Now I have analysed this with the aid of the following process of reasoning: If I say that the stairs are a symbol for the sexual act, whence do I obtain the right to regard the mother, the sister, and the child as concrete; that is, as not symbolic? If, on the strength of the claim that dream pictures are symbolic, I give to certain of these pictures the value of symbols, what right have I to exempt certain other dream parts from this process? If, therefore, I attach symbolic value to the ascent of the stairs, I must also attach a symbolic value to the pictures that represent the mother, the sister, and the child. Therefore I did not translate the dream, but really analysed it. The result was surprising. I will give you the free associations with the separate dream-parts, word for word, so that you can form your own opinions concerning the material. I should state in advance that the young man had finished his studies at the university a few months previously; that he found the choice of a profession too difficult to make; and that he thereupon became a neurotic. In consequence of this he gave up his work. His neurosis took, among other things, a decidedly homosexual form. The patient's associations with his mother are as follows: "I have not seen her for a long time, a very long time. I really ought to reproach myself for this. It is wrong of me to neglect her so." "Mother," then, stands here for something which is neglected in an inexcusable manner. I said to the patient: "What is that?" And he replied, with considerable embarrassment, "My work." With his sister he associated as follows: "It is years since I have seen her. I long to see her again. Whenever I think of her I recall the time when I took leave of her. I kissed her with real affection; and at that moment I understood for the first time what love for a woman can mean." It is at once clear to the patient that his sister represents "love for woman." With the stairs he has this association: "Climbing upwards; getting to the top; making a success of life; being grown up; being great." The child brings him the ideas: "New born; a revival; a regeneration; to become a new man." One only has to hear this material in order to understand at once that the patient's dream is not so much the fulfilment of infantile desires, as it is the expression of biological duties which he has hitherto neglected because of his infantilism. Biological justice, which is inexorable, sometimes compels the human being to atone in his dreams for the duties which he has neglected in real life.