SYMBOLISM

SHORT PAPERS

THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE 1

LXI

I
N establishing the symbolic relation of an object or an
action to an unconscious phantasy we must first have
recourse to conjectures, which necessarily undergo
considerable modifications and often complete transforma-
tion with wider experience. Indications flooding in on
one, as they often do, from the most diverse spheres of
knowledge offer important confirmation; so that all branches
of individual and group psychology can take their share
in the establishment of a special symbolic relation. Dream-
interpretation and analys1s of neuroses, however, remain,
as before, the most trustworthy foundation of every kind
of symbolism, because in them we can observe in anima
viii the motivation, and further the whole genesis, of mental
structures of this kind. A feeling of certainty about a
symbolic relation can in my opinion be attained only in
psycho-analysis. Symbolic interpretations in other fields
of knowledge (mythology, fairy-tales, folk-lore, etc.) always
bear the impress of being superficial, two-dimensional:
they tend to produce a lurking feeling of incertitude, an
idea that the meaning might just as well have been something
else, and indeed in these fields there is always a tendency
to go on imposing new interpretations on the same content.
The absence of a third dimension may well be what dis-
tinguishes the unsubstantial allegory from the symbol-a
thing of Aesh and blood.
Bridges often play a striking part in dreams. In the
interpretation of the dreams of neurotics one is frequently
confronted with the question of the tyfical meaning of the
bridge, particularly when no historica fact apropos of the
1
Ztilsd•rift, 1921, VII. 211. [Translated by C. M. Baines.]
3.51
 1921
1916-17 THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE 353
dream-bridge occurs to the patient. It may have been
due to some coincidence in the material furnished by my
practice that I should be able to replace the bridge in a
whole series of cases by sexual symbols as follows: the
bridge is the male organ, and in particular the powerful
organ of the father, which unites two landscapes (the two
parents in the giant shapes in which they appear to the
infant view). This bridge spans a wide and perilous
stream, from which all life takes its origin, into which man
longs all his life to return, and to which the adult does
periodically return, though only by proxy-through a
portion of himself. That the approach to this stream in
dream-life is not direct but by means of some kind of
supporting plank or stay is intelligible in the light of the
special characteristic of the dreamers: they were without
exception suffering from sexual impotence, and they made
use of this genital weakness to protect themselves against
the dangerous proximity of women. This symbolic inter-
pretation of the bridge-dream proved true in numerous
cases; I also found confirmation of my assumption in a
popular folk-tale and in a French artist's drawing of an
obscene topic: in both an enormous male organ figured,
which was extended over a wide river, and in the fairy
story it was strong enough to carry a heavy team of horses
with their load.
My view concerning this symbol received final verifica-
tion, and at the same time took on the deeper significance
that belonged to it but had been previously lacking, from
the communications of a patient who suffered from bridge-
anxiety and from ejaculatio retardata. Besides a variety of
experiences which were calculated to arouse and to heighten
in the patient the apprehension of castration or death (he
was the son of a tailor), the analysis disclosed the following
terrifying episode from his ninth year; his mother, a
midwife ( 1), who idolized him, would not be parted from
him even on the night of agony in which she gave birth
to a girl-child, so that the little boy, if he could not see
the whole process of the birth from his bed, was at least
obliged to hear everything, and from the remarks of the

12
354 THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS LXI

people tending the mother was able to gather details about

the appearing of the infant and then its withdrawal for a
time once more into the mother's body. The boy could
not have escaped the apprehension which irresistibly seizes
the witness of a scene of birth; he imagined himself in
the position of the child, which was going through that
first and greatest anxiety, the prototype of every later
anxiety, which for hours together was being drawn to and
fro between the mother's womb and the outer world. This
to and fro, this isthmus between life and what is not yet
(or no longer) life, thus gave the special form of bridge-
anxiety to the patient's anxiety-hysteria. The opposite
shore of the Danube signified for him the future life which,
as is usual, was modelled upon prenatal life. 1 Never in
his life haa he gone over a bridge on foot, only in
vehicles driven very fast and in the company of a strong
personality dominating his own. When, after adequate
development of the transference, I induced him for the
first time to drive across the bridge with me once more
after a long interval, he clung to me like a vice, all his
muscles were stiffened to tautness, and his breath was held.
On the return journey he behaved in the same way, but
only as far as the middle of the bridge; when the bank this
side, which for him meant life, became visible, he loosed
his grip, became cheerful, noisy, and talkative. The
anxiety had vanished.
We are thus enabled to understand the patient's appre-
hension in the proximity of female genitals, and his in-
capacity for complete surrender to a woman, who always
meant for him, though unconsciously, deep water with the
menace of danger, water in which he must drown if some
one stronger does not 1 hold him above the water '.
1
In my opinion, the two meanings bridge= uniting
member between the parents ' and 1 bridge= link between
life and not-life '(death) ' supplement each other in the most
effectual manner: the father's organ is actually the bridge
which expedited the unborn (the not yet born) into life.
a Cf. Rank's detailed discussion of the Lohengrin-legend with confirmation•
from folk-psychology.
1916-17 THE SYMBOLISM OF THE BRIDGE 355
This latter additional interpretation alone gives to the
simile that deeper sense without which there can be no
true sym bal.
It is natural to interpret the use of the bridge symbol
as it occurs in cases of neurotic bridge-anxiety as represent·
ing purely mental ' connections ', ' linking ', ' associating'
(Freud's 'word-bridge ')-in a word, as a mental or logical
relation, that is, to take it as an ' autosymbolic ', ' functional '
phenomenon in Silberer's sense. But just as in the given
mstance solid material ideas about the events at a confine-
ment form the basis for these phenomena, my own view
is that there is no functional phenomenon without a material
parallel, that is, one relating to ideas of objects. Of course,
m the case of narcissistic stressing of the ' ego-memory
systems ', 1 association with object-memories may fall into
the background, and the appearance of a pure autosym-
bolism may be produced. On the other hand, it js possible
that no ' material ' mental phenomenon exists which is not
blended with some memory-trace, even though only a
faint one, of the self-perception accompanying it. Finally,
it may be recalled in this connection that in the last
analysis nearly every symbol, perhaps indeed every one,
has also a physiological basis, i.e. expresses in some way
or other the whole body or an organ of the body or its
function. 8
There are contained, I think, in what has been so far
intimated, the main outlines along which a topographical
description of the formation of symbols might be con-
structed; and since the dynamics of the repression active
in it has been already described on a former occasion,a
there still remains to be supplied (in order t9 gain ' meta-
psychological' insight, in Freud's sense, into the essential
nature of symbols) a knowledge of the distribution of the
psycho-physical quantities concerned in this interplay of
1 See my article on Tic. (Tilt lnltrnational 'Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. ii.

p. 1, Chap. XII. of this book.)

I Cf. the observations relative to this in the article 'The Phenomenon of
Hysterical Materialization', Cha,. VI. of this book.
1 See 'The Ontogenesis o Symbols', Ferenczi, Contributions to Psycho-
Analysis, 1916, chap. x.
356 THEORY AND TECHNIQUE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS LXII

forces, and more exact data as to its ontogenesis and

phylogenesis. 1
The psychic material brought to the surface in the
' bridge-anxiety ' appears also in the patient in a symptom
of conversion hysteria. A sudden shock, the sight of
blood or of some bodily defect, may bring about faintness.
The occurrence which was the forerunner of these attacks
was supplied by his mother's story that he came half-dead
into the world after a difficult birth and that respiration
was brought about with great trouble. This recollection
was the original trauma, to which the later one, his· presence
at his mother's labour, could attach itself.
It need scarcely be specially mentioned that bridges in
dreams may also originate in historical dream-material and
be without any symbolic significance.

LXII
BRIDGE SYMBOLISM AND THE
DON JUAN LEGEND a
IN the J1receding paper on Bridge Symbolism I have tried
to disclose the numerous layers of meaning which the
bridge has attained in the unconscious. According to that
interpretation the bridge is: (1) the male member which
unites the parents during sexual intercourse, and to which
the little child must cling if it is not to perish in the ' deep
water' across which the bridge is thrown. (2) In so far
as it is thanks to the male member that we have come into
the world at all out of that water the bridge is an important
vehicle between the ' Beyond ' (the condition of the unborn,
the womb) and the ' Here' (life). (3) Since man is not
able to imagine death, the Beyond after life, except in the
image of the past, consequently as• a return to the womb,
1 Cf. Ernest Jones's essay on 'The Theory of Symbolism', chap. vii. of
Paptrs on Psycho-Ana{vJis, 1918.
• Ztitschri.ft, 19u, VIII. 77· (Translated by John Rickman.]