What can I do, what can I begin? That shuddering thing; There it crackles within And coils in a ring. It must be poisoned. Here it crawls around. Blissfully I feel as it worms Itself into my soul And kills me finally. All these things are simple, and need no explanation to be intelligible. Somewhat more complicated, but still unmistakable, is the dream of a woman; she sees the triumphal arch of Constantine. A cannon stands before it, to the right of it a bird, to the left a man. A shot flashes out of the tube; the projectile hits her; it goes into her pocket, into her purse. There it remains, and she holds her purse as if something very precious were in it. The image disappears, and she continues to see only the stock of the cannon, and over that Constantine’s motto, “In hoc signo vinces.” These few references to the symbolic nature of dreams are perhaps sufficient. For whomsoever the proof may appear insufficient, and it is certainly insufficient for a beginner, further evidence may be found in the fundamental work of Freud, and in the works of Stekel and Rank which are fuller in certain particulars. We must assume here that the dream symbolism is an established fact, in order to bring to our study a mind suitably prepared for an appreciation of this work. We would not be successful if we, on the contrary, were to be astonished at the idea that an intellectual image can be projected into our conscious psychic activity; an image which apparently obeys such wholly other laws and purposes than those governing the conscious psychic product. _Why are dreams symbolic?_ Every “why” in psychology is divided into two separate questions: first, _for what purpose are dreams symbolic_? We will answer this question only to abandon it at once. Dreams are symbolic in order that they can not be understood; in order that the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain unknown. The question why this is so and not otherwise, leads us out into the far-reaching experiences and trains of thought of the Freudian psychology. Here the second question interests us, viz., _How is it that dreams are symbolic?_ That is to say, from where does this capacity for symbolic representation come, of which we, in our conscious daily life, can discover apparently no traces?