vii

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

If there has arisen a demand for a second edition of this rather
difficult book before the end of the first decade, I owe no
gratitude to the interest of the professional circles to whom
I appealed in the preceding sentences. My colleagues in
psychiatry, apparently, have made no effort to shake off the
first surprise which my new conception of the dream evoked,
and the professional philosophers, who are accustomed to treat
the problem of dream life as a part of the states of con-
sciousness, devoting to it a few—for the most part identical
—sentences, have apparently failed to observe that in this
field could be found all kinds of things which would inevit-
ably lead to a thorough transformation of our psychological
theories. The behaviour of the scientific critics could only
justify the expectation that this work of mine was destined
to be buried in oblivion; and the small troop of brave pupils
who follow my leadership in the medical application of psycho-
analysis, and also follow my example in analysing dreams in
order to utilise these analyses in the treatment of neurotics,
would not have exhausted the first edition of the book. I
therefore feel indebted to that wider circle of intelligent
seekers after truth whose co-operation has procured for me
the invitation to take up anew, after nine years, the difficult
and in so many respects fundamental work.

I am glad to be able to say that I have found little to
change. Here and there I have inserted new material, added
new views from my wider experience, and attempted to revise
certain points; but everything essential concerning the dream
and its interpretation, as well as the psychological proposi-
tions derived from it, has remained unchanged: at least,
subjectively, it has stood the test of time. Those who are
acquainted with my other works on the Etiology and Mechan-
ism of the psychoneuroses, know that I have never offered

viii

THE INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

anything unfinished as finished, and that I have always striven
to change my assertions in accordance with my advancing
views ; but in the realm of the dream life I have been able to
stand by my first declarations. During the long years of my
work on the problems of the neuroses, I have been repeatedly
confronted with doubts, and have often made mistakes ; but
it was always in the “interpretation of dreams ” that I found
my bearings. My numerous scientific opponents, therefore,
show an especially sure instinct when they refuse to follow me
into this territory of dream investigation.

Likewise, the material used in this book to illustrate the
rules of dream interpretation, drawn chiefly from dreams of
my own which have been depreciated and outstripped by
events, have in the revision shown a persistence which re-
sisted substantial changes. For me, indeed, the book has
still another subjective meaning which I could comprehend
only after it had been completed. It proved to be for me a
part of my self-analysis, a reaction to the death of my father
–that is, to the most significant event, the deepest loss, in
the life of a man. After I recognised this I felt powerless to
efface the traces of this influence. For the reader, however,
it makes no difference from what material he learns to value
and interpret dreams.

BERCHTESGADEN, Summer of 1908.