not be used simultaneously in the masculine and the feminine sense!” To be sure the clause in parentheses takes away much of the absoluteness of this assertion, for this is not at all permitted by the phantasy.  I do not, however, think it superfluous to state that in my experience Stekel’s general statement has to give way to the recognition of a greater manifoldness.  Besides those symbols, which are just as frequent for the male as for the female genitals, there are others which preponderately, or almost exclusively, designate one of the sexes, and there are still others of which only the male or only the female signification is known.  To use long, firm objects and weapons as symbols of the female genitals, or hollow objects (chests, pouches, &c.), as symbols of the male genitals, is indeed not allowed by the fancy.

It is true that the tendency of the dream and the unconscious fancy to utilize the sexual symbol bisexually betrays an archaic trend, for in childhood a difference in the genitals is unknown, and the same genitals are attributed to both sexes.

These very incomplete suggestions may suffice to stimulate others to make a more careful collection.

I shall now add a few examples of the application of such symbolisms in dreams, which will serve to show how impossible it becomes to interpret a dream without taking into account the symbolism of dreams, and how imperatively it obtrudes itself in many cases.

1.  The hat as a symbol of the man (of the male genital):  (a fragment from the dream of a young woman who suffered from agoraphobia on account of a fear of temptation).

“I am walking in the street in summer, I wear a straw hat of peculiar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards and the side pieces of which hang downwards (the description became here obstructed), and in such a fashion that one is lower than the other.  I am cheerful and in a confidential mood, and as I pass a troop of young officers I think to myself:  None of you can have any designs upon me.”

As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her:  “The hat is really a male genital, with its raised middle piece and the two downward hanging side pieces.”  I intentionally refrained from interpreting those details concerning the unequal downward hanging of the two side pieces, although just such individualities in the determinations lead the way to the interpretation.  I continued by saying that if she only had a man with such a virile genital she would not have to fear the officers—­that is, she would have nothing to wish from them, for she is mainly kept from going without protection and company by her fancies of temptation.  This last explanation of her fear I had already been able to give her repeatedly on the basis of other material.