PREFACE TO THE SECOND (GERMAN) EDITION
THAT there should have been a demand for a second
edition of this book- a book which cannot be described as easy to read-
before the completion of its first decade is not to be explained by the
interest of the professional circles to which I was addressing myself. My
psychiatric colleagues have not, apparently, attempted to look beyond the
astonishment which may at first have been aroused by my novel conception
of the dream; and the professional philosophers, who are anyhow accustomed
to disposing of the dream in a few sentences- mostly the same- as a
supplement to the states of consciousness, have evidently failed to
realize that precisely in this connection it was possible to make all
manner of deductions, such as must lead to a fundamental modification of
our psychological doctrines. The attitude of the scientific reviewers was
such to lead me to expect that the fate of the book would be to fall into
oblivion; and the little flock of faithful adherents, who follow my lead
in the therapeutic application of psycho-analysis, and interpret dreams by
my method, could not have exhausted the first edition of this book. I
feel, therefore, that my thanks are due to the wider circle of cultured
and inquiring readers whose sympathy has induced me, after the lapse of
nine years, once more to take up this difficult work, which has so many
fundamental bearings.
I am glad to be able to say that I found little in the
book that called for alteration. Here and there I have interpolated fresh
material, or have added opinions based on more extensive experience, or I
have sought to elaborate individual points; but the essential passages
treating of dreams and their interpretation, and the psychological
doctrines to be deduced therefrom, have been left unaltered; subjectively,
at all events, they have stood the test of time. Those who are acquainted
with my other writings (on the etiology and mechanism of the
psychoneuroses) will know that I never offer unfinished work as finished,
and that I have always endeavored to revise my conclusions in accordance
with my maturing opinions; but as regards the subject of the dream-life, I
am able to stand by my original text. In my many years' work upon the
problems of the neuroses I have often hesitated, and I have often gone
astray; and then it was always the interpretation of dreams that restored
my self-confidence. My many scientific opponents are actuated by a wise
instinct when they decline to follow me into the region of oneirology.
Even the material of this book, even my own dreams,
defaced by time or superseded, by means of which I have demonstrated the
rules of dream-interpretation, revealed, when I came to revise these
pages, a continuity that resisted revision. For me, of course, this book
has an additional subjective significance, which I did not understand
until after its completion. It reveals itself to me as a piece of my
self-analysis, as my reaction to the death of my father, that is, to the
most important event, the most poignant loss in a man's life. Once I had
realized this, I felt that I could not obliterate the traces of this
influence. But to my readers the material from which they learn to
evaluate and interpret dreams will be a matter of indifference.
Where an inevitable comment could not be fitted into
the old context, I have indicated by square brackets that it does not
occur in the first edition. *
Berchtesgaden, 1908 -
* Omitted in subsequent editions. |
