From a branch of the tree spreading far out there hangs a long, sharp sword. Before me there stands a man whom I am -unable to distinguish clearly. The sword hangs between us and we cannot therefore see and recognize one another. Stronger and warmer grows our mutual longing; with a powerful grip the man seizes the sword determined to drag it down; - I shout exult-ingly and throw both arms in the air. - He has seized the sword too hastily, it slips from his hand and pierces me through the heart. I sink down with the sword sticking in my breast. The figure of the man dissolves like a shadow and I am alone lying on the ground, mortally wounded.

2 Hermann Swoboda, Die Periode im menschlichen Organ-ismus (F. Deuticke, Wien u. Leipzig, 1904).

Does this dream really portray only death through an accident? Through a man's lack of adroitness? Not at all. This is not a death dream - it is a dream of life. "The tall, spreading tree in the primitive forest" is the penis. The erection is represented as a long sharp sword. "Stronger and warmer grows our longing" - und nun fuhrt er den erigierten Penis in die Vagina. Heart and breast serve as displacement from below. . . .

The "shadowy dissipation of the figure" relates to a dead person. Her greatest love! It is also a raw by-play on ejaculation. . . .

Remarkable picture! At the moment when she begins to live, when she begins to know life, she dies.

Just as the dream knows no negative in general, it recognizes no denial of life. In the dream dying means usually the same as living and often the greatest life urge is expressed as a death wish. Similar psychologic considerations hold true also of suicide;3 even the choice of the manner of self-destruction is influenced by certain erotic factors. This thought has been repeatedly expressed by the poets; philosophers, too, have dwelt on the intimate relations between -Eros and Thanatos.4 In the dream, as in actual life, murder is often a crime pas-sionelle representing nothing more than a sexual act with a strongly sadistic coloring. A typical dream of young girls: they are standing naked on the street, a big man attacks them or sticks a knife into their abdomen. I have already analyzed such a dream. In such cases the murderous attack portrays a forceful defloration, - what is being killed off irretrievably is the honor; it is the death knell of virginity which, again, means the inauguration of woman's life. Homosexuals dream of attacking a man whom they knock down with a cane. Dreams of this character require no further elucidation on my part.

I turn now to the representation of death in dreams: