REPRESENTATION IN DREAMS BY SYMBOLS: SOME FURTHER
TYPICAL DREAMS

The analysis of the last biographical dream shows that I recognised the symbolism in
dreams from the very outset. But it was only little by little that I arrived at a full
appreciation of its extent and significance, as the result of increasing experience, and
under the influence of the works of W. Stekel, concerning which I may here fittingly say
something.
This author, who has perhaps injured psychoanalysis as much as he has benefited it,
produced a large number of novel symbolic translations, to which no credence was given
at first, but most of which were later confirmed and had to be accepted. Stekel's services
are in no way belittled by the remark that the sceptical reserve with which these symbols
were received was not unjustified. For the examples upon which he based his
interpretations were often unconvincing, and, moreover, he employed a method which
must be rejected as scientifically unreliable. Stekel found his symbolic meanings by way
of intuition, by virtue of his individual faculty of immediately understanding the symbols.
But such an art cannot be generally assumed; its efficiency is immune from criticism, and
its results have therefore no claim to credibility. It is as though one were to base one's
diagnosis of infectious diseases on the olfactory impressions received beside the sick-bed,
although of course there have been clinicians to whom the sense of smell -- atrophied in
most people -- has been of greater service than to others, and who really have been able
to diagnose a case of abdominal typhus by their sense of smell.
The progressive experience of psychoanalysis has enabled us to discover patients who
have displayed in a surprising degree this immediate understanding of dream-symbolism.
Many of these patients suffered from dementia praecox, so that for a time there was an
inclination to suspect that all dreamers with such an understanding of symbols were
suffering from that disorder. But this did not prove to be the case; it is simply a question
of a personal gift or idiosyncrasy without perceptible pathological significance.
When one has familiarised oneself with the extensive employment of symbolism for the
representation of sexual material in dreams, one naturally asks oneself whether many of
these symbols have not a permanently established meaning, like the signs in shorthand;
and one even thinks of attempting to compile a new dream-book on the lines of the cipher
method. In this connection it should be noted that symbolism does not appertain
especially to dreams, but rather to the unconscious imagination, and particularly to that of
the people, and it is to be found in a more developed condition in folklore, myths,
legends, idiomatic phrases, proverbs, and the current witticisms of a people than in
dreams. We should have, therefore, to go far beyond the province of dream-interpretation
in order fully to investigate the meaning of symbolism, and to discuss the numerous
problems -- for the most part still unsolved -- which are associated with the concept of the
symbol.1 We shall here confine ourselves to say that representation by a symbol comes
under the heading of the indirect representations, but that we are warned by all sorts of
signs against indiscriminately classing symbolic representation with the other modes of
indirect representation before we have clearly conceived its distinguishing characteristics.
In a number of cases the common quality shared by the symbol and the thing which it
represents is obvious, in others it is concealed; in these latter cases the choice of the
symbol appears to be enigmatic. And these are the very cases that must be able to
elucidate the ultimate meaning of the symbolic relation; they point to the fact that it is of
a genetic nature. What is today symbolically connected was probably united, in primitive
times, by conceptual and linguistic identity.2 The symbolic relationship seems to be a
residue and reminder of a former identity. It may also be noted that in many cases the
symbolic identity extends beyond the linguistic identity, as had already been asserted by
Schubert (1814).3
Dreams employ this symbolism to give a disguised representation to their latent thoughts.
Among the symbols thus employed there are, of course, many which constantly, or all but
constantly, mean the same thing. But we must bear in mind the curious plasticity of
psychic material. Often enough a symbol in the dream-content may have to be interpreted
not symbolically but in accordance with its proper meaning; at other times the dreamer,
having to deal with special memory-material, may take the law into his own hands and
employ anything whatever as a sexual symbol, though it is not generally so employed.
Wherever he has the choice of several symbols for the representation of a dream-content,
he will decide in favour of that symbol which is in addition objectively related to his
other thought-material; that is to say, he will employ an individual motivation besides the
typically valid one.
Although since Scherner's time the more recent investigations of dream-problems have
definitely established the existence of dream-symbolism -- even Havelock Ellis
acknowledges that our dreams are indubitably full of symbols -- it must yet be admitted
that the existence of symbols in dreams has not only facilitated dream-interpretation, but
has also made it more difficult. The technique of interpretation in accordance with the
dreamer's free associations more often than otherwise leaves us in the lurch as far as the
symbolic elements of the dream-content are concerned. A return to the arbitrariness of
dream-interpretation as it was practised in antiquity, and is seemingly revived by Stekel's
wild interpretations, is contrary to scientific method. Consequently, those elements in the
dream-content which are to be symbolically regarded compel us to employ a combined
technique, which on the one hand is based on the dreamer's associations, while on the
other hand the missing portions have to be supplied by the interpreter's understanding of
the symbols. Critical circumspection in the solution of the symbols must coincide with
careful study of the symbols in especially transparent examples of dreams in order to
silence the reproach of arbitrariness in dream-interpretation. The uncertainties which still
adhere to our function as dream-interpreters are due partly to our imperfect knowledge
(which, however, can be progressively increased) and partly to certain peculiarities of the
dream-symbols themselves. These often possess many and varied meanings, so that, as in
Chinese script, only the context can furnish the correct meaning. This multiple
significance of the symbol is allied to the dream's faculty of admitting overinterpretations,
of representing, in the same content, various wish-impulses and thoughtformations,
often of a widely divergent character.
After these limitations and reservations I will proceed. The Emperor and the Empress
(King and Queen)4 in most cases really represent the dreamer's parents; the dreamer
himself or herself is the prince or princess. But the high authority conceded to the
Emperor is also conceded to great men, so that in some dreams, for example, Goethe
appears as a father-symbol (Hitschmann). -- All elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks,
umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erection), all sharp
and elongated weapons, knives, daggers, and pikes, represent the male member. A
frequent, but not very intelligible symbol for the same is a nail-file (a reference to
rubbing and scraping?). -- Small boxes, chests, cupboards, and ovens correspond to the
female organ; also cavities, ships, and all kinds of vessels. -- A room in a dream generally
represents a woman; the description of its various entrances and exits is scarcely
calculated to make us doubt this interpretation.5 The interest as to whether the room is
`open' or `locked' will be readily understood in this connection. (Cf. Dora's dream in
Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria.) There is no need to be explicit as to the sort of key
that will unlock the room; the symbolism of `lock and key' has been gracefully if broadly
employed by Uhland in his song of the Graf Eberstein. -- The dream of walking through
a suite of rooms signifies a brothel or a harem. But, as H. Sachs has shown by an
admirable example, it is also employed to represent marriage (contrast). An interesting
relation to the sexual investigations of childhood emerges when the dreamer dreams of
two rooms which were previously one, or finds that a familiar room in a house of which
he dreams has been divided into two, or the reverse. In childhood the female genitals and
anus (the `behind'6) are conceived of as a single opening according to the infantile cloaca
theory, and only later is it discovered that this region of the body contains two separate
cavities and openings. Steep inclines, ladders, and stairs, and going up or down them, are
symbolic representations of the sexual act.7 Smooth walls over which one climbs, facades
of houses, across which one lets oneself down -- often with a sense of great anxiety --
correspond to erect human bodies, and probably repeat in our dreams childish memories
of climbing up parents or nurses. `Smooth' walls are men; in anxiety dreams one often
holds firmly to `projections' on houses. Tables, whether bare or covered, and boards, are
women, perhaps by virtue of contrast, since they have no protruding contours. `Wood',
generally speaking, seems, in accordance with its linguistic relations, to represent
feminine matter (Materie). The name of the island Madeira means `wood' in Portuguese.
