ABSTRACT
In 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 transformation with wider experience. Dream-interpretation and analysis of neuroses, however, remain, as before, the most trustworthy foundation of every kind of symbolism, because in them we can observe in anima vili the motivation, and further the whole genesis, of mental structures of this kind. In the interpretation of the dreams of neurotics one is frequently confronted with the question of the typical meaning of the bridge, particularly when no historical fact apropos of the dream-bridge occurs to the patient. It is natural to interpret the use of the bridge symbol as it occurs in cases of neurotic bridge-anxiety as representing 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.
