ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the therapeutic and theoretical approach to the unconscious mind known as psychoanalysis. He began to view dreams as one way the unconscious mind communicates its desires. Freud's 1899 masterwork The Interpretation of Dreams became wildly popular and helped establish the psychoanalytic perspective in psychology and psychiatry. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud argues that dreams contain meaningful information about the dreamer's unfulfilled, unconscious wishes. Each dream, he claims, is a message in disguise; one must interpret its meaning through dream analysis. He discusses the ancient idea that dreams were the work of spirits or demons. He also examines the more contemporary notion that dreams represent extensions of the waking state or neural activity in the brain's sensory regions. The Interpretation of Dreams and Freud's psychoanalytic perspective played a great part in shaping the disciplines of both psychology and psychiatry.
