Interpreting Dreams

First published in 1899 as Die Traumdeutung, this book argues that the dream is a disguised fulfilment of a wish and that its apparent nonsense can be read. Freud distinguishes the manifest content from latent thoughts, and he describes the dream-work of condensation, displacement, symbolisation, and secondary revision that evades censorship. He draws on his own dreams, on patients' reports, and on examples from literature, and he sets out a method of free association. Later chapters connect dreaming with the psychology of the neuroses and with childhood wishes, including the family drama he names after Oedipus. The work is a theoretical treatise, not a dream dictionary of fixed signs.

Bound in blue cloth, cover blocked in gold foil with an inset paper label, printed with a colour painting by Gabriella Boyd. Black slipcase.