a of manufacturer Tiller,

also a maid-servant

who broke a

cured his uniform; also to tell (English): Tut t el, female breasts ; further, tailor (English) ; and that
leads

him to an English fairy story about some clever little tailors who bound down a giant with their tapes. He had already thought of Wilhelm
Tell, the slayer of Gessler.

Tell

is

linked also with

Johann Parricida. Since the terrible deed that he was about to commit was nothing less than murder the dream affect appears thoroughly justified. The dream also discloses the influence of a castration fear. He had been threatened with castration on
account of masturbation.

He wants

to retaliate with

bloody revenge.

He

is

man

continually harboring murderous

302
thoughts

Sex and Dreams

against his people. Always unconsciously, of course. Every electric car, every local train, every horse is a possible death messenger.

The steamer may run down a

little

boat.

Once

his

father and his brothers nearly encountered just such an accident. One may meet robbers on the country
road.
Bicycle, automobile, street, stormy weather,
all

poison, infection
ideas.

these

served his murderous

But

his wish has

turned into anxiety: he

fears he might hurt others

infect his

injure them perhaps hands and thus spread poison. Formerly he entertained thoughts of murder. He thought of attacking his mother and of knifing

her.

Out of revenge. Because she turned her love to Through yearning. Because such a girl child. murder represents symbolically the expression of He expiates for these murder violent possession.
a

instincts with his neurotic tortures.

He

finds

him-

self in the attitude of a murderer grasping a knife and he does not want to contemplate the picture.

Freud has repeatedly emphasized the identity of the dream thoughts with the various neurotic compulsions. I want to give one additional example.

patient, while at a health resort with his brother had the feeling: "I cannot stand it any longer. I
shall

jump

at him and knock him

down !" The

feeling:

anal-

ysis disclosed the vestiges of a powerful infantile

attachment to that brother.

stand
it

The

"I cannot

any longer, I shall

jump

at him, knock him

Interpretation

303
into

down wnd per annum benu tzen, " is here turned

Fear (of self) is often? turned into anger. anger. This conversion is particularly clear in the infantile

form of anxiety
7

neurosis.

Children

who

fly

easily into
fear.

a temper, are victims of an excessive

Another example.

medical student

fails

at an examination and

acquires a great hatred against his examiner, Professor Zuckerkandl. Among the various ways in

which

his wild fancies

:

lowing he
footing,
lasse.
is

is

intimate with

conceive revenge tlie man, that

is
is,

the fol-

on equal

and asks him that er ihm durchkommen

He also harbors the fancy that the professor He under obligation to 'him for some service. need only remind the man of his debt of gratitude. This patient, Zenta, has the following dream:
(95) I find that Prof. Z.,

whom
is

I consider rereally

sponsible

for

my

misfortune,

close

acquaintance of mme. I meet him and he treats me in a very friendly and obliging manner. I am certain that Z. is bound to me by certain moral obligaI try to give him to understand in an indirect way that since we are such close acquaintances
tions.

and in view of the fact that he

7

is

under obligation

tion:

the biologic root of the fourth symbolic equamay replace any other affect in the dream." Fear, anger, fury and doubt may substitute and vicariously replace one another. The agoraphobiacs lose their fear of open

Here we note

"Any

affect

places while angry.

304

Sex and Dreams

to me, his conduct ought to be

did not disclose that

listig

tricky

more pleasing. I had behaved very hintertowards me. But he showed me

}ie

further reaction whereas I spoke to him as I would to a person holding a great social position (Cabinet On account of his high officer, or something).
social position I

have avoided in

my

conversation

with him

all

references to his

examination failure.
emotional.

duty and my Durchf all The dream was strongly

At once we
social standing

recognize that this person of high is none but the father with whom

his relations are

very cordial. He is very courteous in his attitude towards his father but at the same
time regards him as the original cause of his neuThe father is obviously anal erotic rotic trouble.

and has preoccupied himself to a suspicious extent

with his son's anal functions.

