Books

First edition in English, US issue, first state. "This is unquestionably Freud's greatest single work. It contains all the basic components of psychoanalytic theory and practice; the erotic nature of dreams, the 'Oedipus complex', the libido, and the rest; all related to the background of the 'unconscious', later to be called the 'sub-conscious'" (PMM). First published in 1899, Die Traumdeutung was introduced to the English-speaking world via this translation - published simultaneously in London and New York - which was based on the third German edition of 1911. There are two states of the US issue; in the first the title is an integral leaf (as here), and in the second it is a cancel. Provenance: the American poet and New York socialite Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff (1888-1967), with her engraved pictorial bookplate. One of her closest friends was the German-American writer George Sylvester Viereck (1884-1962), a devotee of Freudian psychology. In 1923 Viereck published a popular science book, Rejuvenation: How Steinach Makes People Young, which drew Freud's attention. Diagnosed with oral cancer in early 1923, Freud underwent a series of unsuccessful surgeries before deciding to have a Steinach vasectomy that November. Named after the Viennese physiologist Eugen Steinach, the operation promised physical, mental, and sexual rejuvenation. Despite its inefficacy, the popularity of the Steinach procedure reflected the obsessive pursuit of medical rejuvenation in the early 20th century. Viereck subsequently travelled to Vienna to interview Freud, after which they maintained a steady correspondence. Grinstein 227. See Printing and the Mind of Man 389 for the German edition. Octavo. Original blue vertical-grain cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt. Housed in a custom black quarter morocco book-form box. Several diagrams within text. Without the erratum slip often tipped-in before p. 1. Spine ends bumped, cloth bright and clean bar faint mark on front cover, front inner hinge starting but firm, mid-20th-century date pencilled on front pastedown, facing free endpaper browned, a handful of neat marginal pencil marks else contents generally clean: a very good copy.

In 'The Interpretation of Dreams,' Freud presents his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation, arguing that dreams are forms of 'wish fulfillment'.