Fertility is symbolized by ploughed fields, gardens, etc.
I have shown in another book, “Psychoanalysis, Its History, Theory and Practice,” that symbols are absolutely universal and that the folklore of the various races and of the various centuries draws upon the same material for the purpose of simplified representation. Differences in climate, fauna and flora are purely superficial. Dwellers of the Polar regions are not likely to compare anything to a palm tree which they have never seen, nor will tropical races symbolize coldness through snowfields.
Experiments made by Dr. Karl Schrötter have confirmed Freud’s and Jung’s theories of symbolization in dreams. To the uninitiated and sceptical, dream symbols generally appear rather ludicrous fancies and not a few opponents of psychoanalysis hold that symbols were resorted to by analysts unable to read an obvious wish fulfilment in every dream.
Schrötter hypnotized his patients, then suggested to them a dream outline, ordering them also to indicate through an appropriate gesture when the dream would begin and end. This enabled him, by the way, to record the duration of every dream.[4]
He then awakened the subject and made him tell his dream.
One of his patients, a woman drawing toward middle age, who had been greatly upset when she learnt that the man she loved was suffering from syphilis, was asked to have a dream symbolizing her state of mind. Here is the vision she had:
“I am walking through a forest on an autumn day. The path is steep and I feel chilly. Some one whom I cannot distinguish is near me. I only feel the touch of a hand. I am very thirsty. I would like to slake my thirst at a spring but there is a sign on the spring that means poison: a skull and cross bones.”
The fancy is rather poetical and this example is quite typical of the symbolization of our life’s incidents by the dream work.
A patient with a strong resistance to the analytic method saw me in a dream “carrying a fake refrigerator full of make-believe meats, vegetables and fruits.”
The interpretation is obvious. I am carrying in a deceptive way an assortment of ideas which can be of no use to any one.