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Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners

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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). 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.

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1920

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About the author

Sigmund Freud

4,415 books8,466 followers
Dr. Sigismund Freud (later changed to Sigmund) was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality. He is regarded as one of the most influential—and controversial—minds of the 20th century.

In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specialising in nervous and brain disorders. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.

Freud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was published in which Freud analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences.

In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.

After World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1923, he published 'The Ego and the Id', which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'.

In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna.

Freud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. He died of cancer on 23 September 1939.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 240 reviews
Profile Image for kwesi 章英狮.
292 reviews743 followers
March 12, 2011
We sleep 6 to 12 hours a day, and 2 hours of our sleep we dream of something. Some said they are omens, some they are messages and sometimes people thought you were a son or daughter of something satanic. Everyone have different beliefs depending on the place we grow and develop culture. There are four ways to define a dream depending on our culture;

1. History, people have sought meaning in dreams or divination through dreams.
2. Physiologically as a response to neural processes during sleep
3. Psychologically as reflections of the subconscious
4. Spiritually as messages from gods, the deceased, predictions of the future, or from the Soul. - Wikipedia


Prophets also practice dream incubation, they sleep in a sacred place to receive a divine message from the above. For example the 55 prophets of the bible; they wrote prophetic works as God's tool to share to people his words, Nostradamus; the well-known prophet, and many more. Only few believe to the power of dream, people thought they were just fantasies of our mind to satisfy our sleep. But until now, the content and purpose of dreams are not yet understood, though they have been a topic of speculation and interest throughout recorded history and the scientific study of dream is called oneirology - which came from the Greek word oneiros or dream and logia, the study of.

There were uncountable number of psychologist who already studied dream; one of them was Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist who emphasizes dream analysis. He introduce himself as a natural scientist rather than theoretical psychologist, he studied Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, sociology, as well as literature and the arts; he was also important to divination and tarot reading. Reading books for tarot and divination, authors will always refer to his works and almost of his concept were used in numerology.

Jung's adviser, Sigmund Freud published a book that simply explains his own theory of meaning of dream, a part of psychoanalysis in which we understand ones people characteristic by giving meaning to their dreams. What make special to his work was, he uses his own dreams and client dreams, which are unnamed, that are easy to understand for the readers. A dream of one person is depending on its experience, explaining a whole dream can formulate hundreds or thousands of answers. It also depends on the ties or bond or connection between you and your own client. Sigmund Freud was the father of modern abnormal, just by looking to his picture - kidding.

According to Freud, a dream is a sum up of two main content. First, the manifest, is what a dreamer remembers upon waking and Lastly, latent, can be said to be coded. Since latent can be coded it was also subdivided by Freud according to its properties and he called it dream work (an idea merely existing in the region of possibility is replaced by a vision of its accomplishment, meaning, it changes a latent or complicated dream into a manifest).

1. Condensation - where several thoughts were combined.
2. Displacement - where a forbidden thought is transferred into a harmless substitute.
3. Symbolism - where concepts become a concrete image
4. Secondary Revision - where reconstructing of the dream material gives it the illusion of coherent.


This two terms are gradually used in the book and needed to be understand before you proceed reading it. They are also subdivided into classes; 1st class, meaning and intelligible; 2nd class, self-coherent and have a distinct meaning - this is the case when we dream, for instance, that some dear relative had died of plague when we know of no ground for expecting, apprehending, or assuming anything of the sort; 3rd class, incoherent, complicated and meaningless - almost of our dreams partake this group. They had unknown origin but simply manifest by condensation and displacement, which already stated above.

Once we agree with the meaning of a dream, Freud called it Dream Mechanism. Something with similarity, identity and agreement that produces unity to the dream and the dreamer. How do we really emphasizes a dream to produce unity, by simply following the steps above and lastly by dramatization, transformation of thought into a scene. A dream can be disguise as human desires.

To sum up Freud's idea of dream analysis, First, Freud pointed out constant connection between some part of every dream and some detail of the dreamer's life during the previous waking state. Second, every dream attempted or successfully gratification of some wishes, conscious or unconscious. Third, he proved that our dreams are symbolical that makes it transparent or unintelligible to the observer. Fourth, sexual desires play an enormous part in our unconscious. Lastly, a direct connection between dreams and insanity. Until now, psychologist still trying to discover human's function of dreams and uses it to psychoanalysis, taking a deep breath out of your blowing insanity.


Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in the Austrian Empire city of Freiberg. Freud was recognized as intellectually gifted at an early age an encouraged in academic pursuit by his Jewish parents, despite the family's limited means. His family moved to Vienna in 1860 and by the age of seventeen, Freud entered the University of Vienna, receiving his medical degree in 1881. He began practicing medicine as a neurologist in Vienna in 1886, the same year he married Martha Bernays. It is said that Freud's interest in dreams dated from an early age an that he kept a dream journal. By the last decade dated from the nineteenth century, he began making an intensive study of himself as the model for the explorations of personality development, memory, and dreams, which led to his revolutionary theories. Freud and his family left Austria for England shortly before World War II. In 1939, Freud died after a long struggle with cancer. - At the back of the book.

Rating - Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners by Sigmund Freud, 4 Sweets and the insanity that blows the mind of individuals. (At first place, by choosing this book as part of my book or journal report, before reading it I was interested with dreams. From my childhood nightmares until now, I can see that my desires are more powerful than the things that I wanted to overcome. According to the book, dreams are representing desires of human that inherit the mental and physical activities. It leads to insanity, for short. I'm not a psychology major student but I become more deeply attached to this subject because it answered my questions that are far from my own knowledge by reading and listening to discussion that are interesting. For example dreams, I thought, dream interpretation are for those people who deeply desired of understanding its divine meaning and not for scientific basis. But reading the book, it clearly shows that dreams were studied well by Freud and his people. Their are hundreds or maybe thousands of psychologist right now who studied psychoanalysis but the fact that a psychologist might only be a theological but they can be simply natural according to Jung.)

Challenges:
Book #43 for 2011
Book #27 for Off the Shelf!


Profile Image for Pradnya.
325 reviews106 followers
November 30, 2015
To me, the most curious object on earth, is human mind. It's a Pandora box in itself which hold a curious mixture of 'gifts' and 'evils'. It's also like an iceberg, with two third of actual mass submerged, hidden away from plain sight.
To get to know the man, one has to dive deep inside the unconscious mind which is vast store of experiences, triggers, desires like a sea holding shells. Dreams are those shells thrown out after rubbing n polishing them, thus altering their true nature.

The book is all about dreams and their meanings. It also throws light on the background where dreams are formed and the complete mechanism, Freud calls as apparatus.
He has presented case studies of his patients and how they unraveled the formation and meaningful message.

The core of book is summed up in the central idea - the unconscious is where wishes are formed and stored throughout the day, when we are oblivious to the impact of day to day life. We feel urge to do something and our active foreconscious refuses the idea, dismisses it which now goes and holds its place in unconscious mind.

“Nothing can be brought to an end in the unconscious; nothing can cease or be forgotten”

The unconscious, in the middle of the night, when the guarding foreconscious mind is tired and resting, sends the wish disguised in the elements of recent developments of everyday events. The guard, though resting, is still active enough to censor the apparatus of unconscious and might wake us up if the dream content sounds harmful to it.

“the symptom has been constituted in order to guard against the outbreak of the anxiety. The phobia is thrown before the anxiety like a fortress on the frontier.”

However, its purpose is to make sure our body gets sound sleep and hence the harmful dream continues sometimes mixing itself with real life happening, distorting its contents by 'condensation' and 'displacement'. A lot of symbolism goes there interwoven with day to day memories. Thus the repressed wish gets renewed and seeks fulfillment reinforced by power of unconscious.
“The dream is the (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed, repressed) wish.”
The wishes foreconscious better hide from us. No wonder it makes us forget the dream as soon as we get up. The whole dreaming part is a clever mechanism of our clever brains.

“if the discharge of presentation should be left to itself, it would develop an affect in the Unc. which originally bore the character of pleasure, but which, since the appearance of the repression, bears the character of pain”

Sometimes dreams are scary with painful contents. The anxiety dreams as they called, have their roots in long suppressed wishes. According to Freud, most of the dreams carry messages about sexual desires.

“the content of anxiety dreams is of a sexual nature, the libido belonging to which content has been transformed into fear.”

I've few times woke up while dreaming a movie where the end clamor is nothing but the shriek sound of a real television anchor rushing through headlines, in my home. I was amused then how the dreams fuse themselves with the sounds of reality whilst I'm still in half slumber.