In the dream he

finds that the

examiner to

whom

he ascribes his misfortune (misfortune at trial with woman, for he is impotent with woman and a masturbator,
test)
is
i.e.,

misfortune with reference to the true

An acquaintreally a close acquaintance. ance who has once bribed him with sweets and to
whom he owes all sorts of early erotic pleasures. "He treats me zuvorkommender Weise"; that is litHe has a vague notion that it is his erally true.
father's

moral duty to take care of him, for

misfortune?

is

not

the

father responsible for his

The
1

Interpretation

SOS
at

dream
least in

discloses the wish to tell his father so,

some indirect way.

behavior,

em

He expects a kulanteres The associakulanteres Benehmen.

popo, with which
is

tions are: cut,

also associated
in the sense of

the term "hmterlistig" (cunning) some one lusting (lustemd) for the posterior parts. The high social position refers to the father, while

Durchfall (failure, but literally, a "falling or passing through") links anal functions to the result of

The situation: "treating very who some one is actually being hated" breaks gently forth very plainly and it contains the roots of the neurosis the latter is centered chiefly on urolagnia
the examination.
;

and coprolagnia. Mr. Gino, a compulsion neurotic who dreads unfaithfulness, treason and dirt, and who is burdened
with a compensatory washing mania, dreams: (96) I am going to a prostitute; first I visit

Frau Strabo and her

fingers are

sister.

I see that

Tier

nose and

wrapped up in white bandages. At part-* I offer her my hand but I think to myself I caning not go to a prostitute for I have to go home first and wash my handy and there is no time for all that
to-day.
infection

The
if

fact is I am afraid of spreading some I should not first wash my hands.

This subject has had dream No. 94. His fear of contact is grounded on altruistic motives: he is not
afraid to catch the infection himself, his fear is
1

that he will carry and spread to others the diseased

306

Sex and Dreams

germs. This fear is expressed plainly in the dream. note that the fear is roused through the fact

We

that he had shaken hands with a woman,

Frau

Strabo sugStrabo, whose hand was bandaged. he is a physician strabismus gests to this subject

and he talks about

squint, tion that a
internal.

that.

He

himself once had a

In this connection I

may men-

number

of disturbances of vision are due

to self-imposed punishment for seeing what is forbidden. The patient carries out upon himself the
lex talionis.

This lex talionis

is

illustrated in the

belief that looking into the

mirror precisely at the

midnight hour brings on blindness and in the belief of pious Jews that it is not permissible to look at
the Kohanim^ or priests, while they offer the benediction. I recall an ocular trouble in a boy, eight years of age, which the attending oculists were

unable to explain and which was due to the fact that the boy had witnessed something he should not have
seen.
8

This

patient's

squinting
sister's

was

also

neurotic
his

symptom: he has "squinted" too eagerly at

mother's and his

charms. 9

His mother took

to

*One of my patients relates that his mother once called out him while she was urinating: "don't look this way or you

be blinded!" *Cf. Freud; Die psychogene Sehstorung in psychoanalytischer Auffassung, Aerztliche Standeszeitung, 1910, No. 9. Freud expresses the punishing power of the conscience as follows: "Because you wanted to misuse your sight for evil sensuality, it serves you right not to be able to see at all!"
will

Interpretation

307

care of him after he underwent a nasal operation and her tremendous self-sacrifice made an unforgettable impression on him.
also

But ten years

did

later he

had an operation on
after-care.

his penis, requiring con-

siderable

The wound

not

heal

readily and this twenty-year-old boy was bandaged The touch of her delicate daily by his mother.

hands roused very pleasurable sensations. In his Familienroman the phantasy of the mother as Dirne played a great role. Also in his masturbation phantasies. On account of the latter habit he considered himself unclean and the whole washing

mania was traceable back to

his

masturbation habit.
out the manias

As Freud has very

fittingly pointed
itself

but they pertain to the In this case the phantasies were of such a character that the mother

refer not to the habit

accompanying phantasies.

darin zur Dirne gemacht wurde. . . In the dream, before going to the prostitute he visits Frau Strabo; that is the manner in which the
.

dream expresses the thought phantasy that he is calling on Frau Strabo and that the latter is a prostitute:

Strabo he

identifies

with a prostitute.

Offer-

ing her the hand at parting is a reminder of the contact of his mother's hand with his penis and
here the fingers are the symbol of the penis. Also of the thought that, if he be impotent, he will carry on digital manipulations. Thus the prostitute be-

comes unnecessary.

Naturally his reason in the

308

Sex and Dreams

dream "he must go home to wash his hands," is a dream distortion which, when read inversely, means "this phantasy has made me so unclean that I ought to go home and wash my hands !" "No more time for all that" refers to the fact that on the night of the dream his mother was not there; she had just started for home the previous evening,
bit of
:

after a visit of several days.

fear he might spread some infection is obvious; infection through prostitute or mother; nose

The

reminds him of a destructive luetic lesion of the

But Freud part; fingers, of psoriasis palmarum. has taught us that, whenever present, these fears are
decidedly justified on the part of our patients. In the dream too, the affect stands out as the real
valid feature.
affect

Everything that centers around the

be changed, transposed, distorted. But the affect retains its justification even under trans-

may

formation.
here we discover that this subject, indeed, has particular reason to fear the danger from which he

And

would protect others.

The

fact

is

he harbors the

thought of poisoning his father and brothers, a phantasy which has played a tremendous role in
his

youth; also the notion of knocking them down.

feels

He
like

constrained to wash continually because, Lady Macbeth, he wants to remove the blood

stain off his hands.

And

reduced to

form the anxiety state means:

its elementary "I fear that my

Interpretation

309

criminal passion for mother might induce me to injure father and the other members of the family. I fear this especially as I have repeatedly wished

Just as his washing mania is a protection against the moral contamination to which

them dead!"

he

felt himself

bolizes his cleansing off his

exposed and at the same time symhands the blood of the

victims, so he carries out other remarkable compulsive acts which indicate very plainly that these

Abwehrhandlungen are compromises between withHe sticks the right index holding and yielding.
finger into the hollow of his left hand, carrying out a rotary motion and he rotates his hand in a

Moreover he has, peculiar fashion in the water. or rather has had, for he is now cured, a most
a strict ritual he had peculiar washing ceremonial, devised and this too was cleared away through the
psychoanalysis after
notations.
10 it

was reduced to

its

wish con-

minor example for a conclusion. A dream of Sigma (vid. Dreams Nos. 70, 71, 72, 73, 82, 83). (97) I am standing in an open place. I am forced

10 Poisoning has a deeper determination in the significance of poison as spermatic fluid and of poisoning as pregnancy. (Extension of the second symbolic equation.) One of my patients was afraid that his sister would become pregnant through the water in the bath tub, because he masturbated while bathof syphilis ing. Oino had the same fear. The widespread fear Poison stands also for is largely motivated in the same way. money; money for penis: vid. Anthropophyteia, vol. VI, p. 15. Thus we uncover here a new determination for the anal-erotic

avarice.

310
out or
rate I
it.

Sex and Dreams

else

am

compelled to keep my place (f). At any under some compulsion, but I do not mind

Analysis:

The dreamer has proposed marriage

to a certain girl, a step he has since often regretted. short time afterwards he wrote her a letter break-

ing up the engagement.

committing
time.

suicide.

He

She was on the point of became engaged a second

Shortly after this second engagement his severe neurosis broke out. All that is expressed in
the short dream.
"freier Platz"
is

The open space

also satire.

is

his bride;
else

but

Any

one

was wel(lit-

come to
eral

his bride.

He

took up a "free spot"

is

His In sister compelled him to give up the engagement. fact she dictated the letter in which he apprised the girl of his change of mind. "Or perhaps comliterally true.

meaning of the term). He is forced out. That

pelled to keep

now
free.

His bride Also true. place." holds on fast to him and would not let him

my

His psychic conflict formulates itself as follows: should he keep his word and marry a poor break his word to be so. girl, or become free and
It shows also a competitive struggle between

two
his

women
wish?

for his love: sister and bride.

What

is

He

is

not self-reliant.

He wants

to be led

to a decision.

That

is

the reason

ently so unconcerned.

But

the greatest hypocrisy.

why he is appar"not minding it" is It should be: "I am imhis

Interpretation

311

The uncertainty!" feigned affect of indifference is a pure wish fulfill"Forced ment. How clearly his doubt is expressed
mensely
worried
over
this
!

out" or "kept down" and with a question mark. Any one who has read the previous dream analysis pertaining to this case will see at once that this apparent indifference is a cover for affects so

tremendous that they have actually led the subject to the brink of committing suicide. This illustrates
affects.

the true character of dreams apparently free of The absence of affectivity in this case represents a wish fulfillment in the midst of tremen-

dous

affects.

