The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams

One hundred years ago Sigmund Freud published The Interpretations of Dreams, a book that, like Darwin's The Origin of Species , revolutionized our understanding of human nature. Now this groundbreaking new translation--the first to be based on the original text published in November 1899--brings us a more readable, more accurate, and more coherent picture of Freud's masterpiece. The first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams is much shorter than its subsequent editions; each time the text was reissued, from 1909 onwards, Freud added to it. The most significant, and in many ways the most unfortunate addition, is a 50-page section devoted to the kind of mechanical reading of dream symbolism--long objects equal male genitalia, etc.--that has gained popular currency and partially obscured Freud's more profound insights into dreams. In the original version presented here, Freud's emphasis falls more clearly on the use of words in dreams and on the difficulty of deciphering them. Without the strata of later additions, readers will find here a clearer development of Freud's central ideas--of dream as wish-fulfillment, of the dream's manifest and latent content, of the retelling of dreams as a continuation of the dreamwork, and much more. Joyce Crick's translation is lighter and faster-moving than previous versions, enhancing the sense of dialogue with the reader, one of Freud's stylistic strengths, and allowing us to follow Freud's theory as it evolved through difficult cases, apparently intractable counter-examples, and fascinating analyses of Freud's own dreams. The restoration of Freud's classic is a major event, giving us in a sense a new work by one of this century' most startling, original, and influential thinkers. In her new translation, Crick (emeritus, German, Univ. Coll., London) gives us the first edition of Freud's magnum opus (1900) with historical context and notes on the theory and practice of translation. While this version lacks the fullness of Freud's intellectual development, it reveals the fundamental work clearly and in context. Serious students can have the best of both worlds by comparing Crick's work with James Strachey's 1953 work (a variorum of all eight editions, considered the "standard") in passages of particular interest. This more literal version, not beholden to the psychoanalytic movement and its defense of Freud as scientist, pays respect to Strachey while "attempting to render Freud's varying registers, listening for latent metaphors as well as his grand elucidatory analogies." Here we come closer to Freud's masterly German, yet, as with Strachey, it reads like good English. Recommended for academic and larger general libraries.AE. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ., Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. 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 (Genitalie