[59] For an important discussion of certain further aspects of baptism from the psycho-analytical point of view, see Ernest Jones, "Die Bedeutung des Salzes in Sitte und Brauch der Völker", Imago. 1912, I. 463 ff.
[60] "Psychology of the Unconscious," 233 ff.
[61] "Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild."
[62] Silberer, op. cit.
[63] Cp. Ernest Jones, "Papers on Psycho-Analysis," 129 ff.
[64] Thus in a case known to the present writer a boy frequently indulged in phantasies of entering into the bodies of women and girls whom he admired, the ideas of effecting an entrance into the body, of being carried therein and of re-emerging therefrom, being all accompanied by voluptuous feelings of a sexual character.
[65] A striking example of this is to be found in Sir J. M. Barrie's "Mary Rose", in which a grown up son, on returning after many years to the home of his childhood, is earnestly warned and entreated by the housekeeper in charge of the (now empty) house not to enter his former nursery (womb symbol), a small room which is approached by a short passage (vagina symbol). He eventually overcomes his fears and boldly enters the forbidden apartment with a lighted candle (phallic symbol) in his hand. At that moment the ghost of his mother appears!
The identification of the processes of birth and coitus is well shown in the following dream of a patient. "I was with difficulty crawling through a very narrow tunnel under a mountain which, I thought, was called the Aalberg. I was a good deal frightened but saw the end of the tunnel a long way off. In trying to get out, I seemed to force my way forward by continually butting with my head against some kind of soft wall". The movement here described is a clear coitus symbol (head = penis), while the mountain would appear to have derived its name from the phallic significance of the eel.
In a certain number of cases the idea of returning to the mother's womb or of being born is coloured by the infantile "cloacal theory" of birth, according to which the child imagines birth to take place through the rectum. This is shown with exceptional clearness in the following dream. "I was walking down a long and narrow flight of stairs. They seemed to be the back stairs of a large house or hotel and were very dirty and ill-lit, and every now and then I would tread in a pool of dirty water. The stairs suddenly (note the words in italics) opened out towards the bottom and I emerged into a back yard. I found I was covered with soot and dust and my boots were filthy." (Cp. the well known passage from St. Augustine, "Inter urinas et faeces nascimur").
[66] Freud, "Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre." IV, 693, 694. Further evidence has recently been brought together by Mrs. S. C. Porter in a (not yet published) paper on Brontephobia.