The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child

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Dreams in Children of Preschool Age

J. Louise Despert

To cite this article: J. Louise Despert (1947) Dreams in Children of Preschool Age, The
Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 3:1, 141-180, DOI: 10.1080/00797308.1947.11823084

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 DREAMS IN CHILDREN OF PRESCHOOL AGE 1
By J. LOUISE DESPERT, M.D. (New York) 2

I. Introduction
The present study forms a part of a series of investigations conducted
at the Payne Whitney Nursery School since 1937, in an attempt to gain
an understanding of the personality development of normal preschool
children. The method of approach used to collect data has been de-
scribed in previous articles (18, 19). In general, it can be stated that this
method makes available systematically collected data which may be
analyzed at any time, both for their qualitative and quantitative mean-
ings. This particular point needs to be emphasized, especially in relation
to the collecting of dreams in young children, since a good deal of the
controversy reported in the fields of psychology and psychopathology
over the concept of young children's dreams relates to the methods of
approach more than to the material itself.
There is growing evidence among child psychologists that all forms
of mentation bear a direct relationship to the behavior of the child;
that a constant interrelation and interplay exist between any human
experience, and the function and patterns of behavior. At the present
time it seems that one aspect of mental experience, the dream, has not
yet been sufficiently and systematically studied; nor has the role that
dreams playas an expression, and in the development of the personality
of the young child. It is the purpose of this study to analyze a series of
dreams collected in 39 children of preschool age, and attempt to define
the meaning and function of dreams in the feeling and thinking experi-
ences of young children.

1. The author wishes to acknowledge the assistance of Rita Turchioe, Ph.D., in the
preparation of this manuscript. She also wishes to thank the Nursery School staff
for their valued cooperation through the years: Florence Eaton, Margaret Fitchen,
directors; Eleanor Lewis, Helen Ratushny, nurses; Josephine Williams, Rachel Mayo.
Bertha Kozick, Elinor Conly, Sylvia Dudley, teachers.
2. From The New York Hospital and the Department of Psychiatry, Cornell
University Medical College, New York.

141
142 J. LOUISE DESPERT

II. Survey of the literature

There is a wealth of material in the literature of dreams which is
rapidly increasing; but the literature has been, to a very large extent,
concerned with dreams of adults or children over 5 years of age. Stu-
dents of child psychology are divided regarding the function that dreams
play in the life of the child; and in consequence, there are many theories
formulated relating to this point. It could be said that there are as
many concepts of the nature of dreams as there are schools of child
psychology.
While the problem is a go~ deal more complex than such arbitrary
division would imply, for purposes of convenience it is possible to
divide the methods of approach into two large groups: 1) a qualitative
dynamic interpretation of data on a few single cases, and 2) a quanti-
tative evaluation of material collected on a large number of children.
In the first case, one or a few children were selected, but no attempt was
made systematically to collect data; rather, the object was to understand
the psychodynamics of the dreams of the individual child, and to utilize
such understanding to study or alter the personality adjustment of the
individual child. On the other hand, quantitative studies emphasized
the statistical treatment of the data obtained from large groups of
children, and systematic categorizations obtained. There was an attempt
to classify subject matter, age levels, social factors, and other isolated
items; but dynamic and longitudinal studies, as well as investigations
of the individual child's deeper emotional life, were lacking.
In reviewing the literature, the material will be presented under
three headings: 1) Theories of Children's Dreams, 2) Qualitative Studies,
3) Quantitative Studies. It is acknowledged that such a classification is
arbitrary, and that there is some overlapping; however, for purposes of
convenience and clarification, this division is maintained.

1. Theories of Children's Dreams

While the literature on dreams in general is extensive and complex,
and includes formulations of concepts about children's dreams through
retrospective analysis, formulations drawn from systematic studies of
actual children's dreams are considerably less in number. The out-
standing theories are associated with the names of Freud, Jung, Piaget,
Griffiths, Wickes, and other students of child psychology.
Freud (27) maintains that children's dreams differ from the dreams
of adults in that they are fulfillment of simple, unrepressed wishes.
"The dreams of little children are often simple fulfillments of
wishes, and for this reason are, as compared with the dreams of adults,
by no means interesting. They present no problem to be solved, but
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 143

