Violets

"The naive dreams of healthy people often contain a much simpler symbolism than those of neurotics; for in the latter, as a result of the more powerful workings of the censorship, the symbolism may be obscure and hard to interpret. The dream recorded below will serve to illustrate the fact...

I arrange the centre of a table with flowers for a birthday.

"When I asked what flowers they had been, her first reply was: 'expensive flowers; one has to pay for them', and then that they had been 'lilies of the valley, violets and pinks or carnations...'

"Violets was ostensibly quite asexual; but, very boldly, as it seemed to me, I thought I could trace a secret meaning for the word in an unconscious link with the French word 'viol' ['rape']. To my surprise the dreamer gave as an association the English word 'violate'. The dream had made use of the great chance similarity between the words 'violet' and 'violate' in order to express 'in the language of flowers' the dreamer's thoughts on the violence of defloration (another term that employs flower symbolism) and possibly also a masochistic trait in her character. A pretty instance of the 'verbal bridges' crossed by the paths leading to the unconscious. The words 'one had to pay for them' signified having to pay with her life for being a wife and a mother."
 
 

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