The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud)

Why persons dream, what they dream, and what their dreams mean, are subjects of interest to a wide range of researchers, and a wide range of artists and clinical practitioners. The Interpretation of Dreams looks at what dreams mean intrinsically and at what meanings dreams make for waking dreamers. It must also be recognized that the perspective from which Freud examines and interprets dreams is that of the professional psychologist and that the clinical neurosis of the subjects of his interpretations is to be presumed. To put it another way, Freud's subjects are patients, but the conclusions that he draws from observing them and interpreting their dreams are generalized to the human condition as a whole.

Three premises dominate Freud's approach to explaining the role of dreams in the human psyche. One is that "interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." In other words, determining the meaning and significance of a dream may provide clues to the real nature of a dreamer's psyche. Once a dream is interpreted or decoded and the latent content or actual meaning is d

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also busy with what Freud calls the "work of condensation" (175) into symbols. This encounter of mind states almost assures that the symbols of the [reported] dream seem straightforward but in fact point toward latent meaning and therefore result in voluminous interpretation of those symbols. The concept of wish-fulfillment, which appears to point in the direction of an explanation for human motive in attitude, articulation, and behavior, is multilayered in The Interpretation of Dreams. At one level, the body wishes to sleep, and the dream is instrumental for that purpose. At a second and more complex level, dream content symbolically expresses Ucs infantile wish-fulfillment: "the child with all his impulses [suppressed in waking life] survives in the dream" (Freud 94). Significantly and centrally in Freud's work, these impulses are fundamentally sexual, expressing repressed anxieties though immediately stimulated by day residue. This concept implies that in addition to being symbolic and surreal, dream experience is equated with neurotic experience, at least as compared to the behavior, experience, and comportment of a mentally healthy adult. But this is where Freud generalizes from the neurotic to the general human population.
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Approximate Word count = 2443
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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