The Theory of Psychoanalysis

by C. G. Jung

The fear of the wolf in the dream is therefore fear of her father. The little patient explains her fear of her father by his severity towards her. He had also told her that we only have bad dreams when we have been doing wrong. Later, she once asked her father, “But what does Mamma do wrong? She has very often frightful dreams.”

The father once slapped her fingers because she was sucking them. Was this her naughtiness? Scarcely, because sucking the fingers is an anachronistic infantile habit, of little interest at her age. It only seems to annoy her father, for which he will punish and hit her. In this way, she relieves her conscience of the unconfessed and much more serious sin. It comes out, that she has induced a number of other girls to perform mutual masturbation.

These sexual tendencies have caused the fear of the father. Still, we must not forget that she had this dream in her fifth year. At that time these sins had not been committed. Hence we must regard this affair with the other girls as a reason for her present fear of her father; but that does not explain the earlier fear. But still, we may expect it was something of a similar nature, some unconscious sexual wish, corresponding to the psychology of the forbidden action previously mentioned. The moral value and character of this wish is even more unconscious with the child than with adults. To understand what had made an impression on the child, we have to ask what happened in her fifth year. Her youngest brother was born at that time. Even then her father had made her nervous. The associations previously referred to give us an undoubted connection between her sexual inclinations and her anxiety. The sexual problem, which nature connects with positive feelings of delight, is in the dream brought to the surface in the form of fear, apparently on account of the bad father, who represents moral education. This dream illustrates the first impressive appearance of the sexual problem, obviously suggested by the recent birth of the little brother, just such an occasion when experience teaches us that these questions become vital.

Just because the sexual problem is closely connected with certain pleasurable physical sensations, which education tries to reduce and break off, it can apparently only manifest itself hidden under the cloak of moral anxiety as to sin. This explanation certainly seems rather plausible, but it is superficial, it is insufficient. It attributes the difficulties to the moral education, on the unproved assumption that education can cause such a neurosis. We hereby leave out of consideration the fact that there are people who have become neurotic and suffer from morbid fears without having had a trace of moral education. Moreover, the moral law is not merely an evil, which has to be resisted, but a necessity, born out of the utmost needs of humanity. The moral law is only an outward manifestation of the innate human impulse to dominate and tame oneself. The origin of the impulse towards domestication or civilization is lost in the unfathomable depths of the history of evolution, and can never be conceived as the consequence of certain laws imposed from without. Man himself, obeying his instincts, created laws. Therefore, we shall never understand the reasons for the repression of sexuality in the child if we only take into account the moral influences of education. The main reasons are to be found much deeper, in human nature itself, in its perhaps tragic contradiction between civilization and nature, or between individual consciousness and the general conscience of the community. I cannot enter into these questions now; in my other work, I have tried to do so. Naturally, it would be of no value to give a child a notion of the higher philosophical aspects of the problem; that would probably not have the slightest effect.

The child wants, first of all, to be relieved from the idea that she is doing wrong in being interested in the generation of life. By the analytic explanation of this complex it is made clear to the child how much pleasure and curiosity she really takes in the problem of generation, and how her groundless fear is the inversion of her repressed desire. The affair of her masturbation meets with a tolerant understanding and the discussion is limited to drawing the child’s attention to the aimlessness of her action. At the same time it is explained to her that her sexual actions are mainly the consequences of her curiosity, which might be satisfied in a better way. Her great fear of her father corresponds, probably, with as great an expectation, which, in consequence of the birth of her little brother, is closely connected with the problem of generation. Through this explanation, the child is declared to be justified in her curiosity and the greater part of her moral conflict is eliminated.

Fourth Interview. The little girl is now much nicer and much more confiding. Her former unnatural and constrained manner has vanished. She brings a dream which she dreamed after the last sitting. It runs: “I am as tall as a church-tower and can see into every house. At my feet are very small children, as small as flowers are. A policeman comes. I say to him, ‘If you dare to make any remark, I shall take your sword and cut off your head.’”

In the analysis of this dream she makes the following remarks: “I would like to be taller than my father, for then he will have to obey me.” The first association with policeman was father. He is a military man and has, of course, a sword. The dream clearly fulfils her wish. In the form of a tower, she is much bigger than her father, and if he dares to make a remark, he will be decapitated. The dream fulfils the natural wish of the child to be a grown-up person, and to have children playing at her feet, symbolized in the dream by the small children. With this dream she overcomes her great fear of her father; that means an important improvement with regard to her personal freedom, and her certainty of feeling.

But incidentally there is here also a theoretical gain; we may consider this dream to be a clear example of the compensating and teleological function of dreams which was especially pointed out by Maeder. Such a dream must leave with the dreamer an increased sense of the value of her own personality, which is of much importance for personal well-being. It does not matter that the symbols of the dream are not perceived by the consciousness of the child, as conscious perception is not necessary to derive from symbols their corresponding emotional effect. We have to do here with knowledge derived from intuition; in other words, it is that kind of perception on which at all times the effect produced by religious symbols has depended. Here no conscious understanding has been needed; the feelings are affected by means of emotional intuition.

Fifth Interview. In the fifth sitting, the child brings a dream which she had dreamt meanwhile. “I am with my whole family on the roof. The windows of the houses on the other side of the valley radiate like fire. The rising sun is reflected. Suddenly I notice that the house at the corner of our street is, as a fact, on fire. The fire comes nearer and nearer; at last our house is also on fire. I take flight into the street and my mother throws several things to me. I hold out my apron, and among other things my doll is thrown to me. I notice that the stones of our house are burning, but the wood remains untouched.”

The analysis of this dream presents peculiar difficulties and therefore required two sittings. It would lead me too far to sketch to you all the material this dream brought forth. I have to limit myself to what is most necessary. The associations which deal with the real meaning of the dream belong to the remarkable image which tells us that the stones of the house are on fire, while the wood remains untouched. It is sometimes worth while, especially with longer dreams, to take out the most striking parts and to analyze them first. This proceeding is not the typical one, but it is justified by the practical desire to shorten matters. The little patient makes the observation that this part of the dream is like a fairy-tale. Through examples it was made plain to her that fairy-tales always have a meaning. She objects: “But not all fairy-tales have one. For instance, the tale of the Sleeping Beauty. What could that mean?” The explanation was as follows: “The Sleeping Beauty had to wait for one hundred years in an enchanted sleep until she could be freed. Only he who was able to overcome all the difficulties through love, and had the courage to break through the thorny hedge, was able to deliver her. So one must often wait a long while to obtain what one longs for.”