Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/61

 A SPERMATOZOA PHANTASY OF AN EPILEPTIC 53

A return to the mother's womb is symbolised by his visit to his mother's grave, which therefore precedes that to his father's body: one might say, the patient in his phantasy goes the same road in an opposite direction to that which he once took when he entered into hfe. In agreement with this there also occurs a seeking and finding the mother in the dreams of spermatozoa quoted by Silberer. It is worth noting that there is a great simiJ- arity between the events accompanying and subsequent to the patient's burial and Agatha's last disgusting dream. We find a similar agreement between the patient's remark that clay comes out of his penis and symbols of sperm in the dreams Silberer mentions. On the other hand one misses in Silberer's dreams the wish to be born again, which in the case I have observed is mani- festly of more importance than the death wish, hi the present case death is only a means to a new Ufe, just as it appears to be in the dreams analysed by Hedwig Schulze, while Silberer's Agatha did not even wish to be conceived. We can explain this difference: in a case like Agatha's narcissism wins and diere- fore one longs for non-existence, in other cases a longing to return newly born into the world springs from the allo-erotism that is triumphing.

The patient does not like to end his present life without having experienced the realisation of a wish unfulfilled during liis military career, and so he is promoted to company sergeant-major in his phantasy. Also he is buried to the accompaniment of music, which in Holland is only done for officers. Music here' is also a symbol of life, for he who makes music makes life (i.e. noise); further the patient produces music by means of electricity which is itself ' \

usually a symbol of procreation. When he is afraid that his wife will touch the wire it coincides very well with her account that he had only cohabited with her once in one or two months, and then practised coitus interruptus. (I only learned later that his marriage was an unhappy one.)

The fact that in reality he lost all his semen stimulated in his phantasy the opposite with regard to his father's semen. He identified himself with his father. We may deduce this from the fact that not only he himself was born from his father's semen, but also his two little sons from his own semen. The chamber-pot into which he fell obviously symbolised the female sex organ, and likewise probably the coffin in which he was buried represents the