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."

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 parlourmaid 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 Schlemihl he laughed heartily, and told me that during the summer he had read a book by Prevost 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. Schrotter, at the instance of H. Swoboda, produced dreams in deeply hypnotized persons by suggestions which determined a large part of the dream- content. 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 psycho-analytic 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- symbolization or of dream-interpretation. Unfortunately, the value of this important investigation was diminished by the fact that Dr. Schrotter shortly afterwards committed suicide. Of his dream-experiments be gave us only a preliminary report in the Zentralblatt fur Psychoanalyse.

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. 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.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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