the lower blossoms they have already fallen off to a considerable extent. Now that she is at the bottom, she sees a porter who is combing—as she would like to express it—just such a tree—that is, who is plucking thick bunches of hair from it, which hang from it like moss. Other workmen have chopped off such boughs in a garden, and have thrown them upon the street, where they lie about, so that many people take some of them. But she asks whether that is right, whether anybody may take one.[1] In the garden there stands a young man (having a personality with which she is acquainted, not a member of her family) up to whom she goes in order to ask him how it is possible to transplant such boughs into her own garden.[2] He embraces her, whereat she resists and asks him what he means, whether it is permissible to embrace her in such a manner. He says that there is no wrong in it, that it is permitted.[3] He then declares himself willing to go with her into the other garden, in order to show her the transplanting, and he says something to her which she does not correctly understand: "Besides this three metres—(later on she says: square metres) or three fathoms of ground are lacking." It seems as though the man were trying to ask her something in return for his affability, as though he had the intention of indemnifying himself in her garden, as though he wanted to evade some law or other, to derive some advantage from it without causing her an injury. She does not know whether or not he really shows her anything.[4]
I must mention still another series of associations which often serves the purpose of concealing sexual meaning both in dreams and in the neurosis,—I refer to the change of residence series. To change one's residence is readily replaced by "to remove," an ambiguous expression which may have reference to clothing. If the dream also contains a "lift" (elevator), one may think of the verb "to lift," hence of lifting up the clothing.
- ↑ Whether it is permitted to "pull one off," i.e. to masturbate.
- ↑ The bough has long since been used to represent the male genital, and besides that it contains a very distinct allusion to the family name of the dreamer.
- ↑ Refers to matrimonial precautions, as does that which follows.
- ↑ An analogous "biographical" dream was reported on p. 252, as the third of the examples of dream symbolism; a second example is the one fully reported by Rank106 under the title "Traum der sich selbst deutet"; for another one which must be read in the "opposite direction," see Stekel114, p. 486.