I do dream a lot, completely incoherent stuff which would make me laugh at it. And I recall most of the dreams, vividly. Since I read the book, it's fun deciphering them, knowing how that neglected pen on desk appears in my dream, making it an object of magical powers to write with. Or a long forgotten friend makes visit in dream and next day something related to her pop up in real world. The book wasn't a fun read but the knowledge it left with me is very enlightening and apparatus of fun.
Profile Image for BAM doesn’t answer to her real name.
2,039 reviews457 followers
June 16, 2022
2018 book for all seasons challenge: controversial or banned book

So I picked this because Freud right? What about him wasn't controversial? But it's all true he really does see sex in everything or it's not worth looking at. It's all blah, blah, blah then something ridiculous.
I will admit I am analyzing my dreams a bit more objectively now. What did I do yesterday? What was I reading? Did I fall asleep to music? Who have I not spoken to in awhile? Etc
Profile Image for Negar Afsharmanesh.
386 reviews71 followers
August 3, 2023
کتاب درباره جنبه های مختلف خواب، این که چرا خواب میبینیم هدف از خواب چیه، چرا چیز های به خصوصی بعضی وقت ها تو خواب میبینیم، و تاثیرات مختلف اتفاقات و اشخاص در خواب
Profile Image for Hirdesh.
401 reviews92 followers
March 18, 2017
4.5 STARS.
Extremely beginner's one.
As I'm keen reader of psychology and read a lot about Psychology behind dreams always making my curiosity enhanced as well as enlighten my own perceptions about it.
Classic book for beginner of Psychology, it also improvise Facts and old theories about Dream.
Learning with simpler definition and examples.

Good lines-
*"Firstly come those which exhibit a non-repressed, non-concealed desire; these are
dreams of the infantile type, becoming ever rarer among adults. Secondly, dreams which
express in veiledform some repressed desire; these constitute by far the larger number of
our dreams, and they require analysis for their understanding. Thirdly, these dreams where
repression exists, but without or with but slight concealment."
*"If we keep closely to the definition that dream work denotes the transference of dream thoughts to dream content, we are compelled to say that the dream work is not creative; it develops
no fancies of its own, it judges nothing, decides nothing. It does nothing but prepare the matter for condensation and displacement, and refashions it for dramatization, to which
must be added the inconstant last-named mechanism"
*"Schubert, for instance, claims: "The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter.""
*"With the rise of scientific thought the whole of this expressive mythology was transferred to psychology; to-day there is but a small minority among educated persons who doubt that
the dream is the dreamer's own psychical act."
*"Self-deception is a plant which withers fast in the pellucid atmosphere of dream
investigation"
Profile Image for Alex Sproul.
19 reviews2 followers
January 7, 2022
This book was absolute garbage and I don't understand how Freud's ideas are still practiced today.

Dream Psychology is a tour of Freud's theories on why we dream, how they form, and what they mean. He does start off with valid observation: dreams almost always reflect components of our conscious experiences so there must be some kind of translation from our daily thoughts to our dream state. And I did enjoy the chapter on the foreconscious being a sensory tool for unconscious reality.

Now let me explain why this book is trash.

According to Freud, ALL dreams are an expression of wish fulfillment that is suppressed by our conscious experience. So if you dream that you murder a baby, it's probably because you are jealous that somebody else had a baby and that's your unconscious expression of vengeance. And sure, that's probably a valid interpretation. But if you look hard enough at ANYTHING, you will find some way to relate it to your own experience. It's completely unfalsifiable and that goes against every foundation of science. Freud even goes as far as saying that when his clients have completely absurd dreams, it's because the clients have a wish for Freud to be wrong.

In addition to logical fallacies and anectdotal evidence being used to justify his ideas (occasionally Freud just says "the evidence for this is too complex to get into right now"), Freud also brings EVERYTHING back to childhood psychosexual development. If you dream of stairs, that's you wanting to have sex. See a chapel? That's a vagina (see my previous update about the literal footnote stating that all chapels = vaginas in dreams). Wearing a cowboy hat? That's a penis. I won't even get into the Oedipus complex (also garbage) or the homophobic theories on bisexuality. The theory is just garbage.

As a translated work, this is also just awful. A few passages in French and German are left untranslated and shorthand is left for the reader to decipher on their own (it took me too long to realize that "Forec." and "Unc." meant "foreconscious" and "unconscious", respectively.

