\u201cThe earth is heavy and opaque without dreams,\u201d Ana\u00efs Nin wrote in her diary before our nocturnal fancies became the subject of science \u2014 an inquiry catalyzed by the publication of Freud\u2019s seminal 1900 book The Interpretation of Dreams, which the legendary psychoanalyst considered in part his \u201cown self-analysis\u201d and in which he declared that \u201cthe interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Two decades later, humorist, essayist, and children\u2019s poet Ralph Bergengren wrote David the Dreamer: His Book of Dreams (public library). This most unusual 1922 book is doubly notable for the absolutely striking illustrations by Austrian artist and writer Tom Seidmann-Freud \u2014 Sigmund Freud\u2019s eccentric niece Martha, who at the age of fifteen took on a male name and began wearing men\u2019s clothes, and who went on to be a visionary and exceptionally talented artist of the German Art Nouveau movement before committing suicide at the age of thirty-seven.<\/p>\n
Several years before Seidmann-Freud authored her own visionary \u201cinteractive\u201d picture-book, she illustrated Bergengren\u2019s whimsical tale of an androgynous-looking little boy\u2019s dream about his dog\u2019s third birthday party \u2014 a choice especially curious given her famous uncle\u2019s classic treatise, which paved the way for the contemporary study of the psychology of dreams.<\/p>\n![\"davidthedreamer2\"](\"https:\/\/lavorare.net.br\/2015\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/davidthedreamer2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n