Since `bed and board' (mensa et thorus) constitute marriage, in dreams the latter is often
substituted for the former, and as far as practicable the sexual representation-complex is
transposed to the eating-complex. -- Of articles of dress, a woman's hat may very often be
interpreted with certainty as the male genitals. In the dreams of men one often finds the
necktie as a symbol for the penis; this is not only because neckties hang down in front of
the body, and are characteristic of men, but also because one can select them at pleasure,
a freedom which nature prohibits as regards the original of the symbol. Persons who
make use of this symbol in dreams are very extravagant in the matter of ties, and possess
whole collections of them.8 All complicated machines and appliances are very probably
the genitals -- as a rule the male genitals -- in the description of which the symbolism of
dreams is as indefatigable as human wit. It is quite unmistakable that all weapons and
tools are used as symbols for the male organ: e.g. ploughshare, hammer, gun, revolver,
dagger, sword, etc. Again, many of the landscapes seen in dreams, especially those that
contain bridges or wooded mountains, may be readily recognised as descriptions of the
genitals. Marcinowski collected a series of examples in which the dreamer explained his
dream by means of drawings, in order to represent the landscapes and places appearing in
it. These drawings clearly showed the distinction between the manifest and the latent
meaning of the dream. Whereas, naively regarded, they seemed to represent plans, maps,
and so forth, closer investigation showed that they were representations of the human
body, of the genitals, etc., and only after conceiving them thus could the dream be
understood.9 Finally, where one finds incomprehensible neologisms one may suspect
combinations of components having a sexual significance. -- Children, too, often signify
the genitals, since men and women are in the habit of fondly referring to their genital
organs as `little man', `little woman', `little thing'. The `little brother' was correctly
recognised by Stekel as the penis. To play with or to beat a little child is often the dream's
representation of masturbation. The dream-work represents castration by baldness, haircutting,
the loss of teeth, and beheading. As an insurance against castration, the dream
uses one of the common symbols of a penis in double or multiple form; and the
appearance in a dream of a lizard -- an animal whose tail, if pulled off, is regenerated by a
new growth -- has the same meaning. Most of those animals which are utilised as genital
symbols in mythology and folklore play this part also in dreams: the fish, the snail, the
cat, the mouse (on account of the hairiness of the genitals), but above all the snake, which
is the most important symbol of the male member. Small animals and vermin are
substitutes for little children, e.g. undesired sisters or brothers. To be infected with
vermin is often the equivalent for pregnancy. -- As a very recent symbol of the male
organ I may mention the airship, whose employment is justified by its relation to flying,
and also, occasionally, by its form. -- Stekel has given a number of other symbols, not yet
sufficiently verified, which he has illustrated by examples. The works of this author, and
especially his book Die Sprache des Traumes, contain the richest collection of
interpretations of symbols, some of which were ingeniously guessed and were proved to
be correct upon investigation, as, for example, in the section on the symbolism of death.
The author's lack of critical reflection, and his tendency to generalise at all costs, make
his interpretations doubtful or inapplicable, so that in making use of his works caution is
urgently advised. I shall therefore restrict myself to mentioning a few examples.
Right and left, according to Stekel, are to be understood in dreams in an ethical sense.
`The right-hand path always signifies the way to righteousness, the left-hand path the
path to crime. Thus the left may signify homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the
right signifies marriage, relations with a prostitute, etc. The meaning is always
determined by the individual moral standpoint of the dreamer' (loc. cit., p. 466). Relatives
in dreams generally stand for the genitals (pp. 373 ff.). Here I can confirm this meaning
only for the son, the daughter, and the younger sister -- that is, wherever `little thing'
could be employed. On the other hand, verified examples allow us to recognise sisters as
symbols of the breasts, and brothers as symbols of the larger hemispheres. To be unable
to overtake a carriage is interpreted by Stekel as regret at being unable to catch up with a
difference in age (p. 479). The luggage of a traveller is the burden of sin by which one is
oppressed (ibid.). But a traveller's luggage often proves to be an unmistakable symbol of
one's own genitals. To numbers, which frequently occur in dreams, Stekel has assigned a
fixed symbolic meaning, but these interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor of
universal validity, although in individual cases they can usually be recognised as
plausible. We have, at all events, abundant confirmation that the figure three is a symbol
of the male genitals. One of Stekel's generalisations refers to the double meaning of the
genital symbols. `Where is there a symbol,' he asks, `which (if in any way permitted by
the imagination) may not be used simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine
sense?' To be sure, the clause in parenthesis retracts much of the absolute character of this
assertion, for this double meaning is not always permitted by the imagination. Still, I
think it is not superfluous to state that in my experience this general statement of Stekel's
requires elaboration. Besides those symbols which are just as frequently employed for the
male as for the female genitals, there are others which preponderantly, or almost
exclusively, designate one of the sexes, and there are yet others which, so far as we know,
have only the male or only the female signification. To use long, stiff objects and
weapons as symbols of the female genitals, or hollow objects (chests, boxes, etc.) as
symbols of the male genitals, is certainly not permitted by the imagination.
It is true that the tendency of dreams, and of the unconscious fantasy, to employ the
sexual symbols bisexually, reveals an archaic trait, for in childhood the difference in the
genitals is unknown, and the same genitals are attributed to both sexes. One may also be
misled as regards the significance of a bisexual symbol if one forgets the fact that in some
dreams a general reversal of sexes takes place, so that the male organ is represented by
the female, and vice versa. Such dreams express, for example, the wish of a woman to be
a man.
The genitals may even be represented in dreams by other parts of the body: the male
member by the hand or the foot, the female genital orifice by the mouth, the ear, or even
the eye. The secretions of the human body -- mucus, tears, urine, semen, etc. -- may be
used in dreams interchangeably. This statement of Stekel's, correct in the main, has
suffered a justifiable critical restriction as the result of certain comments of R. Reitler's
(Internat. Zeitschr. für Psych., i, 1913). The gist of the matter is the replacement of an
important secretion, such as the semen, by an indifferent one.
These very incomplete indications may suffice to stimulate others to make a more
painstaking collection.10 I have attempted a much more detailed account of dreamsymbolism
in my Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (trans. by Joan Riviere; Allen
and Unwin, London).
I shall now append a few instances of the use of such symbols, which will show how
impossible it is to arrive at the interpretation of a dream if one excludes dreamsymbolism,
but also how in many cases it is imperatively forced upon one. At the same
time, I must expressly warn the investigator against overestimating the importance of
symbols in the interpretation of dreams, restricting the work of dream-translation to the
translation of symbols, and neglecting the technique of utilising the associations of the
dreamer. The two techniques of dream-interpretation must supplement one another;
practically, however, as well as theoretically, precedence is retained by the latter process,
which assigns the final significance to the utterances of the dreamer, while the symboltranslations
which we undertake play an auxiliary part.
1. The hat as the symbol of a man (of the male genitals):11 (A fragment from the dream of
a young woman who suffered from agoraphobia as the result of her fear of temptation.)
`I am walking in the street in summer; I am wearing a straw hat of peculiar shape, the
middle piece of which is bent upwards, while the side pieces hang downwards (here the
description hesitates), and in such a fashion that one hangs lower than the other. I am
cheerful and in a confident mood, and as I pass a number of young officers I think to
myself: You can't do anything to me.'
As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her: `The hat is really a male
genital organ, with its raised middle piece and the two downward-hanging side pieces.' It
is perhaps peculiar that her hat should be supposed to be a man, but after all one says:
Unter die Haube kommen (to get under the cap) when we mean: to get married. I
intentionally refrained from interpreting the details concerning the unequal dependence of
the two side pieces, although the determination of just such details must point the way to
the interpretation. I went on to say that if, therefore, she had a husband with such
splendid genitals she would not have to fear the officers; that is, she would have nothing
to wish from them, for it was essentially her temptation-fantasies which prevented her
from going about unprotected and unaccompanied. This last explanation of her anxiety I
had already been able to give her repeatedly on the basis of other material.
It is quite remarkable how the dreamer behaved after this interpretation. She withdrew
her description of the hat, and would not admit that she had said that the two side pieces
were hanging down. I was, however, too sure of what I had heard to allow myself to be
misled, and so I insisted that she did say it. She was quiet for a while, and then found the
courage to ask why it was that one of her husband's testicles was lower than the other,
and whether it was the same with all men. With this the peculiar detail of the hat was
explained, and the whole interpretation was accepted by her.
The hat symbol was familiar to me long before the patient related this dream. From other
but less transparent cases I believed that I might assume the hat could also stand for the
female genitals.12
2. The `little one' as the genital organ. Being run over as a symbol of sexual intercourse.
(Another dream of the same agoraphobic patient.)
`Her mother sends away her little daughter so that she has to go alone. She then drives
with her mother to the railway station, and sees her little one walking right along the
track, so that she is bound to be run over. She hears the bones crack. (At this she
experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the
carriage window, to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. Then she reproaches
her mother for allowing the little one to go out alone.'
Analysis. -- It is not an easy matter to give here a complete interpretation of the dream. It
forms part of a cycle of dreams, and can be fully understood only in connection with the
rest. For it is not easy to obtain the material necessary to demonstrate the symbolism in a
sufficiently isolated condition. The patient at first finds that the railway journey is to be
interpreted historically as an allusion to a departure from a sanatorium for nervous
diseases, with whose director she was of course in love. Her mother fetched her away,
and before her departure the physician came to the railway station and gave her a bunch
of flowers; she felt uncomfortable because her mother witnessed this attention. Here the
mother, therefore, appears as the disturber of her tender feelings, a role actually played by
this strict woman during her daughter's girlhood. -- The next association referred to the
sentence: `She then looks to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind.' In the dreamfacade
one would naturally be compelled to think of the pieces of the little daughter who
had been run over and crushed. The association, however, turns in quite a different
direction. She recalls that she once saw her father in the bathroom, naked, from behind;
she then begins to talk about sex differences, and remarks that in the man the genitals can
be seen from behind, but in the woman they cannot. In this connection she now herself
offers the interpretation that `the little one' is the genital organ, and her little one (she has
a four-year-old daughter) her own organ. She reproaches her mother for wanting her to
live as though she had no genitals, and recognises this reproach in the introductory
sentence of the dream: the mother sends her little one away, so that she has to go alone.
