The Interpretation of Dreams · Sigmund Freud
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
Since the appearance of the author’s _Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses_, and _Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory_,[A] much has been said and written about Freud’s works. Some of our readers have made an honest endeavour to test and utilise the author’s theories, but they have been handicapped by their inability to read fluently very difficult German, for only two of Freud’s works have hitherto been accessible to English readers. For them this work will be of invaluable assistance. To be sure, numerous articles on the Freudian psychology have of late made their appearance in our literature;[B] but these scattered papers, read by those unacquainted with the original work, often serve to confuse rather than enlighten. For Freud cannot be mastered from the reading of a few pamphlets, or even one or two of his original works. Let me repeat what I have so often said: No one is really qualified to use or to judge Freud’s psychoanalytic method who has not thoroughly mastered his theory of the neuroses—_The Interpretation of Dreams_, _Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory_, _The Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, and _Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious_, and who has not had considerable experience in analysing the dreams and psychopathological actions of himself and others. That there is required also a thorough training in normal and abnormal psychology goes without saying.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.