The Interpretation of Dreams (Classic Reprint), by Sigmund Freud
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The Interpretation of Dreams (Classic Reprint), by Sigmund Freud
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Excerpt from The Interpretation of DreamsIn attempting a discussion of the Interpretation of Dreams, I do not believe that I have overstepped the bounds of neuropathological interest. For, on psychological investigation, the dream proves to be the first link in a chain of abnormal psychic structures whose other links, the hysterical phobia, the obsession, and the delusion must, for practical reasons, claim the interest of the physician. The dream (as will appear) can lay no claim to a corresponding practical significance; its theoretical value as a paradigm is, however, all the greater, and one who cannot explain the origin of the dream pictures will strive in vain to understand the phobias, obsessive and delusional ideas, and likewise their therapeutic importance.But this relation, to which our subject owes its importance, is responsible also for the deficiencies in the work before us. The surfaces of fracture which will be found so frequently in this discussion correspond to so many points of contact at which the problem of the dream formation touches more comprehensive problems of psychopathology, which cannot be discussed here, and which will be subjected to future elaboration if there should be sufficient time and energy, and if further material should be forthcoming.Peculiarities in the material I have used to elucidate the interpretation of dreams have rendered this publication difficult. From the work itself it will appear why all dreams related in the literature or collected by others had to remain useless for my purpose; for examples I had to choose between my own dreams and those of my patients who were under psychoanalytic treatment. I was restrained from utilising the latter material by the fact that in it the dream processes were subjected to an undesirable complication on account of the intermixture of neurotic characters.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Interpretation of Dreams (Classic Reprint), by Sigmund Freud - Published on: 2015-06-26
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x 1.06" w x 5.98" l, 1.54 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 528 pages
The Interpretation of Dreams (Classic Reprint), by Sigmund Freud Amazon.com Review 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 This volume of essays (part of a new series) reflects a wide range of disciplines: sociology, history, literature, and philosophy. Several are works of historic importance by major thinkers, including Wittgenstein and Erikson. Others are more recent works informed by modern thinkers, most notably Lacan. Though of limited appeal to the lay reader in its assumption of a working knowledge of Freud's dream work and its failure to link the essays, the book will interest scholars, particularly those in the humanities concerned with psychoanalysis. Several essays, particularly Meredith Skura's concerning the literary use of dream interpretation, are outstanding commentaries on Freud's landmark work. Paul Hymowitz, Psychiatry Dept., Cornell Medical Ctr., New YorkCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From The New England Journal of Medicine The 100th anniversary of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams saw the publication of a new translation by Joyce Crick and a "neurophilosophical" treatise on the subject by Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy, experimental psychology, and neurobiology at Duke University. Taken together, they beg to be read in the light of current ideas about dreams.
How far Freud has fallen in the past few decades is clearly reflected in the introduction to the new translation, written by Ritchie Robertson. No, Robertson acknowledges, Freud's theory of dreaming is not scientific; it is not falsifiable, it is embarrassingly sexual and sexist, it undervalues imagery and emotions, and it overvalues verbal repartee. Indeed, Robertson admits, "the scientific study of the mind can proceed with little reference to Freud." Still, he insists, Freud has "helped us to understand the psyche as deep, complex, and mysterious." Is his theory only of historical interest?
Freud's own review of the scientific literature of the time suggests that he has not contributed as much as we might think. The content of dreams was already seen by pre-Freudians as determined by previous experiences and as arising in what Ludwig Strumpell referred to as "almost memory-less isolation" from those experiences. Dreams were already seen as bizarre and chaotic, driven, as Freud described the theories of Wilhelm Wundt, by "internal... excitations of the sensory organs." The views of this pre-Freudian scientific community were remarkably similar to those held by neurobiologists and cognitive neuroscientists today.