Often the dreamer wonders about some occurrence in the dream.

Let us analyze a dream of

this

type:

(98) In Weihburg street I saw Mr. Springer sitcoach-box of a carriage ting on the Kutschbock, in conversation with three Hungarian infantrymen. One had a dark mustache; the two others had only
little

blond beards.

I wondered about Mr. Sprin-

ger's conduct.

It seemed vulgar

and degrading.

He This Herr Springer represents his father. own adventures. with his father his reproaches
The carriage begatten.) father was intiis the Englishwoman with whom the But who are the three infantrymen? The mate.
(Springen,
bespringen,

dreamer's associations lead to the male genitalia, The big one with the heavy the sexual trinity.

312
mustache
testicles.
is

Sex and Dreams

the penis, the other two symbolize the His father had given too much thought

to his genitalia. That is the true theme of his surprise. But another infantilistic reminiscence occurs to him. The

Hungarian soldiers with their narrow trousers reminds him that he has once played with dolls. He examined anatomically each doll and was surprised to find no genitalia. Only smooth limbs. No opening anywhere.

Next, he tore apart the

dolls* bodies.

He only found sawdust within. He came to the conclusion that

dolls

and women

had no "pipi." That surprised him very much. He saw a ballet dancer once, Abel, in a flesh-colored
tights

and he

called out:

"Abel has no

pipi."

For years afterwards he remembered and repeated

that incident.

The
"pipi."

greatest degradation to him was to have no

He

indulged in revenge fancies in which he

pictured himself as tearing off his father's genitals. Why? Because his father had threatened him with
castration to cure him of handling his private parts as a child. He was also tremendously attached to

the Englishwoman. Hence his boundless jealousy. He wanted to revenge himself by castrating his
father.

and fancies was a psychic impotence of which he was cured only through the analysis.
result of these experiences

The

Interpretation

313

Wundern (wondering)

leads here also to wound,

Wunde, the result of castration, and to trauma, a theme which we have already dealt with previously. Observe the similarity of Weihburg street and Weihrich (Dream No. 92). The affect of wonderis spurious. (Symbolic equation of affects.) It stands here for anger and means: "I am terribly

ing, too,

worried over Mr. Springer's conduct." The apparent lack of affectivity in a dream

is al-

ways an interesting problem.

is

Many

dreams of most

horrible content seem emotionally colorless.

Why

that?

of Freud's finds an easy interwhich explains satisfactorily the absence pretation

A gruesome dream

of affectivity.

"The dream about

''which confronts

own

pelvis is

the old bridge'* says Freud, with the task of sectioning my characterized by the absence of the

me

awe proper to the situation. That is a wish fulfillment in more than one sense. The sectioning represents the self analysis which I carry out with the

publication of my book on the Interpretation of "Drearns y a task so unpleasant that I have delayed

for over a year the printing of the finished manuThe wish is that I lift myself above this script. handicapping feeling, that is why I experience no

awe

in the dream.

overcome

my

In another sense, too, I wish to to avoid Grauen feeling of aversion,

(Literal sense: turning gray);

my

hair

is

turning

314<

Sex and Dreams

also reminds

gray and that

longer.

We

know

I must delay no that towards the end the thought

me that

breaks forth in the dream, that if I pursue a vacillating policy towards my aim I may have to leave
the task to the new generation." (The Interpretation of Dreams, Translated by A. Brill, Macmillan Company, New York.) The absence of affectivity in this dream of the

founder of the new science of dream interpretation It shows Freud's wish to is also a wish fulfillment.

overcome the "inhibiting emotions."

