The Interpretation of Dreams

Freud begins with a review of literature on dreams written by a broad range of ancient and contemporary figures – concluding that science has learned little of the nature of dreams in the past several thousand years. Although the prevailing view was that dreams were merely responses to ‘sensory excitation,’ Freud felt that the multifaceted dimensions of dreams could not be attributed solely to physical causes. By the time Freud began writing the book he had interpreted over a thousand dreams of people with psychoses and recognised the connection between the content of dreams and a person’s mental health.