What, then, did Freud add to the study of dreams? Beautiful literature, but mostly bad theory and methodology. Dreams serve to discharge pent-up energy associated with unsatisfied infantile wishes. Dream construction follows a tortured path, with the condensation of many ideas into one and the displacement of their "energies" to unrelated images, all to keep the forbidden wishes from reaching consciousness. Freud's interpretations are stunning: a woman's dream about going to Italy (gen Italien -- to Italy) reflects a hidden wish concerning genitals (Genitalien). Why? Because it is obvious. One is reminded of Plato's "proof" in the Republic that the philosopher-king leads a life that is 729 times more pleasant than that of a tyrant.
All in all, Freud's theory of dreams can probably best be described as 50 percent right and 100 percent wrong. Many of his observations about dreams (not their interpretation) are insightful. If viewed as a historical work, perhaps metaphorically, The Interpretation of Dreams can be enjoyable and thought-provoking. But those looking for a scientific explanation of dreaming had best look elsewhere. Even those seeking to use dream interpretation as a clinical tool deserve a more useful model, one more consonant with modern scientific theory. A hundred years after Freud, we seem to be back where he started.
In Dreaming Souls, Flanagan seeks to answer philosophical questions about dreaming in the light of what we know about neurobiology. Still, when he talks about dreaming, he is referring specifically to the conscious experience of dreaming, with or without subsequent recall on waking, and not to the underlying physiology of the dreaming state. Although this minimal and somewhat naive attention to physiology is disappointing, it does not make his book uninteresting. Consciousness, he proposes, evolved to solve specific problems, such as how to permit the selective allocation of limited brain resources to just one of many competing sensory inputs -- what we call "attention." What, one might ask, does consciousness offer that the underlying neurophysiology could not handle equally well? Perhaps, Flanagan seems to suggest, consciousness just happened to appear before a "mindless" physiologic alternative did, and it worked well enough. Maybe consciousness and emotions represent just one of many solutions that could have evolved to deal with these problems. Perhaps (and it is a terrifying thought) consciousness could just as easily not have evolved.
What about dreaming? This, Flanagan argues, is merely an unintended side effect of waking consciousness; evolution forgot to turn the conscious mind off at night, resulting in dreams that "neither help nor hinder fitness." For Flanagan, the neurobiologic processes underlying consciousness in both waking and sleeping states are of only passing interest and may be, in the end, unimportant. He clearly feels that cognitive processing during sleep serves no evolutionary value, a position that flies in the face of most recent research (for example, on sleep and consolidation of memory). What, then, is sleep for? Flanagan seems to fall back on an old suggestion of Allan Hobson's, that sleep merely serves to allow stockpiles of neurotransmitters in the brain to be replenished. Such an explanation woefully underestimates both the cost and the value of sleep.
Still, Flanagan provides a fascinating view of dreaming from the perspective of a modern philosopher. He presents an elegant explication of how dreams, constructed through a chaotic process without intent on the part of the dreamer, can not only still have meaning, but also be self-revealing and useful as well. Even if the experience of dreaming (as opposed to its underlying physiology) arose without evolutionary selection, he argues, it does not follow that dreams are meaningless or that dreaming is useless. Much of what we are was never selected for -- the abilities to solve partial differential equations and to write sonnets and soliloquies were not selected by evolutionary pressures. What we are and what we have evolved to be are not the same. Destiny is not biology, and dreams are not just noise produced by the sleeping brain. Flanagan's provocative commentary would make quick and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the thoughtful study of dreaming and may yet provide the basis for a new framework for understanding what dreams mean and how they can be used: the goal of dream interpretation. But the big scientific questions remain unanswered. What is the role of sleep in cognitive and emotional processing? How do we integrate these physiologic processes with the phenomenology of dreaming? The time is ripe to address these questions.
What might answers to these questions look like? Over the past 10 to 15 years, cognitive neuroscience has proved the existence of multiple, physically distinct memory systems, including working-memory, episodic-memory, and semantic-memory systems. As a consequence, the old idea of consolidating short-term memories into long-term memories has expanded to include concepts of transferring memories from one system to another and then integrating them into complex associative networks. New research suggests that these activities may depend on sleep and might even be the main function of sleep.
