My Numerous Territory of Investigation (Erasure of Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams”)

Introductory Remarks

 

In attempting a discussion of Dreams, I do believe I have overstepped the bounds of interest;

investigation proves to be the first in a chain of practical significance

 

whose theoretical value is the greater origin of the dream.

This relation is responsible for the surfaces of fracture

 

which touch more comprehensive problems.

Peculiarities elucidate dreams; the work itself will appear useless;

 

to choose between patients I was restrained by an undesirable complication:

inseparably connected was the circumstance that I was a poet.

 

This was painful, but unavoidable; I could not resist the temptation.

The reader, putting himself in my difficult position, will take offence.

 

Preface

1.

If there has arisen a demand for this rather difficult decade,

I owe gratitude to the preceding.  My colleagues

have made no effort to shake off my dream,

and professional philosophers, accustomed to treat the dream

as part of a few sentences, have failed to observe

that in this field could be found all things.  Scientific critics

could be buried in oblivion.  I am glad.

 

2.

Here and there, new views from my wider experience

attempt to revise certain points; (everything essential has remained unchanged);

subjectively, my works know I have never finished.

I have always striven to change my advancing views,

but in the dream I have been my first declarations.

 

3.

During the long years of my work, I have been repeatedly confronted with mistakes;

but it was always my numerous territory of investigation.  Likewise the rules of dream,

depreciated and outstripped by events, have resisted substantial changes.

 

4.

For me, the book has another meaning:

The traces of this reader learn to dream.