I have not brought along the birthday present. I had no time to purchase it. She is in bed, looks very pale, - like a wax figure- and that makes me wonder.

But few words are necessary. Christine is the wife of the man she longs for. The dream means: I come to the burial of my friend Christine. I have forgotten the floral wreath. She died so suddenly I had no time for it. She was stretched on her deathbed, pale as wax and I rejoiced.

Here birthday stands for death. The feeling of surprise or wonder stands for joyful satisfaction.

A woman, thirty-four years of age, obsessed with the fear of apoplexy, relates the following dream:

(79) I carried my dead brother, dressed as he was laid in his coffin, tenth the aid of another person and we were about to place the coffin in the grave with the body still warm

I said to the other: "See, Franz is still alive, we cannot put him down." There were many other burials and many people around. I awoke shuddering.

She lost her brother to whom she was attached with all her heart. Her only consolation was an uncle, - the other person in the dream. She has fused brother with uncle, a typical incest compromise; she is so deeply in love with her uncle that she could not refuse him a thing. The coffin in which every person first lies, is the maternal body. The same symbolism holds true of grave (das Grab) and in this connection "graben" carries plainly a significant meaning, like "bohren" (boring) and "ge-boren" (born). Thus the grave stands for heaven; hence the close connection between the grave and heaven in popular belief. The idea is expressed by Riickert:

Du meine Welt in der ich lebe, Mein Himmel du, darein ich schwebe, O, du mein Grab, in das hinab Ich ewig meinen Kummer gab and even more clearly by Schiller:

Noch kostlicheren Samen bergen Wir trauernd in der Erde Schoss, Und hoffen, dass er aus den Sargen Erbluhen soll zu schonerm Los.

In the above dream the patient sees her brother, the membrum virile of her cousin, as it was in the maternal body; (dressed as he was in his coffin): i. e. naked and she wants to put him in the grave while still alive, i. e. potent. The accompanying affect pertains to the abhorrence roused by the thought of burying some one alive. But the affect has been displaced; interpreted it means: I do not want to put my husband - who is still living - prematurely among the dead by changing him for the uncle.

"We cannot put him in": this has the double meaning of putting in as well as of betrayal (or unfaithfulness); "einen tiichtig hmeinlegen," a colloquialism not unlike our "putting something over" on some one, means: to deceive some one. "Many people" means "the secret"; also the challenge to do it, after all. "Many burials" means: everybody lives and tastes the fruits of indulgence und legt die anderen hinein, why should you alone impose such scruples on yourself?

These dream thoughts are further corroborated through the fact that her present husband did not get along at all well with her deceased brother and he would, in fact, thoroughly deserve the punishment. Her most intense desire is to have a child, i. e., to be a coffin herself. She cannot expect a child from her husband for she knows that he is sterile. She wants to get the child from the uncle, she wants to "carry" him with another person; here "tragen," "carrying" has the meaning of being pregnant (as in English).6

An abstinent church official, suffering of depressions, dreams: