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 generalize 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. -

* In the U.S.A. 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.- TR.

*(2) "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.")

*(3) Cf. "the cloaca theory" in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex.

*(4) See p. 123-124 above.

*(5) Cf. in the Zentralblatt fur 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."

*(6) Cf. Pfister's works on cryptography and picture-puzzles. -

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 (p. 473). 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 recognize 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 recognized as plausible. We have, at all events, abundant confirmation that the figure three is a symbol of the male genitals. One of Stekel's generalizations 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