The meaning is very simple. If we translate the little old ugly woman into the opposite we find that in the dream she is being pursued around the table by a big, attractive young man, an experience which corresponds to a wish on the part of this attractive woman who is married to a very weak, delicate man, and a wish which through repression (on account of its "forbidden" character) is turned into a fear. The continuation of the dream is recalled by the woman only after my interpretation and corroborates the interpretation. The alleged old woman in the dream tears off the subject's blouse and wants to stick her hand between the breasts a procedure wholly illogical on the part of an old woman but perfectly intelligible on the part of a young man in the same situation, which really depicts a rape phantasy. On the other hand, it is also conceivable that the picture represents a reverse act, that she struggles with a wish to run after a big man; but the end seems to make that illogical. Why should she want to tear open the man's waistcoat? Here we learn another dream process, the so-called transposition from below. In many dreams what takes place below is represented above and reversely. That is an extraordinarily common form of dream distortion, a process which, moreover, plays also a tremendous role in the symptomatology of the neuroses. Applying the principle of transposition from below above we arrive at the wish to act aggressively and tear apart a man's trousers. Both interpretations, the aggressive and the defensive, fit into one another very well; for there is no sadist who is not also a masochist, no exhibitionist who is not a voyeur at the same time. "All instincts appear in pairs."1 Thus nature herself upholds the law of opposites. The dream must bear a meaning also in a positive sense. She fears the mother. She has homosexual leanings and wishes the assault which, moreover, signifies a question about her motherhood.

1 Alfred Adler, Der Aggressionstrieb im Leben und in der Neurose, Fortschritte der Medizin, 1908, No. 19: "In the healthy, the perverse, and the neurotics, alike, the motive power is generated by two originally disparate instincts which are later drawn together and, as a consequence, the sadistic-masochistic manifestation corresponds, alike, to two instincts, - the sexual instinct and the instinct of aggression (Aggressionstrieb)."

For the woman is sterile. She will never have milk in her breast. And now we arrive at the most significant meaning. She wishes to be again with the mpther and lie at the nurse's breast. The grip on the breasts is the first pleasurable contact of infancy.

The dream thus plays upon various motives. More than that! The old woman who seizes her at the heart is the symbol of death. An ancient symbol. Every fear is also a fear of death. In fact, in roundabout ways, - always the fear of death!

Thus we see an interplay of the yearning for life and the fear of death, the fear of living and the yearning after death, commingled.

Moreover, these forms of dream distortion are supported by linguistic characteristics.

Linguists have pointed out that in man's aboriginal language many words had double meaning, signifying one concept and at the same time the exact opposite.

This feature of language was known already to Schubert, who in his Symbolik des Traumes (Symbolism of Dream) maintains:

"Recent, more penetrating linguistic investigations has proven everywhere the prevalence of interchangeable terms in the articulated language and the kinship of words. First we frequently find that words having contrary meanings originate from the same root; as if, in expressing itself, the soul emphasized the inner organic double sense, rather than some external particularized manifestation thereof. . . . Words designating warm and cold are not only similarly sounding in some modern languages: for instance, Italian caldo, English cold, and German halt, meaning the opposite; but within the realm of the same language we find words for warm and for cold derived from the same root (gelw, gelidus, cold; and caelo, calidus, warm); and the God of the tropical South has descended from the cold North. Just as frequently in myth and language the good divinity is fused with the evil one and reversely, the evil divinity is taken for good, so in Persian, although the corresponding myth makes a strong division between the two principles, the name of the evil Ahrvman and that of the god of light, Orim-Asdes, both come from the same root; so also epos (eros), love, and epis (eris, quarrel; and in various other languages the words for unity and union and enemy and division are the same. (Swe-denborg elaborated a theory that sensuous love generates in heaven the crassest hatred.) Light, too, the symbol of truth, and falsehood, or lying, in some languages are derived from the same root, because light (the beautiful morning star, as it is called somewhere, after flaring up in a scorching flame, becomes the rapacious wolf, the evil Loghe, who elsewhere appears also as dog and bitch, in unpleasant connotations. That double quality (scorching and lighting) of light is played upon in the jargon of myth everywhere. Blood, too, appears in double sense, as poison, anger, raging madness, and as expatiation, appeasement, peace. Rage and meekness, darkness and light, the heavy metal and the light bird, air and iron, the generating of joy and sadness, low and high, sensuality and impotence, and many other concepts of similar antithetical character are traceable likewise to the same roots; the lamb as well as the beast, which are often met as symbols of the creative logos first appear as ram expressing the generative principle, then as representing the grossest sensualism (here, too, lamb and flame, from same root); or as snake either in a beneficial or in a fearfully evil sense."

