Sigmund Freud wrote Dream Psychology: Psychoanalysis for Beginners in response to a general demand for a more accessible version of his previous, academic volume on dreams and the unconscious: The Interpretation of Dreams. Dream Psychology contains a step-by-step explanation of Freud's own technical jargon and presents the methods by which Freud conducts dream analysis, the basic idea being that Freud cannot be everyone's shrink. This being said, the overall content of the book closely resembles other non-academic psychology books because it records numerous patient studies and addresses the main obstacles between a dreamer and the correct interpretation of their dreams.
Consistent with his earlier career, Freud devotes much of his attention to repression in this book. He believes that repression by the conscious mind of undesirable truths about the person and of painful memories leads to mental instability and psychosis. His foray into the field of dream analysis is for the sole purpose of the elimination of repression. After many years in the field, Freud learned that people rarely present all the facts of their dreams without suppressing or changing some of them. He addresses this in the book by advocating for free-association: the continuous, uninhibited speech of the patient in describing the dream and any accompanying feelings. He desires his patients to present as complete a picture as possible, resisting the temptation to conceal aspects or feelings of which they are ashamed or afraid.
Freud's other major topic in the book is symbols. Borrowing upon literary theory, he identifies symbols in his patients' dreams and interprets them. According to Freud, symbols are manifestations of the unconscious brain, a continuance of waking thought through coded imagery. Just like a literary symbol, these dream symbols often represent multiple referents, making them sometimes difficult to pin down. Basically a symbol in a dream informs the dreamer of either a latent desire or a repressed fear. In his psychoanalysis of dreams Freud is interested in taking advantage of the workings of the unconscious mind in order to draw conclusions about his patient's psychology. He uses these symbols to teach people about themselves and to help them work through any mental blocks or repression.
