deny that it may have a phallic meaning in some cases. Every symbol has more than one meaning. I can therefore not admit the correctness of exclusively sexual interpretations, such as appear in some psychoanalytic publications, for my experience has made me regard them as one-sided, and therefore insufficient. As an example of this I will tell you a very simple dream of a young patient of mine. It was as follows: “I was going up a flight of stairs with my mother and sister. When we reached the top I was told that my sister was soon to have a child.”
I shall now show you how, on the strength of the hitherto prevailing point of view, this dream may be translated so that it receives a sexual meaning. We know that the incest phantasy plays a prominent part in the life of a neurotic. Hence the picture “with my mother and sister” might be regarded as an allusion in this direction. The “stairs” have a sexual meaning that is supposedly well established; they represent the sexual act, because of the rhythmic climbing of steps. The child that my patient’s sister is expecting is nothing but the logical result of these premises. The dream, translated thus, would be a clear fulfilment of infantile desires, which as we know play an important part of Freud’s theory of dreams.
Now I have analysed this with the aid of the following process of reasoning: If I say that the stairs are a symbol for the sexual act, whence do I obtain the right to regard the mother, the sister, and the child as concrete; that is, as not symbolic? If, on the strength of the claim that dream pictures are symbolic, I give to certain of these pictures the value of symbols, what right have I to exempt certain other dream parts from this process? If, therefore, I attach symbolic value to the ascent of the stairs, I must also attach a symbolic value to the pictures that represent the mother, the sister, and the child. Therefore I did not translate the dream, but really analysed it. The result was surprising. I will give you the free associations with the separate dream parts, word for word, so that you can form your own opinions concerning the material. I should state in advance that the young man
