Two Confinement Dreams of a Pregnant Woman

1

'I dreamt of a big sand-hill like the one in front of our house in W., only this one went up to a point. I had continually to walk round and round the point. I had the feeling: You must! I do not know whether I had to do it for practice or for some other reason. I kept looking down, and grasping firmly and anxiously in the sand with my hands. A road ran at the botton of the sand-hill, and there was water by the side of it. I was terribly giddy, just as I used to be in the mountains. As I was crawling about feeling that I was going to fall the hill suddenly opened, and I was drawn downwards as in a funnel. I felt I should be suffocated by the sand falling in on me. Instead, however, I felt that I was descending quickly, and I arrived at the bottom in an open space similar to a wide tube and close to the road. A restaurant was opposite in which people were drinking coffee. The whole situation reminded me of a mere where we often played when children. Then I awoke. My feeling was quite different from that after my other dreams of falling; I was quite easy and relieved.'

2

'I was downstairs with our housekeeper in the kitchen. The domestic offices were the same as in T., but were in the basement, somewhat low, like ours. A few steps led up from it as though from a shaft, and I saw the sun shining into the passages. I wanted to go up into the dining-room to dinner and was afraid that you might scold me if I came too late as usual. But when I tried to come up the different exits I always had to return at the top step, because they were closed by something I could not explain. It was like a blind which moved of its own accord and through which I could only get my head, but stuck with my shoulders. Then I suddenly managed to force myself through one of the openings which yielded all of a sudden. Then I was in the side