Die Traumdeutung

Leipzig and Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1900. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 8vo (225 x 146 mm). [4], 371, [5] pp., a few text diagrams. Bound in contemporary black calico with blindstamped boards and gilt-lettered spine (joints expertly repaired, calico over lower joint partially split, corners bumped). Text bright and clean throughout, lower corner of first leaves slightly bumped, light marginal finger-soiling of title-page, clean tear at foot of p. 141/2 without loss. A very good copy. ----

FIRST EDITION of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud's greatest single work and the foundation of psychoanalysis. Freud's first major work on psychology, Die Traumdeutung contains "all the basic components of psychoanalytic theory and practice" (PMM): displacement, regression, the libido, Oedipal impulses and the erotic nature of dreams. "Freud gave an unprecedented precision and force to the idea of the essential similarities of normal and abnormal behaviour, opening up the door to the irrational that had been closed to Western pychology since the time of Locke" (Norman). Freud has been ranked "with Charles Darwin and Karl Marx as one of the three great revolutionary thinkers of the nineteenth century" (pace I. Bernhard Cohen, cf. Grolier Medicine). Freud's biographer and colleague Ernest Jones recorded that the manuscript of Die Traumdeutung was finished by 11 September 1899. Freud sent a copy to his close associate Wihelm Fleiss which was inscribed with the date 24 October 1899 (cf. Norman F33, Fleiss' copy). According to Jones, the work was "actually published on November 4, 1899, but the publisher chose to put the date 1900 on the title page" (Jones, I, p. 395). The first edition was of 600 copies, and as Eimas notes, the book "is now quite scarce". Initially, the work went virtually unnoticed. Jones notes that eighteen months after publication, "no scientific periodical, and only a few others, had mentioned the book. It was simply ignored [. . .] Seldon has an important book produced no echo whatever. It was ten years later, when Freud's work was coming to be recognized, that a second edition was called for" (Jones, op. cit., pp. 395-396).
References and literature: PMM 389; Norman F33; Horblit 32; Grolier/Medicine 87; Eimas, Heirs of Hippocrates 2176; Garrison-M. 4980; E.Jones, Sigmund Freud: Life and Work, London, 1956-1957. - Visit our website to see more images!