main symptoms from below, that is, the genitals, to the throat (pain, inability to sing, hoarseness, dry throat, pressure in the throat, etc.). The patient often had dreams in which she was naked and was pursued by her former teacher or her father—two determining figures in the genesis of her illness—or she was thrown in a moss bed and her clothes torn off by a man.
Once she dreamt she was in the fields. The hay had been raked up into small piles—shocks. Suddenly a serpent appeared looking out from each hay shock. One especially large one slipped into her mouth and bit her palate. The hay shocks are the hairy portion of the genitals out of which the serpent, the penis, looks out, and so become a counterpart of the nymphæ forest cited by Freud,[1] which represented the female genitals. In the fairy tales (and mythology) there is a whole series of similar transpositions. Their value lies, not only in offering a surprising confirmation of the Freudian views, but in that they are a serviceable result in comparative psychology.
In fairy tales it is for the most part barren women who become pregnant by eating (symbol of coitus with a symbolic object or animal). The child that results from this wonderful fertilization is usually a great hero.
In "Ivan Cow Son of the Storm Knight" in the Russian fairy stories (Afanassiew, Nr. 27) the fish is the male sexual symbol. (Perhaps the fish spawn and the great fruitfulness of fish, besides those qualities mentioned of the serpent, are new determining moments.)
A royal pair were still, after ten years, without children. Then the king sent to all rulers in all cities and to all peasants to find if any one knew how the queen could be cured so that she might bear a child. Of all who came no one could help except a peasant's son to whom the king gave a pile of gold and three days time. First, nothing occurred to him, not even in his dreams, then he met an old woman whom he had first spurned but finally confided his troubles to her.
She had him tell the king to order three silk nets to be woven and sink them in the sea before the palace windows. She said that a golden scaled pike was always swimming before the palace.
- ↑ Freud, Journal für Psychologie und Neurologie, Bd. VIII, 1906. Bruckstück, l. c., p. 450.
