Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts Part 2

Nietzsche writes ("Menschliches, Allzumenschliches"), "In sleep and in dreams we pa.s.s through the entire curriculum of primitive mankind.... I mean as even to-day we think in dreams, mankind thought in waking life through many thousand years; the first cause that struck his spirit in order to explain anything that needed explanation satisfied him and pa.s.sed as truth. In dreams this piece of ancient humanity works on in us, for it is the germ from which the higher reason developed and in every man still develops. The dream takes us back into remote conditions of human culture and puts in our hand the means of understanding it better. The dream thought is now so easy because, during the enormous duration of the evolution of mankind we have been so well trained in just this form of cheap, phantastic explanation by the first agreeable fancy. In that respect the dream is a means of recovery for the brain, which by day has to satisfy the strenuous demands of thought required by the higher culture." (Works, Vol. II, pp. 27 ff.)

If we remember that the explanation of nature and the philosophizing of unschooled humanity is consummated in the form of myths, we can deduce from the preceding an a.n.a.logy between myth making and dreaming. This a.n.a.logy is much further developed by psychoa.n.a.lysis. Freud blazes a path with the following words: "The research into these concepts of folk psychology [myths, sagas, fairy stories] is at present not by any means concluded, but it is apparent everywhere from myths, for instance, that they correspond to the displaced residues of wish phantasies of entire nations, the dreams of ages of young humanity." (Samml. kl. Lehr. II, p.

205.) It will be shown later that fairy stories and myths can actually be subjected to the same psychologic interpretation as dreams, that for the most part they rest on the same psychological motives (suppressed wishes, that are common to all men) and that they show a similar structure to that of dreams.

Abraham (Traum und Mythus)(1) has gone farther in developing the parallelism of dream and myth. For him the myth is the dream of a people and a dream is the myth of the individual. He says, e.g., "The dream is (according to Freud) a piece of superseded infantile, mental life" and "the myth is a piece of superseded infantile, mental life of a people"; also, "The dream then, is the myth of the individual." Rank conceives the myths as images intermediate between collective dreams and collective poems. "For as in the individual the dream or poem is destined to draw off unconscious emotions that are repressed in the course of the evolution of civilization, so in mythical or religious phantasies a whole people liberates itself for the maintenance of its psychic soundness from those primal impulses that are refractory to culture (t.i.tanic), while at the same time it creates, as it were, a collective symptom for taking up all repressed emotion." (Inz-Mot., p. 277. Cf. also Kunstl., p. 36.)

A definite group of such repressed primal impulses is given a prominent place by psychoa.n.a.lysis. I refer to the so-called dipus complex that plays an important role in the dream life as also in myth and apparently, also in creative poetry. The fables (sagas, dramas) of dipus, who slays his father and marries his mother are well known. According to the observations of psychoa.n.a.lysis there is a bit of dipus in every one of us. [These dipus elements in us can-as I must observe after reading Imago, January, 1913-be called "t.i.tanic" in the narrower sense, following the lead of Lorenz. They contain the motive for the separation of the child from the parents.] The related conflicts, that in their entirety const.i.tute the dipus complex (almost always unconscious, because actively repressed) arise in the disturbance of the relation to the parents which every child goes through more or less in its first (and very early) s.e.xual emotions. "If king dipus can deeply affect modern mankind no less than the contemporary Greeks, the explanation can lie only in the fact that the effect of the Greek tragedy does not depend on the ant.i.thesis between fate and the human will, but in the peculiarity of the material in which this ant.i.thesis is developed. There must be a voice in our inner life which is ready to recognize the compelling power of fate in the case of dipus, while we reject as arbitrary the situations in the Ahnfrau or other destiny tragedies. And such an element is indeed contained in the history of king dipus. His fate touches us only because it might have been ours, because the oracle hung the same curse over us before our birth as over him. For us all, probably, it is ordained that we should direct our first s.e.xual feelings towards our mothers, the first hate and wish for violence against our fathers. Our dreams convince us of that. King dipus, who has slain his father Laius and married his mother Jocasta, is only the wish-fulfillment of our childhood. But more fortunate than he, we have been able, unless we have become psychoneurotic, to dissociate our s.e.xual feelings from our mothers and forget our jealousy of our fathers. From the person in whom that childish wish has been fulfilled we recoil with the entire force of the repressions, that these wishes have since that time suffered in our inner soul. While the poet in his probing brings to light the guilt of dipus, he calls to our attention our own inner life, in which that impulse, though repressed, is always present. The ant.i.thesis with which the chorus leaves us

See, that is dipus, Who solved the great riddle and was peerless in power, Whose fortune the townspeople all extolled and envied.

