Freud's Interpretation of Dreams: A Reappraisal

Description

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.

Susan Sugarman is Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, USA, and a former Fulbright scholar and Guggenheim fellow. Her most recent book is What Freud Really Meant: A Chronological Reconstruction of his Theory of the Mind (Cambridge University Press, 2016).

'Sugarman throws into relief the basic argumentative lines of the Interpretation of Dreams in particular and of Freud's theory as a whole, and the result of her analysis is a novel view of what this theory achieves. Her masterly presentation, clear throughout, knowledgeable and yet concise, gives us a new Freud, one critically examined, but no less fertile in understanding the human mind.' Rudiger Bittner, Universitat Bielefeld, Germany 'Susan Sugarman is puzzled by Freud's claim that dreams must provide a wish fulfillment in order to materialize. This takes her to a fascinating voyage in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams in the course of which she arrives with unexpected yet exacting truths. When a great Freud scholar like Sugarman probes into the most famous of Freud's books, you can be certain that you will be rewarded with a masterpiece in psychoanalytic scholarship and a new way of thinking about Freud's theory.' Aner Govrin, Bar-Ilan University, Israel