they are invaluable as affording proof that the dream, in its inmost
essence, is the fulfillment of a wish .. ."
However, Freud states in a footnote that sometimes the dreams of
adults are often of a simple nature:
"It should be mentioned that young children often have more com-
plex and obscure dreams, while, on the other hand, adults, in certain
circumstances, often have dreams of a simple and infantile character.
How rich in unsuspected content the dreams of children no more than
four or five years of age may be is shown by the examples in my 'Analyse
der Phobie eines fiinfjahrigen Knaben' Oahrbuch von Bleuler-Freud,
vol. i, 1909), and Jung's 'Ober Konflikte der kindlichen Seele' (vol. ii,
1910)."
In the main, Fleud looks upon the child's dream as one in which
the manifest and latent contents are the same, and principally differs
from that of the adult by plainly representing the fulfillment of an
ungratified desire.
While the analyses of adults' dreams in the writings of Freud include
a large number of childhood dreams reconstructed, recalled, or relived
by the patients and are, therefore, subject to retrospective falsifications,
it is interesting to note that a comparatively small percentage of Freud's
total writings is devoted to the problem of actual children's dreams. As
is well known, Freud was the first to bring out the importance of the
dream as material for analysis in the resolving of neuroses. Still more
significantly, he emphasized the role of the dream as a major part of the
total human experience; with the advent of this recognition, the dream
gained admission into psychological studies.
In his analysis of a phobia in a 5-year-old boy (26), Freud introduced
several symbols which were later to be widely recognized as significant
in the dream life of the child.
Many child psychologists have accepted Freud's concepts of chil-
dren's dreams in their entirety, and have formulated theories which can
be considered only slight modifications of Freud's own. For instance,
Thom (62) points out that children's dreams are frequently the overt
expression of ungratified wishes. He describes such dreams as being
highly pleasurable; so that there is a tendency for the child to delight in
describing them, and to even talk of his dreams as actual experiences.
Jones (40) follows Freud closely: To him, the unfulfilled desire is the
main content of children's dreams, and this desire has not undergone
repression. Anna Freud (25) states that many of the children's dreams
are rather simple of interpretation because of the lack of complex sym-
bols; however, some of them do not appear as simple as would be implied
by Freud. For Coriat (16, 17), the latent content of children's dreams
144 J. LOUISE DESPERT

is synonymous with manifest content. He follows Freud in asserting

that children's dreams are, in their essence, fulfillment of a wish.
A similar stand is taken by Wickes (65), who holds that children's
dreams are simple and contain very few complex details; "They have
l>ften a naivete in a way in which they hand out a secret." Children's
dreams are reported as being characteristically vivid and simple, and
projecting the child's daytime problems in the child's unconscious.
Gutheil (32) carefully reviews the various psychological schools in
relation to dream interpretation. In the case of children's dreams, his
stand is that they are "in most cases, qualified for analytical interpreta-
tion. We can see in children's dreams their emotions of jealousy, love,
ambition, a feeling of inferiority, and so on, in full bloom." A footnote
indicates, however, that the interpretation should not be given to the child
as is the case with the adult. To Gutheil, the dream serves as an index of
the child's conflicts, and as an aid in orientation of the therapy. He also
reports that death wishes toward relatives are often activated by the
death of close relatives; and that children's dreams frequently reveal
death wishes, owing to their incomplete comprehension of the actual
reality of death which, to them, is only being absent.
While acknowledging the element of wish fulfillment in children's
dreams, many authors point out that some other factors are in operation;
however, there is much divergence as to the identity of these factors and
the role they play in the dreams. Melanie Klein (44) postulates that
besides wishes, which are always present, there are also expressed guilt
feelings related to these wishes. This sense of guilt originates in the
superego and, even in the most manifest of wishes, is a latent ex-
pression.
Grotjahn reports that dreams occur in the first year of life; and that
before the age of 5, children generally are not able to report reliably
their dream experiences. In his "Dream Observations in a Two-year,
four-months-old Baby," (31) he emphasizes that although children's
dreams contain elements of wish fulfillment they are, nevertheless, not
completely without problems. He further states that "... in children,
play, fantasies and dreams are very closely related to each other, and
that what in an adult would be called hallucinations may be called
vivid visual imaginations, very characteristic of infant thinking, and if
such fantasied, hallucinatory form of memory is observed in a sleeping
child it may be called a dream."
The child's mode of thinking is closely linked with the nature of
dreams in the explanation offered by Jung (41):
. " ... the state of infantile thinking in the child's psychic life, as well
as 1lldreams, is nothing but a re-echo of the prehistoric and the ancient."
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 145

