The Interpretation of Dreams like Freud's other works it posits a "semantics of desire". The mythologist Joseph Campbell described the book as an "epochal work", noting that it was "based on insights derived from years devoted to the fantasies of neurotics". Max Schur, Freud's physician and friend, has provided evidence that the first dream that Freud analyzed, his so-called "Irma dream" was not very disguised, but actually closely portrayed a medical disaster of Emma Steinbeck, one of Freud's patients. The psychologist Hans Eysenck, writing in "Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire" (1985), argued that the dreams Freud cites not only do not support
The Dream - Introduction into the Psychology of Dreams fascinated by the putative meaning of their dreams and desired to discover their unconscious selves by means of interpreting them. In the following years, Silberer noticed that while the literature on the interpretation of dreams was increasing in amount and complexity, general information on basic elements of dreams was deficient. Therefore, he began to give public lectures on fundamental knowledge about dreams as well as his specific findings in this field in Vienna. After various listeners of one of such lectures had assured him that he had succeeded in providing an understandable introduction into the psychology of dreams, Silberer decided