Christopher Booker is a scholar who wrote that every story falls into one of seven basic plot structures: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, the Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy, and Rebirth. Shmoop explores which of these structures fits this story like Cinderella’s slipper.
Plot Type : The Quest
Plot Type: The Quest
Because the book is a scientific/psychological treatise rather than an example of narrative fiction or verse, trying to understand The Interpretation of Dreams in the context of "plot" and "story" can be like trying to fit a square peg into a triangular hole.
Still, many scholars have noted that Freud's theory of dreaming contains a lot of autobiographical content—so much so that Ritchie Robertson has called The Interpretation of Dreams a "disguised autobiography" (source).
Scholars, biographers, and Freud himself have also noted that The Interpretation of Dreams was one product of Freud's commitment to "self-analysis." As he grieved for the death of his father and searched for the origins of the "neurotic" symptoms that he recognized in himself, Freud set out on a psychological journey with clear end-goals in mind—self-discovery and healing (source).
So, not only can we think of The Interpretation of Dreams as a disguised autobiography, we can also think of it as a disguised quest narrative. Freud may not be out to slay dragons, rescue damsels, or chuck rings of power into the fires of Mordor, but he does have an object in his sights—to do as the ancient Greek oracle said and "know [him]self."
The Call
If you choose to read The Interpretation of Dreams as a disguised quest narrative, there are lots of ways of thinking about the call that inspired Freud's journey.
The death of his father in 1896 has been suggested as one of the reasons why Freud began a course of "self-analysis" (source), and Freud himself notes in his preface to the second German-language edition of the book that The Interpretation of Dreams was "a portion of my own self-analysis, my reaction to my father's death—that is to say, to the most important event, the most poignant loss, of a man's life" (source).
Alongside Freud's personal investment in the project, however, was his more pragmatic conviction that ordinary dream-lives could reveal the inner workings of human psychology. This conviction—not to mention Freud's desire to make a lasting impact in his field—was another clear reason for him to pursue this line of study.
The Journey
The journey that Freud takes throughout The Interpretation of Dreams is a journey of discovery—discovery of the self, on the one hand, and the discovery of the universal depths of human nature, on the other.
Arrival and Frustration
Throughout the first six chapters of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud progresses slowly but surely in his efforts to lay out a comprehensive methodology for dream-interpretation. But as he embarks on the book's final chapter, he's confronted with a new challenge and ordeal. He realizes that in order for his theory of dreaming to be taken seriously, he'll have to demonstrate its relationship to a quasi-neurological model of human cognition.
The Final Ordeal
Freud encounters his final ordeal in the seventh chapter of The Interpretation of Dreams. His difficult task is to lay out a complex, quasi-neurological model of the human mind—one that will back up and vindicate the complex theory of dreaming that he's developed over the preceding 500+ pages.
The Goal
It's clear by the end of The Interpretation of Dreams that Freud is confident about the theory he's just put forward. Although he admits that a lot of work will remain to be done, he feels no doubt that his book will revolutionize readers' understanding of human dream-lives and human psychology.
As for his own "self-analysis" and mental health—although Freud might not have been able to fully understand or rid himself of all of his strange "symptoms" and character quirks, less than two years after the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams was published, he did make his first visit to Rome (source).
As Ritchie Robertson suggests, Freud's "self-analysis" seems to have brought him "through his personal crisis" and helped him to overcome at least some of his "neuroses" (source). We'll call that a quest well done.