You could get better information from a tarot card reading (and they probably won't mention your parents' genitals). Don't read this book if you hate yourself like I apparently do.
Profile Image for Kellen Wilson.
7 reviews
July 18, 2012
Interesting read but I can't help but to feel the age of this volume. Personifications of certain psychic functions felt like an over simplification, and aspects of his finite conclusions had possibilities other than his conclusions. Of course I could see the flaws in Freud's logic on certain things through the lens of modern discoveries, hence why the book felt dated, but I also felt that there was some grasping at straws when it came to certain dream analysis. Seeing certain objects in the dreamscape and actions related to those objects that originate from the day before or past experiences aren't so easily attached to wish fulfillment as much as they can be a brain's analysis of past events and a survey of possible results from a hypothetical change in a real event, this allows the brain to explore what could have happened. This explanation allows for a possible wish fulfillment scenario but exemplifies that the process could also be a function of the brain trying to better understand past events. Freud talked as though the wish fulfillment was the finite answer in such a situation but I felt that this conclusion was far from foregone for some of the reasons stated above. I haven't touched on Freud's ideas of sex being a factor in most dreams because all I can do is state opinion here. Did he over emphasize sex? Probably, but considering most of society back then was under emphasizing it... Conjecture on his part and mine. I see more interesting and scientifically open analysis coming from Jungian methods, but I think theFreudian methods are scientifically important, picking up things that the Jung analysis did not and vice versa.
Profile Image for Nazanin.
104 reviews4 followers
February 8, 2018
بالاخره تمام شد
با این کتاب یا بهتر است بگویم با ترجمه کتاب اصلا راحت نبودم
اگرچه که یک اثر ممکن است به خودی خود پیچیده و چندلایه باشد اما خواننده انتظار دارد متنی شیوا و فصیح را البته با حفظ امانت در محتوای اصلی مطالعه کند
باید اضافه کنم که پیش از این کتابی در خصوص فروید یا از آثار وی نخوانده بودم شاید کلا قلم و سبک فروید چنین است
به هر حال برای فردی که میخواهد با اسرار خواب یا حتی شیوه تفکر فروید آشنا شود به عنوان اولین کتاب شاید پیشنهاد ایده آلی نباشد.
Profile Image for Marjan Ghp.
48 reviews19 followers
October 27, 2018
😐
يا من به زبان فرويد آشنا نبودم يا مترجم به فارسيِ سخت ترجمه كرده بود، به هر روي، حين خواندن اين كتاب احساس روان رنجوري شديدي داشتم (!). البته وجود غلط هاي املايي، نگارشي، ويرايشي و جملات نامفهوم هم به اين حس دامن زد.
اما نكته مثبت اينكه اخيرا روياهام رو با دقت بيشتري بررسي و ريشه يابي ميكنم.

———————————————————-
قسمت هاي مفهوم متن:| :

هر خوابي بدون استثنا به تاثيرات چند روز گذشته و دقيقتر بگوييم به اثر روز پيش از خواب برمي گردد.


رويا در واقع همان تحقق خواسته ها و آرزوهاي پس رانده و سركوب شده است با تغيير شكل.


كابوس ها ماهيت جنسي دارند و ليبيدو به محتوايي تعلق دارد كه به ترس تبديل شده است. :|


سه منبع مهم براي رويا:
نخست ممكن است يك آرزو در روز به ذهن خطور كرده باشد اما محقق نشود و بماند براي شب. دوم شايد چنين روياهايي در طول روز شكل پيدا كنند اما ناديده گرفته شود و بماند براي شب. سوم اين كه ممكن است آنها هيچ ارتباطي با زندگي روزانه نداشته باشند اما به آرزو و تمايلاتي مرتبط هستند كه سركوب شده و در شب پديدار مي شود.


طبق تعريف ارسطو، رويا توالي فكري ايجاد شده در ذهن است كه در طول خواب رخ مي دهد...
اين بروزها و جلوه هاي قوه تفكر را به هنگام خواب مي توان به شيوه زير طبقه بندي كرد:
١. افكاري كه در طول روز به دليل مانع تصادفي ناتمام است.
٢. افكاري كه در طول روز حل نشده زيرا قدرت ذهني در حل آن ناتوان عمل كرده و مشكلات لاينحل باقي مانده اند.
٣. افكاري كه در طول روز سركوب شده اند.
٤. افكاري كه در طول روز باعث تحريك سيستم ناخودآگاه و نيمه خودآگاه شده اند.
٥. متشكل از آثار بي اهميت و حل نشده روز است.


