This paper contains a general survey of river symbolism in most of its aspects—as a male and a female symbol, as a symbol of the body, of the breast, of healing, etc. The author stresses particularly the condensation of symbolism around the process of birth, and emphasizes the fluid components of the earliest experiences, which enter into the Isakower phenomenon and the dream screen. The suckling wakes first with a desire for food, and Niederland believes that in dreams of flowing water an oral component may be discerned below the urinary. Drowning, or 'going under', as an aspect of drinking, may be the nearest representation of death which the unconscious can muster. The author believes of dreams of rivers what Friedman believes of dreams of bridges, that they tend to occur at crucial intervals in analysis, broaching new material of a deeply repressed kind.