A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

The ego which has been freed of all ethical restraints feels itself in accord with all the demands of the sexual striving, with those demands which have long since been condemned by our aesthetic rearing, demands of such a character that they resist all our moral demands for restraint. The pleasure-striving – the libido, as we term it – chooses its objects without inhibitions, and indeed, prefers those that are forbidden. It chooses not only the wife of another, but, above all, those incestuous objects declared sacred by the agreement of mankind – the mother and sister in the man's case, the father and brother in the woman's. Even the dream of our fifty-year old lady is an incestuous one, its libido unmistakably directed toward her son. Desires which we believe to be far from human nature show themselves strong enough to arouse dreams. Hate, too, expends itself without restraint. Revenge and murderous wishes toward those standing closest to the dreamer are not unusual, toward those best beloved in daily life, toward parents, brothers and sisters, toward one's spouse and one's own children. These censored wishes seem to arise from a veritable hell; no censorship seems too harsh to be applied against their waking interpretation.

But do not reproach the dream itself for this evil content. You will not, I am sure, forget that the dream is charged with the harmless, indeed the useful function of guarding sleep from disturbance. This evil content, then, does not lie in the nature of the dream. You know also that there are dreams which can be recognized as the satisfaction of justified wishes and urgent bodily needs. These, to be sure, undergo no dream distortion. They need none. They can satisfy their function without offending the ethical and aesthetic tendencies of the ego. And will you also keep in mind the fact that the amount of dream distortion is proportional to two factors. On the one hand, the worse the censorable wish, the greater the distortion; on the other hand, however, the stricter the censor himself is at any particular time the greater the distortion will be also. A young, strictly reared and prudish girl will, by reason of those factors, disfigure with an inexorable censorship those dream impulses which we physicians, for example, and which the dreamer herself ten years later, would recognize as permissible, harmless, libidinous desires.

Besides, we are far from being at the point where we can allow ourselves to be shocked by the results of our work of interpretation. I think we are not yet quite adept at it; and above all there lies upon us the obligation to secure it against certain attacks. It is not at all difficult to "find a hitch" in it. Our dream interpretations were made on the hypotheses we accepted a little while ago, that the dream has some meaning, that from the hypnotic to the normal sleep one may carry over the idea of the existence at such times of an unconscious psychic activity, and that all associations are predetermined. If we had come to plausible results on the basis of these hypotheses, we would have been justified in concluding that the hypotheses were correct. But what is to be done when the results are what I have just pictured them to be? Then it surely is natural to say, "These results are impossible, foolish, at least very improbable, hence there must have been something wrong with the hypotheses. Either the dream is no psychic phenomenon after all, or there is no such thing as unconscious mental activity in the normal condition, or our technique has a gap in it somewhere. Is that not a simpler and more satisfying conclusion than the abominations which we pretend to have disclosed on the basis of our suppositions?"

Both, I answer. It is a simpler as well as a more satisfying conclusion, but not necessarily more correct for that reason. Let us take our time, the matter is not yet ripe for judgment. Above all we can strengthen the criticism against our dream interpretation still further. That its conclusions are so unpleasant and unpalatable is perhaps of secondary importance. A stronger argument is the fact that the dreamers to whom we ascribe such wish-tendencies from the interpretation of their dreams reject the interpretations most emphatically, and with good reason. "What," says the one, "you want to prove to me by this dream that I begrudged the sums which I spent for my sister's trousseau and my brother's education? But indeed that can't be so. Why I work only for my sister, I have no interest in life but to fulfill my duties toward her, as being the oldest child, I promised our blessed mother I would." Or a woman says of her dream, "You mean to say that I wish my husband were dead! Why, that is simply revolting, nonsense. It isn't only that we have the happiest possible married life, you probably won't believe me when I tell you so, but his death would deprive me of everything else that I own in the world." Or another will tell us, "You mean that I have sensual desires toward my sister? That is ridiculous. I am not in the least fond of her. We don't get along and I haven't exchanged a word with her in years." We might perhaps ignore this sort of thing if the dreamers did not confirm or deny the tendencies ascribed to them; we could say that they are matters which the dreamers do not know about themselves. But that the dreamers should feel the exact opposite of the ascribed wish, and should be able to prove to us the dominance of the opposite tendency – this fact must finally disconcert us. Is it not time to lay aside the whole work of the dream interpretation as something whose results reduce it to absurdity?

