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Why do we dream, and what do dreams mean? In this short book, written for general readers, Sigmund Freud explains his theory that every dream is the disguised fulfilment of a wish, often a forbidden or forgotten one. He shows how the mind turns hidden thoughts into strange images through condensation, displacement and symbols, and why we forget our dreams on waking, using examples from his own dreams and those of his patients.
Context and significance
This is the English translation, published in 1920, of On Dreams (1901), the summary Freud wrote of his great Interpretation of Dreams, and it is the easiest way into his ideas. Freud (1856–1939), the Viennese neurologist who founded psychoanalysis, fled from the Nazis to London in 1938. See his life.
About the author
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) grew up in Vienna in a Jewish family and trained as a neurologist. After studying hypnosis with the famous Charcot in Paris, he began listening to his patients talk freely about their dreams and memories, and developed from this practice a new theory of the mind and a new kind of treatment: psychoanalysis.
From his consulting room at Berggasse 19 he published The Interpretation of Dreams and a stream of books that changed psychology, literature and everyday language. In 1938, after the Nazis took over Austria, he fled to London, where he died the following year. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis is the best place to begin.