attitude toward him, and then to her resemblance in this respect (her
nagging, pestering persistence and actual persecution of him) to a snake
which is endeavoring to enwrap itself about him, to strangle him, to
withdraw from him his very life's blood, etc. This may or may not have been
the line of associations just preceding the dream.

He had no idea as to what the dream meant. Using free association, in
ordinary face-to-face conversation, I asked him what "snake" reminded him
of. The association came in a moment. He smiled, became embarrassed, said
it was foolish of him to tell me this, but it reminded him of his wife. He
had always looked upon his wife as a snake in human form. He had frequently
called her "snake" because of her conduct toward him. She had wound herself
about his life in snake-like fashion.

And then came the story of their troubles. This was his second wife. She
was fifteen years his junior. He was meek, feeble, of weak will-power,
without initiative. She was domineering. Although his wife never told him
so openly and in so many words, he felt convinced that the trouble had begun
more or less because his wife's sexual libido was not satisfied in her
sexual relations with him. He admits that she is a passionate woman, her
sexual libido was of such strength that he, much older than she, and not too
strong physically, could but little gratify her. The first complaints and
the sole trouble which appeared on the surface were financial--he barely
made a living and she complained thereat continually, bitterly and
tyrannically. It seems that her complaint in this direction was justified.
It is difficult to determine just what role her lack of sexual gratification
played-- whether it only acted as stirring up the embers of dissatisfaction
(with his weekly earnings) which already existed, or whether it was the
basic factor, led to her dissatisfaction with her matrimonial choice, and
caused her to seek some more or less valid cause for complaint, in that way