A Dream That Interprets Itself

Sigmund Freud hired Otto Rank as his secretary and funded Ranks PhD in literature at the University of Vienna. In 1910, at age 26, Rank published A Dream That Interprets Itself. Freud could not praise the essay highly enough; impressed by Ranks erudition, Freud invited his protg to contribute two chapters, on poetry and myth, in 1914 to The Interpretation of Dreams. Thereafter, Ranks name would appear under Freuds on the title page of the foundational text of psychoanalysis for the next fifteen years. Grateful for Freuds generosity, Rank published a stream of articles and books advancing psychoanalytic thinking into almost every area of the arts and humanities, thus demonstrating to Freuds critics that the validity of psychoanalysis did not hinge solely on his autobiographical work The Interpretation of Dreams. Rank died in 1939 and his work fell out of favor until a renaissance of interest beginning in the 1970s. This is the first English translation of Ranks masterpiece of dream interpretation, originally published in 1910 as Ein Traum, der sich selbst deutet in the journal Jahrbuch fr Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen, 2(2): 465540. It is accompanied by an in-depth introduction from editor Robert Kramer, the worlds only Rankian psychologist. The book is essential reading for all psychoanalytic scholars, practitioners, and historians, and those interested in dream analysis.