See into what a terrible flood of mishap he has sunk.

This admonition hits us and our pride, we who have become in our own estimation, since the years of childhood, so wise and so mighty. Like dipus, we live in ignorance of the wishes that are so offensive to morality, which nature has forced upon us, and after their disclosure we should all like to turn away our gaze from the scenes of our childhood."

(Freud, Trdtg., p. 190 f.)

Believing that I have by this time sufficiently prepared the reader who was unfamiliar with psychoa.n.a.lysis for the psychoa.n.a.lytic part of my investigation, I will dispense with further time-consuming explanations.

Part II.

a.n.a.lYTIC PART.

Section I.

Psychoa.n.a.lytic Interpretation Of The Parable.

Although we know that the parable was written by a follower of the hermetic art, and apparently for the purpose of instruction, we shall proceed, with due consideration, to pa.s.s over the hermetic content of the narrative, which will later be investigated, and regard it only as a play of free fantasy. We shall endeavor to apply to the parable knowledge gained from the psychoa.n.a.lytic interpretation of dreams, and we shall find that the parable, as a creation of the imagination, shows at the very foundations the same structure as dreams. I repeat emphatically that in this research, in being guided merely by the psychoa.n.a.lytic point of view, we are for the time being proceeding in a decidedly one-sided manner.

In the interpretation of the parable we cannot apply the original method of psychoa.n.a.lysis. This consists in having a series of seances with the dreamer in order to evoke the free a.s.sociations. The dreamer of the parable-or rather the author-has long ago departed this life. We are obliged then to give up the preparatory process and stick to the methods derived from them. There are three such methods.

The first is the comparison with typical dream images. It has been shown that in the dreams of all individuals certain phases and types continually recur, and in its symbolism have a far reaching general validity, because they are manifestly built on universal human emotions. Their imaginative expression is created according to a psychical law which remains fairly unaffected by individual differences.

The second is the parallel from folk psychology. The inner affinity of dream and myth implies that for the interpretation of individual creations of fancy, parallels can profitably be drawn from the productions of the popular imagination and vice versa.

The third is the conclusions from the peculiarities of structure of the dream (myth, fairy tale) itself. In dreams and still more significantly in the more widely cast works of the imagination creating in a dream-like manner, as e.g., in myths and fairy tales, one generally finds motives that are several times repeated in similar stories even though with variations and with different degrees of distinctness. [Let this not be misunderstood. I do not wish to revive the exploded notion that myths are merely the play of a fancy that requires occupation. My position on the interpretation of myths will be explained in Part I. of the synthetic part.] It is then possible by the comparison of individual instances of a motive, to conclude concerning its true character, inasmuch as one, as it were, completes in accordance with their original tendency the lines of increasing distinctness in the different examples, and thus-to continue the geometric metaphor-one obtains in their prolongations a point of intersection in which can be recognized the goal of the process toward which the dream strives, a goal, however, that is not found in the dream itself but only in the interpretation.

We shall employ the three methods of interpretation conjointly. After all we shall proceed exactly as psychoa.n.a.lysis does in interpretation of folk-lore. For in this also there are no living authors that we can call and question. We have succeeded well enough, however, with the derived methods. The lack of an actual living person will be compensated for in a certain sense by the ever living folk spirit and the infinite series of its manifestations (folk-lore, etc.). The results of this research will help us naturally in the examination of our parable, except in so far as I must treat some of the conclusions of psychoa.n.a.lysis with reserve as problematic.

Let us now turn to the parable. Let us follow the author, or as I shall call him, the wanderer, into his forest, where he meets his extraordinary adventures.