It is not clear on what basis-clinical or purely hypothetical-but Jung's

formulation is that the cosmic dream is commonly found in childhood,
and characteristic of children's thinking: "The naive man of antiquity
saw in the sun the great Father of the heaven and the earth, and in the
moon the fruitful good Mother ... Thus arose an idea of the universe
which was not only very far from reality, but was one which corresponded
wholly to subjective phantasies. We know, from our own experience,
this state of mind. It is an infantile stage. To a child the moon is a
man or a face or a shepherd of the stars. .. As we learn through Freud,
the dream shows a similar type. .. The Dream, according to this con-
c8ption might also be described as the substitute of the infantile scene,
changed through transference into the recent scene.
"The infantile scene cannot carry through its revival; it must be
satisfied with its return as a dream. From this conception of the histor-
ical side of regression, it follows consequently that the modes of con-
clusion of the dream, in so far as one may speak of them, must show at
the same time an analogous and infantile character. This is truly the
case, as experience has abundantly shown, so that today everyone who
is familiar with the subject of dream analysis confirms Freud's proposi-
tion that dreams are a piece of the conquered life of the childish soul.
Inasmuch as the childish psychic life is undeniably of an archaic type,
this characteristic belongs to the dream in quite an unusual degree." (41)
Piaget explains dreams in terms of the thought processes of the
child, which he has studied extensively. He states (55) that young
children identify thought with their dreams. He cites several examples
of children who believed that thought and dreams have an identical
origin. "In considering the origin of the dream we found two types of
answer co-existing in the majority of children. First are those who offer
no real explanation or whose explanations are simply elaborated from
their ideas on the substance of the dream. For example, a child will say
the dream 'comes from the room', all of which statements amount to
much the same."
Reality for the child is so colored by his subjective experiences that
such mental activities as dreams and thought are believed by him to
originate in external objects. In compliance with this hypothesis of
child's thinking, Piaget describes three stages of the origin of dreams:
First, the child conceives of his dreams as pictures of air or light which
appear before his eyes from the external world, so that anyone can see
the dream come and go. At a later stage, the dream is thought to origi-
nate from an internal object such as the head or the stomach before it
appears in the outside environment. At the last stage, the dream is
believed to originate first in the eye and then in the head.
Piaget has been more interested in the meaning of the dream to the
child, and in the origin and nature of the dream as conceived by the
child rather than in the subject matter of the dream, and its significance
in the emotional life of the child.
146 J. LOUISE DESPERT

In her extensive study on the imagination of 5-year-old children,

Griffiths (30) offers an interesting theory regarding the part which
imagination plays in the child's thinking. Like other investigators she
notes that the dreams of 5-year-olds are often of a simple nature, with
little or no disguise of the dream motivation. She makes a unique con-
tribution in that, prior to Grotjahn, she demonstrates that a similar
pattern shapes the dreams, images, play activities, and ideas of the
children studied. Even in the dream itself there is seen, according to
her, a development of a theme throughout the series of dreams collected
from the same child.
For Griffiths, the dream is the lowest level at which thought func-
tions. It is dynamic in that it reflects present experience in its content,
and expresses problems to be solved in the future-problems which are
at first shaped by fantasies, and later incorporated in deliberate thought
and direct action. As a postulate of the function of the child's dream in
thinking, she evolves the hypothesis of different levels of thought. In
adult life they can often be distinguished; the direct energy consuming
type of thinking, and the more or less unconscious type of thought. The
latter type is valuable, in that it frequently helps in bringing about the
solution of a problem which could not have been achieved by the
direct, logical thinking alone.
Owing to the limited amount of mental energy which any individual
has at his disposal at anyone time, the amount of concentrated attention
involved in thinking processes varies from a high degree of concentration
and awareness to the lowest degree possible. This would be even more
so in the case of the child, where there would be not only less energy
available than in the case of an adult, but also less experience in the use
of this limited energy. Griffiths further observes that in the young child,
there are more periods during which concentration is low and there is a
continual shifting from one level to the other. It is in the dream that
the attention is most dispersed, but the mind is active nevertheless. The
daydream and the imaginative daytime activities of the children are
intermediate between the dream where the lowest degree of attention
obtains, and the logical and direct thinking where the contact with
reality and consciousness is highest and the concentration is greatest.
She points out that so much of the child's activities are of the fantasy
type, that it is the characteristic mode of thinking for the child.
Griffiths also points out that the various stages of thinking cannot
be separated in reality but that they operate in an interrelated way, one
reacting upon the other. The nature of the fantasies is such that they
are not altogether undirected, but rather governed by laws which direct
the flow of imaginative thought in an unconscious way; and the origin
of such thought may be found in deep, underlying emotional factors.
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 147

