2 Then I climbed some gigantic stairway in that building and I perceived Mr. X. as he loomed into view a few times and wondered that he lived here. I greeted him cordially, he answered curtly and coolly and I thought to myself: "I must put an end to that, he doesn't do anything for me anyway."

3 Then I held in my right hand a crumpled up white paper, a white apple in my left hand and I entered a room. The folks there wanted to take the apple from me and I fooled them with the ball-shaped paper. I talked haltingly and hysterically when I told the Rosen woman (an actress) about it and thought: "I don't really do it well, it should go smoother, - I don't put my whole self into the task" - And further: "if I can't protect myself

7Artemidoros states: "When interpreting the story of a dream one must look it over from beginning to end and again from the end backwards towards the beginning. For it may happen that the beginning clears up the vague and not easily penetrable end, or the reverse may be the case, etc." against those people, I'll simply strike my brow a blow and wake up."

4 Then I sat on a window sill, next to Dr. Stekel's grown up son and later next to himself. I held the son in tight embrace. "Aha," said Dr. Stekel laughing - "again a bit of homosexuality." Then I let go of the young man.

5 And now I was at N's. A red-haired girl sat next to me and I thought she was Rudolph's relative and present lover. Her hair was deranged on one side and I thought he surely had kissed her there.- Then she stepped out and I was impatient to be alone with Mrs. N. Her husband sat mutely at the table. I jumped at her, threw my arms around her and hissed between my clenched teeth: "I am always thinking of him kissing her and I cannot bear it. I won't stand for it! - That red-haired scarecrow!" Next I had thrown myself, weeping and exhausted, on a divan. Rudolf was there, also the red-haired girl; Rudolf said to me: "I love you still, though not as formerly." Horrified I jumped up so that he should not see my tears.

6 Next clad in white I walked through a garden feeling bitterly cold. Karl went a little ways along and I tried unostentatiously to snuggle up to him; that warmed me up at once but, - I thought to myself, - it was not nice, and mother was also angry about it; so I walked on all alone and my teeth clattered with the cold.

The dream gives an account of her life history and begins with a phantasy regarding the future; we must read it backwards in order to understand it. In her childhood she had a little erotic adventure with a young boy (Karl). She was twelve years of age and suffered terribly of chills; a typical symptom of anxiety neurosis, and particularly of sexual expectancy. A boy lodger, who lived in their house, fourteen years of age, came for a number of weeks to her bed, kissed her (without doing anything more to her) until the mother caught him at it and ordered him out of the house. The episode about the white dress (innocence) and the freezing, refers to that experience. Six years previously she was engaged to a young man, a musician (Rudolph), who after a few weeks confessed to her that he did not know what to do, he was unhappy, he did not love her as formerly. She looked upon the red-haired girl who was more to him in the dream than she herself as the cause of his cooling off. Events similar to those portrayed in the dream had actually occurred. The man who sits silently at the table and cannot help her, is her father who is dead and whom she loved with supreme devotion. She became seriously neurotic on account of going through these experiences and came to me for treatment. How she fancies the cure in this dream is portrayed in the fourth part of it: she holds in strong embrace my grown-up son (one I do not actually have). The son is naturally my erect phallus (the patient always has the feeling that something ponderous is about to descend upon her, or that she is about to fill out something big; when she opens her eyes and gazes up to the sky, she regrets that her eyes are too small to take in the whole expanse of the sky). I was able to prove repeatedly her homosexual inclinations, - among them also a certain inclination towards my wife. A form of transference, but little studied thus far, is the transference upon the physician's family, which plays a tremendous role. Even my little dog thus became the object of a transference as the result of a displacement from the physician to a member of the household. But the fact that in the dream I goad her about her homosexuality has a particular significance. I do not act like a man, I am a woman, for I give her no opportunity to clasp tightly my son. Consequently, now, after her recovery, she again thinks of marriage; the third part of the dream refers to that. The crumpled up white paper in her right hand, which, as she afterwards recollects, many persons are trying to grab, is the marriage certificate. She does not yield to any one the white apple which she holds in her left hand -later she thought the apple might have been red- until the paper has been first accepted, i. e., she can be possessed only by way of the altar. She is not satisfied with herself, she has found as yet no suitable substitute for her lost lover: sie legt sich nicht ordentlich hinem - she does not put her whole self into it.8 Naturally we find here also (Anspiel-ivngen) references to masturbation, the latter bear ing a certain definite relationship to hysteria. The last statement in this portion of the dream reveals tragic thoughts ("if I can't protect myself against these people I'll simply strike my brow a blow and wake up"). She is firmly determined, should she give in to her overpowering cravings, i. e., in an extralegal manner, without marriage certificate, promptly to shoot herself the next day. She will simply press the revolver against her forehead and never wake up again or, rather, wake up in heaven; i. e., then only will her real life begin, - while the revolver phantasy represents also a phantasy of playing with the penis, the phantasy which introduces the fourth part of her dream.

For she has become acquainted with new moral standards; a friendly actress thought one could not become an opera singer with her antiquated views. She is a singer and expects to join the opera stage within a year. Finally she climbs up a certain height from which she is able to disregard some of the moral handicaps. She sees X., the agent, looming up, a man who anyway does not seem to her energetic enough; although she greets him cordially he acknowledges the greeting curtly and seems not to care for her. Her waking dream thoughts are preoccupied with an unmotivated fear of this man's raw conduct, a behavior on account of which he is distrusted by all actresses. Here in this dream he behaves with unusual decency. That much she has already accomplished with her exercises in climbing the gigantic stairway. And finally she accomplishes her end, she is an actress, and has a dim vision of the unfettered life of an actress.

8 She is a man. That is why she can "put herself in." Only in that sense does my accusing her of homosexuality become intelligible. She shows me in this dream wie sie sich "hinein-legen" wurde, if she were a man. The agent X., that brutal, cynical man, would count for a bashful fellow in contrast with her. (Psychic hermaphroditism). In the end she triumphs. She is above (Adler).

Part I contains also a remarkable experience dating back to her earliest years. The first activities of childhood take place mostly in a "Hoftheater" (Court Theater). The memory of it is unclear and contains a dim prophecy of the future: she is now an actress at the Court theater. . . .