The Interpretation of Dreams: Sigmund Freud, translated by Joyce Crick, with an Introduction and Notes by Ritchie Robertson, Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press, 1999, liv +  458 pp., $27.50

Freud was proud of The Interpretation of Dreams. In the preface to the third English edition , he called it “the most valuable of all the discoveries it has been my good fortune to make” (Freud, 1900/1953b, p. xxxii). Convinced of its central importance to his work, he revised and expanded six of the eight editions that appeared during his lifetime. These revisions go far beyond the well-known additions concerning the extent and significance of symbolism in dreams, as Grubrich-Simitis (2000) has demonstrated so well. Even if one does not agree with Ritchie Robertson that “the original dream theory is based on a much more flexible and sensitive interpretation of dream imagery” (p. xxxviii), it is still instructive to read the considerably shorter Interpretation of Dreams that Freud sent into the world in November 1899. Because the publication of this translation coincided with the publication of a facsimile edition of the German first edition (Freud, 1900/1999), readers can now easily compare Joyce Crick's work with the original.

Strachey's notes in the Standard Edition have allowed readers to reconstruct most of the changes in the later editions, but Crick's translation reveals that Strachey did not record “every alteration of substance introduced into the book since its first issue” (Freud, 1900/1953b, p. xx). Freud came to regard this book as part of his self-analysis, and a large part of its fascination stems from its autobiographical revelations, as intimate as anything in works that he published. Consequently, an “alteration of substance” does not necessarily mean a modification of the argument or