In her fantasy, going alone through the streets means having no man, no sexual relations
(coire = to go together), and this she does not like. According to all her statements, she
really suffered as a girl through her mother's jealousy, because her father showed a
preference for her.
The deeper interpretation of this dream depends upon another dream of the same night, in
which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother. She was a `tomboy', and was
always being told that she should have been born a boy. This identification with the
brother shows with especial clearness that `the little one' signifies the genital organ. The
mother threatened him (her) with castration, which could only be understood as a
punishment for playing with the genital parts, and the identification, therefore, shows that
she herself had masturbated as a child, though she had retained only a memory of her
brother's having done so. An early knowledge of the male genitals, which she lost later,
must, according to the assertions of this second dream, have been acquired at this time.
Moreover, the second dream points to the infantile sexual theory that girls originate from
boys as a result of castration. After I had told her of this childish belief, she at once
confirmed it by an anecdote in which the boy asks the girl: `Was it cut off?' to which the
girl replies: `No, it's always been like that.' Consequently the sending away of `the little
one', of the genital organ, in the first dream refers also to the threatened castration.
Finally, she blames her mother for not having borne her as a boy.
That `being run over' symbolises sexual intercourse would not be evident from this dream
if we had not learned it from many other sources.
3. Representation of the genitals by buildings, stairs, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
`He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is certainly the Prater, for one can
see the Rotunda, in front of which there is a small vestibule to which there is attached a
captive balloon; the balloon, however, seems rather limp. His father asks him what this is
all for; he is surprised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come into a courtyard in
which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to pull off a big piece of this, but first
looks round to see if anyone is watching. He tells his father that all he needs to do is to
speak to the overseer, and then he can take as much as he wants to without any more ado.
From this courtyard a flight of stairs leads down into a shaft, the walls of which are
softly upholstered, rather like a leather armchair. At the end of this shaft there is a long
platform, and then a new shaft begins . . . '
Analysis. -- This dreamer belonged to a type of patient which is not at all promising from
a therapeutic point of view; up to a certain point in the analysis such patients offer no
resistance whatever, but from that point onwards they prove to be almost inaccessible.
This dream he analysed almost independently. `The Rotunda,' he said, `is my genitals, the
captive balloon in front is my penis, about whose flaccidity I have been worried.' We
must, however, interpret it in greater detail: the Rotunda is the buttocks, constantly
associated by the child with the genitals; the smaller structure in front is the scrotum. In
the dream his father asks him what this is all for -- that is, he asks him about the purpose
and arrangement of the genitals. It is quite evident that this state of affairs should be
reversed, and that he ought to be the questioner. As such questioning on the part of the
father never occurred in reality, we must conceive the dream-thought as a wish, or
perhaps take it conditionally, as follows. `If I had asked my father for sexual
enlightenment . . . ' The continuation of this thought we shall presently find in another
place.
The courtyard in which the sheet of tin is spread out is not to be conceived symbolically
in the first instance, but originates from his father's place of business. For reasons of
discretion I have inserted the tin for another material in which the father deals without,
however, changing anything in the verbal expression of the dream. The dreamer had
entered his father's business, and had taken a terrible dislike to the somewhat
questionable practices upon which its profit mainly depended. Hence the continuation of
the above dream-thought (`if I had asked him') would be: `He would have deceived me
just as he does his customers.' For the `pulling off', which serves to represent commercial
dishonesty, the dreamer himself gives a second explanation, namely, masturbation. This
is not only quite familiar to us (see above, p. 229), but agrees very well with the fact that
the secrecy of masturbation is expressed by its opposite (one can do it quite openly).
Thus, it agrees entirely with our expectations that the auto-erotic activity should be
attributed to the father, just as was the questioning in the first scene of the dream. The
shaft he at once interprets as the vagina, by referring to the soft upholstering of the walls.
That the action of coition in the vagina is described as a going down instead of in the
usual way as a going up agrees with what I have found in other instances.13
The details -- that at the end of the first shaft there is a long platform, and then a new
shaft -- he himself explains biographically. He had for some time had sexual intercourse
with women, but had given it up on account of inhibitions, and now hopes to be able to
begin it again with the aid of the treatment. The dream, however, becomes indistinct
towards the end, and to the experienced interpreter it becomes evident that in the second
scene of the dream the influence of another subject has already begun to assert itself;
which is indicated by his father's business, his dishonest practices, and the vagina
represented by the first shaft, so that one may assume a reference to his mother.
4. The male organ symbolised by persons and the female by a landscape.
(Dream of a woman of the lower class, whose husband is a policeman, reported by B.
Dattner.)
`. . . Then someone broke into the house and she anxiously called for a policeman. But he
went peacefully with two tramps into a church,14 to which a great many steps led up;15
behind the church there was a mountain16 on top of which there was a dense forest.17 The
policeman was provided with a helmet, a gorget, and a cloak.18 The two vagrants, who
went along with the policeman quite peaceably, had sack-like aprons tied round their
loins.19 A road led from the church to the mountains. This road was overgrown on each
side with grass and brushwood, which became thicker and thicker as it reached the top of
the mountain, where it spread out into quite a forest.'
5. Castration dreams of children.
(a) `A boy aged three years and five months, for whom his father's return from military
service is clearly inconvenient, wakes one morning in a disturbed and excited state, and
constantly repeats the question: Why did Daddy carry his head on a plate? Last night
Daddy carried his head on a plate.'
(b) `A student who is now suffering from a severe obsessional neurosis remembers that in
his sixth year he repeatedly had the following dream: He goes to the barber to have his
hair cut. Then a large woman with severe features comes up to him and cuts off his head.
He recognises the woman as his mother.'
6. A modified staircase dream.
To one of my patients, a sexual abstainer, who was very ill, whose fantasy was fixated
upon his mother, and who repeatedly dreamed of climbing stairs while accompanied by
his mother, I once remarked that moderate masturbation would probably have been less
harmful to him than his enforced abstinence. The influence of this remark provoked the
following dream:
His piano teacher reproaches him for neglecting his piano-playing, and for not
practising the Etudes of Moscheles and Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum. With reference
to this he remarked that the Gradus, too, is a stairway, and that the piano itself is a
stairway, as it has a scale.
It may be said that there is no class of ideas which cannot be enlisted in the representation
of sexual facts and wishes.
7. The sensation of reality and the representation of repetition.
A man, now thirty-five, relates a clearly remembered dream which he claims to have had
when he was four years of age: The notary with whom his father's will was deposited --
he had lost his father at the age of three -- brought two large Emperor-pears, of which he
was given one to eat. The other lay on the windowsill of the living-room. He woke with
the conviction of the reality of what he had dreamt, and obstinately asked his mother to
give him the second pear; it was, he said, still lying on the windowsill. His mother
laughed at this.
Analysis. -- The notary was a jovial old gentleman who, as he seems to remember, really
sometimes brought pears with him. The window-sill was as he saw it in the dream.
Nothing else occurs to him in this connection, except, perhaps, that his mother has
recently told him a dream. She has two birds sitting on her head; she wonders when they
will fly away, but they do not fly away, and one of them flies to her mouth and sucks at
it.
The dreamer's inability to furnish associations justifies the attempt to interpret it by the
substitution of symbols. The two pears -- pommes ou poires -- are the breasts of the
mother who nursed him; the window-sill is the projection of the bosom, analogous to the
balconies in the dream of houses. His sensation of reality after waking is justified, for his
mother had actually suckled him for much longer than the customary term, and her breast
was still available. The dream is to be translated: `Mother, give (show) me the breast
again at which I once used to drink.' The `once' is represented by the eating of the one
pear, the `again' by the desire for the other. The temporal repetition of an act is habitually
represented in dreams by the numerical multiplication of an object.
It is naturally a very striking phenomenon that symbolism should already play a part in
the dream of a child of four, but this is the rule rather than the exception. One may say
that the dreamer has command of symbolism from the very first.
The early age at which people make use of symbolic representation, even apart from the
dream-life, may be shown by the following uninfluenced memory of a lady who is now
twentyseven: She is in her fourth year. The nursemaid is driving her, with her brother,
eleven months younger, and a cousin, who is between the two in age, to the lavatory, so
that they can do their little business there before going for their walk. As the oldest, she
sits on the seat and the other two on chambers. She asks her (female) cousin: Have you a
purse, too? Walter has a little sausage, I have a purse. The cousin answers: Yes, I have a
purse, too. The nursemaid listens, laughing, and relates the conversation to the mother,
whose reaction is a sharp reprimand.
