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Summary

Neither Freud’s extrapolation from the endpoint of the analysis of dreams to their origin nor his attempt to derive the account from general theory appears to support the conclusions he reaches about dreaming. The gap in his argument appears not to have an equal in his other lines of writing. Consequently:

1. The Interpretation of Dreams cannot form the bedrock of his other treatises.
2. His larger project, consequently, is little affected by the weakness of the tract.
3. We need not, on those accounts, abandon the practice of interpreting dreams.
4. We may still be driven by a pleasure principle, even if dreams do not carry out wish-fulfillment.

Freud might have been blindsided, in formulating his dreams theory, by his insistence that all mental processes are purposive. Purposiveness may be incompatible with sleeping, and by extension dreaming. The apparatus Freud maps out in The Interpretation of Dreams and elsewhere may pertain only, though still illuminatingly, to waking life.

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8 - Freud on Dreams

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8 - Freud on Dreams

Summary