hology_ ("Nocturnal
Emissions," Jan., 1904): "Legs and breasts often figured
prominently in these dreams, the other sexual parts, however,
very seldom, and then they turned out to be male organs in most
cases. There were but two instances of copulation dreamt. Girls
and young women were the, usual _dramatis personae_, and,
curiously enough, often the aggressors. Sometimes the face or
faces were well known; sometimes, only once seen; sometimes,
entirely unknown. The orgasm occurs at the most erotic part of
the dream, the physical and psychical running parallel. This most
erotic or suggestive part of the dream was very often quite an
innocent looking incident enough. As, for example: while passing
a strange young woman, overtaken on the street, she calls after
me some question. At first, I pay no heed, but when she calls
again, I hesitate whether to turn back and answer or
not--emission. Again, walking beside a young woman, she said,
'Shall I take your arm?' I offered it, and she took it, entwining
her arm around it, and raising it high--emission. I could feel
stronger erection as she asked the question. Sometimes, a word
was enough; sometimes, a gesture. Once emission took place on my
noticing the young woman's diminished finger-nails. Another
example of fetichism was my being curiously attracted in a dream
by the pretty embroidered figure on a little girl's dress. As an
illustration of the strange metamorphoses that occur in dreams, I
one night, in my dream (I had been observing partridges in the
summer) fell in love with a partridge, which changed under my
caresses to a beautiful girl, who yet retained an indescribable
wild-bird innocence, grace, and charm--a sort of Undina!"

These experiences may be regarded as fairly typical of the erotic
dreams of healthy and chaste young men. The bird, for instance,
that changes into a woman while retaining some elements of the
bird, has been encountered in erotic dreams by other young men.
It is indeed remarkable that, as De Gubernatis observes, "the
bird is a well-known phallic symbol," while Maeder finds
("Interpretations de Quelques Reves," _Archives de Psychologie_,
April, 1907) that birds have a sexual significance both in life
and in dreams. The appearance of male organs in the dream-woman
is doubtless due to the dreamer's grea