An overflow crowd of more than 300 people attended a celebration of the centennial of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams at the New York Academy of Medicine on November 4, 1999. It was the academy's largest group ever at such an event.
Speakers included Bob Pyles, Oliver Sacks, Lynn Gamwell, Ernest Hartmann, and Edward Nersessian. Nersessian spoke for all when he said that it was wonderful not to know most of the faces in the crowd. Members of the academy, artists, press, and analysts attended. National Public Radio and the Infinite Mind recorded the proceedings for later broadcast.
At the event, Lynn Gamwell officially launched a book commemorating the centennial, Dreams 1900–2000: Science, Art, and the Unconscious Mind, edited by Gamwell and published by Cornell University Press (as part of its series “Studies in the History of Psychiatry”) and Binghamton University Art Museum. On Wednesday, November 3, an art exhibit of the same name opened at the Equitable Building in New York City. It remained there until February 26, 2000.
The American Psychoanalytic Association is grateful to Gamwell for organizing the event and for the support of the Lucy Daniels Foundation. Among the many examples of press coverage was the appearance of APsaA president Pyles on the PBS “News Hour” with Jim Lehrer on November 4. A sound recording is available on the Internet via npr.org.