Product Description

Freud's Revolutionary Theory: This ground-breaking work, which Freud considered his most valuable, forever changed the way we think. Now, in this definitive and bestselling translation by James Strachey, Freud's timeless exploration of the unconscious through the dream world is clearly and precisely rendered. Including dozens of case histories and detailed analyses of actual dreams, The Interpretation of Dreams remains an invaluable tool in helping us all discover the truth about ourselves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294921 in Books
• Published on: 1980-03-20
• Released on: 1980-03-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 736 pages

Amazon.com Review
Whether we love or hate Sigmund Freud, we all have to admit that he revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. Much of this revolution can be traced to The Interpretation of Dreams, the turn-of-the-century tour de force that outlined his theory of unconscious forces in the context of dream analysis. Introducing the id, the superego, and their problem child, the ego, Freud advanced scientific understanding of the mind immeasurably by exposing motivations normally invisible to our consciousness. While there's no question that his own biases and neuroses influenced his observations, the details are less important than the paradigm shift as a whole. After Freud, our interior lives became richer and vastly more mysterious.

These mysteries clearly bothered him--he went to great (often absurd) lengths to explain dream imagery in terms of childhood sexual trauma, a component of his theory jettisoned mid-century, though now popular among recovered-memory therapists. His dispassionate analyses of his own dreams are excellent studies for cognitive scientists wishing to learn how to sacrifice their vanities for the cause of learning. Freud said of the work contained in The Interpretation of Dreams, "Insight such as this falls to one's lot but once in a lifetime." One would have to feel quite fortunate to shake the world even once. --Rob Lightner

From Library Journal
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.

From The New England Journal of Medicine
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 (Genitalien). Why? Because it is obvious. One is reminded of Plato's "proof" in the Republic that the philosopher-king leads a life that is 729 times more pleasant than that of a tyrant.

All in all, Freud's theory of dreams can probably best be described as 50 percent right and 100 percent wrong. Many of his observations about dreams (not their interpretation) are insightful. If viewed as a historical work, perhaps metaphorically, The Interpretation of Dreams can be enjoyable and thought-provoking. But those looking for a scientific explanation of dreaming had best look elsewhere. Even those seeking to use dream interpretation as a clinical tool deserve a more useful model, one more consonant with modern scientific theory. A hundred years after Freud, we seem to be back where he started.

In Dreaming Souls, Flanagan seeks to answer philosophical questions about dreaming in the light of what we know about neurobiology. Still, when he talks about dreaming, he is referring specifically to the conscious experience of dreaming, with or without subsequent recall on waking, and not to the underlying physiology of the dreaming state. Although this minimal and somewhat naive attention to physiology is disappointing, it does not make his book uninteresting. Consciousness, he proposes, evolved to solve specific problems, such as how to permit the selective allocation of limited brain resources to just one of many competing sensory inputs -- what we call "attention." What, one might ask, does consciousness offer that the underlying neurophysiology could not handle equally well? Perhaps, Flanagan seems to suggest, consciousness just happened to appear before a "mindless" physiologic alternative did, and it worked well enough. Maybe consciousness and emotions represent just one of many solutions that could have evolved to deal with these problems. Perhaps (and it is a terrifying thought) consciousness could just as easily not have evolved.

What about dreaming? This, Flanagan argues, is merely an unintended side effect of waking consciousness; evolution forgot to turn the conscious mind off at night, resulting in dreams that "neither help nor hinder fitness." For Flanagan, the neurobiologic processes underlying consciousness in both waking and sleeping states are of only passing interest and may be, in the end, unimportant. He clearly feels that cognitive processing during sleep serves no evolutionary value, a position that flies in the face of most recent research (for example, on sleep and consolidation of memory). What, then, is sleep for? Flanagan seems to fall back on an old suggestion of Allan Hobson's, that sleep merely serves to allow stockpiles of neurotransmitters in the brain to be replenished. Such an explanation woefully underestimates both the cost and the value of sleep.

Still, Flanagan provides a fascinating view of dreaming from the perspective of a modern philosopher. He presents an elegant explication of how dreams, constructed through a chaotic process without intent on the part of the dreamer, can not only still have meaning, but also be self-revealing and useful as well. Even if the experience of dreaming (as opposed to its underlying physiology) arose without evolutionary selection, he argues, it does not follow that dreams are meaningless or that dreaming is useless. Much of what we are was never selected for -- the abilities to solve partial differential equations and to write sonnets and soliloquies were not selected by evolutionary pressures. What we are and what we have evolved to be are not the same. Destiny is not biology, and dreams are not just noise produced by the sleeping brain. Flanagan's provocative commentary would make quick and enjoyable reading for anyone interested in the thoughtful study of dreaming and may yet provide the basis for a new framework for understanding what dreams mean and how they can be used: the goal of dream interpretation. But the big scientific questions remain unanswered. What is the role of sleep in cognitive and emotional processing? How do we integrate these physiologic processes with the phenomenology of dreaming? The time is ripe to address these questions.

What might answers to these questions look like? Over the past 10 to 15 years, cognitive neuroscience has proved the existence of multiple, physically distinct memory systems, including working-memory, episodic-memory, and semantic-memory systems. As a consequence, the old idea of consolidating short-term memories into long-term memories has expanded to include concepts of transferring memories from one system to another and then integrating them into complex associative networks. New research suggests that these activities may depend on sleep and might even be the main function of sleep.

