Books › Dream Psychology

Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners — Sigmund Freud

A short introduction to Freud's theory of dreams, published in English in 1920 with an introduction by André Tridon. It covers the same ground as The Interpretation of Dreams in far fewer pages: the difference between what a dream shows and the thoughts behind it, how a dream condenses and disguises those thoughts, and why the dreams of children are simpler than those of adults.

Public-domain status

This edition was published in 1920, more than 95 years ago, so the text is in the public domain in the United States. Dreamlore uses the free Project Gutenberg edition (eBook #15489), where you can read the whole book. Copyright rules differ in other countries.

How Dreamlore quotes it

The app searches the full text for passages that match the words of your dream, alongside Miller and The Interpretation of Dreams. When a reading quotes the book, the quote is compared word for word with the passage it came from before you see it, and any quote that does not match exactly is removed. Nothing is paraphrased and presented as a quotation. More on how it works →

Sample passages

In what we may term "prescientific days" people were in no uncertainty about the interpretation of dreams.

The dreams of children are of this nature; they have a meaning, and are not bizarre.

The dream content consists chiefly of visual scenes; hence the dream ideas must, in the first place, be prepared to make use of these forms of presentation.

In sleep we are now and then aware of this contempt; the dream content transcends the censorship rather too much, we think, "It's only a dream," and sleep on.

A note on reading it today

Like The Interpretation of Dreams, it presents Freud's theory as he held it at the time; much of it is contested today. Dreamlore quotes it as a clear, readable statement of that theory.

Browse the dream dictionary A–Z →

Dreamlore and these pages are for reflection and curiosity. The books quoted here are old — Miller wrote in 1901 and his entries read as omens, and many of Freud's ideas are disputed today. Take them as a starting point for thinking about your own dream, not as prediction or advice.