9. The Interpretation of Dreams
Freud began working on the book The Interpretation of Dreams about 1895, and more actively following the death of his father. Though he was attempting to solidify his understanding of the unconscious processes of the mind, he was also motivated by his desire to achieve something great, not only in the medical world, but throughout the entire world. “Do you think that one day there will be a marble tablet on the house, saying: ‘In this house on July 24, 1895, the Secret of Dreams was revealed to Dr. Sigmund Freud’?”, he wrote to a friend. Public approbation was always in his mind, driven as he was to accomplish “great things”.
The initial printing of the book was 600 copies, and years later not all of them had been sold. Freud wrote a condensed version, On Dreams, to make it more reachable to the public, and revised the original eight times. Originally published in 1900, it was still considered a largely professional textbook for decades, though it gradually gained popularity in the second half of the 20th century. It remains popular in the 21st. Many of Freud’s assertions and theories expressed in the work remain controversial, as do nearly all aspects of his career.