half of the dream was discovered in the analysis to represent a flight from her husband, and the entering into intimate relations with a third person, behind whom was plainly indicated Mr. X.’s brother mentioned in a former dream.  The first part of the dream was a fairly evident birth phantasy.  In dreams as in mythology, the delivery of a child from the uterine waters is commonly presented by distortion as the entry of the child into water; among many others, the births of Adonis, Osiris, Moses, and Bacchus are well-known illustrations of this.  The bobbing up and down of the head in the water at once recalled to the patient the sensation of quickening she had experienced in her only pregnancy.  Thinking of the boy going into the water induced a reverie in which she saw herself taking him out of the water, carrying him into the nursery, washing him and dressing him, and installing him in her household.

The second half of the dream, therefore, represents thoughts concerning the elopement, which belonged to the first half of the underlying latent content; the first half of the dream corresponded with the second half of the latent content, the birth phantasy.  Besides this inversion in order, further inversions took place in each half of the dream.  In the first half the child entered the water, and then his head bobbed; in the underlying dream thoughts first the quickening occurred, and then the child left the water (a double inversion).  In the second half her husband left her; in the dream thoughts she left her husband.

Another parturition dream is related by Abraham of a young woman looking forward to her first confinement.  From a place in the floor of the house a subterranean canal leads directly into the water (parturition path, amniotic liquor).  She lifts up a trap in the floor, and there immediately appears a creature dressed in a brownish fur, which almost resembles a seal.  This creature changes into the younger brother of the dreamer, to whom she has always stood in maternal relationship.

Dreams of “saving” are connected with parturition dreams.  To save, especially to save from the water, is equivalent to giving birth when dreamed by a woman; this sense is, however, modified when the dreamer is a man.

Robbers, burglars at night, and ghosts, of which we are afraid before going to bed, and which occasionally even disturb our sleep, originate in one and the same childish reminiscence.  They are the nightly visitors who have awakened the child to set it on the chamber so that it may not wet the bed, or have lifted the cover in order to see clearly how the child is holding its hands while sleeping.  I have been able to induce an exact recollection of the nocturnal visitor in the analysis of some of these anxiety dreams.  The robbers were always the father, the ghosts more probably corresponded to feminine persons with white night-gowns.