Dreams of a little boy lost
From The Missing Dreams: Fragments from the Notebooks of Sigmund Freud (ed Amy Reknaw, Oedi-pus Press, 1992):
Here is another dream dealing with early trauma, which is characterised by the clarity of the manner in which it was recalled. It was told to me by a gentleman, to whom I shall refer only as R M, inhibited by his mother- complex.
He was going for a walk with his father, along the river Sambre next to his house (the dreamer, R M, is Belgian by origin). They came to a SUSPENSION BRIDGE curiously wreathed in mist, so that it seemed to stretch only half way across the river and peter out in mid-air. The dreamer's father crossed the bridge and he, too, seemed to disappear into thin air. R M walked on, passing many strange sights on the banks of the river: a MERMAID- like creature, but with the head of a fish and the legs of a woman; two CANDLES which, animated, crept along by the water like worms. He found himself alone in a starkly furnished room. Then he noticed he was not alone, but was with his mother, whom he had not seen for some years. She greeted him lovingly and he bent to kiss her, not as a son, but as a lover, only to find the kiss obstructed, since both their heads had become wrapped in integuments of GREY CLOTH.
ANALYSIS
This dreamer belonged to a type whose therapeutic prospects are not favourable: up to a certain point they offer little resistance to analysis, but from then on turn out to be almost inaccessible.
The suspension bridge is to be taken symbolically, especially in relation to the dreamer's father, who disappears along it. R M confided that he, a...