By no means; this stronger argument breaks down when we attack it critically. Assuming that there are unconscious tendencies in the psychic life, nothing is proved by the ability of the subject to show that their opposites dominate his conscious life. Perhaps there is room in the psychic life even for antithetical tendencies, for contradictions which exist side by side, yes, possibly it is just the dominance of the one impulse which is the necessary condition for the unconsciousness of its opposite. The first two objections raised against our work hold merely that the results of dream interpretation are not simple, and very unpleasant. In answer to the first of these, one may say that for all your enthusiasm for the simple solution, you cannot thereby solve a single dream problem. To do so you must make up your mind to accept the fact of complicated relationships. And to the second of these objections one may say that you are obviously wrong to use a preference or a dislike as the basis for a scientific judgment. What difference does it make if the results of the dream interpretation seem unpleasant, even embarrassing and disgusting to you? "That doesn't prevent them from existing," as I used to hear my teacher Charcot say in similar cases, when I was a young doctor. One must be humble, one must keep personal preferences and antipathies in the background, if one wishes to discover the realities of the world. If a physicist can prove to you that the organic life of this planet must, within a short period of time, become completely extinct, do you also venture to say to him, "That cannot be so. This prospect is too unpleasant." On the contrary, you will be silent until another physicist proves some error in the assumptions or calculations of the first. If you reject the unpleasant, you are repeating the mechanism of dream construction instead of understanding and mastering it.

Perhaps you will promise to overlook the repulsive character of the censored dream-wishes, and will take refuge in the argument that it is improbable, after all, that so wide a field be given over to the evil in the constitution of man. But does your own experience justify you in saying that? I will not discuss the question of how you may estimate yourselves, but have you found so much good will among your superiors and rivals, so much chivalry among your enemies, so little envy in their company, that you feel yourselves in duty bound to enter a protest against the part played by the evil of egoism in human nature? Are you ignorant of how uncontrolled and undependable the average human being is in all the affairs of sex life? Or do you not know that all the immoralities and excesses of which we dream nightly are crimes committed daily by waking persons? What else does psychoanalysis do here but confirm the old saying of Plato, that the good people are those who content themselves with dreaming what the others, the bad people, really do?

And now turn your attention from the individual case to the great war devastating Europe. Think of the amount of brutality, the cruelty and the lies allowed to spread over the civilized world. Do you really believe that a handful of conscienceless egoists and corruptionists could have succeeded in setting free all these evil spirits, if the millions of followers did not share in the guilt? Do you dare under these circumstances to break a lance for the absence of evil from the psychic constitution of mankind?

You will reproach me with judging the war one-sidedly, you will say that it has also brought forth all that is most beautiful and noble in mankind, its heroic courage, its self-sacrifice, its social feeling. Certainly, but do not at this point allow yourselves to become guilty of the injustice which has so often been perpetrated against psychoanalysis, of reproaching it with denying one thing because it was asserting another. It is not our intention to deny the noble strivings of human nature, nor have we ever done anything to deprecate their value. On the contrary, I show you not only the censored evil dream-wishes, but also the censor which suppresses them and renders them unrecognizable. We dwell on the evil in mankind with greater emphasis only because others deny it, a method whereby the psychic life of mankind does not become better, but merely incomprehensible. When, however, we give up this one-sided ethical estimate, we shall surely be able to find a more accurate formula for the relationship of the evil to the good in human nature.

And thus the matter stands. We need not give up the conclusions to which our labors in dream interpretation lead us even though we must consider those conclusions strange. Perhaps we can approach their understanding later by another path. For the present, let us repeat: dream distortion is a consequence of the censorship practised by accredited tendencies of the ego against those wish-impulses that are in any way shocking, impulses which stir in us nightly during sleep. Why these wish-impulses come just at night, and whence they come – these are questions which will bear considerable investigation.

It would be a mistake, however, to omit to mention, with fitting emphasis, another result of these investigations. The dream wishes which try to disturb our sleep are not known to us, in fact we learn of them first through the dream interpretation. Therefore, they may be described as "at that time" unconscious in the sense above defined. But we can go beyond this and say that they are more than merely "at that time" unconscious. The dreamer to be sure denies their validity, as we have seen in so many cases, even after he has learned of their existence by means of the interpretation. The situation is then repeated which we first encountered in the interpretation of the tongue slip "hiccough" where the toastmaster was outraged and assured us that neither then nor ever before had he been conscious of disrespectful impulse toward his chief. This is repeated with every interpretation of a markedly distorted dream, and for that reason attains a significance for our conception. We are now prepared to conclude that there are processes and tendencies in the psychic life of which one knows nothing at all, has known nothing for some time, might, in fact, perhaps never have known anything. The unconscious thus receives a new meaning for us; the idea of "at present" or "at a specific time" disappears from its conception, for it can also mean permanently unconscious, not merely latent at the time. Obviously we shall have to learn more of this at another session.

TENTH LECTURE

THE DREAM

Symbolism in the Dream

WE have discovered that the distortion of dreams, a disturbing element in our work of understanding them, is the result of a censorious activity which is directed against the unacceptable of the unconscious wish-impulses. But, of course, we have not maintained that censorship is the only factor which is to blame for the dream distortion, and we may actually make the discovery in a further study of the dream that other items play a part in this result. That is, even if the dream censorship were eliminated we might not be in a position to understand the dreams; the actual dream still might not be identical with the latent dream thought.

This other item which makes the dream unintelligible, this new addition to dream distortion, we discover by considering a gap in our technique. I have already admitted that for certain elements of the dream, no associations really occur to the person being analyzed. This does not happen so often as the dreamers maintain; in many cases the association can be forced by persistence. But still there are certain instances in which no association is forthcoming, or if forced does not furnish what we expected. When this happens in the course of a psychoanalytic treatment, then a particular meaning may be attached thereto, with which we have nothing to do here. It also occurs, however, in the interpretation of the dreams of a normal person or in interpreting one's own dreams. Once a person is convinced that in these cases no amount of forcing of associations will avail, he will finally make the discovery that the unwished-for contingency occurs regularly in certain dream elements, and he will begin to recognize a new order of things there, where at first he believed he had come across a peculiar exception to our technique.

In this way we are tempted to interpret these silent dream elements ourselves, to undertake their translation by the means at hand. The fact that every time we trust to this substitution we obtain a satisfactory meaning is forced upon us; until we resolve upon this decision the dream remains meaningless, its continuity is broken. The accumulation of many similar cases tends to give the necessary certainty to our first timid attempts.

I am expounding all this in rather a schematic manner, but this is permissible for purposes of instruction, and I am not trying to misstate, but only to simplify matters.

In this manner we derive constant translations for a whole series of dream elements just as constant translations are found in our popular dream books for all the things we dream. But do not forget that in our association technique we never discover constant substitutes for the dream elements.

You will say at once that this road to interpretation appears far more uncertain and open to objection than the former methods of free association. But a further fact is to be taken into consideration. After one has gathered a sufficient number of such constant substitutes empirically, he will say that of his own knowledge he should actually have denied that these items of dream interpretation could really be understood without the associations of the dreamer. The facts that force us to recognize their meaning will appear in the second half of our analysis.

We call such a constant relationship between a dream element and its interpretation symbolic. The dream element is itself a symbol of the unconscious dream thought. You will remember that previously, when we were investigating the relationship between dream elements and their actuality, I drew three distinctions, viz., that of the part of the whole, that of the allusion, and that of the imagery. I then announced that there was a fourth, but did not name it. This fourth is the symbolic relationship here introduced. Very interesting discussions center about this, and we will now consider them before we express our own particular observations on symbolism. Symbolism is perhaps the most noteworthy chapter of dream study.

In the first place, since symbols are permanent or constant translations, they realize, in a certain measure, the ideal of ancient as well as popular dream interpretation, an ideal which by means of our technique we had left behind. They permit us in certain cases to interpret a dream without questioning the dreamer who, aside from this, has no explanation for the symbol. If the interpreter is acquainted with the customary dream symbols and, in addition, with the dreamer himself, the conditions under which the latter lives and the impressions he received before having the dream, it is often possible to interpret a dream without further information – to translate it "right off the bat." Such a trick flatters the interpreter and impresses the dreamer; it stands out as a pleasurable incident in the usual arduous course of cross-examining the dreamer. But do not be misled. It is not our function to perform tricks. Interpretation based on a knowledge of symbols is not a technique that can replace the associative technique, or even compare with it. It is a supplement to the associative technique, and furnishes the latter merely with transplanted, usable results. But as regards familiarity with the dreamer's psychic situation, you must consider the fact that you are not limited to interpreting the dreams of acquaintances; that as a rule you are not acquainted with the daily occurrences which act as the stimuli for the dreams, and that the associations of the subject furnish you with a knowledge of that very thing we call the psychic situation.

Furthermore, it is very extraordinary, particularly in view of circumstances to be mentioned later, that the most vehement opposition has been voiced against the existence of the symbolic relationship between the dream and the unconscious. Even persons of judgment and position, who have otherwise made great progress in psychoanalysis, have discontinued their support at this point. This is the more remarkable since, in the first place, symbolism is neither peculiar to the dream nor characteristic of it, and since in the second place, symbolism in the dream was not discovered through psychoanalysis, although the latter is not poor otherwise in making startling discoveries. The discoverer of dream symbolism, if we insist on a discovery in modern times, was the philosopher K. A. Scherner (1861). Psychoanalysis affirmed Scherner's discovery and modified it considerably.

Now you will want to know something of the nature of dream symbolism, and to hear some examples. I shall gladly impart to you what I know, but I admit that our knowledge is not so complete as we could desire it to be.

The nature of the symbol relationship is a comparison, but not any desired comparison. One suspects a special prerequisite for this comparison, but is unable to say what it is. Not everything to which we are able to compare an object or an occurrence occurs in the dream as its symbol; on the other hand, the dream does not symbolize anything we may choose, but only specific elements of the dream thought. There are limitations on both sides. It must be admitted that the idea of the symbol cannot be sharply delimited at all times – it mingles with the substitution, dramatization, etc., even approaches the allusion. In one series of symbols the basic comparison is apparent to the senses. On the other hand, there are other symbols which raise the question of where the similarity, the "something intermediate" of this suspected comparison is to be sought. We may discover it by more careful consideration, or it may remain hidden to us. Furthermore, it is extraordinary, if the symbol is a comparison, that this comparison is not revealed by the association, that the dreamer is not acquainted with the comparison, that he makes use of it without knowing of its existence. Indeed, the dreamer does not even care to admit the validity of this comparison when it is pointed out to him. So you see, a symbolic relationship is a comparison of a very special kind, the origin of which is not yet clearly understood by us. Perhaps later we may find references to this unknown factor.

The number of things that find symbolic representation in the dream is not great – the human body as a whole, parents, children, brothers and sisters, birth, death, nakedness and a few others. The only typical, that is, regular representation of the human person as a whole is in the form of a house, as was recognized by Scherner who, indeed, wished to credit this symbol with an overwhelming significance which it does not deserve. It occurs in dreams that a person, now lustful, now frightened, climbs down the fronts of houses. Those with entirely smooth walls are men; but those which are provided with projections and balconies to which one can hold on, are women. Parents appear in the dream as king and queen, or other persons highly respected. The dream in this instance is very pious. It treats children, and brothers and sisters, less tenderly; they are symbolized as little animals or vermin. Birth is almost regularly represented by some reference to water; either one plunges into the water or climbs out of it, or rescues someone from the water, or is himself rescued from it, i.e., there is a mother-relation to the person. Death is replaced in the dream by taking a journey, riding in a train; being dead, by various darksome, timid suggestions; nakedness, by clothes and uniforms. You see here how the lines between symbolic and suggestive representation merge one into another.

In contrast to the paucity of this enumeration, it is a striking fact that the objects and subject matter of another sphere are represented by an extraordinarily rich symbolism. This is the sphere of the sexual life, the genitals, the sex processes and sexual intercourse. The great majority of symbols in the dream are sex symbols. A remarkable disproportion results from this fact. The designated subject matters are few, their symbols extraordinarily profuse, so that each of these objects can be expressed by any number of symbols of almost equal value. In the interpretation something is disclosed that arouses universal objection. The symbol interpretations, in contrast to the many-sidedness of the dream representations, are very monotonous – this displeases all who deal with them; but what is one to do?

Since this is the first time in these lectures that we speak of the sexual life, I must tell you the manner in which I intend to handle this theme. Psychoanalysis sees no reason for hiding matters or treating them by innuendo, finds no necessity of being ashamed of dealing with this important subject, believes it is proper and decent to call everything by its correct name, and hopes most effectively in this manner to ward off disturbing or salacious thoughts. The fact that I am talking before a mixed audience can make no difference on this point. Just as there is no special knowledge either for the Delphic oracle or for flappers, so the ladies present among you have, by their appearance in this lecture hall, made it clear that they wish to be considered on the same basis as the men.

