Page:Freud - A general introduction to psychoanalysis.djvu/176

 160 Introduction to Psychoanalysis

her belief that menstrual bleeding results from sexual inter- course with a man, a bit of sexual theory believed by many im- mature girls.

(&). "She sees a deep hole in the vineyard which she knows was made by pulling out a tree." Herewith her remark that f( she misses the tree." She means that she did not see the tree in the dream, but the same phrase serves to express another thought which symbolic interpretation makes completely certain. The dream deals with another bit of the infantile sex theory, namely, with the belief that girls originally had the same genitals as boys and that the later conformation resulted from castration (pulling out of a tree).

(c). "She is standing in front of the drawer of her writing table, with which she is so familiar that she knmvs immediately if anybody has been through it." The writing-table drawer, like every drawer, chest, or box, stands for the female genital. She knows that one can recognize from the genital the signs of sexual intercourse (and, as she thinks, even of any contact at all) and she has long been afraid of such a conviction. I believe that the accent in all these dreams is to be laid upon the idea of knowing. She is reminded of the time of her childish sexual investigations, the results of which made her quite proud at the time.

5. Again a little bit of symbolism. But this time I must first describe the psychic situation in a short preface. A man who spent the night with a woman describes his partner as one of those motherly natures whose desire for a child irresistibly breaks through during intercourse. The circumstances of their meeting, however, necessitated a precaution whereby the fertiliz- ing discharge of semen is kept away from the womb. Upon awaking after this night, the woman tells the following dream:

" An officer with a red cap follows her on the street. She flees from him, runs up the staircase, and he follows after her. Breathlessly she reaches her apartment and slams and locks the. door behind her. He remains outside and as she looks through a peephole she sees him sitting outside on a bench and weeping."

You undoubtedly recognize in the pursuit by an officer with a red cap, and the breathless stair climbing, the representation of the sexual act. The fact that the dreamer locks herself in against the pursuer may serve as an example of that inversion