Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Interpretation of Dreams
    The Interpretation of Dreams
    The Interpretation of Dreams
    Audiobook21 hours

    The Interpretation of Dreams

    Written by Sigmund Freud

    Narrated by Michael Page

    4.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    What are the most common dreams and why do we have them? What does a dream about death mean? What do dreams of swimming, failing, or flying symbolize?

    First published by Sigmund Freud in 1899, The Interpretation of Dreams considers why we dream and what it means in the larger picture of our psychological lives. Delving into theories of manifest and latent dream content, the special language of dreams, dreams as wish fulfillments, the significance of childhood experiences, and much more, Freud, widely considered the "father of psychoanalysis," thoroughly and thoughtfully examines dream psychology.

    Encompassing dozens of case histories and detailed analyses of actual dreams, this landmark text presents Freud's legendary work as a tool for comprehending our sleeping experiences.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 21, 2011
    ISBN9781452671284

    Related to The Interpretation of Dreams

    Related audiobooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Consciousness Is Just a Feeling

      Mar 3, 2021

      When he was a boy, Mark Solms obsessed over big existential questions. What happens when I die? What makes me who I am? He went on to study neuroscience but soon discovered that neuropsychology had no patience for such open-ended questions about the

      12 min read

    • Article

      When Neurology Becomes Theology

      Jun 15, 2017

      Early in my neurology residency, a 50-year-old woman insisted on being hospitalized for protection from the FBI spying on her via the TV set in her bedroom. The woman’s physical examination, lab tests, EEGs, scans, and formal neuropsychological testi

      10 min read

    • Article

      Read the Lost Dream Journal of the Man Who Discovered Neurons: An exclusive look at the dreams Santiago Ramon y Cajal recorded to prove Freud was wrong.

      Aug 20, 2015

      Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish histologist and anatomist known today as the father of modern neuroscience, was also a committed psychologist who believed psychoanalysis and Freudian dream theory were “collective lies.” When Freud published The Int

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Dreams of the Man Who Discovered Neurons

      Oct 24, 2019

      Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a Spanish histologist and anatomist known today as the father of modern neuroscience, was also a committed psychologist who believed psychoanalysis and Freudian dream theory were “collective lies.” When Freud published The Int

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Charmed Life of Frank Wilczek

      Mar 17, 2021

      Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek’s new book, Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality, is both a way of thinking about the abundance that characterizes our exterior and interior worlds, and a kind of alternative to traditional religion, a way of being “born aga

      13 min read

    • Article

      Jen Soriano

      Aug 16, 2023

      Jen Soriano
      3 min read

    • Article

      This Man Says the Mind Has No Depths

      Jul 26, 2018

      A whole lot of books on the brain are published these days and you can read yourself into a coma trying to make sense of their various messages. So it was with my usual low-burn curiosity that I starting reading The Mind Is Flat by British behavioral

      12 min read

    • Article

      In your Dreams

      Oct 31, 2021

      In your Dreams
      13 min read

    • Article

      Changing Your Mind

      Aug 27, 2023

      by Robin McConnell On a spring paddock hill, dismembered by dusk, the broad shouldered boy is reading Keats. While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day and touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. The rim of farm light flecks hayseeds Luminescent

      3 min read

    • Article

      Consciousness Isn’t Self-Centered

      Feb 27, 2020

      The great mystery of consciousness is why matter lights up with felt experience. After all, we are composed of particles indistinguishable from those swirling around in the sun; the atoms that compose your body were once the ingredients of countless

      10 min read

    • Article

      Joseph R. Lee Analyses Dreams

      Feb 27, 2020

      Joseph R. Lee Analyses Dreams
      22 min read

    • Article

      Karl Ove Knausgaard

      Dec 15, 2017

      One morning, almost fifteen years ago, I woke up from a dream that was so vivid and powerful that I knew it must be true. I still remember both what happened in the dream and the feelings it left me with. Now the fact is that listening to someone els

      37 min read

    • Article

      What My Stroke Taught Me

      Apr 6, 2017

      In my memories of the Scottish hospital, the sky is always blue, though I know that can’t be completely accurate. Summer was waning, and as my friends and I had already experienced, Edinburgh was prone to unpredictable storms. Yet, I can’t think of a

      16 min read

    • Article

      Steven Pinker Has His Reasons

      Nov 17, 2021

      A few years ago, at the Princeton Club in Manhattan, I chanced on a memorable chat with the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. His spouse, the philosopher Rebecca Goldstein, with whom he was tagging along, had been invited onto a panel to discuss th