Thus even the emotionally colorless dreams corroborate the principle which I am propounding There is no dream without powerful affects. The power of
:

dreams to penetrate consciousness depends on the strength of the dream-building affects as well as on
the depth of the slumber. 11

"P. Meunier and R. Masselon, Les reves et leur interpretation (Blend et Cie., Paris, 1910) arrive at the same conclusion: "La logique des reves est entierement affective"

INDEX OF SUBJECTS
Affect, 262, 281, 283 passim, 295, 308, 311, 313, 314 Aggression, 109, 165, 179 Anal eroticism, 217, 220, 257, 304, 309

Coitus interruptus, 101 Colloquialism, 35

Complex, 132, 220 Compromise, 201 Compulsion, 222, 225, 284, 301,
302
Concepts, 115 Condensation, 123, 135, 143 Conflict, 169 passim, 239, 272, 292 Conscience, 18, 24, 163, 169, 243 Consciousness, 18 Consolation, 44

Anger, 303 Antagonism, 299 Anthropophyteia, 48,

306
Antithesis, 115

88, 148, 181, 182, 184, 191, 199, 292,

Anxiety, 36, 89, 100, 103, 154, 202, 221, 222 Apoplexy (fear of), 263 Art, 26 Asceticism, 24, 258, 298
Associations, 55, 96, 101, 103, 120, 163, 188, 205, 224, 231, 240, 243, 257, 276, 293, 294, 296, 301

dream, 75 Contrary meaning, passim Craving, 13, 21

112,

113

Criminality, 179, 184, 290, 302 Culture, 18, 21

Authority, 23
Belief (in dreams), 17 Bible, 29, 30, 93 Bipolarity, 96, 115, 282 Birth, 97, 98 passim, 107, 117, 208 phantasy, 87, 219
Bisexuality, 66,
79, 103, 149, 166, 179, 184, 195, 196 passim, 198, 199, 204, 233

Death, 24, 80, 97, 98 passim,

102, 103, 107, 110, 135, 170, 179, 219, 251, 296

Cannibalistic trend, 277 Castration, 143, 196, 220, 312 Censorship, 170 Character traits, 201 Circumcision, 79 Coercion, 89

phantasy, 100 wish, 254 Defence, 109, 198 Defloration, 83 Demons, 15 Devil symbolism, 201 Disappointment, 117 Displacement, 139, 140, 144, 150, 152 passim, 155, 161, 166, 264, 272
Distortion, 82, 93, 97, 107, 109,
150, 161, 170, 175, 308

Divinity, 200

315

316

Index of Subjects
Homosexuality, 109, 155, 166, 170, 208, 219, 221, 261, 266 Hysteria, 156
Ideal, 25, 117 Identification, 175, 191

Dizziness, 214, 260, 294 Don Juan, 117, 133, 210 Doubt, 115, 188, 245, 272 passim, 291

compulsive, 272 Dramatization, 21, 34 Dream thoughts, 126, 165 work, 57 Dress symbolism, 198 passim

Impatience, 33 Impotence, 34, 258, 259, 312 Incest phantasies, 151, 191,
193, 194, 208, 216, 230, 232, 245, 261, 263, 291, 292 Inciters, dream, 164, 271 Indecision, 241

Emasculation, 196 Emotions, inhibiting, 314 Envy, 260 Erectio, 79 Eroticism, 89 Excitation, sexual, 40 Expatiation, 296, 302 Even and uneven, 223

Indulgence, 23 Infantile root,

74, 125, 131, 144, 170, 215, 217, 271, 302,

312
Inferiority, 135, 201 Inhibition, 18, 21, 103 Instinct, 17, 109 Interpretation, 31 Inversion, 178

Fairy story, 43
Faust, 18, 19, 21 Fear, 89, 100, 110, 151, 162, 167, 177, 222, 306, 308 Fellatio, 143, 145, 151, 217 Fetichism, 220, 294 Flesh symbolism, 32 Fixation, emotional, 217, 219, 231 Flagellation, 223 Function (of dream), 19 Fusion, 65, 161, 164, 170, 220, 225 of time, 87 Future, 24

Itching,

220

Jealousy, 103, 274, 319 Jesus, 17 Job, 17 Joseph's dreams, 30

Language, 19 Latent dream thought,

195

56, 93,

Law

Grandeur, 40
Gratification, sexual, 209 Guilt, feeling of, 177

Habitus, 201 Hallucination, 18 Hatred, 282, 299

of opposites, 109 Left-handedness, 214, 231, 293 passim Lesbian trend, 202, 204 Lex talionis, 306 Libido, 200 Lingam, 112 Linguistics, 110 Love, 207, 209

