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When Cosima Wagner's diaries were recently made public, it was found that she had recorded many of Wagner's dreams, about which she and Wagner had many discussions; they had developed their own theory of dream interpretation. An unknown person later made many of the dreams illegible; presumably, this was done by someone who had read Freud, as, of course, Cosima had not. However, four hundred twenty-one dreams have survived from Wagner's last fourteen years. They include many nightmares in which Cosima leaves him and takes the children with her. The dreams have been studied, and compared statistically to available norms. In the dreams Wagner shows himself to be unsure of his masculine identity, more or less depressed, and often fearful of losing Cosima. Wagner's biographical circumstances, including the death of his father when Wagner was only six months old, his stepfather's death when Wagner was eight, and the unavailability of the sorely pressed mother, all contribute to Wagner's repeated thematic material of the hero longing after his mother, separated from her, and rescued by a woman. Parallel difficulties in Cosima's biography help us understand the strong attraction between the pair, which ensured, through Cosima's mirroring of Wagner's conflicts, her tolerance of his difficulties.