Here a dream may be inserted whose excellent symbolism permitted of interpretation
with little assistance from the dreamer:
8. The question of symbolism in the dreams of normal persons.20
An objection frequently raised by the opponents of psychoanalysis -- and recently also by
Havelock Ellis21 -- is that, although dream-symbolism may perhaps be a product of the
neurotic psyche, it has no validity whatever in the case of normal persons. But while
psychoanalysis recognises no essential distinctions, but only quantitative differences,
between the psychic life of the normal person and that of the neurotic, the analysis of
those dreams in which, in sound and sick persons alike, the repressed complexes display
the same activity, reveals the absolute identity of the mechanisms as well as of the
symbolism. Indeed, the natural dreams of healthy persons often contain a much simpler,
more transparent, and more characteristic symbolism than those of neurotics, which,
owing to the greater strictness of the censorship and the more extensive dream-distortion
resulting therefrom, are frequently troubled and obscured, and are therefore more difficult
to translate. The following dream serves to illustrate this fact. This dream comes from a
non-neurotic girl of a rather prudish and reserved type. In the course of conversation I
found that she was engaged to be married, but that there were hindrances in the way of
the marriage which threatened to postpone it. She related spontaneously the following
dream:
I arrange the centre of a table with flowers for a birthday. On being questioned she states
that in the dream she seemed to be at home (she has no home at the time) and
experienced a feeling of happiness.
The `popular' symbolism enables me to translate the dream for myself. It is the
expression of her wish to be married: the table, with the flowers in the centre, is symbolic
of herself and her genitals. She represents her future wishes as fulfilled, inasmuch as she
is already occupied with thoughts of the birth of a child; so the wedding has taken place
long ago.
I call her attention to the fact that `the centre of a table' is an unusual expression, which
she admits; but here, of course, I cannot question her more directly. I carefully refrain
from suggesting to her the meaning of the symbols, and ask her only for the thoughts
which occur to her mind in connection with the individual parts of the dream. In the
course of the analysis her reserve gave way to a distinct interest in the interpretation, and
a frankness which was made possible by the serious tone of the conversation. -- To my
question as to what kind of flowers they had been, her first answer is `expensive flowers;
one has to pay for them'; then she adds that they were lilies-of-the-valley, violets, and
pinks or carnations. I took the word lily in this dream in its popular sense, as a symbol of
chastity; she confirmed this, as purity occurred to her in association with lily. Valley is a
common feminine dream-symbol. The chance juxtaposition of the two symbols in the
name of the flower is made into a piece of dream-symbolism, and serves to emphasise the
preciousness of her virginity -- expensive flowers; one has to pay for them -- and
expresses the expectation that her husband will know how to appreciate its value. The
comment, expensive flowers, etc., has, as will be shown, a different meaning in every one
of the three different flower-symbols.
I thought of what seemed to me a venturesome explanation of the hidden meaning of the
apparently quite asexual word violets by an unconscious relation to the French viol. But
to my surprise the dreamer's association was the English word violate. The accidental
phonetic similarity of the two words violet and violate is utilised by the dream to express
in `the language of flowers' the idea of the violence of defloration (another word which
makes use of flowersymbolism), and perhaps also to give expression to a masochistic
tendency on the part of the girl. -- An excellent example of the word bridges across which
run the paths to the unconscious. `One has to pay for them' here means life, with which
she has to pay for becoming a wife and a mother.
In association with pinks, which she then calls carnations, I think of carnal. But her
association is colour, to which she adds that carnations are the flowers which her fiancé
gives her frequently and in large quantities. At the end of the conversation she suddenly
admits, spontaneously, that she has not told me the truth; the word that occurred to her
was not colour, but incarnation, the very word I expected. Moreover, even the word
`colour' is not a remote association; it was determined by the meaning of carnation (i.e.
flesh-colour) -- that is, by the complex. This lack of honesty shows that the resistance
here is at its greatest because the symbolism is here most transparent, and the struggle
between libido and repression is most intense in connection with this phallic theme. The
remark that these flowers were often given her by her fiancé is, together with the double
meaning of carnation, a still further indication of their phallic significance in the dream.
The occasion of the present of flowers during the day is employed to express the thought
of a sexual present and a return present. She gives her virginity and expects in return for
it a rich love-life. But the words: `expensive flowers; one has to pay for them' may have a
real, financial meaning. -- The flower-symbolism in the dream thus comprises the
virginal female, the male symbol, and the reference to violent defloration. It is to be noted
that sexual flower-symbolism, which, of course, is very widespread, symbolises the
human sexual organs by flowers, the sexual organs of plants; indeed, presents of flowers
between lovers may perhaps have this unconscious significance.
The birthday for which she is making preparations in the dream probably signifies the
birth of a child. She identifies herself with the bridegroom, and represents him preparing
her for a birth (having coitus with her). It is as though the latent thoughts were to say: `If
I were he, I would not wait, but I would deflower the bride without asking her; I would
use violence.' Indeed, the word violate points to this. Thus even the sadistic libidinal
components find expression.
In a deeper stratum of the dream the sentence I arrange, etc., probably has an auto-erotic,
that is, an infantile significance.
She also has a knowledge -- possible only in the dream -- of her physical need; she sees
herself flat like a table, so that she emphasises all the more her virginity, the costliness of
the centre (another time she calls it a centre-piece of flowers). Even the horizontal
element of the table may contribute something to the symbol. -- The concentration of the
dream is worthy of remark; nothing is superfluous, every word is a symbol.
Later on she brings me a supplement to this dream: `I decorate the flowers with green
crinkled paper.' She adds that it was fancy paper of the sort which is used to disguise
ordinary flowerpots. She says also: `To hide untidy things, whatever was to be seen
which was not pretty to the eye; there is a gap, a little space in the flowers. The paper
looks like velvet or moss.' With decorate she associates decorum, as I expected. The
green colour is very prominent, and with this she associates hope, yet another reference to
pregnancy. -- In this part of the dream the identification with the man is not the dominant
feature, but thoughts of shame and frankness express themselves. She makes herself
beautiful for him; she admits physical defects, of which she is ashamed and which she
wishes to correct. The associations velvet and moss distinctly point to crines pubis.
The dream is an expression of thoughts hardly known to the waking state of the girl;
thoughts which deal with the love of the senses and its organs; she is `prepared for a
birthday', i.e. she has coitus; the fear of defloration and perhaps the pleasurably toned
pain find expression; she admits her physical defects and overcompensates them by
means of an over-estimation of the value of her virginity. Her shame excuses the
emerging sensuality by the fact that the aim of it all is the child. Even material
considerations, which are foreign to the lover, find expression here. The affect of the
simple dream -- the feeling of bliss -- shows that here strong emotional complexes have
found satisfaction.
I close with the --
9. Dream of a chemist.
(A young man who has been trying to give up his habit of masturbation by substituting
intercourse with a woman.)
Preliminary statement: On the day before the dream he had been instructing a student as
to Grignard's reaction, in which magnesium is dissolved in absolutely pure ether under
the catalytic influence of iodine. Two days earlier there had been an explosion in the
course of the same reaction, in which someone had burned his hand.
Dream I. He is going to make phenylmagnesiumbromide; he sees the apparatus with
particular distinctness, but he has substituted himself for the magnesium. He is now in a
curious, wavering attitude. He keeps on repeating to himself: `This is the right thing, it is
working, my feet are beginning to dissolve, and my knees are getting soft.' Then he
reaches down and feels for his feet, and meanwhile (he does not know how) he takes his
legs out of the carboy, and then again he says to himself: `That can't be . . . Yes, it has
been done correctly.' Then he partially wakes, and repeats the dream to himself, because
he wants to tell it to me. He is positively afraid of the analysis of the dream. He is much
excited during this state of semi-sleep, and repeats continually: `Phenyl, phenyl.'
Dream II. He is in . . . with his whole family. He is supposed to be at the Schottentor at
half-past eleven in order to keep an appointment with the lady in question, but he does
not wake until half-past eleven. He says to himself: `It is too late now; when you get there
it will be half-past twelve.' The next moment he sees the whole family gathered about the
table -- his mother and the parlour-maid with the soup-tureen with peculiar distinctness.
Then he says to himself: `Well, if we are sitting down to eat already, I certainly can't get
away.'
Analysis. He feels sure that even the first dream contains a reference to the lady whom he
is to meet at the place of rendezvous (the dream was dreamed during the night before the
expected meeting). The student whom he was instructing is a particularly unpleasant
fellow; the chemist had said to him: `That isn't right, because the magnesium was still
unaffected,' and the student had answered, as though he were quite unconcerned: `Nor it
is.' He himself must be this student; he is as indifferent to his analysis as the student is to
his synthesis; the he in the dream, however, who performs the operation, is myself. How
unpleasant he must seem to me with his indifference to the result!
