may be mentioned the flying machine, utilisation of which is justified
by its relation to flying as well as occasionally by its form. To play
with a little child or to beat a little one is often the dream’s
representation of onanism. A number of other symbols, in part not
sufficiently verified, are given by Stekel,[114] who illustrates them
with examples. Right and left, according to him, are to be conceived in
the dream in an ethical sense. “The right way always signifies the road
to righteousness, the left the one to crime. Thus the left may signify
homosexuality, incest, and perversion, while the right signifies
marriage, relations with a prostitute, &c. The meaning is always
determined by the individual moral viewpoint of the dreamer” (_l.c._, p.
466). Relatives in the dream generally play the rôle of genitals (p.
473). Not to be able to catch up with a wagon is interpreted by Stekel
as regret not to be able to come up to a difference in age (p. 479).
Baggage with which one travels is the burden of sin by which one is
oppressed (_ibid._). Also numbers, which frequently occur in the dream,
are assigned by Stekel a fixed symbolical meaning, but these
interpretations seem neither sufficiently verified nor of general
validity, although the interpretation in individual cases can generally
be recognised as probable. In a recently published book by W. Stekel,
_Die Sprache des Traumes_, which I was unable to utilise, there is a
list (p. 72) of the most common sexual symbols, the object of which is
to prove that all sexual symbols can be bisexually used. He states: “Is
there a symbol which (if in any way permitted by the phantasy) may not
be used simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense!” To be
sure the clause in parentheses takes away much of the absoluteness of
this assertion, for this is not at all permitted by the phantasy. I do
not, however, think it superfluous to state that in my experience
Stekel’s general statement has to give way to the recognition of a
greater manifoldness. Besides those symbols, which are just as frequent
for the male as for the female genitals, there are others which
preponderately, or almost exclusively, designate one of the sexes, and
there are still others of which only the male or only the female
signification is known. To use long, firm objects and weapons as symbols
of the female genitals, or hollow objects (chests, boxes, pouches, &c.),
as symbols of the male genitals, is indeed not allowed by the fancy.
It is true that the tendency of the dream and the unconscious fancy to
utilise the sexual symbol bisexually betrays an archaic trend, for in
childhood a difference in the genitals is unknown, and the same genitals
are attributed to both sexes.
These very incomplete suggestions may suffice to stimulate others to
make a more careful collection.[CW]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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