Processes of memory transfer and integration occur both intentionally (through the frontal cortex) and automatically (through "self-organizing" bottom-up processes). These processes are more complex and more time-consuming than simpler forms of memory consolidation, and they appear to use the same brain regions required for sensory processing. Taken together, they beg for a state in which sensory input is blocked and conscious control of cognitive and affective processing is turned off. Although such a state would be optimal for the automatic reactivation and reprocessing of ensembles of preexisting memories, it would leave the organism dissociated from its environment and unable to interact with it safely. By adding immobility to these other conditions, sleep makes this state of "off-line" memory reprocessing both safe and effective; herein lies the evolutionary pressure for sleep.
This, perhaps, is the beginning of a theory worth consideration by neurobiologists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers alike, and the questions it raises are both important and exciting. How would the reliable changes in chemical neuromodulation that are dependent on the stage of sleep, sensory-input gating, generation of electroencephalographic waves, and regional brain activation facilitate off-line memory reprocessing? Which component parts of such a memory-reprocessing system would each sleep stage support? For example, during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, distant and unpredictable cortical associations, but not episodic memories, appear to be preferentially activated, leading to the bizarre, symbolic, and hyperemotional narratives found in classic dreams. In contrast, during non-REM sleep, mentation is generally more linear and thoughtlike. How and why would the brain modulate memory-reprocessing systems in these ways? And, finally, what function, if any, might our conscious awareness of this reprocessing -- what we call dreaming -- serve? I hope that the answers to these questions are not too far away.
Reviewed by Robert Stickgold, Ph.D. Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.
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81 of 85 people found the following review helpful. Forget the controversy By Karen Batres Make up your own mind about Freud, but in the meantime, this is one of his great works that anyone can read without having technical knowledge about psychology. Freud included much about his own dreams, and the reader will suspect that he didn't "tell all" about his own introspection--nor would most of us! But this work, along with "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" and "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious" are for all readers. It is worth your while to peruse one of the most influential books in human history. As for the violence of the controversy that Freud inspires--well, that vehemence must mean something: a hundred years later, we are still at it. Decide for yourself.
41 of 47 people found the following review helpful. Important Classic Work By Steve Proctor As a psychotherapist I recognize that dreams are not the doorway to the unconscious but rather the window to the unconscious mind, its desires, impulses, and motivations. People like to give their egos and conscious minds too much credit for the decisions and actions in their daily lives. One must take into consideration that the average person has about 80,000 thoughts per day and according to most psychologists about 95% of those are repetitive thoughts that also occurred in their conscious mind yesterday or the day before. This helps to illustrate that we are, for the most part, driving on auto pilot in our daily lives. This begs the question of who is in charge, or as biologist Bruce Lipton has phrased it, "who is the wizard behind the curtain" in our choices and actions in our lives? The answer to this is question is that our unconscious minds are the real driver and pilot navigating our lives and not our conscious mind that is thinking redundant thoughts, like a broken record, throughout most of our day.In order to gain a better understanding of the `wizard behind the curtain"--the pilot of our lives-- we must be willing to take an honest and uncensored examination and assessment of our dreams. It is in our dreams, when our conscious mind is unable to censor our true desires and motivations, that the "wizard" is revealed to us. Strachey's translation of Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams: The Complete and Definitive Text" provides an excellent and comprehensive foundation to the topic of understanding, deciphering, and interpreting and understanding how our unconscious reveals itself to us via our dreams.While some reviewers have stated that Strachey's translation is hard to read and has too many "archaic words" and lengthy sentences, I would have to disagree. I have found this text to be an extremely accessible translation of Freud's work and feel that Strachey helps to bridge the communication gap that exists between Freud and the twenty-first century reader. Freud's work doesn't get any more accessible