The Dark Forest of Authors: Freud and Nineteenth-Century Dream Theory

Abstract

After arguing that Freud's conception of what constitutes a dream theory and his sense of what it means for a dream to be meaningful are crucial for assessing the originality of his work, this essay focuses on his review of the literature in chapter one of The Interpretation of Dreams. Chapter one makes Freud's own theory appear more revolutionary than it actually is. Freud exaggerates the dominance and neglects the complexity of physiological theories of dreams; he also underemphasizes the tradition of the dream as revelation. Freud requires that a theory of the dream identify an essential characteristic of the dream and explain other features in relation to it; his wish-fulfilment theory does just that. But Freud was not, as he claimed, the only scientist or physician of his day to believe that dreams are interpretable and meaningful.