The dream has a number of representations for the male genital that may be called symbolic, and in which the similarity of the comparison is, for the most part, very enlightening. In the first place, the holy figure 3 is a symbolical substitute for the entire male genital. The more conspicuous and more interesting part of the genital to both sexes, the male organ, has symbolical substitute in objects of like form, those which are long and upright, such as sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees, etc. It is also symbolized by objects that have the characteristic, in common with it, of penetration into the body and consequent injury, hence pointed weapons of every type, knives, daggers, lances, swords, and in the same manner firearms, guns, pistols and the revolver, which is so suitable because of its shape. In the troubled dream of the young girl, pursuit by a man with a knife or a firearm plays a big role. This, probably the most frequent dream symbolism, is easily translatable. Easily comprehensible, too, is the substitution for the male member of objects out of which water flows: faucets, water cans, fountains, as well as its representation by other objects that have the power of elongation, such as hanging lamps, collapsible pencils, etc. That pencils, quills, nail files, hammers and other instruments are undoubtedly male symbols is a fact connected with a conception of the organ, which likewise is not far to seek.

The extraordinary characteristic of the member of being able to raise itself against the force of gravity, one of the phenomena of erection, leads to symbolic representations by balloons, aeroplanes, and more recently, Zeppelins. The dream has another far more expressive way of symbolizing erection. It makes the sex organ the essential part of the whole person and pictures the person himself as flying. Do not feel disturbed because the dreams of flying, often so beautiful, and which we all have had, must be interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement, as erection dreams. P. Federn, among the psychoanalytical students, has confirmed this interpretation beyond any doubt, and even Mourly Vold, much praised for his sobriety, who carried on his dream experiments with artificial positions of the arms and legs, and who was really opposed to psychoanalysis – perhaps knew nothing about psychoanalysis – has come to the same conclusion as a result of his research. It is no objection to this conclusion that women may have the same dreams of flying. Remember that our dreams act as wish-fulfillments, and that the wish to be a man is often present in women, consciously or unconsciously. And the fact that it is possible for a woman to realize this wish by the same sensation as a man does, will not mislead anyone acquainted with anatomy. There is a small organ in the genitals of a woman similar to that of the male, and this small organ, the clitoris, even in childhood, and in the years before sexual intercourse, plays the same role as does the large organ of the male.

To the less comprehensible male sex-symbols belong certain reptiles and fish, notably the famous symbol of the snake. Why hats and cloaks should have been turned to the same use is certainly difficult to discover, but their symbolic meaning leaves no room for doubt. And finally the question may be raised whether possibly the substitution of some other member as a representation for the male organ may not be regarded as symbolic. I believe that one is forced to this conclusion by the context and by the female counterparts.

The female genital is symbolically represented by all those objects which share its peculiarity of enclosing a space capable of being filled by something – viz., by pits, caves, and hollows, by pitchers and bottles, by boxes and trunks, jars, cases, pockets, etc. The ship, too, belongs in this category. Many symbols represent the womb of the mother rather than the female genital, as wardrobes, stoves, and primarily a room. The room-symbolism is related to the house-symbol, doors and entrances again become symbolic of the genital opening. But materials, too, are symbols of the woman —wood, paper, and objects that are made of these materials, such as tables and books. Of animals, at least the snail and mussel are unmistakably recognizable as symbols for the female; of parts of the body the mouth takes the place of the genital opening, while churches and chapels are structural symbolisms. As you see, all of these symbols are not equally comprehensible.

The breasts must be included in the genitals, and like the larger hemispheres of the female body are represented by apples, peaches and fruits in general. The pubic hair growth of both sexes appears in the dream as woods and bushes. The complicated topography of the female genitals accounts for the fact that they are often represented as scenes with cliffs, woods and water, while the imposing mechanism of the male sex apparatus leads to the use of all manner of very complicated machinery, difficult to describe.

A noteworthy symbol of the female genital is also the jewel-casket; jewels and treasure are also representatives of the beloved person in the dream; sweets frequently occur as representatives of sexual delights. The satisfaction in one's own genital is suggested by all types of play, in which may be included piano-playing. Exquisite symbolic representations of onanism are sliding and coasting as well as tearing off a branch. A particularly remarkable dream symbol is that of having one'steeth fall out, or having them pulled. Certainly its most immediate interpretation is castration as a punishment for onanism. Special representations for the relations of the sexes are less numerous in the dream than we might have expected from the foregoing. Rhythmic activities, such as dancing, riding and climbing may be mentioned, also harrowing experiences, such as being run over. One may include certain manual activities, and, of course, being threatened with weapons.

