by Stekel, who can refer in this connection to a very
widespread usage of language.
The deeper interpretation of this dream depends upon another dream of
the same night in which the dreamer identifies herself with her brother.
She was a "tomboy," and was always being told that she should have been
born a boy. This identification with the brother shows with special
clearness that "the little one" signifies the genital. The mother
threatened him (her) with castration, which could only be understood as
a punishment for playing with the parts, and the identification,
therefore, shows that she herself had masturbated as a child, though
this fact she now retained only in memory concerning her brother. An
early knowledge of the male genital which she later lost she must have
acquired at that time according to the assertions of this second dream.
Moreover the second dream points to the infantile sexual theory that
girls originate from boys through castration. After I had told her of
this childish belief, she at once confirmed it with an anecdote in which
the boy asks the girl: "Was it cut off?" to which the girl replied, "No,
it's always been so."
The sending away of the little one, of the genital, in the first dream
therefore also refers to the threatened castration. Finally she blames
her mother for not having been born a boy.
That "being run over" symbolizes sexual intercourse would not be evident
from this dream if we were not sure of it from many other sources.
3. Representation of the genital by structures, stairways, and shafts.
(Dream of a young man inhibited by a father complex.)
"He is taking a walk with his father in a place which is surely the
Prater, for the _Rotunda_ may be seen in front of which there is a small
front structure to which is attached a captive balloon; the balloon,
however, seems quite collapsed. His father asks him what this is all
for; he is surprised at it, but he explains it to his father. They come
into a court in which lies a large sheet of tin. His father wants to
pull off a big piece of this, but first looks around to see if any one
is watching. He tells his father that all he needs to do is to speak to
the watchman, and then he can take without any further difficulty as
much as he wants to. From this court a stairway leads down into a shaft,
the walls of which are softly upholstered something like a leather
pocketbook. At the end of this shaft there is a longer platform, and
t
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