This material, similar in its character and origin consisting of
sensations of motion, is now used for the representation of the most
manifold dream thoughts. Dreams of flying, for the most part
characterised by delight, require the most widely different
interpretations—altogether special interpretations in the case of some
persons, and even interpretations of a typical nature in that of others.
One of my patients was in the habit of dreaming very often that she was
suspended above the street at a certain height, without touching the
ground. She had grown only to a very small stature, and shunned every
kind of contamination which accompanies intercourse with human beings.
Her dream of suspension fulfilled both of her wishes, by raising her
feet from the ground and by allowing her head to tower in the upper
regions. In the case of other female dreamers the dream of flying had
the significance of a longing: If I were a little bird; others thus
become angels at night because they have missed being called that by
day. The intimate connection between flying and the idea of a bird makes
it comprehensible that the dream of flying in the case of men usually
has a significance of coarse sensuality.[CK] We shall also not be
surprised to hear that this or that dreamer is always very proud of his
ability to fly.
Dr. Paul Federn (Vienna) has propounded the fascinating theory that a
great many flying dreams are erection dreams, since the remarkable
phenomena of erection which so constantly occupy the human phantasy must
strongly impress upon it a notion of the suspension of gravity (_cf._
the winged phalli of the ancients).
Dreams of falling are most frequently characterised by fear. Their
interpretation, when they occur in women, is subject to no difficulty
because women always accept the symbolic sense of falling, which is a
circumlocution for the indulgence of an erotic temptation. We have not
yet exhausted the infantile sources of the dream of falling; nearly all
children have fallen occasionally, and then been picked up and fondled;
if they fell out of bed at night, they were picked up by their nurse and
taken into her bed.
People who dream often of swimming, of cleaving the waves, with great
enjoyment, &c., have usually been persons who wetted their beds, and
they now repeat in the dream a pleasure which they have long since
learned to forgo. We shall soon learn from one example or another to
what representation the dreams of swimming easily lend themselves.
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