Books

FIRST ENGLISH EDITION, erratum slip tipped in at first page of text, numeral at foot of final index-page, pp. xiii, 510, 8vo, original blue cloth, lettered in gilt to upper board and backstrip, the latter gently faded, a few faint marks to upper board, a touch of wear at tips, top edge a little dusty, other edges and free endpapers a little browned, Italian bookseller ticket to front pastedown, Publisher's Note tipped to flyleaf (see below), very good. An excellent copy of the first appearance in English of this 'once in a lifetime' work (as the author himself called it, in his Preface to a later English edition). Included in 'Printing and the Mind of Man' (389), where it is classed as 'unquestionably Freud's greatest work', containing 'all the basic components of psychoanalytic practice'. The slip to the flyleaf insists that 'The sale of this book is limited to Members of the Medical, Scholastic, Legal, and Clerical professions' - a statement of restriction that provided immunity from prosecution for this controversial work, the pioneering study that made Freud's name. Though hardly a success domestically, sales of the work in Germany were sluggish (the six years following publication yielded a mere 350), the psychoanalyst was proud of the popular and international spread of his theories - customarily noting translations around Europe in his successive Prefaces. (PMM 389).

Die Traumdeutung, which translates as 'The Interpretation of Dreams', is one of the seminal works of psychoanalysis literature. Written by Sigmund Freud, it introduces his theory of the unconscious with respect to dream interpretation and also discusses what would later become the theory of the Oedipus complex. Freud revised the book at least eight times and, in the third edition, added an extensive section which treated dream symbolism very literally, following the influence of Wilhelm Stekel.