Moreover, he is the material with which the analysis (synthesis) is made. For it is a question of the success of the treatment. The legs in the dream recall an impression of the previous evening. He met a lady at a dancing lesson whom he wished to conquer; he pressed her to him so closely that she once cried out. After he had stopped pressing against her legs, he felt her firm responding pressure against his lower thighs as far as just above his knees, at the place 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 masculine towards the woman. If it will work with the woman, the treatment will also work. Feeling and becoming aware of himself in the region of his knees refers to masturbation, and corresponds to his fatigue of the previous day.... The rendezvous had actually been set for half-past eleven. His wish to oversleep and to remain with his usual sexual objects (that is, with masturbation) corresponds with his resistance. [1] It is only of late that I have learned to value the significance of fancies and unconscious thoughts about life in the womb. They contain the explanation of the curious fear 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 nothing but a projection into the future of this mysterious life before birth. _The act of birth, moreover, is the first experience with fear, and is thus the source and model of the emotion of fear._ [2] Cf. _Zentralblatt fuer psychoanalyse_, I. [3] Or chapel--vagina. [4] Symbol of coitus. [5] Mons veneris. [6] Crines pubis. [7] Demons in cloaks and capucines are, according to the explanation of a man versed in the subject, of a phallic nature. [8] The two halves of the scrotum. [9] See _Zentralblatt fuer Psychoanalyse_, vol. i., p. 2. VI THE WISH IN DREAMS That the dream should be nothing but a wish-fulfillment surely seemed strange to us all--and that not alone because of the contradictions offered by the anxiety dream.