II

PREFACE

been possible with the relations of dreams to the neuroses and
to mental derangement.

Herr Otto Rank has afforded me valuable assistance in the
selection of supplementary examples, and has revised the
proofs of this edition. I have to thank him and many other
colleagues for their contributions and corrections.

VIENNA, 1911

PREFACE

TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) EDITION

THAT there should have been a demand for a second edition
of this book–a book which cannot be described as easy to
read–before the completion of its first decade is not to be
explained by the interest of the professional circles to which
I was addressing myself. My psychiatric colleagues have not,
apparently, attempted to look beyond the astonishment
which may at first have been aroused by my novel conception
of the dream; and the professional philosophers, who are
anyhow accustomed to disposing of the dream in a few sen-
tences–mostly the same–as a supplement to the states of
consciousness, have evidently failed to realize that precisely
in this connection it was possible to make all manner of deduc-
tions such as must lead to a fundamental modification of our
psychological doctrines. The attitude of the scientific reviewers
was such as to lead me to expect that the fate of the book would
be to fall into oblivion; and the little flock of faithful adherents,
who follow my lead in the therapeutic application of psycho-
analysis, and interpret dreams by my method, could not have
exhausted the first edition of this book. I feel, therefore, that
my thanks are due to the wider circle of cultured and inquiring
readers whose sympathy has induced me, after the lapse of
nine years, once more to take up this difficult work, which has
so many fundamental bearings.

I am glad to be able to say that I found little in the book

12

that called for alteration. Here and there I have interpolated
fresh material, or have added opinions based on more extensive
experience, or I have sought to elaborate individual points;
but the essential passages treating of dreams and their inter-
pretation, and the psychological doctrines to be deduced
therefrom, have been left unaltered; subjectively, at all events,
they have stood the test of time. Those who are acquainted
with my other writings (on the aetiology and mechanism of
the psychoneuroses) will know that I never offer unfinished
work as finished, and that I have always endeavoured to
revise my conclusions in accordance with my maturing opinions;
but as regards the subject of the dream-life, I am able to
stand by my original text. In my many years’ work upon
the problems of the neuroses I have often hesitated, and I
have often gone astray; and then it was always the interpreta-
tion of dreams that restored my self-confidence. My many
scientific opponents are actuated by a wise instinct when they
decline to follow me into the region of oneirology.

Even the material of this book, even my own dreams,
defaced by time or superseded, by means of which I have
demonstrated the rules of dream-interpretation, revealed,
when I came to revise these pages, a continuity that resisted
revision. For me, of course, this book has an additional sub-
jective significance, which I did not understand until after
its completion. It reveals itself to me as a piece of my self-
analysis, as my reaction to the death of my father, that is, to
the most important event, the most poignant loss in a man’s
life. Once I had realized this I felt that I could not obliterate
the traces of this influence. But to my readers the material
from which they learn to evaluate and interpret dreams will
be a matter of indifference.

Where an inevitable comment could not be fitted into the
old context, I have indicated by square brackets that it does
not occur in the first edition.¹

BERCHTESGADEN, 1908

¹Omitted in subsequent editions.