Other hypotheses regarding children's dreams are based on system-

atic investigations, among which are found the studies of Jersild (37),
and Jersild, Markey and Jersild (38). The latter authors have analyzed
findings obtained by interview and questionnaire methods, and they
conclude that the dream content of the children studied is related to
the children's everyday waking life. Moreover, children's dreams seem
to be closely allied with their fears, as these authors have found that the
children formulated the same themes in reporting their fears and their
dreams.
Foster and Anderson (24), in their study of unpleasant dreams of
children, agree with Jersild, Markey and Jersild by emphasizing that
the experiences of the preceding day have a determining influence in
shaping the type of dream experience. The contents of the dreams
come most often from such experiences, especially those which are
exciting or emotionally colored. According to these authors, this element
of excitation and emotional tension could account for the vivid re-
experiencing in the dream of past events which have taken place long
ago in the child's life.
The significance of the child's everyday experiences was recognized
by Blanchard (10) as an explanation for the motivation of children's
dreams. However, the author points out that the method used in the
study of motivation dealt with manifest content only. The latter point
is of special importance, since the majority of the children studied were
between six and eighteen years of age. Wish fulfillment does not seem
to be so universal as reported in the studies of Freud and his followers,
and sex does not appear openly in the motivation of the dreams; how-
ever, the author points out that this may be due to the deficiency of the
method which did not analyze the latent content of the dream. There is
a close relation between the motives, as obtained through two different
sources: the child's own associations, and the information obtained by
means of social histories and psychiatric studies.
Kimmins (42) held that the child at 5 still confuses dreaming with
waking fantasy elements, that excerpts of conscious waking life are
transplanted to the unconscious dream life. The dreams of young
children studied were vivid and seemed very real, lacking in the charac-
teristics of fantasy and unreality, and the dreams were frequently re-
ported as actual happenings. The author pointed out that a certain
characteristic of a constant nature was easily recognized in a series of
dreams of the same child, regardless of the seemingly diversified details
which each dream might have contained. This qualifying characteristic
can be used as an indication of the child's chief interest, and can also
afford a means for probing the child's mental life.
It is maintained by Kimmins that the dream may suggest the pres-
148 J. LOUISE DESPERT

ence of repressed material in the unconscious. This concept was also

formulated by Willoughby (67) who finds that some dreams function as
a means of releasing the libido, and that the tension of fixated affect is
abreacted through the dream.
In reference to this function of the dream and its relation to the
mechanism of repression, Anderson (3) comments on a nightmare exper-
ienced by a girl of 2 years, 8 months, who had an intense fear of black
dogs. His explanation is that the nightmare functioned as an outlet for
an inhibited emotional response of the preceding day. With inhibitions
released during sleep, the emotional response reappeared and its inten-
sity was such that the child awakened from her sleep in terror. Anderson
further defines the nightmare as a means of reconditioning the child
to an original fear of dogs. The restimulation of the fear by the dream
was of such intensity that the fear reaction lingered for a period of
several months.
It is important to emphasize that apart from the few actual dreams
of children under 5 (3, 10, 26, 31), the formulation of concepts on dreams
was made from analyses of dreams in adults and older children.

2. Qualitative Studies
In surveying the literature on children's dreams, it is found that a
large number of child psychology studies include reports on dreams of
one child or a very small number of children, which are given as illustra-
tions and exemplifications of the authors' psychological theories. These
authors kept rather detailed notes of a biographical nature on their own
children; or, in some cases, on an individual child with whom the
author had some contact. Thus, Preyer (57) reported on his own son;
Stern (60), on his three children; and Freud (27), on his own and several
other children.
Preyer (57) in his studies of children's fears reports on the case of
his 4-year-old son who had a marked fear of pigs, a fear which he carried
over into his dreams. At night, he would frequently cry out in fear
that the pig would bite him. The dreams seemed so vivid to the child
that he behaved as if the animal was actually there, and could not be
convinced that it was not. Previously, this child had an intense fear of
dogs from which he was beginning to recover; and the author em-
phasized that the child had never been bitten by a dog, neither had he
seen another child bitten so far as could be determined.
From the observations on his own children, Stern (60) concludes
that the phenomenon of dreaming goes back to the child's first year,
since about this time an infant may give indications that he is dreaming
when he screams and makes significant movements. He points out,
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 149

