The wanderer wishes to possess his mother as an unravished bride. Also a feature familiar to psychoanalysis. The generally accompanying antithesis is the phantasy that the mother is a loose woman = attainable, sexually alluring woman. Perhaps this idea will also be found in the parable.
The young people of both sexes, separated by a wall, do not come together because they are afraid of the distant detour to the door. This can, with a little courage, be translated: The auto-erotic satisfaction is easier.
[C G. Jung writes (Jb. ps. F., IV, p. 213 ff): “Masturbation is of inestimable importance psychologically. One is guarded from fate, since there is no sexual need of submitting to any one, life and its difficulties. With masturbation one has in his hands the great magic. He needs only to imagine and in addition to masturbate and he possesses all the pleasures of the world and is under no compulsion to conquer the world of his desire through hard work and struggle with reality. Aladdin rubs his lamp and the slaves come at his bidding; this story expresses the great psychologic gain in local sexual satisfaction [pg 090] through facile regression.” Jung applies to masturbation the motive of the dearly won prize and that of the stealing of fire. He even appears to derive in some way the use of fire from masturbation. In this at any rate I cannot follow him.]
On his detour the wanderer (who desires to reach the portal of woman) meets people who are alone in the rooms and carry on dirty work. Dirt and masturbation are wont to be closely associated psychically. The dirty work is “only appearance and individual fantasy,” and “has no foundation in Nature.” The wanderer knows that “such practices vanish like smoke.” He has done it himself before and now he will have nothing more to do with it. He aspires to a woman, that the work done alone leads to nothing is connected with the fact that the work of two is useful. But “dirty work” is also to be understood as sensual enjoyment without love.
In paragraph 10 we again meet the already mentioned symbolism of the walled garden. The wanderer is the only one that can secure admission to the maiden. After a fear of impotence (anxiety about disgrace) he goes resolutely to the door and opens it with his Diederich, which sticks into a narrow, hardly visible opening (deflowering). He “knows the situation of the place,” although he has never been there before. I mean that once, before he was himself, he was there in the body of his mother. What follows suggests a birth fantasy as these occur in dreams of being born. The wanderer now actually takes part in being born in reverse direction. [pg 091] I append several dreams about being born.
“I find myself on a very narrow stairway, leading down in turns; a winding stairway. I turn and push through laboriously. Finally I find a little door that leads me into the open, on a green meadow, where I rest in soft luxuriant bushes. The warm sunshine was very pleasant.”
F. S. dreams: “In the morning I went to work with my brother (as we went the same road) in the Customs House Street. Before the customs house I saw the head postillion standing. From it the way led to a street between two wooden walls; the way appeared very long and seemed to get narrower toward the end and indeed so close that I was afraid that we would not get through. I went out first, my brother behind me; I was glad when I got out of the passage and woke with a beating heart.” Addenda. “The way was very dark, more like a mine. We couldn't see, except in the distance the end, like a light in a mine shaft. I closed my eyes.” Stekel notes on the dreams of F. S.: “The dream is a typical birth dream. The head postillion is the father. The dreamer wants to reverse the birth relations of his brother who is ten years older than he. ‘I went out first, my brother after me.’ ”
Another beautiful example in Stekel: “Inter faeces et urinas nascimur.” [We are born between faeces and urine] says St. Augustine. Mr. F. Z. S. contributes an account of his birth which strongly reminds us of the sewer-theory.
“I went into the office and had to pass a long, [pg 092] narrow, uneven alley. The alley was like a long court between two houses and I had the indefinite feeling that there was no thoroughfare. Yet I hurried through. Suddenly a window over me opened and some one, I believe a female, spilled the wet contents of a vessel on me. My hat was quite wet and afterwards I looked at it closer and still noticed the traces of a dirty gray liquid. Nevertheless, I went on without stopping, and quickened my steps. At the end of the alley I had to go through the house that was connected by the alley with the other. Here I found an establishment (inn?) that I passed. In this establishment were people (porters, servants, etc.) engaged in moving heavy pieces of furniture, etc., as if these were being moved out or rearranged. I had to be careful and force my way through. Finally I came to the open on a street and looked for an electric. Then I saw on a path that went off at an angle, a man whom I took for an innkeeper who was occupied in measuring or fastening a hedge or a trellis. I did not know exactly what he was doing. He was counting or muttering and was so drunk that he staggered.”
Stekel: “In this dream are united birth and effects of the forbidden or unpermissible. The dreamer goes back over the path—evidently as an adult. The experiences represent an accusation against the mother. This accusation was not without reason. Mr. F. Z. S. had a joyless childhood. His mother was a heavy drinker. He witnessed her [pg 093] coitus with strangers. (Packing up = coitus.) The packers and porters are the strange men who visited his inn (his mother was also his nurse) in order to store heavy objects, etc. Finally he was obstructed in his birth, for a man is occupied in measuring. The father was a surveyor (the innkeeper). In the dream, furthermore, he was measuring a trellis-fence. Both trellis and hedge are typical dream symbols of obstacles to copulation.”