"DREAM OF THE WISE BABY, THE"

"The Dream of the Wise Baby" is a one-page text that Ferenczi wrote in 1923. It is a description of a typical adult dream, not a fantasy or a myth, regardless of any analogy with the episode of Jesus teaching the doctors of the Law. It recounts a very young child, a neonate, a baby with glasses, who is teaching adults. Although Freud makes no mention of it in the final edition of The Interpretation of Dreams in 1926, he does write: "Dreams are so closely related to linguistic expression that Ferenczi has truly remarked that every tongue has its own dream-language. It is impossible as a rule to translate a dream into a foreign language and this is equally true, I fancy, of a book such as the present one."

A footnote to Ferenczi's text introduces the notion of children's "effective knowledge" [tatsächliches Wissen ] of adult sexuality. If the dream is repeated often it illustrates what Ferenczi was later to call the "traumatolytic function of the dream" more than a sensual reminiscence that the infant may have enjoyed when at the breast. This knowledge poses a question: Is it a knowledge that is linked to a visual or auditory perception, to an autoerotic excitation, or to an intuition in relation with a primal fantasy? The answer was clear for Ferenczi: It is a knowledge that is linked to facts and to prematuration consequent to trauma, thus to an experience of suffering. In "Confusion of Tongues" (1933/1955) he wrote: "The fear of the uninhibited, almost mad adult changes the child, so to speak, into a psychiatrist [. . .]. It is unbelievable how much we can still learn from our 'wise children,' the neurotics."

Pierre Sabourin

See also: "Confusion of Tongues between Adults and the Child"; Infantile sexual curiosity.

Source Citation

Ferenczi, Sándor. (1923). Der traum vom "gelehrten Säugling." Internationale Zeitschrift fürärztliche Psychoanalyse, IX, 70.

Bibliography

Ferenczi, Sándor. (1955). Confusion of tongues between adults and the child. The language of tenderness and of passion. In Final contributions to the problems and methods of psycho-analysis (pp. 156-167). London: Hogarth. (Original work published 1933 [1932])

Freud, Sigmund. (1900a). The interpretation of dreams. Parts I and II. SE, 4-5.