Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams

For students, lay readers and experts, this book features a careful reconstruction and critical reconsideration of The Interpretation of Dreams, which Freud construed as the cornerstone of his oeuvre. Sugarman identifies foundational weaknesses that call such characterization into question and assesses their implication for Freud's larger project.

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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.