than this.Like all of Freud's writings he is very much present in this text with his own biases clearly showing throughout the book. Freud was a big bold thinker; after all, that's in part why he is an iconic figure. He was also a man of his time and one must take that in consideration when reading this text. During his time Freud was the leader, and father, of the psychoanalysis movement and his rather misogynistic views must be placed in the historical and cultural context of his own personal life and the time in which he lived. Yes, like most of Freud's writings there is a lot to get past, however, when you are able to remove Freud's biases from the work you are left with a comprehensive overview of the subject of dreams and their interpretation.Is this the only book that one should read if they have an interest in the topic and want to gain a better understanding of the dreams and the unconscious? Of course, the answer is "no." The fields of psychology and dream research have grown and changed immensely over the last one hundred years and most (not to say all) theorists have gone as far away from Freud's views as one possibly can. However, no psychologist or dream researcher can ever completely get away from Freud's work as he did provide the groundwork for understanding this topic.Is this a book that one needs to read if they wanted to gain a thorough and comprehensive understanding of dreams and their interpretation? Absolutely. This work is the foundation to the field and if one wants to gain a comprehensive understanding of the topic they need to start here. Strachey's translation of this text is a must have for the serious student of psychology, dream researcher, or lay person who desires a better understanding of their dreams and what they mean.
30 of 35 people found the following review helpful. the dynamics of dreams are the bedrock of thinking By Richard Stephenson Most reviewers see the value of this great work, which lays out the dynamics of the unconscious mind. Others have a variety of misconceptions: first, he was not a cocaine addict. He misunderstood cocaine [as most people did] and, briefly, recommended it to others, including his fiancee. When his close friend died of it, Freud realized his error.Second, one reader states that you can't find "measurements" to prove anything about dreams. As one who has practiced in the field, I can say that the reader can measure the truth of Freud's theory by using it to understand him or herself, by analyzing one's own dreams.The dynamics of dreams are:first, dreams are phylogenetic, i.e., inherited as a species; they are not ontogenetic, i.e., created by environmental factors.R.E.M. studies have shown for fifty years that our eyes move rapidly while dreaming as is we were watching a film. However, all of the people in a dream are different fragments of ourselves, of our wishes, of our interests.Second: this phylogenetic inheritance includes an innate propensity to think in pictures. Moving up the scale of consciousness, in Ucs. [unconsciousness, thinking is mostly pictorial but sometimes verbal]; in Pcs. [preconsciousness, i.e., in daydreaming, thinking is pictorial and verbal and partly in our control]; in Cs. [consciousness, thinking is mostly verbal but partly pictorial].Dreams have two main dynamics: one, displacement [in which the mind protects itself by displacing the troubling thought with a symbol]; two, condensation [in which the mind places symbols on top of one another in layers in order to make the troubling thought hard to find].Schizophrenics are hard to understand because much of their thinking is dominated by displacement and condensation while they are awake. Their speech has numerous layers of symbols - condensation.In displacement, there is a manifest meaning [that which appears evident] and a latent meaning [that which one has to dig for by piercing the condensation of the displacements.Any thinker, who chooses to simply understand, should avoid preconceptions or anger or a need to disdain or to repress. He or she should merely use the dynamics of dreaming to unravel his or her own dreams and daydreams [which can be analyzed with the same dynamics, except it is much easier because condensation is not as severe].Freud was originally sceptical of his own insights and, as a result, he sat on this work for about a year, being reluctant to believe himself. He finally realized he was being defensive, that he was trying to repress disturbing truths about himself that were also true of us as a species.In analysis, the analyst doesn't speak much because the best person in a position to understand himself is the patient . . . just as the best person in a position to understand his/her dream is the dreamer. Further, an analyst doesn't talk because he wants the patient to speak until he/she finally understands him/herself. That takes time.It takes time for a person to crack the layers of condensation in his/her own thinking and to see all of the displacements.After 100 years, Freud's book remains one of the great gifts anyone ever gave men and women to understand themselves.
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