read for Psych Anthro at UCB ( )

Warning: This is an impressionistic rant rather than a true review.

This is the hardest slog through a book I've ever had, and for the least reward.

The Interpretation of Dreams is contradictory, repetitious and confusing. Moreover, in it the author is revealed as immature (that is not having outgrown the adolescent obsession with sex), arrogant if not megalomaniac, misogynistic, bullying and, in general, thoroughly unpleasant.He seems to believe quite genuinely that everything that he has felt and experienced can and indeed must be of general applicability, that it can be extrapolated to apply to _all_ men in all times and places.

Thus, for instance, because in infancy he wanted to displace his father (kill him) and replace him as the object of his mother's sexual attention, he blithely assumes that all male children have such feelings towards their parents. Similarly, he extrapolates that all female children want to kill their mother and have sex with their father.

Freud further sets forth as an invariable rule that anxiety and other mental problems such as neuroses are always and only caused by a sexual experience in infancy or childhood. Similarly, much of the content of dreams, especially the latent content, is of a sexual nature. The latent dream content is what the dream is *really* about, as opposed to the manifest content, that which the dreamer actually experiences and relates to the annalist. The latent content is the important part of the dream, usually meaning something totally foreign to the manifest content. This latent content can only be teased out by the annalist by dint of close questioning of the patient and, one gathers from Freud's own discussions, very frequently through bullying.

It may be appropriate to mention in this connection that the introducer of this volume points out that several of Freud's women patients were intimidated by him and at least one accused him of improper conduct, what we would call today "sexual harassment." In the course of relating example dreams and his interpretations of them, Freud shows a preference for dreams told him by women, and he takes great pleasure in showing that even the most unlikely-seeming of these dreams display the patient's sexual desires and behavior. I was not previously aware that the annalist's job was to humiliate and harass his, presumably very vulnerable, patients, especially those of the opposite sex. Seems to me a most peculiar way to cure them. But, what do I know?

Two more of Freud's dogmas which he asserts as truth that must be universally acknowledged are that all dreams are wish fulfillments and that they all draw their material from the occurrences of the day just past. He does allow in a few places that childhood memories may also contribute to the dream material, provided of course such memories are of a traumatic sexual nature. As I suggested at the beginning, the book is contradictory and confusing.

Freud's conception of brain physiology and of what one might call the physics of thought are per force only of historical interest; though it should be noted that even at the time of writing, late 1890's, he mentions that applying the insights of Physics to the mysteries of the mind might well prove highly instructive. Still, for all his protestations, rather loud and insistent, that he himself is a scientist, his methods and attitudes seem to this reader as primitive and crude as those of the Medieval leaches for whom bleeding was the universal remedy for all illnesses, ailments and complaints. He claims to have affected some cures, and I suppose he must have done so or he wouldn't have achieved his professorship. Still, it remains astonishing to me that his ideas ever gained respectability, and far more astonishing that they still hold sway today, over one hundred years after he proposed them.

No doubt he was a pioneer - Jung acknowledges him as such- but pioneers normally yield their place of preeminence to later persons of worth in their field. Henry Ford was a pioneer, and yet we don't still drive around in Tin Lizzies. The Wright Brothers were pioneers, yet we don't still fly around in biplanes. And though Marconi was a pioneer, we don't still listen to Cristal sets. Science, technology, the world grow and develop. They progress. Yet in the field of Psychology, at least in the United States, practitioners are still driving the Model T, flying the biplane, tuning in the Cristal set. They cling to their master's dictum that sex and sex alone lies at the root of all human problems.

Jung was mature enough, secure enough in who he was to acknowledge Freud's status as a pioneer, a master yet at the same time to state clearly that Freud was mistaken on several points, among them the privileged place of sex as the exclusive cause of stress, anxiety, etc. Though Freud was a well educated man, his world view seems to have been rather narrow. Jung's world view is far broader; his ideas have far greater claim to be regarded as having universal applicability. Why then is Freudian Psychology still considered normative while Jungian Psychology is considered fringe? I can't imagine. Certainly this state of things is unhealthy, not to say destructive.

I am very interested in Jung, and read The Interpretation of Dreams simply to gain some idea of where Jung is coming from, what he has to contend with and struggle against. For that reason, I am not sorry I read the book. Beyond question, however, I will never read another book by Freud.

This translation is excellent. Yet, IMO the translator could have employed her time and talent much better. Don't read this book unless you absolutely have to. Even then, skim or see if they have Cliff Notes for it. ( )

This book is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious element in our phychic life.

Another book that I had to read in my Theories of Personality class in college. Considered (after its initial publication) by both Freud and Jung as the pinnacle of Freud's work in the field of psychology. I'm looking forward to re-reading it now that I can spare more time to the task - after all, its not the sort of book you can breeze through in a weekend. If you are going to read one book by this seminal thinker, then this is probably it. After I'm finished, I'm looking forward to tackling the biography of Freud (Freud: A Life for Our Time) by Peter Gay.

Since I am not employed as a therapist of any variety, I found this less useful than Freud's writings on broader topics. Interesting, but not as much as other Freud. ( )