I have just used a figure, "Let us follow him into his forest." This is worthy of notice. I mean, of course, that we betake ourselves into his world of imagination and live through his dreams with him. We leave the paths of everyday life, in order to rove in the jungle of phantasy. If we remember rightly, the wanderer used the same metaphor at the beginning of his narrative. He comes upon a thicket in the woods, loses the usual path.... He, too, speaks figuratively. Have we almost unaware, in making his symbolism our own, partially drawn away the veil from his mystery? It is a fact confirmed by many observations [Cf. my works on threshold symbolism-Schwellensymbolik, Jahrb. ps. F. III, p. 621 ff., IV, p. 675 ff.] that in hypnagogic hallucinations (dreamy images before going to sleep), besides all kinds of thought material, the state of going to sleep also portrays itself in exactly the same way that in the close of a dream or hypnotic illusions on awakening, the act of awakening is pictorially presented. The symbolism of awakening brings indeed pictures of leave taking, departing, opening of a door, sinking, going free out of a dark surrounding, coming home, etc. The pictures for going to sleep are sinking, entering into a room, a garden or a dark forest.

The fairy story also used the same forest symbol. Whether on sinking into sleep I have the sensation of going into a dark forest or whether the hero of the story goes into a forest (which to be sure has still other interpretations), or whether the wanderer in the parable gets into a tangle of underbrush, all amounts to the same thing; it is always the introduction into a life of phantasy, the entrance into the theater of the dream. The wanderer, if he had not chosen for his fairy tale the first person, could have begun as follows: There was once a king whose greatest joy was in the chase. Once as he was drawn with his companions into a great forest, and was pursuing a fleet stag, he was separated from his followers, and went still further from the familiar paths, so that finally he had to admit that he had lost his way. Then he went farther and farther into the woods until he saw far off a house....

The wanderer comes through the woods to the Pratum felicitatis, the Meadow of Felicity, and there his adventures begin. Here, too, our symbolism is maintained; by sleeping or the transition to revery we get into the dream and fairy tale realm, a land to which the fulfillment of our keenest wishes beckons us. The realm of fairy tales is indeed-and the psychoa.n.a.lyst can confirm this statement-a Pratum felicitatis, in spite of all dangers and accidents which we have there to undergo.

The dream play begins and the interpretation, easy till now, becomes more difficult. We shall hardly be able to proceed in strictly chronological order. The understanding of the several phases of the narrative does not follow the sequence of their events. Let us take it as it comes.

The wanderer becomes acquainted with the inhabitants of the Pratum felicitatis, who are discussing learned topics, he becomes involved in the scientific dispute, and is subjected to a severe test in order to be admitted to the company. The admission thus does not occur without trouble but rather a great obstacle is placed in the way of it. The wanderer tells us that his examiners hauled him over the coals, an allegorical metaphor, taken possibly from the ordeal by fire. In these difficulties the attaining of the end meets us in the first instance in a series of a.n.a.logous events, where the wanderer sees himself hindered in his activities in a more or less painful, and often even a dangerous manner.

After a phase marked by anxiety the adventure turns out uniformly well and some progress is made after the obstruction at the beginning. As a first intimation of the coming experiences we may take up the obstacles in the path in the first section of the parable, which are successfully removed, inasmuch as the wanderer soon after reaches the lovely region (Sec. 3).

The psychology of dreams has shown that obstacles in the dream correspond to conflicts of will on the part of the dreamer, which is exactly as in the morbid restraint of neurotics. Anxiety develops when a suppressed impulse wishes to gratify itself, to which impulse another will, something determined by our culture, is opposed prohibitively. Obstructed satisfaction creates anxiety instead of pleasure. Anxiety may then be called also a libido with a negative sign. Only when the impulse in question knows how to break through without the painful conflict, can it attain pleasure-which is the psychic (not indeed the biologic) tendency of every impulse emanating from the depths of the soul. The degrees of the pleasure that thus exists in the soul may be very different, even vanis.h.i.+ngly small, a state of affairs occurring if the wish fulfilling experience has through overgrowth of symbolism lost almost all of its original form. If we follow the appearances of the obstruction motive in the parable, and find the regular happy ending already mentioned, then we can maintain it as a characteristic of the phantasy product in question, that not only in its parts but also in the movement of the entire action, it shows a tendency from anxiety towards untroubled fulfillment of wishes.

