Rating: Summary: Easy to Read, Hard to Finish Review: *Yaaaawn* I decided to read this book because it is the foundational text of the psychoanalytic school of literary criticism. T.S. Eliot, among others, lists it as an inspiration. Since lit crit is my bag, I thought I might as well read it. Yes, it is an important book about the reason why we dream and the processes that take place. It's ideas of displacement, condensation, wish-fulfillment, etc. are all important to literature, but this is the driest book I've ever read. Despite the clear, easy writing, it was a very difficult book to get through.
Rating: Summary: Classic contribution to psychoanalytic theory Review: Although Freud's ideas and psychoanalytic theory haven't fared that well in recent decades (Jung's views and reputation have actually done much better), there is no doubt that Freud's ideas were a major contribution to the understanding of human behavior and the mind and remain at least historically important today. Although perhaps superceded by the cognitive and neurobiological approaches that have developed in the last few decades, Freud was still a brilliant thinker who changed our undestanding of the mind for the better.
For example, although his idea of the ego, super-ego, and id are now being supplanted by more physiological explanations (the limbic system of the brain being a very good analog to the id), nevertheless, basically what Freud was saying was that a shaping process goes on during early childhood that results in the formation of relatively enduring personality characteristics. There is no doubt that this developmental idea still has validity to this very day.
However, while I certainly respect and admire many of the early psychologists, and they were great pioneers in many ways, and some of their ideas are still important, nevertheless, a lot of what they said has to be taken now with a considerable grain of salt, and the area of dream interpretation is one them. It doesn't mean that dreams are completely valueless, but they're of much less significance than has been claimed in the past. The most serious critique of the psycholanalytic (and others) view of dreams comes from recent research into the brain and neurobiology. The problem is that dreams are really not what people think at all most of the time--which is some sort of cyptic but profound message from the unconscious mind.
For example, consider the question of why most dreams seem to consist of collections or sequences of difficult to interpret images, thoughts, and memories that seem to be combined or strung together in a not very logical and difficult to interpret fashion. The reason why, contrary to the popular belief that this reflects some profound and not easily discernible meaning, is that the order really is almost random, or is governed by very weak associational processes. The reason why this is, and why most dreams seem so puzzling and difficult to understand is that when you go to sleep, the memory areas of the brain located in the temporal cortex become more active through a process known as corticocipedal disinhibition, allowing memories, images, and thoughts to flood into consciousness willy-nilly. This is prevented or inhibited during normal waking, otherwise the flood of thoughts and images would interfere with normal memory retrieval and thinking processes.
This is a little off the subject, but one area of pseudo or quasi-scientific theory and speculation that has been getting a lot of attention lately (and shows how much more sophisticated the more fantastically oriented or perhaps "mystically" oriented types in psychology are getting) is the idea that the brain is a "quantum computer" and uses quantum mechanical and even multi-dimensional spatial capabilities to do its work. At least one world-famous physicist and mathematician, Roger Penrose, has suggested it himself. (I critique Penrose's proposal on this in my Amazon review of his book, The Large, The Small, and the Human Brain).
However, although a fascinating idea, there is still no real evidence that this is in fact the case. Neurobiologists have drawn analogies between devices like SQIDs (super-conducting quantum interference devices) and nerve cells, but this is reaching a bit.
One main problem for me would be the noise factor. There is already a huge amount of random noise in the firings of nerves in the human brain and quantum mechanisms are far below the level of this noise. The brain seems to ignore the high noise level just fine and to operate pretty well despite it and so I don't see how quantum effects which would be far more subtle would have much of an effect.
The other main problem is that the brain typically shows a huge amount of integration and convergence in its mechanisms, and phenomena at the level of quantum effects would probably just get lost in the overall convergence process or even the resting level of noise. Another way to think about it is how likely quantum effects are to manifest themselves at the molecular level, let alone the cellular level or the level of a neural circuit or the entire brain.
So until there's some real evidence, I remain sceptical, and this is probably another "mystical" idea that will probably go the way of all the others.
But anyway, getting back to the present book, that little digression was really by way of pointing out that unscientific speculation has been rife in psychology from its birth in the mid-19th century with thinkers such as Rudolph Lotze, Paul Brentano, Wilhelm Wundt, Johann Fechner, Hartmann and the Scottish faculty psychologists, Janet, Freud and the other psychoanalytic theorists, and many others. It's just getting harder for the layman to recognize this sort of thing when he sees it since their ideas are more and more taking on the language of physics and engineering and neurobiology. But that doesn't mean it's not the same old unfounded speculation and mystical nonsense.
