ABSTRACT
In some of his most influential writings, Freud portrayed himself not only as having been altogether alone in the discovery that dreams were meaningful but, indeed, as having worked in an environment hostile to the very idea. In this paper, I contest the most extravagant of these claims, Freud's forceful declaration in the “Introductory Lectures” that he alone among the scientists of his time took an interest in dreams and that his scientific contemporaries regarded such an interest with disdain.
