point out its beautiful parallel with certain mythological presentations. This astonishing coincidence of thunderstorm and stork has, of course, to those acquainted with the works of Adalbert Kuhn and Steinthal nothing remarkable. The thunderstorm has had, from ancient times, the meaning of the fertilizing of the earth, the cohabitation of the father Heaven and the mother Earth, to which Abraham[13] has recently again called attention, in which the lightning takes the place of the winged phallus. The stork is just the same thing, a winged phallus, the psychosexual meaning of which is known to every child. But the psychosexual meaning of the thunderstorm is not known to everyone. In view of the psychological situation just described, we must attribute to the stork a psychosexual meaning. That the thunderstorm is connected with the stork and has also a psychosexual meaning, seems at first scarcely acceptable. But when we remember that psychoanalytic observation has shown an enormous number of mythological associations with the unconscious mental images, we may suppose that some psychosexual meaning is also present in this case. We know from other experiences that those unconscious strata which, in former times, produced mythological forms, are still in action among modern people and are still incessantly productive. But this production is limited to the realm of dreams and the symptomatology of the neuroses and the psychoses, for the correction, through reality, is so much increased in the modern mind that it prevents their projection into reality.
We will return to the dream analysis. The associations which lead us to the heart of this image begin with the idea of rain during the thunderstorm. Her actual words were: "I think of water. My uncle was drowned in water—it must be dreadful to be kept under water, so in the dark. But the child must be also drowned in the water. Does it drink the water that is in the stomach? It is very strange, when I was ill Mamma sent my water to the doctor. I thought perhaps he would mix something with it, perhaps some syrup, out of which children grow. I think one has to drink it."
With unquestionable clearness we see from this set of associations that even the child associates psychosexual, and even typical ideas of fructification with the rain during the thunderstorm.
