Page:Freud - The interpretation of dreams.djvu/257

Rh 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. 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.

The interpretation of dreams about fire justifies a prohibition of the nursery which forbids children to burn matches in order that they may not wet the bed at night. They too are