Psychoanalytic dream interpretation the main tool of self-analysis, as well as a prominent part of the treatment. Dream understanding and interpretation during that time was influenced heavily by Freud's drive-conflict theory. The therapy was designed to reveal the latent content of the patient's repressed sexuality and unconscious mind. To understand the dream, the therapist had to explore the latent content of the dream via the process of free association. The symbolic method held that dreams had to be considered in their entirety, and therefore are unified in their meanings. This gave way to very narrow interpretations. Individual events in the dreams didn't matter,
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