Again, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is made. For the question is
the success of the treatment. The legs in the dream recall an impression of the previous
evening. He met a lady at a dancing class of whom he wished to make a conquest; he
pressed her to him so closely that she once cried out. As he ceased to press her legs he
felt her firm, responding pressure against his lower thighs as far as just above the knees,
the spot mentioned in the dream. In this situation, then, the woman is the magnesium in
the retort, which is at last working. He is feminine towards me, as he is virile towards the
woman. If he succeeds with the woman, the treatment will also succeed. Feeling himself
and becoming aware of his knees refers to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue of
the previous day . . . The rendezvous had actually been made for half-past eleven. His
wish to oversleep himself and to keep to his sexual object at home (that is, masturbation)
corresponds to his resistance.
He says, in respect to the repetition of the name phenyl, that all these radicals ending in yl
have always been pleasing to him; they are very convenient to use: benzyl, acetyl, etc.
That, however, explained nothing. But when I proposed the root Schlemihl22 he laughed
heartily, and told me that during the summer he had read a book by Prévost which
contained a chapter: Les exclus de l'amour, and in this there was some mention of
Schlemilies; and in reading of these outcasts he said to himself: `That is my case.' He
would have played the Schlemihl if he had missed the appointment.
It seems that the sexual symbolism of dreams has already been directly confirmed by
experiment. In 1912 Dr K. Schrötter, at the instance of H. Swoboda, produced dreams in
deeply hypnotised persons by suggestions which determined a large part of the dreamcontent.
If the suggestion proposed that the subject should dream of normal or abnormal
sexual relations, the dream carried out these orders by replacing sexual material by the
symbols with which psychoanalytic dream-interpretation has made us familiar. Thus,
following the suggestion that the dreamer should dream of homosexual relations with a
lady friend, this friend appeared in the dream carrying a shabby travelling-bag, upon
which there was a label with the printed words: `For ladies only'. The dreamer was
believed never to have heard of dream-symbolisation or of dream-interpretation.
Unfortunately, the value of this important investigation was diminished by the fact that
Dr Schrötter shortly afterwards committed suicide. Of his dream-experiments he gave us
only a preliminary report in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse.
Similar results were reported in 1923 by G. Roffenstein. Especially interesting were the
experiments performed by Betlheim and Hartmann, because they eliminated hypnosis.
These authors told stories of a crude sexual content to confused patients suffering from
Korsakoff's psychosis, and observed the distortions which appeared when the material
related was reproduced.23 It was shown that the reproduced material contained symbols
made familiar by the interpretation of dreams (climbing stairs, stabbing and shooting as
symbols of coitus, knives and cigarettes as symbols of the penis). Special value was
attached to the appearance of the symbol of climbing stairs, for, as the authors justly
observed, `a symbolisation of this sort could not be effected by a conscious wish to
distort.'
Only when we have formed a due estimate of the importance of symbolism in dreams can
we continue the study of the typical dreams which was interrupted in an earlier chapter
(p. 161). I feel justified in dividing these dreams roughly into two classes: first, those
which always really have the same meaning, and second, those which despite the same or
a similar content must nevertheless be given the most varied interpretations. Of the
typical dreams belonging to the first class I have already dealt fairly fully with the
examination-dream.
On account of their similar affective character, the dreams of missing a train deserve to
be ranked with the examination-dreams; moreover, their interpretation justifies this
approximation. They are consolation-dreams, directed against another anxiety perceived
in dreams -- the fear of death. `To depart' is one of the most frequent and one of the most
readily established of the death-symbols. The dream therefore says consolingly:
`Reassure yourself, you are not going to die (to depart)', just as the examination-dream
calms us by saying: `Don't be afraid; this time, too, nothing will happen to you.' The
difficulty in understanding both kinds of dreams is due to the fact that the anxiety is
attached precisely to the expression of consolation.
The meaning of the `dreams due to dental stimulus' which I have often enough had to
analyse in my patients escaped me for a long time because, much to my astonishment,
they habitually offered too great a resistance to interpretation. But finally an
overwhelming mass of evidence convinced me that in the case of men nothing other than
the masturbatory desires of puberty furnish the motive power of these dreams. I shall
analyse two such dreams, one of which is also a `flying dream'. The two dreams were
dreamed by the same person -- a young man of pronounced homosexuality which,
however, has been inhibited in life.
He is witnessing a performance of Fidelio from the stalls of the opera-house; he is sitting
next to L., whose personality is congenial to him, and whose friendship he would like to
have. Suddenly he flies diagonally right across the stalls; he then puts his hand in his
mouth and draws out two of his teeth.
He himself describes the flight by saying that it was as though he were thrown into the
air. As the opera performed was Fidelio, he recalls the words:
He who a charming wife acquires . . .
But the acquisition of even the most charming wife is not among the wishes of the
dreamer. Two other lines would be more appropriate:
He who succeeds in the lucky (big) throw
The friend of a friend to be . . .
The dream thus contains the `lucky (big) throw', which is not, however, a wish-fulfilment
only. For it conceals also the painful reflection that in his striving after friendship he has
often had the misfortune to be `thrown out', and the fear lest this fate may be repeated in
the case of the young man by whose side he has enjoyed the performance of Fidelio. This
is now followed by a confession, shameful to a man of his refinement, to the effect that
once, after such a rejection on the part of a friend, his profound sexual longing caused
him to masturbate twice in succession.
The other dream is as follows: Two university professors of his acquaintance are treating
him in my place. One of them does something to his penis; he is afraid of an operation.
The other thrusts an iron bar against his mouth, so that he loses one or two teeth. He is
bound with four silk handkerchiefs.
The sexual significance of this dream can hardly be doubted. The silk handkerchiefs
allude to an identification with a homosexual of his acquaintance. The dreamer, who has
never achieved coition (nor has he ever actually sought sexual intercourse) with men,
conceives the sexual act on the lines of masturbation with which he was familiar during
puberty.
I believe that the frequent modifications of the typical dream due to dental stimulus --
that, for example, in which another person draws the tooth from the dreamer's mouth --
will be made intelligible by the same explanation.24 It may, however, be difficult to
understand how `dental stimulus' can have come to have this significance. But here I may
draw attention to the frequent `displacement from below to above' which is at the service
of sexual repression, and by means of which all kinds of sensations and intentions
occurring in hysteria, which ought to be localised in the genitals, may at all events be
realised in other, unobjectionable parts of the body. We have a case of such displacement
when the genitals are replaced by the face in the symbolism of unconscious thought. This
is corroborated by the fact that verbal usage relates the buttocks to the cheeks,25 and the
labia minora to the lips which enclose the orifice of the mouth. The nose is compared to
the penis in numerous allusions, and in each case the presence of hair completes the
resemblance. Only one feature -- the teeth -- is beyond all possibility of being compared
in this way; but it is just this coincidence of agreement and disagreement which makes
the teeth suitable for purposes of representation under the pressure of sexual repression.
I will not assert that the interpretation of dreams due to dental stimulus as dreams of
masturbation (the correctness of which I cannot doubt) has been freed of all obscurity.26 I
carry the explanation as far as I am able, and must leave the rest unsolved. But I must
refer to yet another relation indicated by a colloquial expression. In Austria there is in use
an indelicate designation for the act of masturbation, namely: `To pull one out', or `to pull
one off'.27 I am unable to say whence these colloquialisms originate, or on what
symbolisms they are based; but the teeth would very well fit in with the first of the two.
Dreams of pulling teeth, and of teeth falling out, are interpreted in popular belief to mean
the death of a connection. Psychoanalysis can admit of such a meaning only at the most
as a joking allusion to the sense already indicated.
To the second group of typical dreams belong those in which one is flying or hovering,
falling, swimming, etc. What do these dreams signify? Here we cannot generalise. They
mean, as we shall learn, something different in each case; only, the sensory material
which they contain always comes from the same source.
We must conclude from the information obtained in psychoanalysis that these dreams
also repeat impressions of our childhood -- that is, that they refer to the games involving
movement which have such an extraordinary attraction for children. Where is the uncle
who has never made a child fly by running with it across the room, with outstretched
arms, or has never played at falling with it by rocking it on his knee and then suddenly
straightening his leg, or by lifting it above his head and suddenly pretending to withdraw
his supporting hand? At such moments children shout with joy and insatiably demand a
repetition of the performance, especially if a little fright and dizziness are involved in it.
In after years they repeat their sensations in dreams, but in dreams they omit the hands
that held them, so that now they are free to float or fall. We know that all small children
have a fondness for such games as rocking and seesawing; and when they see gymnastic
performances at the circus their recollection of such games is refreshed. In some boys the
hysterical attack consists simply in the reproduction of such performances, which they
accomplish with great dexterity. Not infrequently sexual sensations are excited by these
games of movement, innocent though they are in themselves. To express the matter in a
few words: it is these romping games of childhood which are being repeated in dreams of
flying, falling, vertigo, and the like, but the pleasurable sensations are now transformed
into anxiety. But, as every mother knows, the romping of children often enough ends in
quarrelling and tears.
