Dream symbolism (n.) is imagination's dislike of showing an object by its proper image, preferring a foreign image that expresses only the one attribute it wants.
Dream symbolism (n.) paints the body in objects: the breathing lung becomes a roaring furnace, the heart a hollow box, the male organ a clarinet or pipe-stem, the pubic hair a piece of fur.
Dream symbolism (n.) has no fixed key: the same piece of content may conceal a different meaning in different people or contexts.
Dream symbolism (n.) uses keys arbitrarily chosen by the interpreter; verbal disguise uses keys laid down by established linguistic usage.
Dream symbolism (n.) is like a character in Chinese script: a symbol has several meanings, and only context can say which one is meant.
Dream symbolism (n.) makes a room usually a woman; whether it is open or locked is then easily intelligible.
Dream symbolism (n.) often makes children stand for the genitals — just as people call their genitals affectionately their 'little ones'.
Dream symbolism (n.) uses the lizard to ward off castration — it is the animal whose tail grows back.
Dream symbolism (n.) makes vermin small children — undesired brothers and sisters; to be plagued by them is often a sign of pregnancy.
Dream symbolism (n.) is bisexual, an archaic trait: in childhood the difference between the sexes is unknown and both are given the same genitals.
Dream symbolism (n.) is given up most easily by uninitiated dreamers, those who know nothing of psycho-analysis.
Dream symbolism (n.) explains dreams with a dental stimulus: in men their motive force is nothing other than the masturbatory desires of puberty — which is why they met such strong resistance.
Dream symbolism (n.) makes the burglar in the night the father who once came to wake the child so it would not wet the bed; ghosts are women in white night-gowns.
Dream symbolism (n.) lays a stack of meanings into water over a life: urine, then semen, then amniotic fluid.
Dream symbolism (n.) is overwhelmingly sexual: many images, a monotonous few meanings — and nobody likes hearing it.
Dream symbolism (n.) is as extraordinary as finding your housemaid, born in a Bohemian village, understands Sanskrit she never learnt.