      19 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Interpretation of Dreams

    4.5/5

    25 ratings12 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Amazing narration and content. Totally worth the listen, highly recommend
    • 3/5
      At a hefty 664 pages, this was hard work at times, and I did skip the last forty pages or so because it was dragging and I was excited about my next book. The bits that dragged for me were the highly theoretical bits. What I liked best were the case histories and the analyses of Freud’s own dreams and those of his friends and family. This book was most enjoyable when Freud put most of himself into it. He seems to have been a peculiar but ultimately rather endearing man.As the blurb promised, ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ did change the way I think about dreams. I’ve been able to look over records kept of old dreams with a fresh perspective. What I got most out of it was the idea that dreams are wish fulfilments. I would argue that they are other things too, but I see elements of wish fulfilment in almost all of my dreams. It’s sort of how we reconcile ourselves to the gap between reality and all that we desire. I didn’t accept all of Freud’s claims – I would have been very surprised if I had done. I started the book a bit ironically: Freud is well-known for his theory that everyone wants to shag their parents and pretty much anything else that moves. In short, he’s known for being obsessed with sex. This element of his thinking wasn’t really apparent until about half way through through this book, in which there’s a hilarious chapter on symbolism. Everything represents genitals, apparently: umbrellas, nail-files, boxes, cupboards, ships, keys, staircases, tables, hats, coats, neckties, ploughing, bridges, children, animals, relatives, luggage, all other body parts… we had a jolly good laugh about this in bed.
    • 5/5
      Makes one's dream world more meaningful.
    • 5/5
      1st — of it’s place in time indeed. Remark t’.
    • 4/5
      I discovered that Freud is a excellent writer. This is perhaps the most basic book about his ideas and psychoanalysis. Of course it very dated now, but Freud was trying to understand the mind. I know that one of the criticism of Freud is that he only talked or wrote about sex, but that because that what all patients talked about
    • 4/5
      Sigmund Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" is a fascinating subject. There is still no precise science to this endeavor -- though over the past century much more has been learned about neurology and the mind, reshaping psychology dramatically since Freud. Unlike traditional cult and folk approaches, Freud tried to apply psychology to interpreting dreams rather than spiritual or religious mythoi. Since Freud we've learned that dreams often are a way for our minds to incorporate the day's events, to help us learn what we think we've learned. We've also learned that dreams can fill multiple functions, not just learning but also, as Freud proposed, wish fulfillment and the mind's attempt to deal with traumas. Dreams can vary in any of us from night to night and each can serve a different purpose. Dreams are also often merely entertainment for the mind while we're asleep.Though much has changed in psychology over the past century since Freud, I would recommend reading "The Interpretation of Dreams". Just keep an open mind and figure that not every dream has some deep psychological meaning.
    • 5/5
      This book probably gets a perfect score from all psychoanalysts everywhere. But for the rest of us living in the real world this book serves better as the thoughts of a poet in action than any actual psychological applications. Nearly all of Sigmund Freud's findings have been refuted with good evidence. For example, Freud thought Fyodor Dostoyevsky's epilepsy was caused by guilt over his father's death when in fact his sons exhibited the same epilepsy,Nevertheless these ideas are highly tempting and extremely fun to work with. In fact, for the artist they are helpful to one of the highest degrees. It is a highly compelling idea, to take one of the book's biggest conceits, that all dreams are wish fulfillment dreams. The fact that it takes much teasing to bring out that tendency doesn't detract from the thought because we honestly have no idea what dreams are. Some say dreams reflect wish fulfillments and fears, and this seems to be closest to the truth since mankind's first emotion is fear, but dreams are so grotesque, non-sensical, and emotionally charging that it seems so much more is involved with them than beats the eye. Indeed, when Freud is not over-complicating things he is actually over-simplifying them. But this may be the trapping of every person who studies dreams.Freud's views are heavily rooted in scientific observation so that lends a lot of credence to his theories. In that sense it's easy to see why his views took off in America where they didn't take off in Europe. It's also easy to explain his ascension in America by the fact that Americans don't want to take responsibility for their actions and would rather blame "supernatural" forces such as the id and the super-ego (as opposed to just the ego). Indeed, it's easy to see how some of Freud's more ridiculous ideas stemmed from this simple seed of a book. He did not form his Oedipal Complex theory yet when this book came out, which was probably his most famous theory, but it's only too easy to see how much bullshit could spring from this one book, which was his first. Sigmund Freud may have ultimately been a charlatan, but I personally believe that he was genuinely on the search for truth. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Indeed, and so sometimes humans are utterly flawed and it's a wonder we can cipher out the truth in any instance at all, let alone the least likely of instances.
    • 5/5
      Very thorough and comprehensive analysis. I wasn't expecting hard science, since, as experimental data, dreams are a difficult ground for repeatability. Freud is very good at separating the component mechanisms: consolidation, censor, and wish fulfilment, and he clearly saw dreams as ultimately intelligible windows into mental life.
    • 5/5
      After finishing "The Interpretation of Dreams,” I found myself saying “wow.” Very few authors have really bowled me over with their ability to think and write analytically, I now see with greater clarity why people look on this work with such fondness and verve. If you are like me and want to achieve a greater understanding of the psyche, by all means read Freud. However, be prepared for dense writing and know your literature.
    • 3/5
      I read this book for a literary criticism class -- rather than psychology -- so I actually enjoyed it. Freud may have been a nutter, but he had some interesting ideas. His dream interpretations are a just another fun way of looking at information. If you don't take this book too seriously, and remind yourself that there's never a single right answer, you'll find it falls under that "good to know" category, regardless of whether or not you ever use his techniques.
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 1/5
      Not for those who want a book of standardized dream interpretations. If you'd like a taste of Freud's ego run amok: this is for you. Anything in the dream case histories that could possibly be interpreted any other way, isn't. He's looked into *every detail* [excruciatingly] and always finds a way to incorporate that dream into his narrowly defined theories. If any book can be both pedantic and comical, this is it.