# Canonical recap data for Freud Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
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slug: interpretation-dreams
canonicalUrl: "https://recap.at/1900/interpretation-dreams"
title: Freud Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
aliases:
- Die Traumdeutung
- The Interpretation of Dreams
- Freud's dream theory
- Birth of psychoanalysis
subtitle: Freud Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams
recapType: global_event
eventStatus: concluded
startDate: 1900-01-01
datePrecision: year
year: 1900
decade: 1900
country:
name: Austria
slug: austria
summaryShort: Freud Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) - Austria.
summaryLong: Freud Publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900) - Austria.
lede: Sigmund Freud published *Die Traumdeutung* (*The Interpretation of Dreams*) in Vienna in November 1900, proposing that dreams were disguised expressions of repressed desires and unconscious conflict. The 600-page work introduced psychoanalysis as a method for understanding the mind and became foundational to 20th-century psychology, philosophy, and culture-even as it remained controversial from the start.
heroImageUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Freud_-_The_interpretation_of_dreams.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_The_interpretation_of_dreams.djvu.jpg"
heroImageCredit: Julius_Silver on Pixabay
importance: 50
sourceConfidence: 55
keyFacts:
- label: Publication date
  value: November 4, 1900 (Vienna)
- label: Author
  value: Sigmund Freud
- label: Original title
  value: Die Traumdeutung
- label: Page count
  value: ~600 pages
- label: Initial print run
  value: 600 copies
- label: Time to write
  value: approximately 2 years (1898–1900)
- label: Publisher
  value: Franz Deuticke (Vienna)
- label: Key methodological claim
  value: Dreams are wish-fulfillment expressions of the unconscious
timeline:
- date: 1895-01-01
  title: Freud begins intensive dream analysis
  description: Freud starts systematically recording and analyzing his own and his patients' dreams, laying groundwork for the theoretical framework he will develop over the next five years.
- date: 1897-01-01
  title: Freud develops the concept of the Oedipus complex
  description: While working through his own dreams and self-analysis, Freud identifies what he calls the Oedipal conflict, a cornerstone concept that will feature prominently in *The Interpretation of Dreams*.
- date: 1899-01-01
  title: Freud completes manuscript
  description: The manuscript is finished and sent to publisher Franz Deuticke in Vienna. The work has taken roughly two years of intensive theoretical and clinical labor.
- date: 1900-11-01
  title: Backdated publication
  description: Although released in November 1900, the book is officially dated 1901 by the publisher-a common practice intended to make the work appear timely into the new year.
- date: 1900-11-04
  title: The Interpretation of Dreams published
  description: Freud's *Die Traumdeutung* is released in Vienna with a modest print run of 600 copies. The book presents psychoanalysis as a method for accessing the unconscious through dream analysis and interpretation.
- date: 1909-01-01
  title: English translation published
  description: James Strachey translates *The Interpretation of Dreams* into English, significantly expanding Freud's audience and influence beyond German-speaking Europe.
- date: 1910-01-01
  title: Freud's first U.S. lecture tour
  description: Freud travels to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, delivering lectures on psychoanalysis that introduce American intellectuals and clinicians to his dream theory and broader psychoanalytic method.
- date: 1919-01-01
  title: Third German edition
  description: Freud publishes a substantially revised third edition of *Die Traumdeutung*, incorporating new clinical material and theoretical refinements from nearly two decades of practice.
sources: []
related: []
impactStatement: Freud's dream theory rewired how educated people thought about their own minds. It spawned an entire discipline, influenced art and literature for generations, and normalized the idea that what we don't consciously know about ourselves matters more than what we do. The book's legacy is complicated-much of his science has been discredited-but its cultural reach proved near-total.
categories:
- award
metaDescription: Freud publishes The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), founding psychoanalysis and reshaping Western thought on the unconscious mind.
comparisonThenNow:
- metric: Scientific standing of dream interpretation
  thenValue: Central to understanding unconscious motivation; widely accepted by educated classes
  thenYear: 1900
  nowValue: Largely rejected by neuroscience; REM sleep shows no special relationship to wish-fulfillment
  nowYear: 2024
  note: fMRI studies from 2000s onward showed dream content correlates poorly with Freudian mechanisms
- metric: Influence on clinical psychology training
  thenValue: Psychoanalysis the dominant training paradigm in Europe and America by 1920s
  thenYear: 1920
  nowValue: Largely displaced by cognitive-behavioral, evidence-based approaches in licensed programs
  nowYear: 2024
  note: Psychoanalytic training persists but is a minority specialization in most countries
- metric: Explanatory scope of sexual/childhood development theory
  thenValue: Freud's theories of infantile sexuality and Oedipal conflict treated as fundamental psychological laws
  thenYear: 1910
  nowValue: Specific Freudian mechanisms largely unsupported; developmental psychology uses different frameworks
  nowYear: 2024
  note: Attachment theory, neuroscience, and cross-cultural psychology have offered competing models
- metric: Public awareness of 'the unconscious mind'
  thenValue: Philosophically discussed; Freud popularizes as actionable clinical concept
  thenYear: 1900
  nowValue: Ubiquitous in popular psychology, therapy, self-help; neuroscience redefines term
  nowYear: 2024
- metric: Gender theory influence from Freud's work
  thenValue: Penis envy, female passivity presented as psychological law
  thenYear: 1905
  nowValue: Largely rejected; second-wave feminism onward critiqued as reflecting cultural bias
  nowYear: 2024
  note: Freud's female psychology theories were explicitly challenged by Horney, Mitchell, and others by 1960s
consequences:
- title: Founding of the Wednesday Psychological Society
  year: 1902
  description: Freud convenes a discussion group in his Vienna apartment with Otto Rank, Wilhelm Stekel, and others. This became the nucleus of the psychoanalytic movement and formalized Freud's emergence as the intellectual center of a new school.