however, that the child very seldom reports his dreams verbally before
the 5th year, since he has difficulty in distinguishing between reality
and dream before that age. He considers the experiences of the previous
day as probably the most important factors affecting the nature of the
dream, and gives examples to support this theory; but he does not
adduce any hypothesis with regard to the function and significance of
the dream.
Freud cites some dreams of his own children, and of children with
whom he was well-acquainted, in support of his theory that little chil-
dren's dreams are nothing more than simple wish fulfillments. In his
Interpretation of Dreams (27) he presents two dreams of his daughter's
at the respective ages of SY2 and 3~, both of which the child related to
him. There is also a report on an observed dream of his daughter's
at 19 months. Four other dreams are reported, the children being:
Freud's S-year-old son, his 22-months-old nephew, a 5~-year-old boy,
and an S-year-old girl. All of these dreams were selected as illustrations
of the wish fulfillment character of each, as well as the relative sim-
plicity of the symbolic expression embodied in them. A dream of Freud's
nephew, little Herman, under 2 years old (about cherries) is re-
called (27).
Von Hug-Hellmuth (64) observes that the infant dreams during the
first year of life, as demonstrated by the occurrence of well-defined move-
ments and smiles or loud laughter which are observed in sleeping in-
fants. One such dream is reported by the author about a little girl just
under I year of age, who had been in the country spending most of the
day splashing in the water. The following night, she was observed to
make identical splashing movements in her sleep.
Anderson (3) reports on a little girl who at 1 year, 9 months, de-
veloped a fear of dogs. The fear was focused particularly on black
Scotch terriers, or dogs of similar small size. The author believes that it
was originally a black terrier that had precipitated the fear. After the
family moved to the city, the child did not come in contact with Scotch
terriers, and showed no fear reaction to dogs or other animals. Approxi-
mately a year later, when the child was 2 years, S months, a black Scotch
terrier jumped and snapped at the child who, at the time, did not show
any indication of excitement. However, on the following night, the child
had a night terror in which she cried out in her sleep: "Mamma, I don't
like little black dogs." Following this night terror, the child again
evinced a fear of dogs which lasted 3Y2 years.
Anderson uses this example to point out that the night terror had
the effect of reconditioning the fear reaction. He looks upon the dream
as a delayed response to the restimulation; thus, acting as a factor in the
reconditioning process. That the dream acted as a means of releasing
150 J. LOUISE DESPERT

the inhibited emotional response is in agreement with the Freudian

concepts of inhibition, repression, and release of affect in dreams of
adults.
Frances Wickes devotes the last two chapters of her book, The Inner
World of Childhood (65), to the dreams of children. They are respective-
lyentitled: "Dreams", and "A Correlation of Dream and Phantasy Mater-
ial". In accordance with her general approach to the study of children's
problems, she finds a close relation between the problems of the parents,
and their expression in the emotional life and activities of the children.
She expresses some concern about "the danger of turning the interest of
the child back into the realm of the unconscious" by investigating chil-
dren's dreams along scientific lines. In the child, unlike the adult, too
great a self-consciousness may develop as a result of emphasis on his fan-
tasy life. The dreams reported by Wickes are, for the most part, recon-
structed childhood dreams from older children or adolescent patients.
Some, however, are actual dreams of relatively young children; such as,
the cases of a IO-year-old girl, an 8-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy, a
7-year-old boy, a 6-year-old girl, a 9-year-old girl, and a 13-year-old girl.
In the majority of cases, however, actual dreams of children are referred
to-not by sex and age-but under the general heading of "the child";
and children under 5 years of age are not mentioned.
Wickes reports a frequent occurrence of "fear" and "cruelty" sym-
bols in children's dreams; and contrary to the observation of Jung (41),
she finds that dreams with cosmic symbols are not common. How-
ever, she reports that in children as well as in adults, the dream may
contain "important messages from the collective unconscious", and cites
several examples of symbols of "fate" in the dreams of children over
8 years of age. She emphasizes the carefully-guarded secret character of
these dreams. Illustrations of content as found in children's dreams in-
clude the following: a great beast, a huge fish, a snake, a lobster which
"grew and grew", a sleek gray cat, bears, apes, worms, dismembering
animals, knocked out teeth, a tidal wave, a big black hole "that grew
bigger and bigger", a devil, and people characterized by a variety of
distorted features, such as: a woman "who had the feet of a man", tall
women, "taller than the houses and taller than the trees .. .", etc.
In the final chapter, Wickes establishes a close correlation between
the material of dream and fantasy in the child, and indicates that the
dream material often reveals a conflict and gives a "glimpse of the way
in which the underground forces are at work undermining the life of
conscious adaptation". The dream material is also taken by the author
as an index of possible dangers attached to repression in the conscious
life, or as an index of the need for changes in the psychological approach
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 151

