I see that her nose and fingers are wrapped up in white bandages. At part-ing I offer her my hand but I think to myself I cannot go to a prostitute for I have to go home first and wash my hands and there is no time for all that to-day. The fact is I am afraid of spreading some infection if I should not first wash my hands.

This subject has had dream No. 94. His fear of contact is grounded on altruistic motives: he is not afraid to catch the infection himself, his fear is that he will carry and spread to others the diseased germs. This fear is expressed plainly in the dream. We note that the fear is roused through the fact that he had shaken hands with a woman, Frau Strabo, whose hand was bandaged. Strabo suggests to this subject - he is a physician - strabismus and he talks about that. He himself once had a squint, - internal. In this connection I may mention that a number of disturbances of vision are due to self-imposed punishment for seeing what is forbidden. The patient carries out upon himself the lex talionis. This lex talionis is illustrated in the belief that looking into the mirror precisely at the midnight hour brings on blindness and in the belief of pious Jews that it is not permissible to look at the Kohanim, or priests, while they offer the benediction. I recall an ocular trouble in a boy, eight years of age, which the attending oculists were unable to explain and which was due to the fact that the boy had witnessed something he should not have seen.8

This patient's squinting was also a neurotic symptom: he has "squinted" too eagerly at his mother's and his sister's charms.9 His mother took

8 One of my patients relates that his mother once called out to him while she was urinating: "don't look this way or you will be blinded!"

9 Cf. Freud; Die psychogene Sehstorung in psychoanaly-tischer Auffassung, Aerztliebe Standeszeitung, 1910, No. 9. Freud expresses the punishing power of the conscience as follows: "Because you wanted to misuse your sight for evil sensuality, it serves you right not to be able to see at all!" care of him after he underwent a nasal operation and her tremendous self-sacrifice made an unforgettable impression on him. But ten years later he also had an operation on his penis, requiring considerable after-care. The wound did not heal readily and this twenty-year-old boy was bandaged daily by his mother. The touch of her delicate hands roused very pleasurable sensations.

In his Familienroman the phantasy of the mother as Dirne played a great role. Also in his masturbation phantasies. On account of the latter habit he considered himself unclean and the whole washing mania was traceable back to his masturbation habit. As Freud has very fittingly pointed out the manias refer not to the habit itself but they pertain to the accompanying phantasies. In this case the phantasies were of such a character that the mother darin zur Dirne gemacht wurde. . . .

In the dream, before going to the prostitute he visits Frau Strabo; that is the manner in which the dream expresses the thought phantasy that he is calling on Frau Strabo and that the latter is a prostitute: Strabo he identifies with a prostitute. Offering her the hand at parting is a reminder of the contact of his mother's hand with his penis and here the fingers are the symbol of the penis. Also of the thought that, if he be impotent, he will carry on digital manipulations. Thus the prostitute becomes unnecessary. Naturally his reason in the dream "he must go home to wash his hands," is a bit of dream distortion which, when read inversely, means: "this phantasy has made me so unclean that I ought to go home and wash my hands!" "No more time for all that" refers to the fact that on the night of the dream his mother was not there; she had just started for home the previous evening, after a visit of several days.

The fear he might spread some infection is obvious; infection through prostitute or mother; nose reminds him of a destructive luetic lesion of the part; fingers, of psoriasis palmarum. But Freud has taught us that, whenever present, these fears are decidedly justified on the part of our patients. In the dream too, the affect stands out as the real valid feature. Everything that centers around the affect may be changed, transposed, distorted. But the affect retains its justification even under transformation.

And here we discover that this subject, indeed, has particular reason to fear the danger from which he would protect others. The fact is he harbors the thought of poisoning his father and brothers, - a phantasy which has played a tremendous role in his youth; also the notion of knocking them down. He feels constrained to wash continually because, like Lady Macbeth, he wants to remove the blood stain off his hands. And reduced to its elementary form the anxiety state means: "I fear that my criminal passion for mother might induce me to injure father and the other members of the family. I fear this especially as I have repeatedly wished them dead!" Just as his washing mania is a protection against the moral contamination to which he felt himself exposed and at the same time symbolizes his cleansing off his hands the blood of the victims, so he carries out other remarkable compulsive acts which indicate very plainly that these Abwehrhandlungen are compromises between withholding and yielding. He sticks the right index finger into the hollow of his left hand, carrying out a rotary motion and he rotates his hand in a peculiar fashion in the water. Moreover he has, or rather has had, - for he is now cured, - a most peculiar washing ceremonial, - a strict ritual he had devised and this too was cleared away through the psychoanalysis after it was reduced to its wish connotations.10

A minor example for a conclusion. A dream of Sigma (vid. Dreams Nos. 70, 71, 72, 73, 82, 83).