Male

"protest," 195, 197, 207,

of father, 215, 283 Hermaphroditism, psychic, 81,

136, 143, 151, 156, 187, 195, 198, 200, 201, 206, 209, 262

Manifest dream content, 56, 93 Masturbation, 103, 151, 156, 191, 192, 215, 265, 292, 307

Index of Subjects
Maternal body phantasies,
103
83,

317

Revenge, 146, 220, 302 Right-sidedness, 222 passim

Sadism, 277 Scorn, 166, 239
Self-control, 23
/

Meaning (of dreams),

100, 108, 125

56, 93,

Misophilia, 74 Mistrust, 165, 245 Morality, 180

/
/

Murder phantasy, 290

Myth, 46 passim
Narcissism, 66 Necrophilia, 184 Negation, 97, 253 Neuralgia, 180
trigeminal, 204 Neurasthenia, 238 Neurosis, 23, 170

reproach, 102

Selfishness of dreams, 175

Shame, 145
Soul, 147 Splitting of personality, 169 Squint, neurotic, 306 Stereotypic dreams, 223 Substitution, 282 Suicide (thoughts of), 171,

174
Surprise, 311

Nonsense (in dreams), passim Nose boring, 140 Nurse complex, 294

293

Symbol, 28, 45 bisexuality of sexual, 197 Symbolism, 19, 26 passim, 34, 36, 39, 45, 93, 107, 167, 225
Tension, sexual, 41 Test dream, 222

Opposites (law of), 109 Overdetermination, 74, 97, 257

Parallel, symbolic, 139 Parsifal, 17 Periodicity, 95

Time, 23
Transference,
155, 189
47,

146,

150, 139,

of), Personality (splitting 175, 176 passim, 180 passim 296 Perversion, 89, Phantasies, homosexual, 258 Phantasy dream, 67 Pleasure, 18 Poetry, 58 Pollution dreams, 224 Potence, 40 Psychoanalysis, 201

Transposition, 74, 116, 145, 149, 194 from below, 109 Trend, criminal, 49 Twilight state, 49

Unconscious, 48, 49 58 thought, 125 Unpleasure, 18

Vertigo, neurotic, 214 Virginity, 183

Reality of dream, 16 Religion, 46, 203 Reminiscence, early, 245 Repression, 17, 183 Resistance, 56, 202, 267 Responsibility, 90

Vomiting, symptomatic, 294

Waking, 24 Warning, 24 Washing ceremonial, neurotic,

309

318
Water dreams, 117
Will to sleep, 20

Index of Names
24, 32, 75, 81, 85, 89, 133, 202, 209, 228, 287, 311

Watchful persons, 163

Wit, 49
19,

Wish

fulfillment,

21,

23,

Wonder, 311

INDEX OF NAMES
Abel, 113

Abraham,

47, 216 Adler, 81, 109, 156, 166, 195,

201, 204, 206, 214, 294, 298 Aigremont, 67, 214 Artemidoros (of Daldos), 30,
31, 93, 152

Hebbel, 20, 26, 48, 55, 183, 207, 270 Heyse, P., 192 Hirschfeld, M., 198 Hitschmann, 50

Inmann, Th., 87
Jones, E., 38

Baeder, F., 112

Baumbach, 61
Bechstein, 44 Bethe, 147 Binet-Sangle", 36 Bleuler, 281
Brill, A., 57, 222, 283,

Kleinpaul, R., 27, 37, 108, 240 Krauss, F. S., 30, 48 Kiirnburger, 14

314

Buadem, 33
Burger, 213

Lessing, 129 Lichtenberg, 174, 186

Marcus Aurelius, 72
Cardanus, 33 Celsius, 252
Eulenspiegel, 33 Euripides, 254

Masselon, R., 314

Maupassant, 250
Meissner, 134 Meunier, P., 314 Miillendorf, 33

Feuchtersleben, 26, 160, 280 France, A., 17

Nassr-ed-din, 33 Nietzsche, 15, 138, 183

Freud,

S., 19, 26, 35, 36, 40, 43, 49, 50, 57, 74, 97, 107, 113, 115, 123, 152, 161, 175, 196, 202, 222, 239, 271, 272,

Rank,

O.,

48

Riklin, F., 27, 43, 44, 45

283, 302, 306, 308, 313 Fliess, 196, 214, 221

Ritterhaus, 45 Ruckert, 263

Ganghofer, 95 Goethe, 162, 212

Grillparzer, 25

Grimm, 45
Gross, O., 50

Sadger, 196 Schemer, K. A., 40, 100 Schiller, 263 Schnitzler, A., 251 Schubert, 37, 98, 110 Shakespeare, 183

Index of Symbols
Stekel, 239, 284

319

Van

Teslaar, 25, 30, 58, 239

Sudermann, 125, 128 Swedenborg, 111 Swoboda, 95, 196, 236, 252

Wagner, 106
Weininger, O., 196

INDEX OF SYMBOLS
Acorn, 112 Actress, 66
Air, 132

Apron, 193
Assault, 108

Burgomaster, 84 Burials (many), 264 Bushes, 266 Buttons, 256

Assembly House, 84 Attack, 254 Automatic Eye, 183 Automatic phone, 65

Baggage, 259, 289, 291
Bass, 64
Bicycle, 217

Big Dog, 190 Bird, 187 Baron Rosenfeld, 146 Bismarck, 120 Bite (on Thigh), 205
Birthday, 262

Black Shoe, 80
Blinding Light, 84 Blood, 148, 266, 295 Blouse, 198 Blue Grass, 79 Boat, 204
Boil, 141 Books, 120, 243 Box, 165, 170

Candy, 239 Carriage ties, 88 Carrying, 265 Cat, 187 Cemetery, 203 Certificate, 155 Chamber Pot, 144 Changes (in earth surface), 97 Chest, 165 Chip, 196 Christ, 36 Cigar, 208 Cigarette, 197 Clarinet, 40 Climbing, 156 Closet, 285 Closed Door, 178 Closing Shop, 261 Club, 256 Coffin, 263 Comb, 202
Confectioner, 129 Cover, 256, 165, 256 Court Citation, 246 Cousin, 215 Cross, 180

Breaking

in,

162

Breast, 253

Breast pin, 271 Broad Path, 229 Broken Handle, 79 Brother, 165, 264, 295

Crowd,

84, 261, 264,

300

Crown of Thorns, 180

Dagger, 300

Brown, 199 Brush, 41 Buelow (Diplomat), 227 Bumpkin, 183

Dark Man, 134

Death, 80

320
Departure, 257 Dirty Linen, 73 Dog, 76 Don Juan, 38 Dove, 275 Draft, 165 Draft Horse, 88 Drawer, 165, 285 Dying, 252, 266
Eagle, 66 Earth, 97 Eating, 65 Elevation, 224 Embrace, 154 Emperor, 84

Index of Symbols
Frog, 200 Fur, 140
Funeral, 261

Funeral Procession, 84

Gate Opening, 84
Ghosts, 261, 296, 300 Globe, 78 Gloves, 285 Gold, 107 Gold Chain, 84

Golden Garments, 84
Grave, 263 Girl, 218

Emperor's Colors, 80 Ends, 42

English

Ground Floor, 256 Growth, 142 Guardians, Three, 84

Hair Dressing, 285 Hall, 208

Woman,

295

Even and Uneven, 223

Evening Meal, 65 Evening Time, 84
Evil Eye, 112

Hand, 112

Examination Test, 305 Excrement, 107 Eye, 112, 182

Falling (down or backwards), 260 Falling (into Abyss), 80 Fig Leaf, 42 Fig Tree, 112 Finger, 150, 182, 183 Fire, 169, 175, 220 First (to get in), 162 Fish, 200 Fish Bladder, 183 Flame, 226 Floors, 256 Fluids (bodily), 148 Food, 220

Hand Baggage, 292 Hand Grips, 256

Heart, 253

High Official, 304 High Tower, 146

Hoffburg, 120
Hofftheater, 156 Hole, 38 Holy Mother, 204
Indifference, 310 Incident, 120 Inspection, 308

Intruder, 178

38 Iron Man, 84 Italian Countess, 228 Italy, 220

Iris,

Foot Perspiration, 295 Forced out (?), 310 Forty Degrees, 228
Friend, 80 Friend, Father's, 195

Jeweller, 193 Jewels, 285

Jewish Looking, 288

Kneeling, 120

Index of Symbols
language, 209 Laundry Bag, 73 Lanterns (Burning), 226
Leaving, 84 Left, 80 Left and Right, 223 Left Side, 226 Left Foot, 210 Life Thread, 88 Little Horses, 208 Little Things, 285 Lodge, 147 Look, peculiar, 215

321

Palm, 112
Partition, 170 Peak, 41

Pearls, 240

Pellmann, 132, 135 People's Anthem, 120 Phoenix Bird, 112 Physician, 82 Piano, 218 Piano Playing, 113 Pillow Cases, 73 Pipe, 40
Pi-pi, 312 Playing, 113 Pocket, 65

Man, 218

Man

(uncertain size), 129

Meat, 150 Menstruation, 73 Miss "King," 215 Missing train, 291

Pocketbook, 291 Poet, 82 Poisoning, 239, 309

Policeman, 162, 169, 170 Preparations, 285 Priests, 261 Prostitute, 195 Pustules, 203

Money, 64, 229 Monk, 38 Monkey, 35, 278 Moon, 78

Mother, 185, 286 Mouse, 199 Municipal Theatre, 84 Murder, 252

Quadrangle, 96 Quiet Figure, 84

Rat, 199 Receiver (phone), 66 Reception, 84 Recital, 66 Red, 240 Reddish, 275 Red Order Insignia, 84

Museum, 182
Nails, 180

Naked, 264 Nakedness, 205 Narcosis, 82 Night Gown vs. Blouse, 197 Nose (eaten away), 263

Numbers, Nun, 38
Office

243, 291

Room,

141

Red (swollen), Hands, 145 Revolver, 156 Right, Right and Left, 210 Right Side, 217 Ring, 78, 79
to Temple, 228 Roast Beef, 295 Rolling down, 224

Old Acquaintance, 305

Road

Open Space, 310

Operation (surgical), 82 Outcry, 206
Pain, 206 Palais, 186

Room, 144 Rope Bridle, 88

Rose, 240 Row, 241

322

Index of Symbols
Ten, 291 Tenor, 64
Thirty-Five, 192 Thread, 78 Three, 298 Throngs of People, 84

Ruin, 224 Running Matter, 141

Salome, 183 Searching, 285 Seed, 224

Serpentine Paths, 223 Servant, 186, 170 Setting up, 186 Shaking, 218 Shellfish, 189 Shore, 218 Silent Man, 154 Sinking down, 84
Snail, 199 Snake, 183, 199, 223

Through (done), 286

Toe, 200
Toilette, 285

Tower, 41
Tree, 97, 253 Triangle, 80 Trotting, 218 Trunk, 165

Ugly Woman, 108

Umbrella, 79 Uncontrollable Horses, 220 Underbrush, 41 Understanding, 209 Uniform, 300 Urine, 193
Vine, 112 Vomiting, 148

Snaky Path, 22T

Sofa, 190

Son (the

Little

One), 146

Son-in-Law, 76 Southern, 219 Spain, 220 Speaking, 148 Spear, 80 Spindle. 38 Spiral, 225 Spoon, 150
Squeezing, 129 Stairway Climbing, 113 Stamp, 38 Standing up, 228 Stars (Little), 240 Strange Child, 150 Strange Man, 190 Strangulation, 150 Struggle, 179 Stumble, 266 Sun, 220 Surprise, 262 Swelling, 142
Table, 239 Tailor, 301 Tears, 44 Technical School, 113 Telephoning, 64 Temple, 229

Wall, 170, 171

Washing Hands, 308 Watchman, 134, 170

(at Gate), 84 Figures, 184 Weeping, 148 "What are you doing?" 163 Wheel, 79

Watchman

Wax

'

White, 240

White Apple, 155 Wild Animals, 220 Winter Coat, 145 Word, 112
Writing Desk, 285

Xmas

Tree, 208

Yellow Shoe, 80 Yellowish-Brown, 275 Yolk (Egg), 78 Young Boy, 204

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