ABSTRACT
In the analysis of dreams and fancies, I have come repeatedly upon the circumstance that the head of Medusa is the terrible symbol of the female genital region, the details of which are displaced ‘from below upwards’. The many serpents which surround the head ought—in representation by the opposite—to signify the absence of a penis, and the phantom itself is the frightful impression made on the child by the penis-less (castrated) genital. The fearful and alarming starting eyes of the Medusa head have also the secondary meaning of erection. 1
