(1) "I was trying to catch a train, but a gate leading to the platform was closed and I could not succeed in opening it. Then my father suddenly appeared, shook the gate violently, opened it and hurried me across the platform. He opened the door of a compartment and pushed me in. I found a lady sitting there." The lady here was associated with the mother and the opening of the gate and door symbolised the sexual act.
(2) "An elderly man" (father symbol) "led me upstairs" (coitus symbol. Cp. Freud, "Interpretation of Dreams," p. 252) "to the interior of a church or chapel" (mother symbol). "Here hymns were being sung" (initiation ceremony) "I thought I ought to sing too, but had some bother to find the right place in the hymn book. Then one of the people said to me 'You are one of us.'"
(3) "I wanted to get into a house, but could not find the way in. Suddenly our doctor" (in this case, as so often, a father substitute) "came along and said: 'A doctor always goes in by the window'. From a bag he brought out a long elastic instrument" (phallic symbol). "with which he opened a window on the first floor" (symbol of sex intercourse). "We entered and I found it was my mother's bedroom. The doctor said 'You should now go to sleep' and I prepared to go to bed."
As will be seen from these examples, the initiation idea may be easily combined with the idea of returning to the mother's womb discussed in the last chapter. This combination is perhaps still more clearly shown in the following dream of the patient, who provided Example 2. "I was on a boat sailing on a river or canal which gradually became narrower and shallower. Finally the boat grounded on a sandy bottom. I got out and walked up a staircase into a cathedral where some ceremony was going on, in which I took part."
[71] Thus in a case known to me the inhibition in question constituted one of the principal factors in the production of a very prolonged condition of sexual impotence in married life.
[72] Sir J.G. Frazer, "Totemism and Exogamy." IV. 228.
[73] Sir J.G. Frazer, "Balder the Beautiful." II. 239.
[74] Op. cit. II. 243, 246.
[75] Op. cit. II. 253, 259.
[76] Op. cit. I. 22.