Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

2 results

  • The Question

  • from Introduction
  • Susan Sugarman, Princeton University, New Jersey
  • Book:
    Freud’s <i>Interpretation of Dreams</i>
    Published online:
    18 November 2022
    Print publication:
    01 December 2022, pp 3-9

  • Summary

    Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams both painstakingly builds the case for a revolutionary theory of dreams and lays the foundation for Freud’s general theory of the mind, the latter an undertaking he believed necessary to account for dreams. He identified as the real breakthrough of the treatise his discovery that dreams fulfill wishes, a wish-fulfillment embodying a condition of relief, whether expressly desired or otherwise welcome.

    The argument contains a gap absent from Freud’s account of other phenomena. The central problem—that even a successful dream analysis does not thereby translate, in reverse, into an account of how the dream formed – though observed before, warrants scrutiny in the context of Freud’s full argument and in comparison with his arguments elsewhere.

    Accordingly, the book reconstructs Freud’s treatise, in preparation for an evaluation of his argument, after which it compares the account of dreams with his explanation of other experiences and with his avowedly speculative work.

Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams
  • A Reappraisal
  • Susan Sugarman
  • Published online:
    18 November 2022
    Print publication:
    01 December 2022
  • Freud always regarded The Interpretation of Dreams, and in particular its thesis that dreams fulfill wishes, as his landmark contribution and the scaffolding of his subsequent work. Susan Sugarman, after carefully examining the text and scrutinizing a range of Freud's other works, shows that the dreams book is not and cannot be that scaffolding. For, not only does his argument on dreams falter, but his reasoning elsewhere – in his case histories, his accounts of phenomena of ordinary waking life, and even his avowedly speculative writing – displays a strength and precision his account of dreams lacks. She concludes by exploring what is then left of the dreams theory and Freud's overall vision of the mind.