Freud was ‘misunderstood’ and wasn’t so obsessed with sex, new analysis of work suggests

A new edition of his theories on dreams argues that he used ‘sexuality’ to describe any purely pleasureable activity

For a psychiatrist, so the joke goes, any object that crops up within a dream must represent a phallus. But it seems even Sigmund Freud did not really think all our sleeping fantasies are suppressed erotica. It was just a basic misunderstanding of the pioneering psychoanalyst’s work, according to an eminent new version of his influential theories.

A revised English edition of Freud’s key work, The Interpretation of Dreams, by scholar Mark Solms will correct several errors of translation and aim to definitively challenge the common misconception that Freud believed the erotic drive was behind much of human behaviour.