Finally there is no one in the picture but myself. I am the central figure of the dream.
To go into more details, I may confide to the reader that I have never enjoyed any form of sport, indoor or outdoors in which I do not play an important, if not the leading part, or which prevents me from indulging my own whims. Witnessing some one else's athletic performances bores me to extinction and games such as cards, checkers or golf which are surrounded with iron clad regulations appear to me not as a relaxation but as a useless form of hard work.
Readers may think that these self-revelations are prompted by egotism, but an analyst should analyse himself as ruthlessly as he analyses others and egotism happens to be the dominant feature of my attitude to life.
The following dream draws a remarkable picture of uncertainty, indecision and gloom:
DREAM. "I am standing at the foot of marble stairs. I expect some danger from the left where a person clothed in authority, with tyrannical appearance, is approaching. I ask a female figure standing at the top of the steps, and who seems to be some acquaintance, relative, mother or sister, for help. I try to run up the steps but cannot. The figure extends me a helping hand but that hand is so weak, lifeless, that I feel helpless. I wake up in deep anxiety."
ATTITUDE. We have in this case a "flight to the mother" coupled with fear of the powerful father. The patient had always suffered from some fear, fear of examinations as a school child, fear of competition in all life matters, fear of marriage, fear of decisions. He lived with his mother and sister and had an affair with a woman considerably older than himself whom he called "mother" and who called him her "boy."
We shall now see a dreamer wrestling with a sentimental problem, seeking a solution for it and refusing to accept the solution suggested by an outsider.
DREAM. "I was in a car with Albert, sitting in my usual seat but the steering gear had been moved so that I could steer from my seat. I was very inexperienced and felt anxiety. I was going down a steep city street and at the bottom, saw a house before which I wished to park; there were red lanterns and signs, however, which prevented me from stopping there. I went on and Albert disappeared, then I was in the open country climbing a hill and a man (A.T.) stood there and I asked him which way to go. The machinery bothered me, I didn't know what button to push but trusted my intuition and went all right. Finally I reached a desert stretch where there was nothing and in great anxiety awoke."