You must not imagine that either the use or the translation of these symbols is entirely simple. All manner of unexpected things are continually happening. For example, it seems hardly believable that in these symbolic representations the sex differences are not always sharply distinguished. Many symbols represent a genital in general, regardless of whether male or female, e.g., the little child, the small son or daughter. It sometimes occurs that a predominantly male symbol is used for a female genital, or vice versa. This is not understood until one has acquired an insight into the development of the sexual representations of mankind. In many instances this double meaning of symbols may be only apparent; the most striking of the symbols, such as weapons, pockets and boxes are excluded from this bisexual usage.

I should now like to give a summary, from the point of view of the symbols rather than of the thing represented, of the field out of which the sex symbols are for the most part taken, and then to make a few remarks about the symbols which have points in common that are not understood. An obscure symbol of this type is the hat, perhaps headdress on the whole, and is usually employed as a male representation, though at times as a female. In the same way the cloak represents a man, perhaps not always the genital aspect. You are at liberty to ask, why? The cravat, which is suspended and is not worn by women, is an unmistakable male symbol. White laundry, all linen, in fact, is female. Dresses, uniforms are, as we have already seen, substitutes for nakedness, for body-formation; the shoe or slipper is a female genital. Tables and wood have already been mentioned as puzzling but undoubtedly female symbols. Ladders, ascents, steps in relation to their mounting, are certainly symbols of sexual intercourse. On closer consideration we see that they have the rhythm of walking as a common characteristic; perhaps, too, the heightening of excitement and the shortening of the breath, the higher one mounts.

We have already spoken of natural scenery as a representation of the female genitals. Mountains and cliffs are symbols of the male organ; the garden a frequent symbol of the female genitals. Fruit does not stand for the child, but for the breasts. Wild animals signify sensually aroused persons, or further, base impulses, passions. Blossoms and flowers represent the female genitals, or more particularly, virginity. Do not forget that the blossoms are really the genitals of the plants.

We already know the room as a symbol. The representation may be extended in that the windows, entrances and exits of the room take on the meaning of the body openings. Whether the room is open or closed is a part of this symbolism, and the key that opens it is an unmistakable male symbol.

This is the material of dream symbolism. It is not complete and might be deepened as well as extended. But I am of the opinion it will seem more than enough to you, perhaps will make you reluctant. You will ask, "Do I really live in the midst of sex symbols? Are all the objects that surround me, all the clothes I put on, all the things that I touch, always sex symbols, and nothing else?" There really are sufficient grounds for such questions, and the first is, "Where, in fact, are we to find the meaning of these dream symbols if the dreamer himself can give no information concerning them, or at best can give only incomplete information?"

My answer is: "From many widely different sources, from fairy tales and myths, jokes and farces, from folklore, that is, the knowledge of the customs, usages, sayings and songs of peoples, from the poetic and vulgar language. Everywhere we find the same symbolism and in many of these instances we understand them without further information. If we follow up each of these sources separately we shall find so many parallels to the dream symbolism that we must believe in the correctness of our interpretations."

The human body, we have said, is, according to Scherner, frequently symbolized in the dream by the house. Continuing this representation, the windows, doors and entrances are the entrances into the body cavities, the facades are smooth or provided with balconies and projections to which to hold. The same symbolism is to be found in our daily speech when we greet a good friend as "old house" or when we say of someone, "We'll hit him in the belfry," or maintain of another that he's not quite right in the upper story. In anatomy the body openings are sometimes called the body-portals.

The fact that we meet our parents in the dream as imperial or royal persons is at first surprising. But it has its parallel in the fairy tale. Doesn't it begin to dawn upon us that the many fairy tales which begin "Once upon a time there was a king and a queen" intend nothing else than, "Once there was a father and a mother?" In our families we refer to our children as princes, the eldest as the crown-prince. The king usually calls himself the father of the country. We playfully designate little children as worms, and say, sympathetically, "poor little worm."

Let us return to the symbolism of the house. When we use the projections of the house to hold ourselves on to in the dream, are we not reminded of the familiar colloquialism about persons with well-developed breasts: "She has something to hold onto"? The folk express this in still another way when it says, "there's lots of wood in front of her house"; as though it wished to come to the aid of our interpretation that wood is a feminine, maternal symbol.