I have therefore good reason for rejecting the explanation that it is the condition of our
cutaneous sensations during sleep, the sensation of the movements of the lungs, etc., that
evoke dreams of flying and falling. As I see it, these sensations have themselves been
reproduced from the memory to which the dream refers -- that they are therefore dreamcontent,
and not dream-sources.28
This material, consisting of sensations of motion, similar in character, and originating
from the same sources, is now used for the representation of the most manifold dreamthoughts.
Dreams of flying or hovering, for the most part pleasurably toned, will call for
the most widely differing interpretations -- interpretations of a quite special nature in the
case of some dreamers, and interpretations of a typical nature in that of others. One of my
patients was in the habit of dreaming very frequently that she was hovering a little way
above the street without touching the ground. She was very short of stature, and she
shunned every sort of contamination involved by intercourse with human beings. Her
dream of suspension -- which raised her feet above the ground and allowed her head to
tower into the air -- fulfilled both of her wishes. In the case of other dreamers of the same
sex, the dream of flying had the significance of the longing: `If only I were a little bird!'
Similarly, others become angels at night, because no one has ever called them angels by
day. The intimate connection between flying and the idea of a bird makes it
comprehensible that the dream of flying, in the case of male dreamers, should usually
have a coarsely sensual significance;29 and we should not be surprised to hear that this or
that dreamer is always very proud of his ability to fly.
Dr Paul Federn (Vienna) has propounded the fascinating theory that a great many flying
dreams are erection dreams, since the remarkable phenomenon of erection, which
constantly occupies the human fantasy, cannot fail to be impressive as an apparent
suspension of the laws of gravity (cf. the winged phalli of the ancients).
It is a noteworthy fact that a prudent experimenter like Mourly Vold, who is really averse
to any kind of interpretation, nevertheless defends the erotic interpretation of the dreams
of flying and hovering.30 He describes the erotic element as `the most important motive
factor of the hovering dream', and refers to the strong sense of bodily vibration which
accompanies this type of dream, and the frequent connection of such dreams with
erections and emissions.
Dreams of falling are more frequently characterised by anxiety. Their interpretation,
when they occur in women, offers no difficulty, because they nearly always accept the
symbolic meaning of falling, which is a circumlocution for giving way to an erotic
temptation. We have not yet exhausted the infantile sources of the dream of falling;
nearly all children have fallen occasionally, and then been picked up and fondled; if they
fell out of bed at night, they were picked up by the nurse and taken into her bed.
People who dream often, and with great enjoyment, of swimming, cleaving the waves,
etc., have usually been bedwetters, and they now repeat in the dream a pleasure which
they have long since learned to forgo. We shall soon learn, from one example or another,
to what representations dreams of swimming easily lend themselves.
The interpretation of dreams of fire justifies a prohibition of the nursery, which forbids
children to `play with fire' so that they may not wet the bed at night. These dreams also
are based on reminiscences of the enuresis nocturna of childhood. In my Fragment of an
Analysis of Hysteria31 I have given the complete analysis and synthesis of such a dream
of fire in connection with the infantile history of the dreamer, and have shown for the
representation of what maturer impulses this infantile material has been utilised.
It would be possible to cite quite a number of other `typical' dreams, if by such one
understands dreams in which there is a frequent recurrence, in the dreams of different
persons, of the same manifest dream-content. For example: dreams of passing through
narrow alleys, or a whole suite of rooms; dreams of burglars, in respect of whom nervous
people take measures of precaution before going to bed; dreams of being chased by wild
animals (bulls, horses); or of being threatened with knives, daggers, and lances. The last
two themes are characteristic of the manifest dream-content of persons suffering from
anxiety, etc. A special investigation of this class of material would be well worth while.
In lieu of this I shall offer two observations, which do not, however, apply exclusively to
typical dreams.
The more one is occupied with the solution of dreams, the readier one becomes to
acknowledge that the majority of the dreams of adults deal with sexual material and give
expression to erotic wishes. Only those who really analyse dreams, that is, those who
penetrate from their manifest content to the latent dream-thoughts, can form an opinion
on this subject; but never those who are satisfied with registering merely the manifest
content (as, for example, Näcke in his writings on sexual dreams). Let us recognise at
once that there is nothing astonishing in this fact, which is entirely consistent with the
principles of dream-interpretation. No other instinct has had to undergo so much
suppression, from the time of childhood onwards, as the sexual instinct in all its
numerous components:32 from no other instinct are so many and such intense unconscious
wishes left over, which now, in the sleeping state, generate dreams. In dreaminterpretation
this importance of the sexual complexes must never be forgotten, though
one must not, of course, exaggerate it to the exclusion of all other factors.
Of many dreams it may be ascertained, by careful interpretation, that they may even be
understood bisexually, inasmuch as they yield an indisputable over-interpretation, in
which they realise homosexual impulses -- that is, impulses which are contrary to the
normal sexual activity of the dreamer. But that all dreams are to be interpreted bisexually,
as Stekel33 maintains, and Adler,34 seems to me to be a generalisation as insusceptible of
proof as it is improbable, and one which, therefore, I should be loth to defend; for I
should, above all, be at a loss to know how to dispose of the obvious fact that there are
many dreams which satisfy other than erotic needs (taking the word in the widest sense),
as, for example, dreams of hunger, thirst, comfort, etc. And other similar assertions, to
the effect that `behind every dream one finds a reference to death' (Stekel), or that every
dream shows `an advance from the feminine to the masculine line' (Adler), seem to me to
go far beyond the admissible in the interpretation of dreams. The assertion that all
dreams call for a sexual interpretation, against which there is such an untiring polemic in
the literature of the subject, is quite foreign to my Interpretation of Dreams. It will not be
found in any of the eight editions of this book, and is in palpable contradiction to the rest
of its contents.
We have stated elsewhere that dreams which are conspicuously innocent commonly
embody crude erotic wishes, and this we might confirm by numerous further examples.
But many dreams which appear indifferent, in which we should never suspect a tendency
in any particular direction, may be traced, according to the analysis, to unmistakably
sexual wish-impulses, often of an unsuspected nature. For example, who, before it had
been interpreted, would have suspected a sexual wish in the following dream? The
dreamer relates: Between two stately palaces there stands, a little way back, a small
house, whose doors are closed. My wife leads me along the little bit of road leading to
the house and pushes the door open, and then I slip quickly and easily into the interior of
a courtyard that slopes steeply upwards.
Anyone who has had experience in the translating of dreams will, of course, at once be
reminded that penetration into narrow spaces and the opening of locked doors are among
the commonest of sexual symbols, and will readily see in this dream a representation of
attempted coition from behind (between the two stately buttocks of the female body). The
narrow, steep passage is, of course, the vagina; the assistance attributed to the wife of the
dreamer requires the interpretation that in reality it is only consideration for the wife
which is responsible for abstention from such an attempt. Moreover, inquiry shows that
on the previous day a young girl had entered the household of the dreamer; she had
pleased him, and had given him the impression that she would not be altogether averse to
an approach of this sort. The little house between the two palaces is taken from the
reminiscence of the Hradschin in Prague, and once more points to the girl, who is a native
of that city.
If, in conversation with my patients, I emphasise the frequency of the Oedipus dream --
the dream of having sexual intercourse with one's mother -- I elicit the answer: `I cannot
remember such a dream.' Immediately afterwards, however, there arises the recollection
of another, an unrecognisable, indifferent dream, which the patient has dreamed
repeatedly, and which on analysis proves to be a dream with this very content -- that is,
yet another Oedipus dream. I can assure the reader that disguised dreams of sexual
intercourse with the dreamer's mother are far more frequent than undisguised dreams to
the same effect.35
There are dreams of landscapes and localities in which emphasis is always laid upon the
assurance: `I have been here before.' But this `déja vu' has a special significance in
dreams. In this case the locality is always the genitals of the mother; of no other place can
it be asserted with such certainty that one `has been here before.' I was once puzzled by
the account of a dream given by a patient afflicted with obsessional neurosis. He dreamed
that he called at a house where he had been twice before. But this very patient had long
ago told me of an episode of his sixth year. At that time he shared his mother's bed, and
had abused the occasion by inserting his finger into his mother's genitals while she was
asleep.
A large number of dreams, which are frequently full of anxiety, and often have for
content the traversing of narrow spaces, or staying long in the water, are based upon
fantasies concerning the intra-uterine life, the sojourn in the mother's womb, and the act
of birth. I here insert the dream of a young man who, in his fantasy, has even profited by
the intra-uterine opportunity of spying upon an act of coition between his parents.