As for the examination episode, to which we have now advanced in our progressive study of the narrative, we can now take up a frequently occurring dream type; the Examination Dream. Almost every one who has to pa.s.s severe examinations, experiences even at subsequent times when the high school or university examinations are far in the past, distressing dreams filled with the anxiety that precedes an examination. Freud (Trdtg., p. 196 ff.) clearly says that this kind of dream is especially the indelible memories of the punishments which we have suffered in childhood for misdeeds and which make themselves felt again in our innermost souls at the critical periods of our studies, at the _Dies irae, dies ilia_ of the severe examinations. After we have ceased to be pupils it is no longer as at first the parents and governesses or later the teachers that take care of our punishment. The inexorable causal nexus of life has taken over our further education, and now we dream of the preliminaries or finals; whenever we expect that the result will chastise us, because we have not done our duty, or done something incorrectly, or whenever we feel the pressure of responsibility. Stekel's experience is also to be noticed, confirmed by the practice of other psychoa.n.a.lysts, that graduation dreams frequently occur if a test of s.e.xual power is at hand. The double sense of the word _matura_ (= ripe) (that may also mean s.e.xual maturity) may also come to mind as the verbal connecting link for the a.s.sociation. In general the examination dreams may be the expression of an anxiety about not doing well or not being able to do well; in particular they are an expression of a fear of impotence. It should be noted here that not only in the former but in the latter case the fear has predominantly the force of a psychic obstruction.

For the interpretation of the examination scene also, we note the fairy tale motif so frequently appearing of a hard-won prize, i.e., any story in which a king or a potentate proposes a riddle or a task for the hero. If the hero solves or accomplishes it, he generally wins, besides other precious possessions, a woman or a princess, whom he marries. In the case of a heroine the prize is a beautiful prince. The motif of the hard-won prize matches the later appearance of obstacles in the Parable. The nature of the prize is, for the present at any rate, a matter of indifference.

A second edition of the examination scene meets us in the 6th section as the battle with the lion. The advance from the anxiety phase to the fulfillment phase appears clearly and the emotions of the wanderer are more strongly worked out. The difficulty at the beginning is indicated in the preceding conversation where no one will advise him how he is to begin with the beast, but all hold out guidance for a later time when he shall have once bound the lion. The beginning of the fight causes the wanderer much trouble. He "is amazed at his own temerity," would gladly turn back from his project, and he can "hardly restrain his tears for fear." He fortifies himself, however, develops brilliant abilities and comes off victor in the fray. A gratification derived from his own ability is unmistakable. The scene, as well as a variation of the preceding examination, adds to it some essentially new details. The displacement of the early opponents (i.e., the examining elders) by another (the lion) is not really new. It is a mere compensation, although, as we shall see later, a very instructive one. Entirely new is the result of the battle.

After killing the lion the victor brings to light white bones and red blood from his body. Note the ant.i.thesis, white and red. It will occur again. If we think of saga and fairy lore parallels, the dragon fight naturally comes to mind. The victorious hero has to free a maiden who languishes in the possession of an ogre. The anatomizing of the dead lion finds numerous a.n.a.logies in those myths and fairy tales in which dismemberment of the body appears. It will be dealt with fully later on.

As the next obstacle in the parable we meet the difficult advance on the wall. (Para. 7 and 8.) We have here again an obstruction to progress in the narrower sense as in Sec. 1, but with several additions. The wall, itself a type of embarra.s.sment, reaches up to the clouds. Whoever goes up so high may fall far. The way on top is "Not a foot in width" and an iron hand rail occupies some of that s.p.a.ce. The walking is therefore uncomfortable and dangerous. The railing running in the middle of it divides the path and so produces two paths, a right and a left. The right path is the more difficult. Who would not in this situation think of Hercules at the cross roads? The conception of right and left as right and wrong, good and bad, is familiar in mythical and religious symbolism. That the right path is the narrower [Matth. VII, 13, 14] or more full of thorns is naturally comprehensible. In dreams the right-left symbolism is typical. It has here a meaning similar to its use in religion, probably however, with the difference that it is used princ.i.p.ally with reference to s.e.xual excitements of such a character that the right signifies a permitted (i.e., experienced by the dreamer as permissible), the left, an illicit s.e.xual pleasure. Accordingly it is, e.g., characteristic in the dream about strawberry picking in the preceding part of the book, that the valley, sought by the dreamer and the boy, "in order to pick strawberries there" turns off to the left from the road, not to the right. The s.e.xual act with a boy appears even in dreams as something illicit, indecent, forbidden. In the parable the wanderer goes from right to left, gets into difficulties by doing so, but knows, as always, how to withdraw successfully.

From the wall the wanderer comes to a rose tree, from which he breaks off white and red roses. Notice the white and red. The victory over the lion has yielded him white bones and red blood, the pa.s.sing through the dangers on the wall now yields him white and red roses. The similarity in the latter case is particularly marked by his putting them in his hat.

