Dream Interpretation Books

i am a grandmother and thought the book was wonderful--we will have to wait to see what my grandson thinks.

My son just turned four and loves monsters. This book is adorable and fun. A great easy read before bed.

I use this book as a way to teach my first graders describing words/adjectives. Each page in the story as at least 2 describing words for the kids to identify such as color, shape, and feeling words. The kids then draw their own monsters (I give them wiggly eyes) and writing to share. A fun activity for sure!

My preschool class loves this book, and asks for it more often than any other book.

This book is the most wonderful when it comes to dealing with the "monster" anywhere in the house. My daughter had it read to her in daycare and she made her own monster and then said "Go away Big Green Monster". Watching her read it to me is so adorable. Her eyes light up when I bring it to her for reading time.

I bought this book b/c it was recommended by the nwf wildlife baby magazine. It was a great buy for us, my 21 month old wants to read it with me over and over again.

Rylant talks about all the interesting things one might hear during a night in the country and at the end brings it back around to letting those things hear us during the day. I think this is a perfect book for children aged 2-6. My two year old seemed to like the illustrations and story and I like how the book itself presents the simple and fascinating things you can hear at night if you'll only pay attention.

THE BOOK ARRIVED IN EXCELLENT CONDITION AND IS BEING ABSOLUTELY ENJOYED BY MY GRANDCHILDREN. THE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE LOVELY, AS IS THE STORY

I love it! This picture book was a recommendation from an Amazon booklist; the description made me curious because we live in the country, too (in Australia).

The whole atmosphere of this book is wonderful - it quietly describes a dark country night to your child so gently that it takes away the childly fear of darkness and the creaking noises of an old country house at night! You can visualise the apple falling from the tree in the orchard, and I loved the mention of the squeaky screendoor from the neighbour's place as well. Except for the racoon (which I change into a wombat when I read it to my son) everything applies so much to anywhere country all over the world.

This book is a loving description of life in the country, and I recommend it for all parents who live on a rural property. I'd suggest from about 3 years of age if your child is worried about darkness or night sounds; but even our 9 months old son already loves the quiet mood of this book which helps him wind down and fall asleep really easy.

Night in the country is a beautiful work. I love the illustrations by Mary Szilaggi. It, like the title states, deals with night in the country, in particular, night sounds, which can, if a young child is not use to them, be a bit alarming. I have found this book quite useful with young grandchildren, nieces, nephews and friends who are unfortunate enough to live in the city. When they visit, some of the sounds simply frighten them. After reading this book to them, we take them on night walks, slow walks through our trees and fields, listening and then identifying the sound they hear. This is fun and the fright soon leaves. The illustrations and the text of this work are quite simple and a joy to both the ear and they eye. Highly recommend this one.

I really liked this book! Tons of info, personal experiences and suggestions are within on how to work with the unconscious mind in a healthy way. great for magicians, witches, sorcerers and lay folk alike!

I have previously read only one book on dream interpretation and think this one is excellent. I've always steered away from dream interpretation because I thought they were too mental for me. I am by nature an intellectual and caught up in daydreaming most of the time anyway. But Johnson tells me to bring feeling and body into the interpretation process, and that I like.

He also warned against passive daydreaming concerning any real person for they will feel something over the collective unconscious. Compared inner work to marching around the walls of Jericho -- conquering a psychic center might take years of persistent work.

All in all: simple and concise. I recommend it.

This book is a fantastic guide to doing Active Imagination. If you are new to the ideas of Carl Jung, this book has the introduction that you need. I have used the techniques from this book on many occasions, and I know I will keep going back to it. Active Imagination has helped me in working with my compulsions and in understanding my bad habits. This is not a 'self-help' book with catchy slogans and common-sense rephrased kind of book. You will end up talking nonsense to yourself and trying to make sense of it. What kind of 'self-help' book would ever encourage you to make up a bunch of nonsense and then try to understand it! When you see the way to express your instincts you will open up a part of yourself that you may never have known before.