- title: Carl Jung's adoption of psychoanalysis
  year: 1906
  description: Jung, working at the Burghölzli Hospital in Zurich, reads Freud's work and begins corresponding with him. Their collaboration until their 1913 split legitimized psychoanalysis among academic and medical institutions in German-speaking Europe.
- title: Psychoanalytic treatment becomes established practice
  year: 1920
  description: By the early 1920s, psychoanalytic institutes exist in Vienna, Berlin, London, and New York. Freud's dream theory and the talking cure become a recognizable clinical methodology taught to medical students and attracting educated patients.
- title: Influence on Surrealist and Modernist art movements
  year: 1924
  description: The Surrealist Manifesto explicitly invokes Freudian dream theory and automatic writing as methods to access unconscious creativity. Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, and others build artistic practice around Freudian concepts of the unconscious.
- title: Popularization in American culture and psychotherapy
  year: 1930
  description: Freud's 1909 lectures at Clark University are published widely. By the 1930s-1950s, psychoanalysis becomes culturally dominant in American psychology, psychiatry, and educated discourse-domination that lasts until cognitive-behavioral approaches emerge in the 1970s-1980s.
- title: Neuroscientific critique and displacement of Freudian mechanisms
  year: 1990
  description: REM sleep research, neuroscience of memory, and controlled clinical trials undermine specific Freudian claims. By 2000s, most psychology departments teach Freud as history rather than active theory; psychoanalysis remains in clinical practice but without scientific validation of its core mechanisms.
culturalContext:
topMusic: []
topFilms:
- title: Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station
  year: 1896
  note: Lumière brothers' short captured the modern moment-cinema itself a new technology for capturing consciousness
- title: The Great Train Robbery
  year: 1903
  note: Early narrative cinema; emerged just as Freud's ideas began circulating, both tapping into modern anxieties
topTVShows: []
zeitgeistNote: Vienna 1900 was simultaneously a capital of imperial stability and cultural ferment. Klimt painted the Vienna Secession's first exhibition in 1897; Schnitzler's psychological realism in literature paralleled Freud's excavation of hidden motives. Industrial modernity, rapid urbanization, and the visible decline of traditional certainties created psychological hunger for new frameworks of understanding. Freud's book arrived as both symptom and proposed cure for this cultural anxiety-a scientific method to master the irrational impulses of modern life.
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  caption: (Previous hero, demoted by topical-relevance swap)
  credit: ""
  width: 0
  height: 0
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Freud_-_Dream_psychology%2C_psychoanalysis_for_beginners.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_Dream_psychology%2C_psychoanalysis_for_beginners.djvu.jpg"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Freud_-_Dream_psychology%2C_psychoanalysis_for_beginners.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_Dream_psychology%2C_psychoanalysis_for_beginners.djvu.jpg"
  caption: Freud - Dream psychology, psychoanalysis for beginners
  credit: Sigmund Freud
  width: 2158
  height: 3724
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Freud_-_The_history_of_the_psychoanalytic_movement.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_The_history_of_the_psychoanalytic_movement.djvu.jpg"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Freud_-_The_history_of_the_psychoanalytic_movement.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_The_history_of_the_psychoanalytic_movement.djvu.jpg"
  caption: Freud - The history of the psychoanalytic movement
  credit: Sigmund Freud, A. A. Brill
  width: 2788
  height: 4426
- url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Freud_-_Wit_and_its_relation_to_the_unconscious.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_Wit_and_its_relation_to_the_unconscious.djvu.jpg"
  thumbnailUrl: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Freud_-_Wit_and_its_relation_to_the_unconscious.djvu/page1-1280px-Freud_-_Wit_and_its_relation_to_the_unconscious.djvu.jpg"
  caption: Freud - Wit and its relation to the unconscious
  credit: Sigmund Freud
  width: 1912
  height: 3112