درباره دوام و طول جريان خواب هم فرويد نقلي از گوبلور مياره كه:"دوام و درازي رويا چيزي جز همان دوران استحاله ي ميان خواب و بيداري نيست. يعني واپسين رويا آن چنان قوي است كه موجب بيداري مي شود و رويا يعني يك نوع بيداري كه در حال آغاز است."
اما فرويد با توجه به نظرياتش در باب تدارك رويا، تماما اين نظر رو زير سوال ميبره و رد ميكنه.
Profile Image for Julian Worker.
Author 44 books452 followers
March 20, 2022
This is an interesting book because it was the first to establish that:

1) There's a connection between some part of the dream and some part of the dreamer's life from the previous day.
2) In every dream there's an attempted or successful gratification of some wish, conscious or unconscious.
3) Many dreams contain symbols that appear absurd to the dreamer, but which are in fact universal making them transparent to a trained observer.
4) Sexual desires play an enormous part in our unconscious.
5) There's a direct connection between dreams and insanity, between the symbolic visions of our sleep and the symbolic actions of the mentally deranged.

Freud contrasts the dream that my memory evokes with the dream and other added matter revealed by analysis. The former he calls the dream's manifest content, the latter it's latent content.

The conscious wish is a dream inciter only if it succeeds in arousing a similar unconscious wish which reinforces it.
Profile Image for Kevin McAllister.
548 reviews31 followers
June 9, 2012
Freud has often bee accused of being overly obsessed with sex and after reading Dream Psychology I can definitely see why this is the case. While he does raise and discuss several interesting theories about dreams in general, eventually for Freud, they almost all come down to sex. He actually discussed a dream he himself had as a seven year old boy in which his "beloved mother" dies and states that this dream was a "repression to an obscure obviously sexual desire". Well, I do admire Freud and what he did for the field of psychology, but that example really does seem to be stretching the sex card a bit to far.
Profile Image for Ibnul Shah.
60 reviews23 followers
January 7, 2019
সিরিয়াসলি, অর্ধেক জিনিস বুঝি নাই। একে তো মনোবিজ্ঞানের কথাবার্তা, তার ওপর অনুবাদের ভাষা কঠিন- বাংলা অভিধান খুলতে হয়েছে বেশ কয়েকবার। এই বই পড়ে বোঝার মতো যোগ্যতা অর্জন করতে সময় লাগবে। তবু যা বুঝেছি ভালোই লেগেছে। স্বপ্ন ব্যাপারটা ভারী রহস্যময়- সেটা নিয়ে গবেষণা করে কোনো একটা সিদ্ধান্তে আসা নিশ্চয় ততটাই কষ্টসাধ্য। এই বইয়ে সম্ভবত (:p) তাই করা হয়েছে।
বিভিন্ন নমুনা স্বপ্ন বিশ্লেষণ করাটা পাঠককে আনন্দ দেবে। আপাতদৃষ্টিতে যে স্বপ্নগুলোকে একেবারে অর্থহীন-অবান্তর মনে হয়, সেগুলোর ভেতরেও লুকায়িত থাকে গূঢ়ৈষাপূর্ণ অর্থ। আবার কিছু কিছু আলোচনা অর্থহীন ঠেকেছে আমার কাছে, যেমন স্বপ্নের প্রতীক ব্যবস্থার নানান কচকচানি।
যাই হোক, সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছি এ জাতের বই এই মুহূর্তে আর পড়ার চেষ্টা করব না। :'D অল্পবিদ্যা ভয়ংকরী! বাই বাই টা টা। :'(
Profile Image for نزار شهاب الدين.
Author 4 books155 followers
November 1, 2010
Although I read this book on a long stretch, due to the fact that I was reading it on my mobile during transitive times (waiting times at banks, restaurants, traffic signals, etc.), I enjoyed it, because I was interested in the concept it proposed - in regards of the kind of dreams it dealt with of course, because in Islam, dreams are of several categories, and the category of Ru'yah (vision), for instance, is not valid in Freud's belief. I have my reservations of course towards taking sexual motives as the roots of all dreams. Moreover, the concept of conscience, fore-conscience, and unconscious is merely a theoretical attempt to explain how the psyche works. It remains just interesting but will always lack evidence.
Profile Image for Solo Lounsbury.
11 reviews1 follower
August 24, 2012
This book starts off rather interesting in deconstructing the idea that a dream is meant to fulfill a desire but as I read this the points seemed to hammer on and on in the same fashion until I was bored to tears. Good start, could have been a bit more I interesting.
Profile Image for Ghazalehsadr.
235 reviews120 followers
November 28, 2023
Except the part where he explains the four elements of dream work (condensation, displacement, considerations of representability, and sexondary revision) there was nothing new in this book which I had not already learned at university during our psychoanalysis classes. The book basically summarises Freud’s dream theory and tries to teach people how to analyse their own dreams.

