Name: The Interpretation of Dreams
ISBN: 9781566195768

The Interpretation of Dreams

The Interpretation of Dreams 1st appeared in German in 11/1899 as Die Traumdeutung (publisher postdated 1900). Publication inaugurated the theory of Freudian dream analysis, which he described as "the royal road to the understanding of unconscious mental processes", promising to "demonstrate that there is a psychological technique which makes it possible to interpret dreams, & that on the application of this technique, every dream will reveal itself as a psychological structure, full of significance, & one which may be assigned to a specific place in the psychic activities of the waking state. Further, I shall endeavour to elucidate the processes which underlie the strangeness & obscurity of dreams, & to deduce from these processes the nature of the psychic forces whose conflict or cooperation is responsible for our dreams." The book introduces the ego & describes a theory of the unconscious as regards dream interpretation. Dreams are forms of wish-fulfillment--attempts by the unconscious to resolve conflicts, whether recent or from the past (Beyond the Pleasure Principle discusses dreams which don't appear to be such). Because the information in the unconscious is in an unruly, often disturbing form, a preconscious censor won't allow it to pass unaltered to consciousness. While still attentive, the censor is more lax in sleep than in waking hours. Thus the unconscious must distort the meaning of its information to make it past the censor.

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DiscourseFanMar 2024

My favorite, and what I still think is the best Benjamin essay, is On the Concept of History[0], but that one is a bit tough as a first essay, perhaps a better starting place (and where most people start with him) is Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction[1]. There's a pretty big gap between those two essays, not intellectually but theoretically, as in it will take you a while, probably, before you understand how they're related.

In general, if you want an actual "start" to studying any modern philosophy, you've got to go with Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (go with the NK Smith or Guyer-Woods translations, though I prefer the former). Then you can start reading forward, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, then, of course, Marx's Capital, vol 1. Then from there, I think you would do well to read Nietzsche's Geneaology of Morals and/or Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and after that really you should read Freud, at the very least the Interpretation of Dreams, and Heidegger, either the Origin of the Work of Art or The Question Concerning Technology. And from there, you can basically just read whatever you want and you'll understand it.

My only further advice is to study all those texts first, before trying anything else, otherwise you'll end up like the people in this comments section.

[0]https://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/CONCEPT2.html [1]https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf

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philosopher1234Dec 2021

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams

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randomNumber7Dec 2020

To get an overview it makes sense to read about the history of philosophy.

It's not practical to read all of platon, just to learn a few important ideas...

Also there is not one true philosophy. Nietzsche is very different from Kant for example.

One book I really want to recommend you:

Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams

It's more a psychology book, but it is deeply philosophical.

Freud tries to analyse how the brain works, using logic and observation of human behaviour.

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ohnomrbillMay 2015

I would try any one of these:

* Volunteer

* Take up an outdoor hobby

* Learn a new spoken language

* Read a seminal work in a vastly different field from computer science (say, "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Freud)

[Edited for formatting]

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sharpshadowApr 2024

Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams goes into this subject and describes how one processes all experiences during sleep through dreams.

Everything gets connected and stored away. Repeated every night. The knowledge you have gets connected with the new information you receive. The more knowledge you have the more valuable new information gets. At some point there is simply very little new information about a topic and the topic bores you.

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Nav_PanelSep 2017

> These ideas are salvageable in part, IF one keeps in mind that their original goal (building a psychotherapy oriented by leading patients to sudden insights) has long been known to be a dead end.

^^^ Yes. My favorite example is that Freud's original name for "The Oedipus Complex" was "The Nuclear Complex" -- it demonstrates that he came up with the idea by noticing an interesting pattern in contemporary society (relating to the nuclear family). My speculation is that he renamed it because he believed himself to be doing Science and Medicine, rather than pure Philosophy or Sociology, and wanted the theory to be seen as more serious (and what could be more serious than invoking the ancients?).

In particular, reading Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" after having read Foucault's "History of Sexuality", a lot of the issues and commonalities Freud identifies are not so much medical conditions as they are deep insights into how living in modern society shapes us.

It's interesting to see how much of the rhetoric around "mental health" still directly stems from his writing. Such as, specifically and most controversially today, the idea that mental illness is a strictly physiological illness requiring medical treatment, rather than a set of patterns emerging from our shared social and developmental conditions.

Dream analysis is also a fun hobby, and a lot of his ideas about free association seem interesting and personally useful, although they are certainly not serious science.

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