`He is in a deep shaft, in which there is a window, as in the Semmering tunnel. Through
this he sees at first an empty landscape, and then he composes a picture in it, which is
there all at once and fills up the empty space. The picture represents a field which is
being deeply tilled by an implement, and the wholesome air, the associated idea of hard
work, and the bluish-black clods of earth make a pleasant impression on him. He then
goes on and sees a work on education lying open . . . and is surprised that so much
attention is devoted in it to the sexual feelings (of children), which makes him think of
me.'
Here is a pretty water-dream of a female patient, which was turned to special account in
the course of treatment.
At her usual holiday resort on the -- Lake, she flings herself into the dark water at a place
where the pale moon is reflected in the water.
Dreams of this sort are parturition dreams; their interpretation is effected by reversing the
fact recorded in the manifest dream-content; thus, instead of `flinging oneself into the
water', read `coming out of the water' -- that is, `being born'.36 The place from which one
is born may be recognised if one thinks of the humorous sense of the French `la lune'.
The pale moon thus becomes the white `bottom', which the child soon guesses to be the
place from which it came. Now what can be the meaning of the patient's wishing to be
born at a holiday resort? I asked the dreamer this, and she replied without hesitation:
`Hasn't the treatment made me as though I were born again?' Thus the dream becomes an
invitation to continue the treatment at this summer resort -- that is, to visit her there;
perhaps it also contains a very bashful allusion to the wish to become a mother herself.37
Another dream of parturition, with its interpretation, I take from a paper by E. Jones. `She
stood at the seashore watching a small boy, who seemed to be hers, wading into the
water. This he did till the water covered him and she could only see his head bobbing up
and down near the surface. The scene then changed to the crowded hall of an hotel. Her
husband left her, and she ``entered into conversation with'' a stranger.
`The second half of the dream was discovered in the analysis to represent flight from her
husband, and the entering into intimate relations with a third person, behind whom was
plainly indicated Mr X.'s brother, mentioned in a former dream. The first part of the
dream was a fairly evident birth-fantasy. In dreams as in mythology, the delivery of a
child from the uterine waters is commonly represented, by way of distortion, as the entry
of the child into water; among many other instances, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses,
and Bacchus are well-known illustrations of this. The bobbing up and down of the head
in the water at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening which she had
experienced in her only pregnancy. Thinking of the boy going into the water induced a
reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying him into the
nursery, washing and dressing him, and installing him in her household.
`The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concerning the elopement,
which belonged to the first half of the underlying latent content; the first half of the
dream corresponded with the second half of the latent content, the birth fantasy. Besides
this inversion in the order, further inversions took place in each half of the dream. In the
first half the child entered the water, and then his head bobbed; in the underlying dreamthoughts
the quickening occurred first, and then the child left the water (a double
inversion). In the second half her husband left her; in the dream-thoughts she left her
husband.'
Another parturition dream is related by Abraham -- the dream of a young woman
expecting her first confinement: From one point of the floor of the room a subterranean
channel leads directly into the water (path of parturition--amniotic fluid). She lifts up a
trap in the door, and there immediately appears a creature dressed in brownish für,
which almost resembles a seal. This creature changes into the dreamer's younger
brother, to whom her relation has always been maternal in character.
Rank has shown from a number of dreams that parturition-dreams employ the same
symbols as micturition-dreams. The erotic stimulus expresses itself in these dreams as an
urethral stimulus. The stratification of meaning in these dreams corresponds with a
change in the significance of the symbol since childhood.
We may here turn back to the interrupted theme (see p. 37) of the part played by organic,
sleep-disturbing stimuli in dream-formation. Dreams which have come into existence
under these influences not only reveal quite frankly the wish-fulfilling tendency, and the
character of convenience-dreams, but they very often display a quite transparent
symbolism as well, since waking not infrequently follows a stimulus whose satisfaction
in symbolic disguise has already been vainly attempted in the dream. This is true of
emission dreams as well as those evoked by the need to urinate or defecate. The peculiar
character of emission dreams permits us directly to unmask certain sexual symbols
already recognised as typical, but nevertheless violently disputed, and it also convinces us
that many an apparently innocent dream-situation is merely the symbolic prelude to a
crudely sexual scene. This, however, finds direct representation, as a rule, only in the
comparatively infrequent emission dreams, while it often enough turns into an anxietydream,
which likewise leads to waking.
The symbolism of dreams due to urethral stimulus is especially obvious, and has always
been divined. Hippocrates had already advanced the theory that a disturbance of the
bladder was indicated if one dreamt of fountains and springs (Havelock Ellis). Scherner,
who has studied the manifold symbolism of the urethral stimulus, agrees that `the
powerful urethral stimulus always turns into the stimulation of the sexual sphere and its
symbolic imagery . . . The dream due to urethral stimulus is often at the same time the
representative of the sexual dream.'
O. Rank, whose conclusions (in his paper on Die Symbolschichtung im Wecktraum) I
have here followed, argues very plausibly that a large number of `dreams due to urethral
stimulus' are really caused by sexual stimuli, which at first seek to gratify themselves by
way of regression to the infantile form of urethral erotism. Those cases are especially
instructive in which the urethral stimulus thus produced leads to waking and the
emptying of the bladder, whereupon, in spite of this relief, the dream is continued, and
expresses its need in undisguisedly erotic images.38
In a quite analogous manner dreams due to intestinal stimulus disclose the pertinent
symbolism, and thus confirm the relation, which is also amply verified by ethnopsychology,
of gold and feces.39 `Thus, for example, a woman, at a time when she is
under the care of a physician on account of an intestinal disorder, dreams of a digger for
hidden treasure who is burying a treasure in the vicinity of a little wooden shed which
looks like a rural privy. A second part of the dream has as its content how she wipes the
posterior of her child, a little girl, who has soiled herself.'
Dreams of `rescue' are connected with parturition dreams. To rescue, especially to rescue
from the water, is, when dreamed by a woman, equivalent to giving birth; this sense is,
however, modified when the dreamer is a man.40
Robbers, burglars, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before going to bed, and which
sometimes even disturb our sleep, originate in one and the same childish reminiscence.
They are the nightly visitors who have waked the child in order to set it on the chamber,
so that it may not wet the bed, or have lifted the coverlet in order to see clearly how the
child is holding its hands while sleeping. I have been able to induce an exact recollection
of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of these anxiety-dreams. The robbers were
always the father; the ghosts more probably corresponded to female persons in white
nightgowns.
1 Cf. the works of Bleuler and his Zurich disciples, Maeder, Abraham, and others, and of
the non-medical authors (Kleinpaul and others) to whom they refer. But the most
pertinent things that have been said on the subject will be found in the work of O. Rank
and H. Sachs, Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse für die Geisteswissenschaft, 1913, chap.
i; also E. Jones, Die Theorie der Symbolik Intern. Zeitschr. für Psychoanalyse, v. 1919.
2 This conception would seem to find an extraordinary confirmation in a theory advanced
by Hans Sperber (Über den Einfluss sexueller momente auf Entstehung und Entwicklung
der Sprache, in Imago, i, 1912). Sperber believes that primitive words denoted sexual
things exclusively, and subsequently lost their sexual significance and were applied to
other things and activities, which were compared with the sexual.
3 For example, a ship sailing on the sea may appear in the urinary dreams of Hungarian
dreamers, despite the fact that the term of `to ship', for `to urinate', is foreign to this
language (Ferenczi). In the dreams of the French and the other romance peoples `room'
serves as a symbolic representation for woman', although these peoples have nothing
analogous to the German Frauenzimmer. Many symbols are as old as language itself,
while others are continually being coined (e.g. the aeroplane, the Zeppelin).
4 [In the USA the father is represented in dreams as `the President', and even more often
as `the Governor' -- a title which is frequently applied to the parent in everyday life. --
trans.]
5 `A patient living in a boarding-house dreams that he meets one of the servants, and asks
her what her number is; to his surprise she answers: 14. He has in fact entered into
relations with the girl in question, and has often had her in his bedroom. She feared, as
may be imagined, that the landlady suspected her, and had proposed, on the day before
the dream, that they should meet in one of the unoccupied rooms. In reality this room had
the number 14, while in the dream the woman bore this number. A clearer proof of the
identification of woman and room could hardly be imagined.' (Ernest Jones, Intern.
Zeitschr. f. Psychoanalyse, ii, 1914) (cf. Artemidorus, The Symbolism of Dreams
[German version by F. S. Krauss, Vienna, 1881, p. 110]: `Thus, for example, the
bedroom signifies the wife, supposing one to be in the house.')
6 cf. `the cloaca theory' in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.
