The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams is a book by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The book introduces Freud's theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, and also first discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud said of this work, "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." Perfect for dreams interpretation. The initial print run of the book was very low — it took many years to sell out the first 600 copies. Freud was paid $209. However, the work gained popularity as Freud did, and seven more editions were printed in his lifetime (dreams). The text was translated from German into English by A. A. Brill, an American Freudian psychoanalyst, and later in an authorized translation by James Strachey, who was British. Because the book is very long and complex, Freud wrote an abridged version called On Dreams. This is the ultimate dream dictionary. Freud spent the summer of 1895 at manor Belle Vue near Grinzing in Austria, where he began the inception of The Interpretation of Dreams. In a 1900 letter to Wilhelm Fliess, he wrote in commemoration of the place:"Do you suppose that some day a marble tablet will be placed on the house, inscribed with these words: 'In this house on July 24th, 1895, the secret of dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigm. Freud'? At the moment I see little prospect of it." - Freud in a letter to Wilhelm Fliess, June 12th, 1900In 1963, Belle Vue manor was demolished, but today a memorial plate with just that inscription has been erected at the site by the Austrian Sigmund Freud Society.Dreams, in Freud's view, are all forms of "wish fulfillment" — attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort, whether something recent or something from the recesses of the past (later in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud would discuss dreams which do not appear to be wish-fulfillment). However, because the information in the unconscious is in an unruly and often disturbing form, a "censor" in the preconscious will not allow it to pass unaltered into the conscious.During dreams, the preconscious is more lax in this duty than in waking hours, but is still attentive: as such, the unconscious must distort and warp the meaning of its information to make it through the censorship. As such, images in dreams are often not what they appear to be, according to Freud, and need deeper interpretation if they are to inform on the structures of the unconscious.Freud used to mention the dreams as "The Royal Road to the Unconscious". He proposed the 'phenomenon of condensation'; the idea that one simple symbol or image presented in a person's dream may have multiple meanings. For this very reason, Freud tried to focus on details during psychoanalysis and asked his patients about things they could even think trivial (i.e. while a patient was describing an experience in their dream, Freud could ask him/her: "was there any sign upon the walls? What was it?"). As Freud was focusing upon the biologic drives of the individual (a fact that alienated him from several colleagues of his like Breuer, Jung and Adler), he stated that when we observe a hollow object in our dreams, like a box or a cave, this is a symbol of a womb, while an elongated object is a symbol for penis. Due to these statements, Freud attracted much criticism from those who believed him a "sexist" or "misanthrope", as he was alleged to have overemphasised the role of instinct, as though he believed people were "wild beasts". Nevertheless, he sometimes admitted "Even a cigar may be just a cigar." Find the explanation of dreams here, as I shall demonstrate that there exists a psychological technique by which dreams may be interpreted and that upon the application of this method every dream will show itself to be a senseful psychological structure which may be introduced into an assignable place in the psychic activity of the waking state. With many great explanation of dreams.