Not infrequently we are in a position to trace in a remarkable manner precisely how words came to be used in a sense exactly contrary to their original meaning. A few examples will suffice. The kinship of knowing and generating has been traced already in a very remarkable manner by Franz Baeder: "In language and myth, dove, too, which as the holy spirit puts in motion the water of life as well as man's cognitive spirit, is identical with the bird phoenix and with the palm (tree or leaf). The palm, also the flower of night at the fountain of life, or, in other versions of myth, the acorn, vine, or fig tree becomes the tree of knowledge, which is at the same time also the tree of contention. Finally the tree of knowledge becomes the lingam, the apparatus and symbol of sensuous delights. In the same manner the seeing eye, the fountain of light, the Word, becomes on the one side the building, creating hand, on the other, with the hand itself, signifies the organ of physical generation. The vitalizing eye becomes at the same time the evil (killing) eye, the truth-generating, oath-yielding hand, the organ of falsehood, lying, waste. Thus, that young prudish virgin who in the myth was never touched by the breath of a sensuous wish becomes the sophisticated goddess of the most unrestrained and wildest sensuality; the creative, spiritually cognitive, word undergoes a terrible change under the picture of the horrible ram Mendes, whose cult includes all the shameful deeds relating to the most bestial animal lust; the fish and the snake of sensuous indulgence generate also that terrible poison, which has corrupted the world and life. The word of love, the holy name, the law become punishment, anger, revenge. Just as linguistic catastrophes change good into evil, light into darkness, so the same mechanisms effect the reverse transformations, evil turning into good; and many examples in myth and language, show evil and poison transformed into lovely figures or beneficial agencies."

Freud, in the second volume of the Jahrbuch fur psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forsch-ungen, called our attention to a pamphlet by Karl Abel, entitled Ueber den Gegensinn der Urworte (On the Contrary Meaning of Aboriginal Words, published in 1889).

In that work Abel points out:

"In the Egyptian language . . . that unique relic of a primitive world, there are a fairly large number of words with double meaning, each the exact contrary of the other. Consider the apparent nonsense of having to bear in mind that the word strong, for instance, in our language, means strong and weak at the same time; that the noun light means light as well as darkness; etc., and there we have a concrete picture of what the Egyptians were accustomed to meet in their daily language. Who can be blamed for an inclination to shake one's head incredulously? . . .

"Considering this and many similar instances of antithetical meaning, there can be no doubt that there was at least one language containing a multitude of words signifying one thing and at the same time the exact opposite. Strange as it may seem the fact is plain and we must take it into consideration.

"Among all the eccentricities of the Egyptian lexicon the most extraordinary perhaps is the fact that, in addition to words which cover opposite meanings, the language contains also compound words, formed of a couple of syllables of contrary meaning, but standing as a unit the meaning of which disregards entirely the sense of one of the component parts. In that remarkable language there are, thus, not merely words which signify strong as well as weak, commanding as well obeying; there are also composite terms such as old-young, distant-near, uniting-dividing, outside-inside, which in spite of their double and antithetical source, signify, respectively, old, distant, uniting, outside. . . . These compound words deliberately bring together contrary meanings, not for the purpose of forming a new meaning, as is done occasionally in the Chinese language, but merely in order to use the composite term in the sense of one of its antithetical components, when the latter would have carried the same meaning, if taken by itself. . . ."

But the riddle is more easily solved than may appear on the surface. Our concepts arise through contrasts. "If it were always light," states Freud, in his interpretative abstract of Abel's essay mentioned above, "we should not distinguish between light and darkness, and consequently we would have neither the concept nor the word light. ... It is clear, everything on this planet is relative and has independent existence only insofar as it stands in relation to, and differs from, other objects. . . . Since every concept is thus the twin of its opposite, how could it be perceived, how could it be communicated at all to another trying to acquire it, except through comparison or contrast with its opposite?"

In dreams this contrast or antithesis plays a great role. The most wonderful peculiarity of human nature, man's bipolarity, expresses itself through this extremely interesting psychic phenomenon. There is no "negative" in dreams, as Freud aptly remarks. But in that sense there is also no "yes." The dream divinity is the arch-type of the doubter.

In some dreams this contrariness is deliberately expressed, and specifically through doubt, as in the following dream of an artist suffering of a professional neurosis: