Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire or experiment and have the status only of speculation. Eysenck argues that the veracity of psychoanalysis is testable through traditional empirical means, and that in all areas where such tests have been carried out it has failed. Eysenck calls Freud, "a genius, not of science, but of propaganda, not of rigorous proof, but of persuasion, not of the design of experiments, but of literary art." According to Eysenck, Freud set back the study of psychology and psychiatry by around fifty years. Eysenck argues that the dreams Freud cites in "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1899) do not really support his theories,
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