In addition to wood there are others. We might not understand how this material has come to be a substitute for the maternal, the feminine. Here our comparison of languages may be helpful. The German word Holz (wood) is said to be from the same stem as the Greek word, νλη, which means stuff, raw material. This is an example of the case, not entirely unusual, where a general word for material finally is exclusively used for some special material. There is an island in the ocean, known by the name of Madeira. The Portuguese gave it this name at the time of its discovery because it was at that time entirely covered with forests, for in the language of the Portuguese, Madeira means wood. You will recognize, however, that Madeira, is nothing else than the slightly changed Latin word materia which again has the general meaning of material Material is derived from mater, mother. The material out of which something is made, is at the same time its mother-part. In the symbolic use of wood for woman, mother, this ancient conception still lives.

Birth is regularly expressed in dreams by some connection with water; one plunges into the water, or comes out of the water, which means one gives birth to, or is born. Now let us not forget that this symbol may refer in two ways to the truths of evolutionary history. Not alone have all land-mammals, including the ancestors of man, developed out of water animals – this is the ultimate fact – but every single mammal, every human being, lived the first part of his existence in the water – namely, lived in the body of his mother as an embryo in the amniotic fluid and came out of the water at the time of his birth. I do not wish to maintain that the dreamer knows this, on the contrary I hold that he does not have to know. The dreamer very likely knows some things because of the fact that he was told about them in his childhood, and for that very reason I maintain that this knowledge has played no part in the construction of his symbols. He was told in childhood that the stork brought him – but where did it get him? Out of a lake, out of the well – again, out of the water. One of my patients to whom such information had been given, a little count, disappeared for a whole afternoon. Finally he was discovered lying at the edge of the palace lake, his little face bent above the water and earnestly peering into it to see if he could not see the little children at the bottom.

In the myths of the birth of the hero, which O. Rank submitted to comparative examination, – the oldest is that of King Sargon of Agade, about 2800 B.C. – exposure in the water and rescue from water play a predominating role. Rank has recognized that these are representations of birth, analogous to those customary in dreams. When a person in his dream rescues another from the water, the latter becomes his mother, or just plainly mother; in the myth a person who rescues a child out of the water professes herself as the real mother of the child. In a well-known joke the intelligent Jewish boy is asked who was the mother of Moses. He answered without hesitation, the Princess. But no, he is told, she only took him out of the water. "That's what she says," is his reply, and thereby he shows that he has found the correct interpretation of the myth.

Leaving on a trip represents death in the dream. Likewise it is the custom in the nursery when a child asks where someone who has died, and whom he misses, may be, to say to him that the absent one has taken a trip. Again I should like to deny the truth of the belief that the dream symbol originates in this evasion used for the benefit of children. The poet makes use of the same symbol when he speaks of the Hereafter as "that undiscovered bourne from which no traveler returns." Even in everyday speech it is customary to refer to the last journey. Every person acquainted with ancient rite knows how seriously, for example, the Egyptians considered the portrayal of a journey to the land of the dead. There still exist many copies of the "death book" which was given to the mummy for this journey as a sort of Baedeker. Since the burial places have been separated from the living quarters, the last journey of the dead person has become a reality.

In the same manner the genital symbolism is just as little peculiar to the dream alone. Every one of you has perhaps at some time or other been so unkind as to call some woman an "old casket" without perhaps being aware that he was using a genital symbol. In the New Testament one may read "Woman is a weak vessel." The Holy Scriptures of the Jews, so nearly poetic in their style, are filled with sex-symbolic expressions which have not always been correctly understood, and the true construction of which, in the Song of Songs, for example, has led to many misunderstandings. In the later Hebraic literature the representation of woman as a house, the door taking the place of the sex opening, is very widespread. The man complains, for instance, when he discovers a lack of virginity, that he has found the door open. The symbol of the table for woman is also known to this literature. The woman says of her husband, "I set the table for him, but he upset it." Lame children are supposed to result from the fact that the man has overturned the table. I take these examples from a work by L. Levy of Brünn, The Sexual Symbolism of the Bible and the Talmud.