This wonderful book is clear and practical, and really goes to the point. It instructs you and helps you at two levels: first it explains how our dreams and imagination function as a link between our conscious and unconscious lives; then it goes on to instruct the reader on how to learn from this link and how to build a fruitful and lifelong dialogue between these two spheres of being. In order to achieve the latter, the author shows us, with clear examples, the way to understand our dreams and to use our imagination and so find the wisdom that we all have inside. Although this all sounds like any other self-help book, here the author never means to sound witty, empty or artificially triumphant. He promises nothing and makes sure we understand that what he is telling us is nothing new: many cultures use these same methods for the psychological, spiritual well-being of people. But we happen to be living in a time and culture that have lost the sense of inner life.Reading this book is like listening to the words of a loving teacher, who knows things because "he has been there before".Well-written and packed with no-nonsense spirituality, without losing touch with the world where we live or our common sense.

though i wouldn't follow the author's exact attributions to symbols in dreams (use your personal ones - what do they mean to you?), the book is still excellent for interpretation and analysis. keep reading it, especially the most important parts, as you are likely to forget. i recommend first reading Owning Your Own Shadow as a primer, also by Robert A. Johnson.

The book is one the reader's best tools both for understanding lucid dreaming and for holding one's own experiments. Laberge has conveyed the complexities of sleep research in a way that is both entertaining and easily understood, without omitting the necessary details of his Stanford research.

Consider this affirmation:

"The next time I'm dreaming, I will recognize that I'm dreaming."

The problem with this self-referential, paradoxical, circular reasoning, is that, when you "wake up in a dream," you do NOT think, "I am dreaming now, so what was it I was gonna recognize?"

That's why you would need the last part in the first place. You need to recognize your dreaming FIRST, before you can prepare yourself for what to do when it happens.

Instead, I would recommend you ask yourself while AWAKE, "Am I dreaming?" At every hour. Contract that habit and soon it will reside in residual droppings in your dream.

Also get into the habit of flipping lights on and off. It won't work if your dreaming.

I really liked this book. It was very helpful and I had my first lucid dream on my second try.

I've only had one lucid dream so far and it was before reading this book, so I can't speak to the effectiveness of the techniques presented. But I can say two things. One, the authors seem to know what they are talking about and have plenty of experience with the subject matter both from personal lucid dreams and scientific research and the book brings that across loud and clear. Two, this one is written from a scientific and not a metaphysical perspective. The authors believe all altered consciousness is a lucid dream and there is no such thing as out of body experiences. I'm fine with that and will be making my own decision, but there are others who believe we are out of our body every night and that all lucid dreams are actually OBE's to some extent...or at least that true OBE's and dreams overlap. I think both views are important for making your own decision. There is no doubt true OBE's happen at least to those who have been Near Death. Whether they can be induced apart from lucid dreams is another question which I haven't answered. Good luck.

LaBerge begins where his first book, LUCID DREAMING, left off, by recapping exactly what lucid dreaming is: the mind realizing that it is dreaming while the body remains asleep, producing a far more vivid dreamscape, one that can be controlled with enough practice.

The book is first and foremost a user's guide: how can we access that wonderfully altered state called the lucid dream? Drawing upon his own research at the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University, as well as techniques drawn from psychology and Tibetan dream yoga, LaBerge has dozens of suggestions for entering the greatest themepark in existence: our dreaming brains. We dream about one-third of our entire lives, so why not make use of this time to enhance the quality of one's life?

LaBerge provides a great deal of sound psychology behind his explanations and techniques, explaining the basic reasons why all humans dream in the first place. He acknowledges that lucid dreaming may be used for pure enjoyment if we want experience adventure, pleasure, or romance. Likewise, he notes that lucid dreaming can also be used to embrace our darker sides (as Jung suggested), turning darker dreams and nightmares into learning experiences to enhance self-knowledge and confidence, ultimately producing personality integration. Additionally, lucid dreaming may be used to practice for athletic or artistic events of any kind. There's simply no limit to the applications of "waking dreams."

LaBerge goes beyond these applications, however, to more serious considerations, showing that lucid dreaming can have the same type of transformative effect on people as near-death experiences if we surrender our egos and allow the dream to take us where it wants instead of trying to always control it. It is in these exciting chapters that we see lucid dreaming as a tremendous technique to reach states of higher consciousness without gurus, how-to books, or seminars. It's all right within our brains.

Some of the techniques are very simple, such as "reality checks" during the day, when we ask ourselves whether or not we are dreaming. Others are as easy as autosuggestion or keeping a dream diary to increase dream recall (very important in all techniques). Other techniques get a bit more involved and can be frustrating (although LaBerge has since manufactured several kinds of dream masks worn at bedtime which detect REM sleep and signal the brain that it is dreaming via tiny blinking lights that do not awaken the dreamer).

Other metaphysical aspects are discussed, such as whether or not the physical body can be healed of disease if the dream body is healed since lucid dreams tap into the brain at a very deep level. And can we share lucid dreams with others or make contact with other dreamers who are aiming for the same dream traget on any given night? LaBerge even notes that he has had at least one precognitive lucid dream that probably saved his son's life.

The practice of lucid dreaming has become more popular over the past decade, but this book remains the most reliable source of information on the phenomenon as well as the best place to research ways to enter the lucid dream state.

It's probably the finest, most comprehensive book on dreams that's in print.

This book, and it's contents has changed my life! And I'm NOT exaggerating. I have begun to dream as if my life depends on it. This book has opened a portal into a new and unknown inner world. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who is interested in their dreams and the life changing messages they have to give us.

This is an eye opening book. Dream work, as opposed to dream interpretation, involves developing a deeper and deeper relationship with the soul until you begin to see yourself as God sees you. It is transformative, and this is what Kamenetz's book is about. He presents some erudite background in the beginning of the book. He then describes his own journey into his soul in vulnerable and poignant terms, and how he was changed by the experience. I was inspired and moved. Thank you, Mr. Kamenetz.

Reading The History of Last Night's dream is like looking into the open door of a private home - only instead of seeing the furniture and decor - you get to feel into Kammenetz's soul. I am awed by his honesty and the 'direct hit' the dreams have for propelling him into what really appears to be true inner growth.I found that it started a little slow - but keep reading! It will blow your mind - and change your ideas about dreams!

The History of Last Night's Dream is part spiritual autobiography and part historical analysis of how exactly the "revelation dream" lost its eminent status in early biblical times and how it is now reasserting itself in quiet, rural Vermont; reasserting itself in a way that is profoundly changing lives for the better. In the process, author Roger Kamenetz reveals how his own life was impacted, and finally transformed, by his dreams.

This book provides a gentle introduction to a psychological and spiritual path known as Archetypal Dreamwork. It's written with enough scholarly background and credentials to quiet (or perhaps even please?) skeptical intellectuals. The particular method of working with dreams that was pioneered by Marc Bregman is probably not very palpable fare for the masses. But when it's presented by an author who's already made a name for himself with his penetrating religious studies - and, what's more, it's presented in the humble form of a human journey that becomes more and more personal as the story unfolds - the result is a book that may just be what this seemingly-esoteric path to spiritual healing and evolution needs to catch the eye of the mainstream. The fact that Roger recently shared his insights about the Work on Oprah's radio show seems to support my hunch...

One's own healing is the greatest message of hope that can be imparted to others; and Roger Kamenetz has, within these pages, enshrined that hope with eloquence, honesty, courage, exhaustively-researched fact, and a healthy dose of wry wit and humor to wash it all down. Highly recommended for seekers (I suspect that there are more of us now than ever before) on all roads to the Mystery of the Soul.

A powerful story of a seeker who found what he was looking for. From Israel to Denmark to a small town in rural Vermont, Kamenetz chases the dream until he catches up with it. This story of Kamenetz's awakening to the power of his own dreaming is heartbreaking, moving, and enlightening. This book may well change our collective view of dreaming forever. Even more phenomenal, though, is that Kamenetz has given each of us---dreamers all---a chance to finally hear what our dreams have been trying to tell us all along.

Scripturally and Experientially accurate!

The book came to me several years ago when I desperately need validation of the prophetic gift.

I have shared copies of the book with several people to help them understand their prophetic calling, gift, and its operation.

I highly recommend it to anyone needing validation of their gift, or wanting to understand how Father God moves through His servants the prophets.

James Goll is a man after Gods own heart.

He shares the Truth that has been shown to him and backs these God given insights with Scripture.

This book is so well written.Prophecy as a whole seems so confusing, but the author really breaks it down. I have been told I have the prophetic gift, but have been scared of it since childhood,due to enemy attack. I think a lot of people who have been involved in the "new age" or "occult" type junk does have the gift, but have been misdirected by satan in the hopes they will misappropriate it. This book is very user friendly.

I found this book very interesting and informative. This is an excellent tool for the church prophet. It is full of revelations and wisdom that you can build on.

This book is Awesome! It really helped me to understand the difference between and Seer and Prophet and the various gifting they each have. It also provided scripture refrences to various Seers in the bible that were also prophets. This is a must have for the Prophet / Seer and those desiring to know there prophetic giftings and how to distinguish the call according to those gifts.

Lanesa Stubbs

The Napping House is my all time favorite book to give to new moms and grandmas!! It's fun to read and the illustrations are absolutely delightful!! A MUST HAVE for all young people's libraries!!

I give this at almost every baby shower I go to. The CD adds so much, and Audrey Wood has captured the rainy nap day perfectly.

Great book, great CD, great price = a GREAT present

I use this book with my preschoolers. Then we made up a song and props to go with it they realy enjoy this story. You can find them during the week retelling the story in the book centre.

I am a big fan of Audry and Don Wood. Their books are simply delightful.

I have this book in hardback, but wanted to give it to a family with young children. The colors and illustrations are just as clear as the hardback, but the book will hold up well when handled by the little ones!

Looking up a dream just happened to be a topic missing in the book. Not one but several consecutive pages are missing. How many other dreams will I not be able to find? I want to exchange it for another book but I haven't had the time to pick a substitute. I'm glad I didn't just settle for one book.

Having the original book for years I was thrilled to see a more complete version, Absolutely the best book on dreams ever published. concise definitions that when put together make total sense. Recommended to anyone with an insight to dreams and what they really mean!

I was disappointed when I first rec'd this book. I was expecting descriptions to be much more detailed. I thought I could get more from a free website and still think this sometimes! I hadn't pulled the book out in a while, I don't use this kind of thing that much in general, but I reluctantly did this morning and was surprisingly pleased. I hadn't noticed how insightful these short and sweet descriptions are. So maybe short is better. The purpose is probably the author's desire to leave some work to the dreamer. As far as thoroughness, I disagree with the reviewer about not being able to find key words... this is the most thorough book I have seen so a question could be asked instead, in my opinion, and that is, why aren't these particular words in this book?

VERY HELPFULL FOR ALL MY DREAM NEEDS...EAZY REFERENCE TO GO RIGHT TO THE DREAM OF CHOICE...THANK YOU...

We have all had the experience of awaken from a dream and being intrigued, wondering if the dream meant something specific. I have always been fascinated by the symbolic language of our dreams. I believe that dreams are the place where we work through our problems, where we practice needed skills, and where we try out new concepts.

For years, I have written down and analyzed my dreams. Sometimes the process can be rather frustrating, especially when I can't determine the meaning of the symbols that I am attempting to examine. My first test for In Your Dreams was to look up a number of mystery symbols that I hadn't been able to identify through other means. I was thrilled when I found them all and several pieces of my personal puzzle fell into place.

With renewed curiosity, I began looking at the symbols of various body parts looking to the symbolic nature of illness and dis-ease. The results were very interesting. I believe that they could be of use to me in my practice.

I got this as a gift. It is a precious story of a child resisting falling asleep to no avail.

My son loves this book so much that he doesnt just want me to read it at night.. he wants me to read it a million times in the day too! my 19 month old loves pointing out all the objects on the page that we are saying good night to. The worlds are flowy.. the pictures are perfect and it keeps him interested from the first page to the last. A toddlers bookshelf is incomplete without this book!

Was as advertised but did not meet my expectations. Maybe it will grow on me after some family use.

I got the book for my 4 yr old and 2 yr old - but neither of them like it much. My husband and I don't like reading it either, and here's why:

The text is quite disjoint, like bits and pieces of other fairy tales and nursery rhymes put together. It seems like the author has just put down random things together - there's no rhyme (literally!) or reason for any of the pages. It does not flow lyrically.

The only interesting aspect is the black and white illustrations on some of the pages. This offers a striking contrast to the color illustrations. However, the whole book has not been put together well, and the quality of illustrations is just so-so. So the impact of the b&w is also pointless.

Compared to other wonderful books like the "Hungry Caterpillar" or "Ten Little Lady Bugs" or "The Firefly's First Flight" which we all really love, this book definitely is not worth having in the childrens' bookshelf.

I seem to be among the minority in disliking this book on Amazon - perhaps I am not seeing something that others are.. But hey! this is truly my opinion!

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R177YYDVCG1WGD Cullen of CullensAbcs.com reviews this book and gives you ideas on how to interactively use the book with children. For more video book reviews, free children videos and activity idea videos for you visit the CullensAbcs.com website. At Facebook you can add Cullen Wood as a friend and become a FAN of Cullen's Abc's.

i did a report on this book about 11 years ago. i am still excited by the book although it is not the original more like a summary. i still enjoyed reading.

This is a new translation (2006) of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. I hope someone qualified might soon comment on the merits or significance of this new translation. Meanwhile, the Editorial Review information offered for this book comes from an earlier edition of a different translation of Freud's work, FWIW. And the second paragraph in the editorial review prelim is entirely inappropriate--it's for another book altogether.

I give Freud's book (not the translation) a low rating because it is misleading. It's not about the interpretation of dreams in general, but more specifically it's, covertly of course, about Freud's own dreams. More basically, it's about "infantile memories" he claimed dreams concealed. (For more explanation of this point, one could consult "If Freud's Theory Be True..." in Psychological Reports (1992, 70, 611-620), which would explain how Freud himself tells us his book is not about what it appears to be about.

Freud's thesis, The Interpretation of Dreams, can be summed up as follows - all dreams are the mind's subconscious effort at wish fulfillment. For some dreams this is obvious - if you eat salty foods before going to bed, you may then dream that you are drinking water. This is a simple example of you wanting something and your subconscious trying to fulfill that wish. For most dreams, quite a bit more analysis is required to undercover what exactly you are wishing for, and Freud dedicates the bulk of his book to giving examples of such analysis. Freud argues that dreams are distorted because the upper layer of the mind is trying to censor what the lower layers of the mind are wishing for - usually out of embarrassment, guilt, etc. For example, I may be envious of my friend's success, so I will dream that my friend fails, but I am also embarrassed at wishing ill will on my friend, so the dream is distorted - perhaps the activity that he fails at will be obscure, twisted, strange, etc. Freud also makes the point that all dreams have their trigger in the preceding day's events, and once triggered the dream has access to all the experiences a person has gathered during his lifetime, as long as the experiences can be linked back somehow to the trigger event. Since the mind thinks in terms of symbols, the dreams must by analyzed by trying to understand how the various symbols can be translated into wishes, or the suppression of wishes. Thus the inner layers of the mind, or the Ego (prime desires), will generate a basic wish based on the experiences of the previous day. The Super Ego (refined sense of culture, guilt, morality, consciousness, etc.) then regulates the Ego's basic wish to fit within the mind's framework of right and wrong behavior. The greater the conflict between the Ego and Super Ego, the more distorted the dream becomes. All dreams are wish fulfillment, without exception.

Freud successfully makes his point within the first 75 pages of the book - the remaining 400 pages are a dry, archaic, tiresome, and in my opinion are not worth the time to read. Much of the book is dedicated to analysis of the dreams of either Freud or Freud's patients. Since Freud lived in early twentieth century Germany, the dreams described are anachronisms and for the most part are irrelevant. Also, I think a lot of meaning is lost in the translation from German to English.

Bottom line, Freud successfully explains the fundamental truth on dreams, put this pioneering analysis is archaic and difficult to read by today's standards. For the layman, I would look for something more current.

Freud's book must be read by anyone who studies dreams, because it contains about 220 dreams and valuable information about the dreamers' life experiences related to their dreams. But, his wish fulfillment theory of dreams is definitely wrong both concerning its origin and its consequences, as explained below.

Freud began to interpret his patients' spontaneously reported dreams by likening them to daydreams and psychotic hallucinations. Everyone knows that daydreams are produced for fulfilling wishes in an imaginary way, and psychologists know that most psychotic hallucinations constitute imaginary fulfillments of wishes frustrated in the waking state. But, likening waking-state products to sleep-state products does not look realistic, because the waking state is a time for fulfilling wishes, whereas the sleep state is known to realize resting and self-restoration rather than realizing new successes and gains. So, Freud's first step in dream interpretation was most probably wrong.

Nevertheless Freud became convinced that dreams meant wish fulfillments because of two dreams that he misinterpreted, as explained below.

Pepi's dream: Medical student Pepi H. was late to wake up one morning, and the landlady called through the door: "Wake up, Herr Pepi! It's time to go to the hospital!" He dreamed that he was lying in bed in a room in the hospital, and there was a card over the bed on which was written: "Pepi H., medical student, age 22." He went on sleeping, thinking that he was already in the hospital.

It is evident that Pepi had, in the disabling state of half-sleep, the incompatible wishes of staying in bed and going to the hospital. Both of these wishes were fulfilled by the image of him in bed in the hospital. This cannot be considered a true dream because of several reasons: (1) Pepi was in a state between sleep and wakefulness; (2) both of his wishes belonged to the waking state instead of being activated in the sleep state; (3) his two wishes frustrated each other; and (4) therefore the image of him in bed in the hospital, which fulfilled both of his wishes in an imaginary way, looks more like a psychotic hallucination than a true dream.

On the other hand, the image of the card on the bed, which was apparently produced after he fell asleep, can be considered a true dream element seeking to terminate the failure to go to the hospital by conveying the following message: "You are not a patient, and you are not a child; you are a medical student of age 22! So, get up and do what you have to do!" The last part of this message was only implied.

We see that, after baselessly likening dreams to psychotic hallucinations, Freud had the bad luck of encountering a mental product that was half hallucination and half dream and took it for a true dream. Below is a dream that is similar to Pepi's dream.

A man who had been driving all night was desperately trying to stay awake and to keep the car on the road, or rather to keep the road in front of the car, as he later remembered. The car jolted twice with no apparent reason, and he woke up in a cornfield. We understand that the image of the road in front of the car had become a hallucination caused by the wish and the failure to keep the road in front of the car in the disabling state of half-sleep. It is also possible that this hallucination was then replaced by a "sleep-preserving" dream when sleep prevailed. Thus, a hallucination was produced in the state of half-sleep and was then transformed into a dream when sleep took over, just like it happened to Pepi.

