ABSTRACT
in this shorter writing by Freud (1916c), he begins by stating that: “Experience in the analysis of dreams has sufficiently well established the hat as a symbol of the genital organ, most frequently of the male organ. It cannot be said that the symbol is an intelligible one.” My point in including it is to illustrate how Freud saw that links could be made between symptoms—in this paper he discusses the tortures to which certain obsessional patients subject themselves—and the symbols, or representations, that they employ to communicate these agonies to their psychoanalyst. It will be clear that these communications will not be intelligible to the psychoanalyst unless they understand the equation of doffing a hat with submission—or castration.
