Interpretation of Dreams & Totem and Taboo

“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life. ”Regarded as Sigmund Freud’s most significant work, The Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1899 and aims to give readers a peek through the workings of the unconscious mind through dream interpretations. In this book, Frued paves a new way of understanding human nature and thought processes. The book fascinates the readers with symbolisms that establish how everyday experiences get manifested into dreams. Describing them as picture-puzzles, Freud asserts that dreams can form a “poetical phrase of the greatest beauty and significance”.


Totem and Taboo' began life as four separate essays published by Sigmund Freud between 1912 and 1913. Freud was struck by the strong parallels between the behavior of neurotics, children and pre-literate tribal peoples (which he termed 'primitives'), and boldly extended his psycho-analytic theories into the fields of social psychology and anthropology. His belief that humanity's distant past was moulded by the deepest urges of the human psyche led him to propose an astonishing theory which brought together such disparate concepts as Animism, the Primal Horde, Totemism, Cannibalism, and the Oedipus Complex to explain the origin of both civilisation and religious practices.