This, to my mind, can not be contested, and these wishes appear largely in the form of symbols. In early times sex was given great significance, and we know that in early myths and literature many events and things were sex symbols. When we dream symbolically, we go back to a method of picturing events that in early history had value, but of which the significance has been forgotten. The law of symbol formation is in dreams not an arbitrary one; it is based on forms of speech in the past and on witty conceptions of to-day. Folklore and wit are full of sexual symbols corresponding to those in dreams. All doubt has been removed of sexual symbolism in dreams by an experiment made by means of hypnotism, where a patient was told to dream some sexual situation. Instead of doing so directly she dreamed a situation in symbolic form corresponding to that in ordinary dream life. Rank and Sachs in their The Significance of Psychoanalysis for the Mental Sciences have given us an excellent study of the nature of symbol formation. Freud has furnished us a list of objects and actions that are of sexual significance. W. Stekel has made an exhaustive study of the subject in his Sprache des Traumes (1911). Freud recognises R. A. Scherner as the true discoverer of symbolism in dreams in his book Das Leben des Traumes (1896), but he admits that Artemidorus in the second century A.D. also interpreted dreams symbolically.
Freud ventures the opinion that dreams about complicated machinery and landscapes and trees have a definite sexual significance. If this is so, and he gives his reason therefor, it would mean that all those authors who have a partiality for describing landscapes and machinery in their works continually, are unconsciously revealing a personal trait they never intended to convey. Ruskin for example is rich in landscapes in his works. Is there any connection between his propensity for such description and his attachment to his mamma, his youthful love disappointment, his unsuccessful marriage and his sad love for Rose La Touche? Is it not likely that many of the painters who made a specialty of landscape painting were driven to this special choice by an unconscious cause that the world has not fathomed, a sexual one? No doubt there is a connection between paintings of female nudes and the sex life of the author in his unconscious; why should not the same be true of the landscape painters and all the writers who abound in landscape descriptions? Is it not possible that Turgenev, who has given us so many landscapes, was unconsciously thinking of his first love disappointment and also of his love for Madame Viardot? We find landscapes in every literary work that deals with the country, but Freud's theory can have applicability only to the author who has a mania for them.
Why does Kipling have a keen interest in bringing descriptions of machinery into his works? If dreams of machinery relate to sex, then we must follow the logical conclusion that an undue interest in machinery must evince a sexual meaning. We are also aware that a large number of popular sexual terms are taken from instruments in the machine-shop.
I do not maintain that objects do not have a literal significance, free from any symbolic intent.
There can be no doubt about the significance of the phallic worship of old times, in which the serpent was symbolic. Dreams where the serpent figures and folk tales telling of dragons who are symbolic of the lustful side of man both have a sexually symbolic meaning.
Again, if Freud is right in claiming that the dream of a woman throwing herself in the water is a parturition dream, then one would have to conclude that a woman occupied constantly with stories about herself swimming was probably absorbed with thoughts about child-bearing. That this significance for such a dream is not absurd may be seen from the following statement by Freud: "In dreams, as in mythology, the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly presented by distortion as the entry of the child into water; among many others, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses and Bacchus are well known illustrations of this."
III
Freud was not the first one to interpret dreams symbolically. There have been excellent symbolical interpretations in literature. I will mention one in Chaucer and another in Ovid.
In Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, one of the greatest love poems ever written and probably a greater work of art than any of the Canterbury Tales, there is a true symbolic interpretation of an anxiety dream. Troilus was pining for his love, Criseyde, who had been led back by Diomede to the Greeks in exchange for Antenor. Troilus dreamt that he saw a boar asleep in the sun and that Criseyde was embracing and kissing it. His suspicions as to her faithfulness were confirmed by the interpretation given by his sister Cassandra, who told him that Criseyde now loved Diomede; Diomede was descended from Meleager the slayer of the boar, which, according to the myth, once ravaged among the Greeks.