Flying is a powerful
dream-symbol, according to
Sigmund Freud. However, his
interpretation of the
symbol relies upon his
idea of
penis envy if applied to
women's
dreams, making his
explanation somewhat suspect, in my eyes. If the
crux of the
concept were changed such that the
woman's
dream was more a natural desire toward
penetration as a
pleasurable event (embracing
femaleness) rather than a desire to have and
possess a penis (a rejection of
femaleness and a desire to be
biologically and
culturally male), I think the
theory would be more
valid.
This is what Freud had to say:
"The peculiar property of this member (the penis) of being able to raise itself upright in defiance of the law of gravity, part of the phenomenon of erection, leads to symbolic representation by means of balloons, aeroplanes, and, just recently (in 1920), Zeppelins. But dreams have another, much more impressive, way of symbolizing erection; they make the organ of sex into the essential part of the whole person, so that the dreamer himself flies Do not be upset by hearing that dreams of flying, which we all know and which are often so beautiful, must be interpreted as dreams of general sexual excitement, dreams of erection... (talks about other psychoanalysts here)... Nor must you think to object to this on the ground that women also have dreams of flying; you should rather remind yourselves that the purpose of dreams is wish-fulfillment, and that the wish to be a man is frequently met with in women, whether they are conscious of it or not (penis envy). Further, no one familiar with anatomy will be misled by supposing that it is impossible for a woman to realize this wish by sensations similar to those of a man, for the woman's sexual organs include a small one which resembles the penis, and this little organ, the clitoris, does actually play during childhood and in the years before sexual intercourse the same part as the large male organ."
I have no problems accepting the sexual nature of any dream. I believe that Westerners are rather repressed about sex, despite seeming to enjoy it so much, so that if sex comes up in any form other than something directly sexual (i.e. sex leaves its "boundaries"), it causes discomfort and anxiety - well, in Americans more than Europeans. As a final note: hey, at least Freud knew what a clitoris was - too bad he didn't recognize what it actually did.
Source of quotation: "Symbolism in Dreams" by Sigmund Freud in International Folkloristics, edited by Alan Dundes, Rowman and Littlefield, New York, 1999. The article itself is reprinted from Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis.