Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/58

 A SPERMATOZOA PHANTASY OF AN EPILEPTIC

BY F. p. MULLER

LEIDEN-OEGSTGEEST, HOLLAND

About nine years ago Herbert Silberer' published an article on dreams of spermatozoa in which he expressed the opinion that other investigators would come across representations of sperma- tozoa in many dreams, and he further added that it would be desirable for them to examine these cases carefully from the point of view of death wishes, in order to find out whether this con- nection which he had observed was the rule. Hedwig Schulze^ has since confirmed this connection of dreams of spermatozoa with death wishes. She further discovered that the wish to be born again lay behind the wish to be dead. Silberer considered his case parti- cularly worthy of consideration because it very clearly proved to him the correctness of a new kind of observation which the majority of people would accept with incredulity. Many persons who have only a little knowledge of psycho-analysis will be inclined to be mistrustful of a phantasy concerning the body of the father (much more so than of one concerning the mother's body), and we can imagine that the opponents will not admit the striking evidence upon which the correctness of Silberer's observation is said to be based, because it concerns the interpretation of symbols which one might be always justified in doubting. On account of this I am particularly pleased to be able to publish the following case because without any interpretation it demonstrates in an indisputable manner the actual occurrence of the phantasy of being a spermatozoon in the father's body, and coupled with it thoughts of death and re-birth.

The man was an epileptic who was not being treated psycho- analytically, and there were no grounds for believing that he had

' 'Spermatozoentramne', yahrb. f. psychoanalyt. ». psychopath. For- schttwgen^ Bd. VI, S. 141 ff.

' 'Ein Spermatozoentraum im Zusammenhang mit Todeswiinschen ', IntematioHale ZHtsckrift fur Psychoanalyse, Bd. II, S. 34.

50