Again in the course of the next sections (9-11) there are obstacles. There a wall is set up against the wanderer. On account of that he has, in order to gain entrance for the maidens into the company in the garden, to go a long way round. Arriving at the door, he finds it locked and is afraid that the people standing about will prevent his entrance or laugh at him.

But the first difficulty is barely removed, by the magic opening of the first gate, when the now familiar change from the anxiety phase to the fulfillment phase occurs. The wanderer traverses the corridor without trouble but his eyes glance ahead of him and he sees through the still closed door, as if it were gla.s.s, into the garden. What result has this success over the difficulties yielded him? Where is the usual white and red reward? We do not have to look long. In Sec. 11 it is recorded, "When I had pa.s.sed beyond the little garden [in the center of the larger garden]

and was going to the place where I was to help the maidens, behold, I was aware that instead of the wall, a low hurdle stood there, and there went by the rose garden, the most beautiful maiden arrayed in white satin with the most stately youth who was in scarlet, each giving arm to the other, and carrying in their hands many fragrant roses. 'This, my dearest bridegroom,' said she, 'has helped me over and we are now going out of this lovely garden into our chamber to enjoy the pleasures of love.' "

Here the parallel with the fairy tale is complete, and reveals the characteristic of the prize that rewards him. The red and the white reveal themselves as man and woman, and the last aim is, as the just quoted pa.s.sage clearly shows, and the further course of the narrative fully indicates, the s.e.xual union of both. Even the rest of the fairy tale prizes are not lacking-kingdoms, riches, happiness. And if they are not dead they are still living.... The narrative has yielded a complete fulfillment of wishes; the longing for love and power has attained its end. That the wanderer does not experience the acquired happiness immediately in his own person, but that the representation of happy love is in the most ill.u.s.trative manner developed in the union of two other persons, is naturally a peculiarity of the narration. It is found often enough in dreams. The ego of the dreamer is in such a case replaced by a "split-off" person, through whom the dream evokes its dramatic pageantry.

It is as if the parable tried to say the hero has won his happy love through struggle; two are, however, needful for love, a man and a woman, so let us quickly create a pair. Apart from the fact that the reward must evidently fall to the hero who has won it, the ident.i.ty of the wanderer with the king in the parable is abundantly demonstrated, even if somewhat paraphrased. The secret of the dramatizing craft of the narrative is most clearly exposed in the conclusion of Sec. 11, where the elders, with the letter of the faculty in their hands, reveal to the wanderer that he must marry the woman he has taken, which he furthermore cheerfully promises them to do.

So far all would be regular and we might think, on superficial examination, that the psychoa.n.a.lytic solution of the parable was ended.

How far from being the case! We have interpreted only the upper stratum and will see a problem show itself that invites us to press on into the deeper layers of the phantasy fabric before us.

We have noticed that in the parable much, even the most important, is communicated only by symbols and by means of allusions. Its previously ascertained latent content [corresponding to the latent dream thoughts]

will in the manifest form be transcribed in different and gradually diminis.h.i.+ng disguises. Also a displacement (dream displacement) has taken place. Now the dream or the imagination working in dreams does nothing without purpose and even though according to its nature (out of "regard for presentability") it has to favor the visual in all cases, the tendency toward the pictorial does not explain such a systematic series of disguises and such a determinate tendency as that just observed by us. The representation of the union of man and woman is strikingly paraphrased.

First as blood and bones-a type of intimate vital connection; they belong to _one_ body, just as two lovers are one and as later the bridal pair also melt into one body. Then as two kinds of roses that bloom on one bush. The wanderer breaks the rose as the boy does the wild rose maiden.

