The Interpretation of Dreams was impressed by the work when he read it in 1905. Rank was moved to write a critical reanalysis of one of Freud's own dreams, and perhaps partly for this reason came to Freud's attention. It was with Rank's help that Freud published the work's second edition in 1909. The classicist Norman O. Brown, writing in "Life Against Death" (1959), described "The Interpretation of Dreams" as one of the great applications and extensions of the Socratic maxim "know thyself." The philosopher Paul Ricœur, writing in "Freud and Philosophy" (1965), described Freud's work as his "first great book", and argued that
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