history of the whole world have been necessary. That indeed were a world-conception fit for a schoolmaster. For psychoanalysis this view suits not at all.
The question as to how much the analyst involuntarily suggests to the patient is a very ticklish one. Undoubtedly that has a much more important place than psychoanalysts have till now admitted. Experience has convinced us that the patient rapidly avails himself of the ideas won through the analysis, and of whatever comes to light through the shaping of the dreams. You may obtain all manner of such impressions from Stekel's book: "Die Sprache des Traumes" ("The Language of the Dream"). I had once a most instructive experience: a very intelligent lady had from the beginning extreme transference phantasies which appeared in well-recognised erotic forms. Nevertheless she entirely declined to admit their existence. Of course she was betrayed by the dreams in which my own person was hidden behind some other figure, and often difficult to unveil. A long series of such dreams forced me at last to say: "So you see it is always like that, and the person of whom one has really dreamt is replaced and hidden by some one else in the manifest dream." Till then the patient had obstinately contested this point. But this time she could no longer evade it, and had to admit my rule—but only that she might play me a trick. Next day she brought me a dream in which she and I appeared in a manifest lascivious situation. I was naturally perplexed and thought of my rule. Her first association to the dream was the malicious question: "It's always true, isn't it, that the person of whom one is really dreaming is replaced by some one else in the manifest dream-content?"
Clearly, she had made use of her experience to find a protective formula by means of which she secured the open expression of her phantasies in an apparently innocent way.
This example aptly shows how patients avail themselves of insight gained during analysis; they use it symbolically. You get caught in your own net if you give credence to the idea of unalterable, permanent symbols. That has
