ABSTRACT
Freud considered The interpretation of dreams to be his greatest work. It took a while for the world to catch on. The first edition, printed in 1900, had a run of only six hundred copies – and it took eight years to sell them. But Freud continued to revise his beloved book for the next thirty years. During his lifetime, The interpretation of dreams went through eight editions – and at each one Freud made additions, emendations and comments upon earlier statements. What has been handed down to us is more than one of Freud’s books; it is like an archeological excavation. In the standard translation into English the later additions and comments are included as footnotes to the original text. (There is one notable exception, which I shall discuss.) A date is attached to each footnote, so the reader can immediately see the stage of Freud’s thinking at which this idea emerges. This is a book that contains layers of commentary about itself. And so, Freud is not merely the author of this book, he is a companion reader; and he is full of advice about how we should
read it. The advice stretches out over almost his entire working career. In this way, The interpretation of dreams is like the Talmud of Freudian psychoanalysis: it contains within itself a running commentary about how it should be read.1