Processes of memory transfer and integration occur both intentionally (through the frontal cortex) and automatically (through "self-organizing" bottom-up processes). These processes are more complex and more time-consuming than simpler forms of memory consolidation, and they appear to use the same brain regions required for sensory processing. Taken together, they beg for a state in which sensory input is blocked and conscious control of cognitive and affective processing is turned off. Although such a state would be optimal for the automatic reactivation and reprocessing of ensembles of preexisting memories, it would leave the organism dissociated from its environment and unable to interact with it safely. By adding immobility to these other conditions, sleep makes this state of "off-line" memory reprocessing both safe and effective; herein lies the evolutionary pressure for sleep.

This, perhaps, is the beginning of a theory worth consideration by neurobiologists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers alike, and the questions it raises are both important and exciting. How would the reliable changes in chemical neuromodulation that are dependent on the stage of sleep, sensory-input gating, generation of electroencephalographic waves, and regional brain activation facilitate off-line memory reprocessing? Which component parts of such a memory-reprocessing system would each sleep stage support? For example, during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep, distant and unpredictable cortical associations, but not episodic memories, appear to be preferentially activated, leading to the bizarre, symbolic, and hyperemotional narratives found in classic dreams. In contrast, during non-REM sleep, mentation is generally more linear and thoughtlike. How and why would the brain modulate memory-reprocessing systems in these ways? And, finally, what function, if any, might our conscious awareness of this reprocessing -- what we call dreaming -- serve? I hope that the answers to these questions are not too far away.

Reviewed by Robert Stickgold, Ph.D.
Copyright © 2000 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

Customer Reviews

Forget the controversy
Make up your own mind about Freud, but in the meantime, this is one of his great works that anyone can read without having technical knowledge about psychology. Freud included much about his own dreams, and the reader will suspect that he didn't "tell all" about his own introspection--nor would most of us! But this work, along with "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life" and "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious" are for all readers. It is worth your while to peruse one of the most influential books in human history. As for the violence of the controversy that Freud inspires--well, that vehemence must mean something: a hundred years later, we are still at it. Decide for yourself.

the dynamics of dreams are the bedrock of thinking
Most reviewers see the value of this great work, which lays out the dynamics of the unconscious mind. Others have a variety of misconceptions: first, he was not a cocaine addict. He misunderstood cocaine [as most people did] and, briefly, recommended it to others, including his fiancee. When his close friend died of it, Freud realized his error.

Second, one reader states that you can't find "measurements" to prove anything about dreams. As one who has practiced in the field, I can say that the reader can measure the truth of Freud's theory by using it to understand him or herself, by analyzing one's own dreams.

The dynamics of dreams are:

first, dreams are phylogenetic, i.e., inherited as a species; they are not ontogenetic, i.e., created by environmental factors.

R.E.M. studies have shown for fifty years that our eyes move rapidly while dreaming as is we were watching a film. However, all of the people in a dream are different fragments of ourselves, of our wishes, of our interests.

Second: this phylogenetic inheritance includes an innate propensity to think in pictures. Moving up the scale of consciousness, in Ucs. [unconsciousness, thinking is mostly pictorial but sometimes verbal]; in Pcs. [preconsciousness, i.e., in daydreaming, thinking is pictorial and verbal and partly in our control]; in Cs. [consciousness, thinking is mostly verbal but partly pictorial].

Dreams have two main dynamics: one, displacement [in which the mind protects itself by displacing the troubling thought with a symbol]; two, condensation [in which the mind places symbols on top of one another in layers in order to make the troubling thought hard to find].

Schizophrenics are hard to understand because much of their thinking is dominated by displacement and condensation while they are awake. Their speech has numerous layers of symbols - condensation.

In displacement, there is a manifest meaning [that which appears evident] and a latent meaning [that which one has to dig for by piercing the condensation of the displacements.

Any thinker, who chooses to simply understand, should avoid preconceptions or anger or a need to disdain or to repress. He or she should merely use the dynamics of dreaming to unravel his or her own dreams and daydreams [which can be analyzed with the same dynamics, except it is much easier because condensation is not as severe].

Freud was originally sceptical of his own insights and, as a result, he sat on this work for about a year, being reluctant to believe himself. He finally realized he was being defensive, that he was trying to repress disturbing truths about himself that were also true of us as a species.

In analysis, the analyst doesn't speak much because the best person in a position to understand himself is the patient . . . just as the best person in a position to understand his/her dream is the dreamer. Further, an analyst doesn't talk because he wants the patient to speak until he/she finally understands him/herself. That takes time.

It takes time for a person to crack the layers of condensation in his/her own thinking and to see all of the displacements.

After 100 years, Freud's book remains one of the great gifts anyone ever gave men and women to understand themselves.

masterpiece
The best translation available is by J. Strachey. Don't get the one by Brill. This books is no light reading, even for those accustomed to reading serious books. Freud's style presents no difficulties, but moral courage is needed. Nevertheless for those courageous enough there is also enormous entertainment here. Personally I find it extremely difficult to read it often. It's too dense and challenging. And much of it is also deeply flawed because the author was overly confident. Despite all this, this may well be the greatest book of the 20th century, and those who want to take the challenge ought to try it. My pragmatic advice is to skip the first chapter, which is a rather dated review of literature.