Rating: Summary: Authoritative and full of Insight Review: Dreams are some of the most mysterious, most enchanting, and most sacred experiences in all of human existence--and yet they are also some of the most elusive, and so their meaning has been scrutinized by every culture of the human race, for thousands and thousands of years.In all of these inquiries, perhaps none has been more thorough, more scientific, and more systematic than Dr. Sigmund Freud's "Interpretation of Dreams" (1900). In his book, Freud surveys the scientific research on dreams put forth so far (a remarkable achievement of scholarship in itself), and then puts forth his own theory of dreams. Dreams, Freud claims, are nothing more than a fulfillment of an unconscious wish. He supports his theory with analysis from a selection of actual dreams from his patients and from his own experience. Much of this book is entertaining and enlightening. Freud's good taste in literature is reflected in his own engaging style, and his sense of scholarly adventure is catching. Plus, he doesn't shy away from the big questions. How can we interpret dreams? How does a dream come about? What is the purpose of dreams? Why are all dreams wish fulfillments? What are the meaning of typical dreams, like losing teeth?--all these questions are tackled here. This is the book where Freud first puts forth his Oedipal theory. Freud's theory is always insightful, if not totally accurate. He seems to try too hard to make all the data jive with his "wish-fulfillment" theory, and when it doesn't, he resorts to ludicrous arguments reminiscent of Anselm's ontological catastrophe. For example, when a dream is clearly not a wish fulfillment, Freud asserts that it has actually fulfilled a wish--a wish that his theory is wrong. Poppycock. Despite these occasional stretches of reasonability, you'll come away from this book with a much greater understanding of the nature of dreams and the mental processes that bring dreams about. Highly recommended. This is a good intro to Freud; consider also "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanaylsis."
Rating: Summary: Authoritative and full of Insight Review: Easy to read and perfectly inteligible for the average non-professional reader like me. This is the most important book written by Sigmund Freud and is in the Freudian tradition of writting some books which focus on difficult issues with a rather simple to understand language and fine style. The purpose of the author, in his own words, was to disturb the sleep of mankind. This is the kind of book that will help you a lot in understand the mechanisms behind one's dreams and all the relationship between what Freud calls your "waking life" and your "dream-life". Before going on interpreting a lot of his and his patients dreams, something that took a lot of personal sacrifice to someone so jealous of his private life as Freud, the author introduces us to the then (1899) accepted theories of dreams, which basically took the dreams as irrational and confuse manifstations that didn't have nothing to do with our real or waking life. The rationale Freud uses to demolish the anti-Freudian myths is powerful and convincing and he even suggests that reading the book will have some effect on our immediate dream life (it happened to me). Despite quite voluminous (700 pages) it deservs the attention and the effort of all of us who want to understand what dreams are all about. Here also, one reads the first paragraphs Freuds devotes to the Oedipus complex, and one has the opportunity to explore along with Freud the mechanisms of the UCS (unconscious) and of our Conscious activities, which some decades latter would lead to the concepts of Ego, Super-Ego and Id. As a trademark the text is always polemical, remembering this same quality one faces in Marxists texts.
Rating: Summary: Barely Unbeatable Theory Review: Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" is a unique book. His treatise on human dreams is truly a product of a brilliant mind. But neither the process of creation itself nor not the results and findings it brought out are the true wonders of this book. The great achievement of Freud's theory is its immunity to criticism. In other words, it is virtually impossible to criticize the results and propositions inserted in this book. His main tenet - a dream is a fulfillment of a desire - cannot be attacked in any intelligible way. If one says for instance that an unpleasant dream or a bloody nightmare is clearly not the fulfillment of a desire, Freud would promptly mention masochism or self punishment. Or, if one finally brings forth a dream that is surely not a desire fulfilled, he might nonetheless say there is at least a desire accomplished, viz: the desire to destroy Freud's dream theory.
Rating: Summary: Barely Unbeatable Theory Review: Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" is a unique book. His treatise on human dreams is truly a product of a brilliant mind. But neither the process of creation itself nor not the results and findings it brought out are the true wonders of this book. The great achievement of Freud's theory is its immunity to criticism. In other words, it is virtually impossible to criticize the results and propositions inserted in this book. His main tenet - a dream is a fulfillment of a desire - cannot be attacked in any intelligible way. If one says for instance that an unpleasant dream or a bloody nightmare is clearly not the fulfillment of a desire, Freud would promptly mention masochism or self punishment. Or, if one finally brings forth a dream that is surely not a desire fulfilled, he might nonetheless say there is at least a desire accomplished, viz: the desire to destroy Freud's dream theory.