Freud's dream "Irma's injection" (Freud 1900). This dream of Freud's about a hysterical patient of his gave to him the final conviction that dreams meant wish fulfillments. He had it 9 months before he delivered his lecture The Etiology of Hysteria, in which he exposed his seduction theory of hysteria, according to which this disorder is caused by sexual abuse suffered in childhood. This means that the thoughts expressed in this dream were produced in conformity with the seduction theory. But when he published the interpretation of this dream in his book on dreams, he had already switched to the fantasy theory of hysteria, which said that this disorder was caused by repressed unacceptable fantasies, or wishes, of sexual nature. Thus, the dream's thoughts were based on the seduction theory of hysteria, whereas its interpretation presented by Feud in his book was based on the fantasy theory. But despite this discrepancy, Freud produced an interpretation that is correct to a great extent. He misinterpreted only the part of the dream that explained the cause of hysteria and the part that said that hysteria was incurable, as shown below.

The dream is about Freud's failure to cure his patient Irma. Many psychologists believe that Irma represented Freud's patient Emma Eckstein and others like her, whom he had failed to cure. Freud recognized correctly the subject of the dream as the presentation of several causes of his failure to cure Irma. For example, Irma did not cooperate with Freud and did not believe his interpretations, which must have been based on the seduction theory, and physicians ignorant of hysteria influenced the therapy negatively. Freud interpreted these parts of the dream correctly, including even the part that accused Freud of believing a physician's wrong diagnosis without examining the patient himself. He had to say, "the material was, one might say, impartial." We can say that the dream expressed the truth, as it was known to the dreamer, as Jung believed. The accusations directed to the physicians were realistic external attributions of Freud's failure. Freud interpreted them as "revenge on other doctors" and "derision of physicians who are ignorant of hysteria." The dream accused physicians of ignoring that hysteria was caused by sexual abuse, as explained below, whereas Freud implied that they ignored its cause explained by the fantasy theory.

The dream explained the cause of her illness as sexual violation and declared that it was incurable because it was impossible to undo the violation. This is the part that Freud misinterpreted, knowingly or by mistake, which in reality carried the following message: "Physicians thought that hysteria could be cured by physical, physiological intervention, but this is absurd, because hysteria is caused by sexual violation which cannot be undone. You all directly know that your colleague who was staying with her gave her an injection. Injections of that sort should not be made so thoughtlessly. That was a dirty injection, and you know very well what it was." The negative idea that hysteria could not be cured by physical/physiological intervention is expressed in the dream through an absurdity (this being one of the means of expressing negative ideas in dreams): Someone suggested in the dream that dysentery would intervene and Irma would be cured. This absurd thought exposed the physicians' ignorance, but also the fact that sexual violation could not be undone and therefore hysteria could not be cured. This dream shows clearly why Freud chose to lie about the cause of hysteria and switched from the seduction theory to the fantasy theory of it. Evidently, he had thought that the only means of curing hysterical patients was to deny that the sexual abuse had happened. That was the only means of "undoing" the abuse which was said by his dream to be impossible.

Freud's overall interpretation of the dream was that it "represented a particular state of affairs as I should have wished it to be. Thus its content was the fulfillment of a wish and its motive was a wish." So, Freud became convinced that dreams meant wish fulfillments by summarizing the meaning of Irma's dream taking into consideration only what he liked in the dream and ignoring, for example, the accusations directed to him by the dream and the fact the dream said that the real cause of hysteria was being sexually abused.

Freud's final belief about the meaning of dreams is this: "A dream is a (disguised) fulfillment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish."

One of the arguments that Freud used to support his wish fulfillment theory was that the mind could do nothing but fulfilling wishes, and because realistic wish fulfillment was impossible during the sleep state, it was done in the form of perception. This argument is obviously wrong, because the mind does plenty of preparatory work before it can actually fulfill a wish, and much of such work can be non-pleasurable. Ignoring these facts, Freud interpreted everything in a dream as an actual wish fulfillment, as exemplified by his misinterpretation of his Irma dream, which presented, for example, several non-pleasurable causes of his failure to cure Irma. I have shown elsewhere that a complete dream contains three types of thought (expressed in Freud's terminology): the frustration of a wish, the causes of the frustration, and the means of fulfilling it. Irma dream was about Freud's failure to cure her but did not present a means of fulfilling it and said instead that curing her was impossible, this being his honest opinion.

