was intelligent, extraordinarily sceptical, and absolutely convinced that dream analysis was nonsense. I had difficulty in inducing her to give dream analysis even one trial. Indeed, I saw at once that I could not inform my patient of the real content of the dream under these circumstances, because her resistances were much too great. I selected the fire, the most conspicuous occurrence of the dream, as the starting point for obtaining her free associations. The patient told me that she had recently read in a newspaper that a certain hotel in Z. had been burnt down; that she remembered the hotel because she had once lived in it. At the hotel she had made the acquaintance of a man, and from this acquaintance a somewhat questionable love affair developed. In connection with this story the fact came out that she had already had quite a number of similar adventures, all of which had a certain frivolous character. This important bit of past history was brought out by the first free association with a dream part. It would have been impossible in this case to make clear to the patient the very striking meaning of the dream. With her frivolous mental attitude, of which her scepticism was only a special instance, she could have calmly repelled any attempt of this kind. But after the frivolity of her mental attitude was recognised and proved to her, by the material that she herself had furnished, it was possible to analyse the dreams which followed much more thoroughly.
It is, therefore, advisable in the beginning to make use of dreams for the purpose of reaching the important subconscious material by means of the patient’s free associations in connection with them. This is the best and most cautious method, especially for those who are just beginning to practise analysis. An arbitrary translation of the dreams is absolutely unadvisable. That would be a superstitious practice based on the acceptance of well-established symbolic meanings. But there are no fixed symbolic meanings. There are certain symbols that recur frequently, but we are not able to get beyond general statements. For instance, it is quite incorrect to assume that the snake, when it appears in dreams, has a merely phallic meaning; just as incorrect as it is to
