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Freud's complaints and Jones's echoing of them that the reception by the German public of Freud's dream book was scant and unfavorable is not sustained by investigation. Freud did not appreciate the extent to which the work was reviewed in Germany. The discovery of additional references in lay periodicals by Giessler, Jentsch, Korn Lubarsch, and others shows that Freud was either unaware of or unduly deprecated the attention paid to his dream studies.
Psychoanalytic theories have always faced resistance because of their sexual content and because of Freud's Viennese Jewish background. But in addition, the unconscious reservations of reviewers, the scientific climate that discouraged lay interest, and Freud's initial reluctance to court intellectuals with literary interests delayed acceptance of the dream theories. Yet it was the latter group which produced some of Freud's most devoted supporters and practitioners. Decker's splendid researches show the general disapproval of Freud by German medical circles and his acceptance by the literati, similar to the phenomena noted by Hale so far as the Americans were concerned (cf., N. H. Hale, Jr.: Freud and the Americans. The Beginning of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876-1917. Oxford University Press, 1971). But the similar reactions have both similar and some important different motivations in the two countries.