In March 1900, shortly after its publication, Freud wrote to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, '... not a leaf has stirred to reveal that The Interpretation of Dreams has had any impact on anyone'. He was convinced that others found his ideas odious, and a hunger for immediate recognition led him to underestimate the general interest evoked; yet if the people whose good opinion he craved - his medical and scientific colleagues - did not reject the book outright, their judgement was nonetheless circumspect.

Sigmund Freud’s audacious masterpiece, The Interpretation of Dreams, has never ceased to stimulate controversy since its publication in 1900. Freud is acknowledged as the founder of psychoanalysis, the key to unlocking the human mind, a task which has become essential to man’s survival in the twentieth century, as science and technology have rushed ahead of our ability to cope with their consequences. Freud saw that man is at war with himself and often unable to tolerate too much reality. He propounded the theory that dreams are the contraband representations of the beast within man, smuggled into awareness during sleep. In Freudian interpretation, the analysis of dreams is the key to unlocking the secrets of the unconscious mind.

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD

ONE  The Scientific Literature of Dream-problems(up to 1900)

TWO  The Method of Dream .Interpretation

THREE The Dream as a Wish-Fulfilment

FOUR  Distortion in Dreams

FIVE  The Material and Sources of Dreams

SIX  The Dream- Work

SEVEN The Psychology of the Dream-Processes