Freud's idea of the disguised fulfillment of suppressed or repressed wishes had one more source. He wrote in his letter of January 3, 1899 to Fliess: "I now understand why in spite of all my efforts I have not yet finished the dream book . . . . I shall be able to present the psychic process in dreams in such a way that it also includes the process in the formation of hysterical symptoms." How Freud "discovered" that psychic process is explained below.

Freud's friend Fliess claimed that hysteria could be cured by a surgical operation performed on the nose of the patient. Freud believed him, and Fliess performed an operation on Emma's nose on February 20, 1895. On March 6, 1895, a second operation was performed by another friend of Freud, and half-a-meter of gauze was removed from Emma's nose. The gauze had been accidentally left in by Fliess and had caused excessive bleeding that had nearly killed her. Nose-bleeding continued even after the second operation and was probably a consequence of the two operations. But Freud wrote to Fliess about Emma on May 4, 1896: "She became restless during the night because of an unconscious wish to entice me to go there, and since I did not come, she renewed the bleeding, as an unfailing means of rearousing my affection." And he wrote to him on February 19, 1899: "It is not only dreams that are fulfillments of wishes, but hysterical attacks as well. This is true of hysterical symptoms, but it probably applies to every product of neurosis."

We see that Freud's wish fulfillment theory of dreams and symptoms was a consequence of baseless generalizations, misinterpretations of some dreams, invalid arguments, and the wrong and wishful interpretation of a physiological phenomenon. Thus, Freud's theory is untenable as far as its origin is concerned. It is equally without proof concerning its consequences, as explained below.

Freud believed that every event that a dreamer could associate with the images of his or her dream in the waking state was part of the meaning of the dream. And he interpreted all that material as wish fulfillment by using devices such as displacement, inversion, and other types of disguising to make the dream fit his theory. It is evident that any event can be interpreted in any way one wishes by using such devices. Even this procedure shows that Fred's theory is wrong.

Freud's theory is refuted also by the difficulty he experienced in explaining the emergence of anxiety in dreams and his total failure to interpret the so-called "incest dreams." He wrote in a footnote added to a later edition of his book on dreams that anxiety was experienced in dreams by consciousness when an unacceptable wish was fulfilled without being sufficiently disguised. But if this were true, "incest dreams" interpreted as wish fulfillments would be dreams of highest anxiety, which is not the case. They are found revolting in the waking state by being interpreted wrongly as wish fulfillments. I explained elsewhere that "incest dreams" mean that sex partners must intimately know, love, and respect each other. The wish fulfillment theory has not been useful in psychotherapy either.

However, to repeat, Freud's book must be read by anyone who studies dreams, because it contains about 220 dreams and valuable information about the dreamers' life experiences related to their dreams. The book also contains some of Freud's own dreams, of which the correct interpretations tell much about his life experiences and the true geneses of his theories. Moreover, the book exposes the importance of unconscious thinking, although Freud misinterpreted the contents of the unconscious and the aims of its products, as I further explained elsewhere.

Cognitive-Behavioral Cybernetics of Symptoms, Dreams, Lateralization: Theory, Interpretation, Therapy

Theory Construction and Testing in Physics and Psychology

I just got my 2007 edition copy of "Interpretation of Dreams" in the mail so I haven't had a chance to read it. So this rating is only on the particular edition that is published by NuVision. They did not include an index or any information about who translated this version. Also, the table of contents is nearly worthless; no detail what-so-ever about the chapters, not even titles of the chapters, just Chapter 1 etc. and a page number. Even though you may think a newer publication is better, this one is much much worse and more expensive. Go with the 1980 publication. I'm returning the book to Amazon (who gets 5 stars for customer service!)