Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice.
Exposition (Initial Situation)
Covering Critical Ground
Freud begins The Interpretation of Dreams by surveying the major scientific, philosophical, and pop cultural theories of dreaming that predate his own. By covering this critical territory before jumping into his own methodology, he lays the groundwork for the argument that follows.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
A Little Taste of the Good Stuff
In the second chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud introduces some of the basic principles of his peculiar methodology. After that, he jumps straight into an illustrative example. Freud recounts his famous Dream of Irma's Injection, then interprets it step by step. As he moves forward, Freud's analysis reveals many of the essential insights that he'll build on throughout the rest of the book.
Climax (Crisis, Turning Point)
The Great Discovery
The first climax of The Interpretation of Dreams arrives at the end of the book's second chapter, when Freud concludes that every dream "is the fulfilment of a wish" (2.1.46). From this point on, chapters three through six are simply expansions of and elaborations on this essential point.
Falling Action
Making the Argument Stick
After Freud delivers the climactic conclusion to the book's second chapter, chapters three through six of The Interpretation of Dreams expand and elaborate on his theory of dreaming. Over the span of hundreds of pages, Freud supports, justifies, and gives nuance to the conclusion he's already come to.
Rising Action (Conflict, Complication)
Taking Another New Path
In the final chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud makes another new beginning. After spending the previous 500+ pages presenting a detailed theory of dreaming, Freud uses his final words to develop a striking new model of what he calls human psychical (psychological) processes. In this quasi-neurological chapter, Freud attempts to demonstrate how his theory of dreaming corresponds to a complementary theory of human cognition.
Resolution (Denouement)
Surveying the Road Less Travelled
The newly rising action of the book's seventh chapter doesn't result in another climactic revelation. Instead, Freud admits that a lot of new work will remain to be done if his readers expect to push his theories further. By way of conclusion, Freud turns to survey the ground he's covered throughout The Interpretation of Dreams, and ends simply by reminding his readers that dreams are precious windows into an individual's past.