Dream interpretation anxiety dreams and nightmares was the result of failures in the dream-work: rather than contradicting the "wish-fulfillment" theory, such phenomena demonstrated how the ego reacted to the awareness of repressed wishes that were too powerful and insufficiently disguised. Traumatic dreams (where the dream merely repeats the traumatic experience) were eventually admitted as exceptions to the theory. Freud famously described psychoanalytic dream-interpretation as "the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind"; he was, however, capable of expressing regret and dissatisfaction at the way his ideas on the subject were misrepresented or simply not understood: On another
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