Sigmund Freud's fundamental work
The Interpretation of Dreams marks an important date in the history of
psychoanalysis. For the first time, a scientific approach to dreams was attempted. On the one hand, it was a moment of systematisation of the analytical theory that would become
metapsychology, and on the other hand, it was a book that made psychoanalysis known, but not without raising a lot of criticism. In
The Interpretation of Dreams, challenging the dominant scientific theories of his time for which the dream is not a mental act, but a somatic (i.e. physical or bodily) process revealed only by certain psychic signs, he argues that dreams are "psychic acts" and that they are "nothing more than a special form of our thinking, which is made possible by the conditions of the sleeping state". Since his analysis of neurotics had taught him that the most complicated thought activities can take place without the intervention of
consciousness, he asserted that dreams are proof of the existence of unconscious psychic acts, demonstrated that they have a meaning and can be interpreted by a "scientific method", that of psychoanalysis. in
The Interpretations of Dreams The first of the dreams, a dream of Freud's reported and analysed in
The Interpretation of Dreams, the dream known as "
Irma's injection", is a dream that can be said to be inaugural and founding. With this dream, dated 1895, he begins the presentation of his method of interpretation and argues that, through his analysis, for the first time the "enigma" of dreams has been revealed. He concludes at the end of his analysis: "When the work of interpretation has been completed the dream may be recognised as the fulfillment of a wish."In other words, dreams are the fulfillment of unconscious wishes that are suppressed by the conscious mind, either because they are deemed unacceptable or because they conflict with societal norms. Therefore, they constitute a source of information about the dreamer's deepest desires and fears, as well as the unconscious conflicts that may be holding them back in their waking lives. However, the meaning of a dream must be interpreted, since the desires are not represented as they are, because at the same time, the reactionary formation opposing this fulfillment of the desire is brought into play. The manifest content of the dream must be freed from the deformation it has undergone. The dream thus presents itself as a valuable means of knowing the
neurosis. In the last pages of this work, he wrote: "The interpretation of dreams is the
via regia (Royal Road) to a knowledge of the unconscious element in our psychic life." A "royal road" that he had begun to follow a few years earlier and which led him to the elaboration of a theory of dreams in which the dream takes on the value of paradigm. According to him, dreams always contain in germ the entire psychology of neuroses, the structure of dreams is "susceptible of universal application", and the "complete psychic act" that is the dream makes it possible to shed light on the mechanisms of other psychic formations as well as to account for a normal or pathological process. == Method and studies ==