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The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

— Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

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Notes from Wikiquote

At any rate the interpretation of dreams is the via regia to a knowledge of the unconscious in the psychic life. | "Royal road" or via regia is an allusion to a statement attributed to Euclid.

Variants

by Abraham Arden Brill, p. 483. Freud did use the Latin phrase via regia in the original as opposed to translating it into the German of the surrounding text.

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Dreams

More quotes by Sigmund Freud

Moreover, the act of birth is the first experience of anxiety, and thus the source and prototype of the affect of anxiety.

The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

No one who, like me, conjures up the most evil of those half-tamed demons that inhabit the human beast, and seeks to wrestle with them, can expect to come through the struggle unscathed.

Dora : An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (1905)

One might compare the relation of the ego to the id with that between a rider and his horse.

New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1933)

A religion, even if it calls itself a religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it.

Group Psychology And The Analysis Of The Ego (1921)

Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness.

Letter to an American mother's plea to cure her son's homosexuality (1935)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sigmund Freud (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.