That ships, too, represent women in dreams is a belief derived from the etymologists, who maintain "ship" was originally the name of an earthen vessel and is the same word as Schaff (to create). The Greek myth of Periander of Corinth and his wife Melissa is proof that the stove or oven is a woman, and a womb. When, according to Herodotus, the tyrant entreated the shade of his beloved wife, whom, however, he had murdered in a fit of jealousy, for some sign of its identity, the deceased identified herself by the reminder that he, Periander, had thrust his bread into a cold oven, as a disguise for an occurrence that could have been known to no other person. In the Anthropophyteia published by F. S. Krauss, an indispensable source book for everything that has to do with the sex life of nations, we read that in a certain German region it is commonly said of a woman who has just been delivered of a child, "Her oven has caved in." The making of a fire and everything connected therewith is filled through and through with sex symbolism. The flame is always the male genital, the fireplace, the hearth, is the womb of the woman.

If you have often wondered why it is that landscapes are so often used to represent the female genitals in the dream, then let the mythologist teach you the role Mother Earth has played in the symbolisms and cults of ancient times. You may be tempted to say that a room represents a woman in the dream because of the German colloquialism which uses the term Frauenzimmer instead of Frau, in other words, it substitutes for the human person the idea of that room that is set aside for her exclusive use. In like manner we speak of the Sublime Porte, and mean the Sultan and his government; furthermore, the name of the ancient Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh, means nothing other than "great court room." (In the ancient Orient the court yards between the double gates of the town were the gathering places of the people, in the same manner as the market place was in the classical world.) What I mean is, this derivation is far too superficial. It seems more probable to me that the room, as the space surrounding man, came to be the symbol of woman. We have seen that the house is used in such a representation; from mythology and poetry we may take the city, fortress, palace, citadel, as further symbols of woman. The question may easily be decided by the dreams of those persons who do not speak German and do not understand it. In the last few years my patients have been predominantly foreign-language speaking, and I think I can recall that in their dreams as well the room represents woman, even where they had no analogous usages in their languages. There are still other signs which show that the symbolization is not limited by the bounds of language, a fact that even the old dream investigator, Schubert (1862) maintained. Since none of my dreamers were totally ignorant of German I must leave this differentiation to those psychoanalysts who can gather examples in other lands where the people speak but one language.

Among the symbol-representations of the male genital there is scarcely one that does not recur in jokes or in vulgar or poetical usage, especially among the old classical poets. Not alone do those symbols commonly met with in dreams appeal here, but also new ones, e.g., the working materials of various performances, foremost of which is the incantation. Furthermore, we approach in the symbolic representation of the male a very extended and much discussed province, which we shall avoid for economic reasons. I should like to make a few remarks, however, about one of the unclassified symbols – the figure 3. Whether or not this figure derives its holiness from its symbolic meaning may remain undecided. But it appears certain that many objects which occur in nature as three-part things derive their use as coats-of-arms and emblems from such symbolic meaning, e.g., the clover, likewise the three-part French lily, (fleur-de-lys), and the extraordinary coats-of-arms of two such widely separated islands as Sicily and the Isle of Man, where the Triskeles (three partly bended knees, emerging from a central point) are merely said to be the portrayal in a different form of the male genitals. Copies of the male member were used in antiquity as the most powerful charms (Apotropaea) against evil influences, and this is connected with the fact that the lucky amulets of our own time may one and all be recognized as genital or sex-symbols. Let us study such a collection, worn in the form of little silver pendants: the four-leaf clover, a pig, a mushroom, a horse-shoe, a ladder, a chimney-sweep. The four-leaf clover, it seems, has usurped the place of the three-leaf clover, which is really more suitable as a symbol; the pig is an ancient symbol of fertility; the mushroom is an unquestionable penis symbol – there are mushrooms that derive their systematic names from their unmistakable similarity to the male member (Phallus impudicus); the horseshoe recalls the contour of the female genital opening; and the chimney sweep who carries a ladder belongs in this company because he carries on that trade with which the sex-intercourse is vulgarly compared (cf. the Anthropophyteia). We have already become acquainted with his ladder as a sex symbol in the dream; the German usage is helpful here, it shows us how the verb "to mount"[30 - "steigen."] is made use of in an exquisite sexual sense. We use the expressions "to run after women," which literally translated would be "to climb after women," and "an old climber."[31 - "den Frauen nachsteigen," and "ein alter Steiger."] In French, where "step" is "la marche" we find that the analogous expression for a man about town is "un vieux marcheur." It is apparently not unknown in this connection that the sexual intercourse of many of the larger animals requires a mounting, a climbing upon the female.