Translated by A.A. Brill, with an Introduction by Stephen Wilson.

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.

SIGMUND FREUD

Sigismund Freud (1856 - 1939), better known as Sigmund Freud, was an Austrian psychiatrist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. If some of his ideas, always controversial, have now fallen out of favour, it does not diminish the impact that his thinking has had on psychology, therapy and, indeed, culture in general. His favourite book, ’The Interpretation of Dreams’, remains the most significant work on the subject matter, even if some of the underlying theories have been discredited.