On Dreams

SEX, DEATH, AND MADNESS IN VIENNA The naturalized American psychologist Bruno Bettelheim (1903–90), himself born and educated in Vienna, suggests that Freud's interest in sex and death arose partly from a "morbid" preoccupation with these issues in late-nineteenth-century Viennese culture as a whole (Bettelheim, p. 10). In his essay "Freud's Vienna," Bettelheim offers the example of the 1889 suicide of the 30-year-old Crown Prince Rudolf. Heir to the imperial throne and married to a Belgian princess whom he did not love, Rudoif murdered his lover. Baroness Vetsera, after having sex with her. He then took his own life. The murder-suicide fascinated and astounded the Viennese public. "It was a shockingly vivid demonstration of the destructive tendencies inherent in man which Freud would investigate and describe later" (Bettelheim, p. 10). In his The interpretation of Dreams, sex, death, and madness recur often in the dreams discussed-both Freud's and his patients'. In addition to society's focus on destructive tendencies, Bettelheim points to the mental instability of Rudolf's mother, the Empress Elizabeth, as a much discussed subject of the day. Elizabeth herself "extoiied both death and madness in remarks such as 'The idea of death purifies' and 'Madness is truer than life'" (Bettelheim, p. 10).

A psychological study of the function, nature, and meaning of dreams; published in German (as Über den Traum) in 1901, in English in 1914.

by Sigmund Freud

Synopsis
In On Dreams, Freud summarizes his earlier groundbreaking The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung [1900]). Against the prevailing scientific opinion of the day, this longer work argues that dreams have meaning and that every dream represents a wish of the dreamer.

    The Study in Focus
    From Arthur Schnitzler's "Lieutenant Gustl"


A pioneer in exploring the hidden workings of the human mind, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the founder of psychoanalysis, has been called the most influential thinker of the twentieth century. Born into a Jewish family in Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), Freud moved with his family to Vienna, Austria, where he lived from early boyhood until shortly before his death. After an education in which he studied the Greek and Latin classics as well as French and German literature, Freud turned to medicine and eventually to the infant science of psychology. By the late 1890s Freud had built on the insights of several coworkers to found the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Among other revolutionary ideas, psychoanalysis proposes that much human behavior is governed by unconscious motives and that in adults many of these motives stem from sexual impulses shaped by long-forgotten childhood experiences. At the turn of the century, Freud published his first major work, The Interpretation of Dreams, which won him slow but growing recognition in the European medical community. Shortly afterward, he summarized his findings for a general readership in On Dreams. The volume foreshadows important concepts that Freud would elaborate in later books, such as The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Three Essays on Sexuality (1905), and Civilization and Its Discontents (1930). Despite his immense body of work, Freud always considered The Interpretation of Dreams his masterpiece, a view with which most observers have agreed. More than simply an inquiry into dreams, it, as well as On Dreams, lays out Freud's basic ideas of psychoanalytic theory.

For More Information
Bettelheim, Bruno. Freud's Vienna and Other Essays. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. Trans, and ed. James Strachey. New York: Basic Books, 1955.
_____. On Dreams. Trans, and ed. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1951.
Gay, Peter. Freud: A Life for Our Time. New York: Norton, 1988.
Grinstein, Alexander. On Sigmund Freud's Dreams. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1968.
Hall, Calvin S. A Primer of Freudian Psychology. New York: Signet, 1954.
Porter, Laurence M. The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud's Theories Revisited. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Robertson, Ritchie. Introduction and Notes to The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud. Trans. Joyce Crick. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Schnitzler, Arthur. "Lieutenant Gusti." In Arthur Schnitzler: Plays and Stories. Trans. Richard L. Simon. New York: Continuum, 1982.
Schorske, Carl. Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture. New York: Vintage, 1981.
Simpson, J. A., and E. S. C. Weiner. The Oxford English Dictionary. Vol. 18. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.
Sulloway, Frank J. Freud, Biologist of the Mind: Beyond the Psychoanalytic Legend. New York: Basic Books, 1979.