And hardly is the veil of the previous disguise lifted, hardly have we learned that the wanderer has taken a woman (Sec. 11), when the affair is again hushed just as it is about to be dramatized (cf. Sec. 12), so that apparently another enjoys the pleasures of love. This consequent concealment must have a reason. Let us not forget the striking obstacles which the wanderer experiences again and again and which we have not yet thoroughly examined. The symbolism of the dream tells us that such obstacles correspond to conflicts of the will. What kind of inner resistance may it be that checks the wanderer at every step on his way to happy love? We suspect that the examinations have an ethical flavor. This appears to some extent in the right-left symbolism; then in the experience at the mill, which we have not yet studied, where the wanderer has to pa.s.s over a very narrow plank, the ethical symbolism of which will be discussed later; and in the striking feeling of responsibility which the wanderer has for the actions of the bridal pair in the crystal prison, which gives us the impression that he had a bad conscience. Altogether we cannot doubt that the dream-the parable-has endeavored, because of the censor, to disguise the s.e.xual experiences of the wanderer. We can be quite certain that it will be said that the s.e.xual as such will be forbidden by the censor. That is, however, not the case. The account is outspoken enough, and not the least prudish; the bridal pair embrace each other naked, penetrate each other and dissolve in love, melt in rapture and pain. Who could ask more? Therefore the s.e.xual act itself could not have been offensive to the censor. The whole machinery of scrupulousness, concealment and deterrent objects, which stand like dreadful watchmen before the doors of forbidden rooms, cannot on the other hand be causeless. So the question arises: What is it that the dream censor in the most varied forms [lion, dangerous paths, etc.] has so sternly vetoed?

In the strawberry dream related in the preceding section, we have seen that a paraphrase of the latent dream content appears at the moment when a form of s.e.xual intercourse, forbidden to the dreamer by the dream censor, was to be consummated. (h.o.m.os.e.xual intercourse.) Most probably in the parable also there is some form of s.e.xuality rejected by the censor. What may it be? Nothing indicates a h.o.m.os.e.xual desire. We shall have to look for another erotic tendency that departs from the normal. From several indications we might settle upon exhibitionism. This is, as are almost all abnormal erotic tendencies, also an element of our normal psychos.e.xual const.i.tution, but it is, if occurring too prominently, a perversity against which the censor directs his attacks. The incidents of the parable that indicate exhibitionism are those where the wanderer sees, through locked doors (Sec. 10) or walls (Sec. 11), objects that can be interpreted as s.e.xual symbols. The miraculous sight corresponds to a transferred wish fulfillment. The supposition that exhibitionism is the forbidden erotic impulse element that we were looking for is, however, groundless, if we recollect that these very elements appear most openly in the parable. In Sec. 14 the wanderer has the freest opportunity to do as he likes. Still the question arises, what is the prohibited tendency? No very great constructive ability is required to deduce the answer. The wording of the parable itself furnishes the information. In Sec. 14 we read, "Now I do not know what sin these two have committed except that although they were brother and sister they were so united in love that they could not again be separated and so, as it were, required to be punished for incest." And in another pa.s.sage (Sec. 13), "After our bridegroom ... with his dearest bride ... came to the age of marriage, they both copulated at once and I wondered not a little that this maiden, that yet was supposed to be the bridegroom's mother, was still so young."

The s.e.xual propensity forbidden by the censor is incest. That it can be mentioned in the parable in spite of the censor is accounted for by the exceedingly clever and unsuspected bringing about of the suggestion.

Dreams are very adroit in this respect, and the same cleverness (apparently unconscious on the part of the author) is found in the parable, which is in every way a.n.a.logous to the dream. Incest can be explicitly mentioned, because it is attributed to persons that have apparently nothing to do with the wanderer. That the king in the crystal prison is none other than the wanderer himself, we indeed know, thanks to our critical a.n.a.lysis. The dreamer of the dream does not know it. For him the king is a different person, who is alone responsible for his actions; although in spite of the clear disguise, some feeling of responsibility still overshadows the wanderer, a peculiar feeling that has struck us before, and now is explained.

Later we shall see that from the beginning of the parable, incest symbols are in evidence. Darkly hinted at first they are later somewhat more transparent, and in the very moment when they remove the last veil and attain a significance intolerable for the censor, exactly at that psychologic moment the forbidden action is transferred to the other, apparently strange, person.

A similar process, of course, is the change of situation in the strawberry dream at the exact moment when the affair begins to seem unpleasant to the dreamer. This becoming unpleasant can be beautifully followed out in the parable. The critical transition is found exactly in one of those places where the representation appears most confused. It is in this way that the weakest points of the dream surface are usually const.i.tuted. Those are the places where the outer covering is threadbare and exposes a nakedness to the view of the a.n.a.lyzer.

The critical phase of the parable begins in the 11th section. The elders consult over a letter from the faculty. The wanderer notices that the contents concern him and asks, "Gentlemen, does it have to do with me?"

They answer, "Yes, you must marry your woman that you have recently taken." Wanderer: "That is no trouble; for I was, so to speak, born [how subtle!] with her and brought up from childhood with her." Now the secret of the incest is almost divulged. But it is at once effectually retracted.