Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of ViennaFreud, Sigmund
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Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis : $b a course of twenty-eight lectures delivered at the University of Vienna
Freud, Sigmund
Psychoanalysis
Going away on a journey stands in dreams for dying; similarly, it is the
custom in the nursery, when a child asks questions as to the whereabouts
of someone who has died and whom he misses, to tell him that that person
has “gone away.” Here again, I deprecate the idea that the dream-symbol
has its origin in this evasive reply to the child. The poet uses the
same symbol when he speaks of the other side as “the undiscovered
country from whose bourne _no traveller_ returns.” Again, in everyday
speech it is quite usual to speak of the “last journey,” and everyone
who is acquainted with ancient rites knows how seriously the idea of a
journey into the land of the dead was taken, for instance, in ancient
Egyptian belief. In many cases the “Book of the Dead” survives, which
was given to the mummy, like a Baedeker, to take with him on the last
journey. Since burial-grounds have been placed at a distance from the
houses of the living, the last journey of the dead has indeed become a
reality.
Nor does sexual symbolism belong only to dreams. You will all know the
expression “a baggage” as applied contemptuously to a woman, but perhaps
people do not know that they are using a genital symbol. In the New
Testament we read: “The woman is the weaker _vessel_.” The sacred
writings of the Jews, the style of which so closely approaches that of
poetry, are full of expressions symbolic of sex, which have not always
been correctly interpreted and the exegesis of which, e.g. in the Song
of Solomon, has led to many misunderstandings.[37] In later Hebrew
literature the woman is very frequently represented by a house, the door
standing for the genital opening; thus a man complains, when he finds a
woman no longer a virgin, that “he has found the door open.” The symbol
“table” for a woman also occurs in this literature; the woman says of
her husband “I spread the table for him, but he overturned it.” Lame
children are said to owe their infirmity to the fact that the man
“overturned the table.” I quote here from a treatise by L. Levy in
Brünn: _Sexual Symbolism in the Bible and the Talmud_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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