good-natured professor—my one-eyed benefactor in another dream (cf. p. 12)—did not overlook the fact that on the list of questions I had crossed out the second of three questions as an indication that he should not insist on it. One of my patients, who withdrew before the final college examinations and made them up later, but who failed in the officer's examination and did not become an officer, tells me that he dreams about the former examination often enough, but never about the latter.
The above-mentioned colleague (Dr. Stekel of Vienna) calls attention to the double meaning of the word "Matura" (Matura—examination for college degree: mature, ripe), and claims that he has observed that examination dreams occur very frequently when a sexual test is set for the following day, in which, therefore, the disgrace which is feared might consist in the manifestation of slight potency. A German colleague takes exception to this, as it appears, justly, on the ground that this examination is denominated in Germany the Abiturium and hence lacks this double meaning.
On account of their similar affective impression dreams of missing a train deserve to be placed next to examination dreams. Their explanation also justifies this relationship. They are consolation dreams directed against another feeling of fear perceived in the dream, the fear of dying. "To depart" is one of the most frequent and one of the most easily reached symbols of death. The dream thus says consolingly: "Compose yourself, you are not going to die (to depart)," just as the examination dream calms us by saying "Fear not, nothing will happen to you even this time." The difficulty in understanding both kinds of dreams is due to the fact that the feeling of anxiety is directly connected with the expression of consolation. Stekel treats fully the symbolisms of death in his recently published book Die Sprache des Traumes.
The meaning of the "dreams of dental irritation," which I have had to analyse often enough with my patients, escaped me for a long time, because, much to my astonishment, resistances that were altogether too great obstructed their interpretation.
At last overwhelming evidence convinced me that, in the case of men, nothing else than cravings for masturbation from