Rating: Summary: Loving and/or Hating Sigmund Freud Review: It does not really matter whether we love or hate Sigmund Freud. What is important to acknowledge is that he revolutionized the way we think about ourselves. Some of this revolution can be traced back to The Interpretation of Dreams, the turn of the century masterpiece that outlined his theory of unconscious forces in the context of dream analysis. Joyce Crick's groundbreaking new translation is based on the original text published in November 1899 and it is clearly a more readable and accurate picture of Freud's original work. It is apparent that Freud concentrates to a larger extent on the use of words in dreams and on the difficulty of deciphering them. Freud's ideas of dreams as wish-fulfillment, his ideas of the retelling of the dream as a continuation, as well as the dream's manifest and latent content, are covered much more clearly than in any of the later editions of the same text. The fact that Joyce Crick's translation is faster-moving and definitively lighter than previous versions enhances the understanding of the material and engages the reader. It established a sense of dialogue with the reader. While reading Joyce Crick's translation the author of the review remembered her first encounter with Freud's original German version Die Traumdeutung while she was an undergraduate student. The German version was definitely much more difficult to read and caused some confusion for the reader. The author valued Freud's elaboration on the symbols of dreams, but viewed the statement that all psychopathic phenomena derive from the suppression of sexual desires as difficult to comprehend (for an undergraduate student). However when comparing The Interpretation of Dreams with Freud's discussion of dreams in his work Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis it has to be pointed out that the latter is probably an easier way of gaining insight into his views about dreams. Dreams are covered in Part II of the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, which Freud delivered in two successive winter terms (running from October to March) in 1915-16 and 1916-17 at the University of Vienna. The new translation is targeted at the psychoanalytically minded postgraduate student or psychiatric registrar who had previous exposure and an understanding of basic concepts such as the preconscious, unconscious and conscious as well as the id, ego and superego. However some explanation about these concepts is provided at the end of the book. Freud's work on dreaming has recently regained interest because among many other opportunities, the ability to conduct studies in sleep laboratories and the neuropsychological assessment of brain-injured patients has assisted us in finding some scientific evidence for some of his theories. Neuroscience has proven that dreaming can be switched on or off by a neurochemical pathway whose main function is to "instigate goal-seeking behaviors and an organism's appetitive interaction with the world" (Panksepp, 1985, p. 273). This means that neuroscience has contributed to the evidence of a radical hypothesis that is more than 100 years old (i.e. that dreams are motivated phenomena, driven by our wishes and the dopamigergic mechanisms, the appetitive (i.e. libidinal) 'command system' of the brain (Panksepp, 1985, 1998)). The Interpretation of Dreams edited by Ritchie Robertson is meeting the challenge for psychoanalysis to refresh Freudian theory, "which now has an unpalatable and distinctly post-Victorian flavor for many" (Panksepp, 1999, p.35). It assists in moving psychoanalysis towards a modern and dynamic mode of thought that continues to be rejuvenated by the accumulating evidence in neuroscience, thus consolidating its presence in the twenty-first century. References Freud, S. (1900). Die Traumdeutung. GW Bd 2-3, 1-642. Freud, S. (1966). New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 1933. In Strachey (Ed & Trans). The complete introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (pp. 471-646). New York: Norton. (Original work published in 1933). Panksepp, J. (1985). Mood changes. In P. Vinken, C Bruyn, H. Klawans (Eds) Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Vol. 45 (pp.271-285). Amsterdam: Elsevier. Panksepp, J. (1998) Affective Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Panksepp, J. (1999) Emotions as Viewed by Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience: An Exercise in Consilience, Neuropsychoanalysis, 1,1, 15-37.
Rating: Summary: Pseudoscience Review: Sigmund Freud has done an amazing research in the field of Dreams and their meanings, you will be amazed how every single detail in the dream has a meaning (According to Sigmund Freud - not that I agree with him). And it is very impressive. Personally I enjoyed this book very much.
Rating: Summary: the hidden meaning of dreams Review: The science of interpretting the hidden meaning of one's dreams is the key to unlocking the door to our unconscious psychic life. Sigmund Freud was the one who discovered that through our dreams we can explore our unconscious, which means that if we can unravel what our dreams mean, we can find out what our mind secretly wants and desires. These wants and desires are otherwise hidden and suppressed by our conscious mind because of our moral and social inhibitions and tensions. In fact, Sigmund Freud theories invented a whole new branch of treatment for neurosis. Freud's "Interprettation of Dreams" has its flaws, and his theories have been constantly modified and improved upon in accordance with new discoveries in contemporary psychology, but it was Freud who first put the wheels in spin. David Rehak author of "Love and Madness"
Rating: Summary: If life is a dream, then don't wake me up Review: This book is a watershed in human intellectual history. In it Freud undermines the picture of mankind as primarily a being of reason, and presents the idea that we are all creatures of our wishes, our inner unconscious lives. Dreams are not nothing, and they are not in Freud's eyes rare religious gifts, but rather to the key to our own mental life. Freud in this book presents a vast world of examples and interpretations .
I am not a psychologist and do not consider myself competent to really judge how much of what Freud presents here is valid or even capable of scientific testing. I do know that this work is one which like a great literary masterpiece has inspired countless interpretations and reinterpretations.
Understanding human Intellectual History is now impossible without knowing this work.
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