Product Description

In this book Sigmund Freud has attempted to expound the methods and results of dream-interpretation; and in so doing he does not think he overstepped the boundary of neuro-pathological science. For the dream proves on psychological investigation to be the first of a series of abnormal psychic formations, a series whose succeeding members-the hysterical phobias, the obsessions, the delusions- must, for practical reasons, claim the attention of the physician.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #860747 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 420 pages

From Amazon.com
Whether we love or hate Sigmund Freud, we all have to admit that he revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. Much of this revolution can be traced to The Interpretation of Dreams, the turn-of-the-century tour de force that outlined his theory of unconscious forces in the context of dream analysis. Introducing the id, the superego, and their problem child, the ego, Freud advanced scientific understanding of the mind immeasurably by exposing motivations normally invisible to our consciousness. While there's no question that his own biases and neuroses influenced his observations, the details are less important than the paradigm shift as a whole. After Freud, our interior lives became richer and vastly more mysterious.

These mysteries clearly bothered him--he went to great (often absurd) lengths to explain dream imagery in terms of childhood sexual trauma, a component of his theory jettisoned mid-century, though now popular among recovered-memory therapists. His dispassionate analyses of his own dreams are excellent studies for cognitive scientists wishing to learn how to sacrifice their vanities for the cause of learning. Freud said of the work contained in The Interpretation of Dreams, "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." One would have to feel quite fortunate to shake the world even once. --Rob Lightner

From Library Journal
In her new translation, Crick (emeritus, German, Univ. Coll., London) gives us the first edition of Freud's magnum opus (1900) with historical context and notes on the theory and practice of translation. While this version lacks the fullness of Freud's intellectual development, it reveals the fundamental work clearly and in context. Serious students can have the best of both worlds by comparing Crick's work with James Strachey's 1953 work (a variorum of all eight editions, considered the "standard") in passages of particular interest. This more literal version, not beholden to the psychoanalytic movement and its defense of Freud as scientist, pays respect to Strachey while "attempting to render Freud's varying registers, listening for latent metaphors as well as his grand elucidatory analogies." Here we come closer to Freud's masterly German, yet, as with Strachey, it reads like good English. Recommended for academic and larger general libraries.AE. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ., Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Freud's most famous and polemic book presents a challenge to narrator Robert Whitfield, who interprets the heavy rhetoric with dispatch and precision, while relating the fascinating dreams with expressive interest and skill. The German text is translated into unstilted English, but the remaining French allows Whitfield to exploit his bilingual ability. Modern medicines have made psychoanalysis less popular than in its heyday, but the impact of Freudian theory on our civilization can never be ignored. For the curious and the serious, Whitfield aptly augments the exploration of this classic book just as a guide aids the tour of an old church. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Good edition of the Book.
This edition of "Interpretation of Dreams" hits all the marks-it has extensive introductory notes, bibliography, and a more than adequate index. Moreover, specific dreams in the text are referenced in a separate index. They also have the English translations of the foreign-language footnotes, which is always helful for those of us who only speak three and not seven languages. The editors understand all facets of "user friendly," which means that this book not only friendly to the user, but friendly for use. It has every bell and whistle that any student, scholar, or savant could want in a book, which is a rare thing.

Moreover, the cover art is very eye catching, since the blurred water-color profiles have a dream-like quality about them, reinforcing, but not distracting from the books subject and contents. In many ways, the book is the cover.

I admire the heavy secondary research Freud put into his book. Keeping in mind Freud's ideas were gestating in the late 1800's, when there was none of the perfected scientific research and research methods that we have today. Like Darwin, Galileo, or Newton, Freud did so much with so little in the way of technological gizmos. This adds even a greater luster to his genius.

However, there are two issues I have with Dr. Freud's methodology. First, his has a very odd universe of sampling, namely himself and his neurotic patients (136, 138). First of all, relying on his own dreams for analysis tends to make his research solipsistic, which is to say we may be looking more at Freud than his research and conclusions. Moreover, relying on neurotic patients does not yield statistically balanced data. His skewed sampling leads to a skewed conclusion.

Secondly, Freud comes to the reductionist conclusion that all dreams are wish fulfillment. Keeping in mind the strange and limited universe of sampling, it is no wonder that Freud came to this rather odd conclusion. Part of the problem is that Freud completely ignored the creativity aspect of dreams. The classic example of the creativity in dreams is Elias Howe's invention of the sewing machine needle. He was an English inventor trying to invent the sewing machine. He had all the parts in place expect the needle, which was giving him problems. He fell asleep at his inventor's table and dreamt cannibals were chasing him, whose spears that had holes in the tops. He woke up and put the hole in the top of the machine needle, and presto! A new industry.

I recognize that this book is an essential the historical literature of psychology. And I have no qualms about typical and ubiquitous Freudian sexology. Sex, or better yet reproduction, is a power drive in humanity, although I do not concede that it is the one and only drive.

Freud's 100 years of dreaming
In a letter to his confidant and friend, Wilhelm Fleiss, the then middle aged neurologist, Sigmund Freud, was in the midst of researching and writing his beloved 'dream book'. He wrote the following:

"Now I have finished and am thinking about the dream book again. I have been looking into the literature and feel like a Celtic imp."Oh, how I am glad that no one, no one knows..." No one suspects that the dream is not nonsense but wish fulfillment."

Indeed, this is the premise of Freud's entire thesis: dreams are no more than repressed unconscious wishes, battling for expression and consummation.

In his own words, Freud had 'dared' to rally against the 'objections of severe science, to take the part of the ancients and of superstition.' In 1900, the official year of the book's publication, its reception, despite its provoctive title, was tepid, and in the course of six years, only sold 351 copies. Freud never gave up hope, and 30 years later, in the preface of the third English edition, he wrote, "It contains, even according to my present day judgement, the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make. Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once a lifetime.' In present day, one can question any Freud scholar about ~The Interpretation of Dreams~ and they will say the same thing: the book contains everything that 'is' psychoanalysis.

Anyone interested in the history of psychoanalysis and the mind of Sigmund Freud, reading this book is an absolute must. The reading runs along too, quite easily, as Freud was an excellent writer: his unique prose style even shines through some clumsy translations.

If you are interested in the book's process of development, I would suggest reading ~The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fliess~; another gold mine for understanding the growth of psychoanalysis.

a classic ponderously translated....
by the ever-turgid Strachey, who loves medical metaphors and Latinized phrasings more than Freud loved literary clarity; but aside from that, THE classic of psychoanalysis, and the first (and, for Freud, the favorite) of Freud's great works.

One can imagine that modern dream research would have interested Freud as much as its reductionist speculations would have amused him. Certainly he'd never have argued that because a patient's stomach hurt during a painful recital of an early memory, this indigestible piece of emotional trauma was "caused" by the gastronomic rejection of a burnt piece of toast eaten just before the session. OF COURSE psychical activity has a physical substrate. And, perhaps, vice versa. What he'd have wanted to know was: in what psychological situation was all this embedded?

One can't help but admire the boldness and honesty with which Freud presented his own dreams and associations. We might speculate in hindsight that Irma, the partially cured patient whom Freud tried to talk out of her hysteria, showed up in his dream with throat and stomach symptoms and an illness caused by a bad injection to protest the way he injected women with his sex-etiology theories, thereby in effect silencing their true voice; and smile at Freud's dream of an orator named Lecher, a dream he had shortly after accepting a position in which he did a lot of public speaking about psychology.

But that we can speculate thus we owe largely to the techniques inspired by Freud himself. He was often wrong, but the spirit of his endeavor lives on.