7 I may here repeat what I have said in another place (Die Zukünftigen Chancen der
psychoanalytischen Therapie, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, i, No. 1 and 2, 1910, and
Ges. Schriften, Bd. vi): `Some time ago I learned that a psychologist who is unfamiliar
with our work remarked to one of my friends that we were surely overestimating the
secret sexual significance of dreams. He stated that his most frequent dream was that of
climbing a flight of stairs, and that there was surely nothing sexual behind this. Our
attention having been called to this objection, we directed our investigations to the
occurrence in dreams of flights of stairs, ladders, and steps, and we soon ascertained that
stairs (or anything analogous to them) represent a definite symbol of coitus. The basis for
this comparison is not difficult to find; with rhythmical intervals and increasing
breathlessness one reaches a height, and may then come down again in a few rapid
jumps. Thus the rhythm of coitus is reproduced in climbing stairs. Let us not forget to
consider the colloquial usage. This tells us that `mounting' is, without further addition,
used as a substitutive designation for the sexual act. In French, the step of a staircase is
called la marche; un vieux marcheur corresponds exactly to the German, ein alter
Steiger.'
8 cf. in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, ii, 675, the drawing of a nineteen-year-old
manic patient: a man with a snake as a neck-tie, which is turning towards a girl. Also the
story Der Schamhaftige (Anthropophyteia, vi, 334): A woman entered a bathroom, and
there came face to face with a man who hardly had time to put on his shirt. He was
greatly embarrassed, but at once covered his throat with the front of his shirt, and said:
`Please excuse me, I have no necktie.'
9 cf. Pfister's works on cryptography and picture-puzzles.
10 In spite of all the differences between Scherner's conception of dream-symbolism and
the one developed here, I must still insist that Scherner should be recognised as the true
discoverer of symbolism in dreams, and that the experience of psychoanalysis has
brought his book (published in 1861) into posthumous repute.
11 From Nachträge zur Traumdeutung in Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, i, Nos. 5 and 6,
1911.
12 cf. Kirchgraber for a similar example (Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, iii, 1912, p. 95).
Stekel reported a dream in which the hat with an obliquely-standing feather in the middle
symbolised the (impotent) man.
13 cf. comment in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, 1; and see above, p. 229, note 34.
14 or chapel = vagina.
15 symbol of coitus.
16 mons Veneris.
17 crines pubis.
18 Demons in cloaks and hoods are, according to the explanation of a specialist, of a
phallic character.
19 The two halves of the scrotum.
20 Alfred Robitsek in the Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse, ii, 1911, p. 340.
21 The World of Dreams, London, 1911, p. 168.
22 [This Hebrew word is well known in German-speaking countries, even among Gentiles,
and signifies an unlucky, awkward person. -- trans.]
23 Über Fehlreaktionen bei der Korsakoffschen Psychose, Arch. f. Psychiatrie, Bd. lxxii.
1924.
24 The extraction of a tooth by another is usually to be interpreted as castration (cf. haircutting;
Stekel). One must distinguish between dreams due to dental stimulus and dreams
referring to the dentist, such as have been recorded, for example, by Coriat (Zentralblatt
für Psychoanalyse, iii, 440).
25 [In German Backen = cheeks and Hinterbacken (lit. `hindcheeks') = buttocks. -- trans.]
26 According to C. G. Jung, dreams due to dental stimulus in the case of women have the
significance of parturition dreams. E. Jones has given valuable confirmation of this. The
common element of this interpretation with that represented above may be found in the
fact that in both cases (castration--birth) there is a question of removing a part from the
whole body.
27 cf. the `biographical' dream on pp. 228-9.
28 This passage, dealing with dreams of motion, is repeated on account of the context. cf.
p. 165.
29 [A reference to the German slang word vogeln (to copulate) from Vogel (a bird). --
trans.]
30 Über den Traum, Ges. Schriften, Bd. iii.
31 Collected Papers, vol. iii, trans. by Alix and James Strachey, Hogarth Press, London.
32 cf. Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.
33 W. Stekel, Die Sprache des Traumes, 1911.
34 Alf. Adler, Der Psychische Hermaphroditismus im Leben und in der Neurose, in
Fortschritte der Medizin, 1910, No. 16, and later papers in the Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse, i, 1910-11.
35 I have published a typical example of such a disguised Oedipus dream in No. 1 of the
Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse (see below); another, with a detailed analysis, was
published in No. 4 of the same journal by Otto Rank. For other disguised Oedipus dreams
in which the eye appears as a symbol, see Rank (Int. Zeitschr. für Ps.A., i, 1913). Papers
upon eye dreams and eye symbolism by Eder, Ferenczi, and Reitler will be found in the
same issue. The blinding in the Oedipus legend and elsewhere is a substitute for
castration. The ancients, by the way, were not unfamiliar with the symbolic interpretation
of the undisguised Oedipus dream (see O. Rank, Jahrb. ii, p. 534: `Thus, a dream of
Julius Caesar's of sexual relations with his mother has been handed down to us, which the
oneiroscopists interpreted as a favourable omen signifying his taking possession of the
earth (Mother Earth). Equally well known is the oracle delivered to the Tarquinii, to the
effect that that one of them would become the ruler of Rome who should be the first to
kiss his mother (osculum matri tulerit), which Brutus conceived as referring to Mother
Earth (terram osculo contigit, scilicet quod ea communis mater omnium mortalium esset,
Livy, I, lxi).' Cf. here the dream of Hippias in Herodotus, VI, 107: `But Hippias led the
barbarians to Marathon after he had had the following dream-vision the previous night. It
had seemed to Hippias that he was sleeping with his own mother. He concluded from this
dream that he would return home to Athens, and would regain power, and that he would
die in his fatherland in his old age.' These myths and interpretations point to a correct
psychological insight. I have found that those persons who consider themselves preferred
or favoured by their mothers manifest in life that confidence in themselves, and that
unshakable optimism, which often seem heroic, and not infrequently compel actual
success.
Typical example of a disguised Oedipus dream:
A man dreams: He has a secret affair with a woman whom another man wishes to marry.
He is concerned lest the other should discover this relation and abandon the marriage;
he therefore behaves very affectionately to the man; he nestles up to him and kisses him. -
- The facts of the dreamer's life touch the dream-content only at one point. He has a secret
affair with a married woman, and an equivocal expression of her husband, with whom he
is on friendly terms, aroused in him the suspicion that he might have noticed something
of this relationship. There is, however, in reality, yet another factor, the mention of which
was avoided in the dream, and which alone gives the key to it. The life of the husband is
threatened by an organic malady. His wife is prepared for the possibility of his sudden
death, and our dreamer consciously harbours the intention of marrying the young widow
after her husband's decease. It is through this objective situation that the dreamer finds
himself transferred into the constellation of the Oedipus dream; his wish is to be enabled
to kill the man, so that he may win the woman for his wife; his dream gives expression to
the wish in a hypocritical distortion. Instead of representing her as already married to the
other man, it represents the other man only as wishing to marry her, which indeed
corresponds with his own secret intention, and the hostile wishes directed against the man
are concealed under demonstrations of affection, which are reminiscences of his childish
relations to his father.
36 For the mythological meaning of water-birth, see Rank: Der Mythus von der Geburt des
Helden, 1909.
37 It was not for a long time that I learned to appreciate the significance of the fantasies
and unconscious thoughts relating to life in the womb. They contain the explanation of
the curious dread, felt by so many people, of being buried alive, as well as the
profoundest unconscious reason for the belief in a life after death, which represents only
the projection into the future of this mysterious life before birth. The act of birth,
moreover, is the first experience attended by anxiety, and is thus, the source and model of
the affect of anxiety.
38 `The same symbolic representations which in the infantile sense constitute the basis of
the vesical dream appear in the ``recent'' sense in purely sexual significance: water =
urine = semen = amniotic fluid; ship = ``to pump ship'' (urinate = seed-capsule; getting
wet = enuresis = coitus = pregnancy; swimming = full bladder = dwelling-place of the
unborn; rain = urination = symbol of fertilization; travelling (journeying-alighting) =
getting out of bed = having sexual intercourse (honeymoon journey); urinating = sexual
ejaculation' (Rankin, I, c.).
39 Freud, Charakter und Analerotik; Rank, Die Symbolschictung, etc.; Dattner, Intern.
Zeitschr. f. Psych. i, 1913; Reik, Intern. Zeitschr., iii, 1915.
40 For such a dream see Pfister, Ein Fall von psychoanalytischer Seelensorge und
Seelenheilung, in Evangelische Freiheit, 1909. Concerning the symbol of `rescuing', see
my paper, Die Zukünftigen Chancender psychoanalytischen Therapie, in Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse, i, 1910. Also Beitrage zur Psychologie des Liebeslebens, i. Über einen
besonderen Typus der objektwahl beim Manne, in Jahrbuch für Ps.A., Bd. ii, 1910 (Ges.
Schriften, Bd. v). Also Rank, Beilege zur Rettungsphantasie in the Zentralblatt für
Psychoanalyse, i, 1910, p. 331; Reik, Zur Rettungssymbolic; ibid., p. 299.