The Interpretation of Dreams Analysis

Literary Devices in The Interpretation of Dreams

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

Setting

Up until 1938, when he fled the dangerous, anti-Semitic climate of Nazi Austria, Freud spent his adult life in Vienna.As one scholar notes, The Interpretation of Dreams "incorporates much of 1890s...

Narrator Point of View

The Interpretation of Dreams is a scholarly, scientific text, so it's a little strange to think of Freud as its "narrator." But if we remember that Freud thought of his argument as a kind of hike o...

Genre

At its most basic level, The Interpretation of Dreams is a scholarly text. As a practicing psychoanalyst, Freud intended the book to contribute to—and maybe even revolutionize—contemporary psyc...

Tone

While it's true that Freud's writing throughout The Interpretations of Dreams is suited to an audience of highly trained professionals, Freud does his best to balance his medical terminology and sc...

Writing Style

Although Freud can be very frank and revealing throughout The Interpretation of Dreams, his writing style still sticks to the formal academic and professional standards of his day. Want a taste of...

What's Up With the Title?

Wordplay and wit may abound in The Interpretation of Dreams, but it was no muss, no fuss for Freud when it came to giving the book a straightforward and clear-cut title. The book lays out a method...

What's Up With the Epigraph?

Nothing classes up a book like a Latin inscription, are we right? Well, the epigraph to The Interpretation of Dreams is a line from Virgil's classical epic The Aeneid (Book VII: 312). Freud's...

What's Up With the Ending?

In the final pages of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud surveys the terrain he's covered and takes advantage of this last opportunity to compare his theory of dreaming to those that have come bef...

Tough-o-Meter

By virtue of its length alone, The Interpretation of Dreams is a doozy. Even the starchiest of couch potatoes might find the muscles in their legs getting stiff after days and days on the cushions...

Plot Analysis

Covering Critical GroundFreud begins The Interpretation of Dreams by surveying the major scientific, philosophical, and pop cultural theories of dreaming that predate his own. By covering this crit...

Booker's Seven Basic Plots Analysis

Because the book is a scientific/psychological treatise rather than an example of narrative fiction or verse, trying to understand The Interpretation of Dreams in the context of "plot" and "story"...

Three-Act Plot Analysis

As Freud's editor and translator James Strachey tells us, Freud thought of The Interpretation of Dreams as being "planned on the model of an imaginary walk" (source). In an 1899 letter to his good...

Trivia

Freud has been celebrated as the first man to achieve a successful self-analysis. His efforts to chart his own unconscious led to The Interpretation of Dreams. (source)Freud was totally addicted to...

Steaminess Rating

Folks, The Interpretation of Dreams may be nowhere near as raunchy as an episode of True Blood or Inside Amy Schumer, but our Victorian grannies would be clutching their pearls if we didn't give th...

Allusions

Freud was a dude who liked to give credit where credit was due. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud includes a huge bibliography that lists all of the authors,...