I shall briefly discuss the history of dream interpretation. This came to me as the first-fruits of the technical innovation, after, following a dim presentiment, I had decided to replace hypnosis with free associations. It was not the understanding of dreams towards which my curiosity was originally directed. I do not know of any influences which had guided my interest to this or inspired me with any helpful expectations. Before the cessation of my intercourse with Breuer I hardly had time to tell him, in so many words, that I now knew how to translate dreams. During the development of these discoveries the symbolism of the language of dreams was about the last thing which became known to me, since, for the understanding of symbols, the associations of the dreamer offer but little help. As I have held fast to the habit of first studying things themselves, before looking them up in books, I was able to ascertain for myself the symbolism of dreams before I was directed to it by the work of Sherner. Only later I came to value fully this means of expression of dreams. This was partly due to the influence of the works of Stekel, who was at first very meritorious but who later became most perfunctory. The close connection between the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams and the once so highly esteemed art of dream interpretation of the ancients only became clear to me many years afterwards. The most characteristic and significant portion of my dream theory, namely, the reduction of the dream distortion to an inner conflict, to a sort of inner dishonesty, I found later in an author to whom medicine but not philosophy is unknown. I refer to the engineer J. Popper, who had published “Phantasies of a Realist” under the name of Lynkeus. The interpretation of dreams became for me a solace and support in those difficult first years of analysis, when I had to master at the same time the technique, the clinic and the therapy of the neuroses, when I stood entirely alone, and in the confusion of problems and the accumulation of difficulties I often feared to lose my orientation and my confidence. It often took a long time before the proof of my assumption, that a neurosis must become comprehensible through analysis, was seen by the perplexed patient, but the dreams, which might be regarded as analogous to the symptoms, almost regularly confirmed this assumption.