“The Interpretation of Dreams” by Sigmund Freud is one of the most significant books of the 20th century. Though dreams and their role in human consciousness have been a continuing thread in religion and art and life down the centuries, Freud's look at the subject through the prism of his emerging practice and study of psychoanalysis provided a startlingly new and challenging perspective. First published in German in 1899, it sold slowly; but over the following decade he revised and expanded it in response to his experiences working with patients, reviewing his own dreams, and discussions and debates with colleagues. It was translated into numerous languages.
In this extensive work he considers the meaning of dreams experienced by individuals generation after generation: dreams of flying, of death, of anger, of sex, of fear, of power. What do they signify, in general terms and in relation to individuals and their own personal situations? In this seminal book, Freud relates and discusses case histories and the effects of analysis. The remembered dreams have navigated the various passages of unconscious and preconscious filters to emerge into daylight, undergoing internal censorship and wish fulfilment and change and many other factors. So, what are these dreams really saying or revealing? What anxiety or hope are they signaling? Sexuality plays a key role-this book contains the first emergence of Freud's Oedipus complex, among other sexual issues.
“The Interpretation of Dreams” is not an easy book-Freud himself produced an abridged version. But its influence on the 20th century, and particularly on Western awareness and society, cannot be underestimated.