The issue though with Freud is that a lot of what he said is nowadays refuted and many of his more detailed opinions have long been disproved. Yes. Dreams are a window into our psyche. Yes. We do have a subconscious. Yes. Our unconscious desires and wishes do manifest themselves in our dreams. However, his theory is not wholly true.

Firstly, sexual desires are not behind all of our dreams and not all dreams are directly or indirectly sexual. Freud definitely overdoes the sex motive. Many dreams are motivated by our artistic or intellectual impulse, and most are simply the play of our imagination and actually innocent. Secondly, not all dreams are wish fulfillments. His theory is not able to justify and explain nightmares and dreams that cause anxiety and stress and how they could be our wishes getting fulfilled. Thirdly, he gives too much credit to the unconscious, but in fact many of our wishes are conscious and we think about them while awake and also dream about them when asleep. Lastly, Freud formulated his theory after studying and analysing the dreams of maladjusted or abnormal persons, but theories that are applied to everyone should proceed from the normal to the abnormal, not from the abnormal to the normal.
Profile Image for Nora.
922 reviews16 followers
July 7, 2023
this MAN IS SO INSANE what’s more insane is that we keep proving him right . fuck this. was a bit insightful tho i have to like admit it. i had a freud phase as a teen so this wasn’t news by any means but it was fun.
50 reviews1 follower
January 31, 2024
This was my first time reading Freud, and to be honest I didn't know what I expected. A weird, narcissistic, overly-sexual book where every sentence has to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Although the overall concept of the book was interesting, it just wasn’t for me. Freud’s constant sexual analysis and completely narcissistic theories were interesting to read but not from an educational perspective, like fair enough dreams are what you wish to happen, but in the cases of bad dreams he genuinely believed it fulfilled their wish of proving him wrong? I doubt it.

Just a weird book, but to be honest don’t really know what I expected - it’s Freud!
Profile Image for LemontreeLime.
3,695 reviews17 followers
October 28, 2013
I crashed through the audiobook version of this in a weekend to prepare for an assignment. Here's my take away: ...Holy jumpin jephoosaphat God DAMN!!! Had no idea. I had always heard this was his best work of all his books. (And this is the edited later updated one, not the original turn of the century version.) He does have quite the fixation at one point in the text on sexual imagery in dreams which i personally believe is simply a product of growing up in a nigh Victorian level of emotional sexual repression. But many of the things he has to say about how the mind manipulates subconscious imagery is potentially spot on. I don't know if i would have read this if I hadn't needed to for a class, and I would have missed something very interesting. Worth digging through the bins for, and then wading through Sigmund's top dollar intellectual verbiage, his vocabulary is extreme and not for the faint of heart or light readers. (I will probably have to listen to this a second time just to make sure i understood the concepts that he really piled the academic diction on.) Good luck, and good night, indeed!
Profile Image for Muhammad Raza Hayder.
6 reviews3 followers
June 1, 2023
Are dreams real? Do they have a meaning? Is some sphere really hidden in my mind world which i am not conscious...i mean, not actively aware of, but it’s there? Why do dreams happen? Why those obscure bizarre flashes, if interpreted, raise to a meaningful whole and begin to make sense? Or sometimes simple enough to not bother. Is it just few flashes and neurons tribes playing their mini clash of clans in my cortex or does this mysterious show really has an unknown origin but a useful purpose?

Freud ventured in to answer all these questions, as he believed, neuroses has its origins in repressed desires, wishes and fears. He briefly, but quite densely takes you to the dream world by deconstructing the dream mechanism, and explain through cases, how he treated many patients through dream analysis, which uncovered true stressors and triggers behind problem.

A brief but fascinating introduction of psychoanalysis approach to treat mental illness.

Though a nice perspective to dreams, it’s disputed and challenged within academia. So, not every word is a last word.
Profile Image for Daniel Threlfall.
127 reviews24 followers
March 17, 2015
I finally read a Freud book from cover to cover.

My thought after reading the book is amazement. Not amazement at Freud's intellect, but confusion regarding why he's heralded as such an authority.

I assume his enduring impact is due to his pioneer status, not the substantive quality of his writing. This book consisted of unprovable statements with no successful argumentation. Nowhere throughout the book did I find a compelling rationale or evidence-backed claim. Instead, he layered supposition upon random supposition, upon random guesswork, upon whatever caught his fancy.
Profile Image for Raul.
370 reviews294 followers
September 13, 2016
Terrible! Would not recommend. Started as an interesting analysis but turned into pages and pages of obsessive sex-dream connections.
Profile Image for Parsa Dayani.
8 reviews
November 18, 2025
کتاب ایده جالبی رو‌مطرح‌میکنه
ولی ایده کمی گنگ هست و منسجم نیست
بیشتر جالبه تا کاربردی فکر هم نمیکنم البته هدف کتاب کاربردی باشه صرفا توصیفی هست
نمیدونم نگارش کتاب به این شکله یا ترجمه‌اش خوب نیست
ولی متن اصلا روان نیست «مترجم: احسان لامع»
Profile Image for Yara.
69 reviews2 followers
January 17, 2024
This book is a beginners guide to Freud’s psychoanalytical theory, specifically on exploring desires hidden in the unconscious that are displayed in our dreams.

It was painful to go through this book because there is absolutely no evidence or scientific proof to any of his statements. I understand that it is only theories based on his observations, and he does repeatedly admit that, but at one point it is difficult to accept his generalizations.

His views feel very narrow, and I question how truthful his patients were with him considering how much personal information you need to share in order for the true meaning of the dream to be revealed. Also, his patients were from his community I’m assuming, thus his findings cannot be generalized. IF he did have diverse patients, I still repeat that his views felt narrow since he seems to explain most dreams based on Oedipus complex and sexual desires. It’s either that, or there is a pattern to the patients he chose to study.

Maybe in the future we’ll get scientific evidence to support these theories. I would love to understand dreams and the hidden mysteries of the unconscious mind. But for now, I cannot accept statements made in this book, not with the huge amount of fallacies present anyway…
Profile Image for daniel.
65 reviews2 followers
August 11, 2014
The words "dream interpretation" were and still are indeed fraught with unpleasant, unscientific associations. They remind one of all sorts of childish, superstitious notions, which make up the thread and woof of dream books, read by none but the ignorant and the primitive.
Freud's theories are anything but theoretical.
[...:]
He was moved by the fact that there always seemed to be a close connection between his patients' dreams and their mental abnormalities, to collect thousands of dreams and to compare them with the case histories in his possession.

He did not start out with a preconceived bias, hoping to find evidence which might support his views. He looked at facts a thousand times "until they began to tell him something."

His attitude toward dream study was, in other words, that of a statistician who does not know, and has no means of foreseeing, what conclusions will be forced on him by the information he is gathering, but who is fully prepared to accept those unavoidable conclusions.

Available at:
http://librivox.org/dream-psychology-...

Original Text at:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15489/...

40 reviews
April 1, 2014
The first book about psychology that I read. I always like books that open a new field to my knowledge. This book is funny and strange. At that time, to read about dreams and psychoanalysis was an amazing experience. Ok, maybe all of the thing that Freud talked in this book is wrong now. But at the time I read it, it is reasonable, articulated and funny. Freud's way of writing is very interesting. And the nature of dreams is so fascinating. I always wonder whether my dreams has any meaning and this book give so many reasonable explanation. At that time, I even kept a dream journal for future reference but I lost it somewhere. I hope that nobody will find it!

And I remember that I read some case studies of Freud (not sure in what book) and they are amazing. It is more fearsome than any scary book that I have read.
Profile Image for zainab_booklover.
158 reviews26 followers
August 6, 2017
Few years ago I had to prepare an assignment about Modernism and modernist writers and how they were influenced by thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud ...
So a part of the assignment consisted of researching and reading about Freud's achievements and breakthroughs.
What might shock you, as it did shock my teacher and my classmates at that time , is that reading about Freud and his acclaimed breakthroughs only resulted in me despising him v.v

Hence. when I had to choose in my reading challenge list a work written by someone I hate and haven't read his works before; I couldn't think of anyone except for Feud. I know I'm not the only who is not a fan of his after reading how heavily he is criticised by some psychiatrists and psychologists.



P.S. if I have read it before I would've quoted it in the dissertation though :3
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