to a child's problem. The dreams of a lO-year-old girl are cited and

brought in comparison with her written compositions. The correlation
between the two tpyes of material may be one of analogy, or of contrast.
For Wickes, analytical procedure is very different than that used
with the adult, in that the symbolism of dreams is for the most part left
untouched, since it is her feeling that such symbolism is beyond the
range of the child's apprehension. Nevertheless, dreams are used by
Wickes as material for psychoanalytical treatment of children's neurotic
difficulties.
Anna Freud and Melanie Klein use children's dreams for the same
purpose, but their approach is different from that of Wickes. Anna
Freud (25) analyzes the dreams and daydreams of several children, rang-
ing from 6 to 11 years. The dream content is treated very much as would
dream content in adults:
"... in dream interpretation we have a field in which nothing new
is to be learned by the application of adult to child analysis. The child
dreams neither more nor less than the adult in analysis; as in everyone,
the clarity or incomprehensibility of the dream content depends upon
the strength of the resistance. The dreams of children are certainly
easier to interpret, even if in the analysis they are not always as simple
as the examples given in The Interpretation of Dreams (Freud)."
Melanie Klein (44) uses play technique in the treatment of children's
neuroses. Several dreams of young neurotic children are discussed.
According to this author, neurotic children unable to tolerate reality,
however denying it, project the frustrations which arise out of the
oedipus situation into dreams and daydreams, the analyses of which
serve both to reveal the conflict and help to resolve it. Since her purpose
in the analysis of the dream is primarily a therapeutic one, a systematic
collecting of data on young children's dreams does not attain. She in-
dicates that the approach in child analysis must be different from that
of the analysis of adults; and points out that there is a close relation
between dreams, daydreams, and the fantasies in the play activities of
young children. Indeed, the dream often repeats the material of fan-
tasy: "Very often children will express in their play the same thing that
they have just been telling us in a dream, or will bring associations to
a dream in the play which succeeds it. For play is the child's most im-
portant medium of expression." Commenting on the significance of
several dreams in young children, Klein states in a footnote:
"My analysis of very young children's dreams in general has shown
me that in them, no less than in play, there are always present not only
wishes but counter-tendencies coming from the superego, and that even
in the simplest wish-dreams the sense of guilt is operative in a latent
way." (44)
152 J. LOUISE DESPERT

Isaac's conception of dreams in young children is best presented in

her condensed statement: "The child dreams of fierce animals eating
him up, of giants and ogres, of huge engines running over him, and
does not himself know that the fear of his father's punishments and his
mother's anger is hidden behind these pictures." (35) She links all fears
of biting animals with the child's own biting impulses at the mother's
breast, and reports an observation of a boy of fourteen months who
woke up in "frantic fear" that a white rabbit was going to bite him.
She reports that these night terrors are common during the second and
third year, but may also be noted earlier.
Observations on the dream made by Piaget (55, 56) are incidental
to his studies on the thought function in children. His reports are con-
cerned with isolated examples; dynamic motivation, age references, and
other behavioristic data are lacking.
Grotjahn (31) reports on several dreams observed in a baby of 2 years,
4 months. These dreams seem to have been stimulated by events of the
previous day, which had incited "... strong and strange emotions which
he (the child) could not work through during the excitement and rapid-
ity of reality and which consequently he had to repeat and work through
more completely in his dreams."
Rivers (58) had previously expressed a similar conception with
regard to the function of dreams of adults; namely, that of serving to
resolve a conflict.
As is evident from the brief presentation of literature given above,
qualitative studies have been based on a few instances of actual dreams
of one or several children whose biographical backgrounds, although not
reported, were well known to the authors. As a rule, the findings were
generalized and served as the· basis for broad formulations about the
function and significance of dreaming in children. Furthermore, the
interest in children's dreams were incidental to the more general in-
terest in, and formulation of dream concepts as applied to adults.

3. Quantitative Studies
In attempting to investigate some of the problems which could not
be considered in qualitative studies, several writers have collected data
on a large number of children by means of slightly varying methods, all
of which had a common statistical denominator. In this group, the more
representative studies are those of Kimmins (42), Blanchard (10), Jersild,
Markey and Jersild (38), Foster and Anderson (24), and Griffiths (30).
Kimmins, as Chief Inspector of Schools in 1920, collected the dreams
of 5,600 children, ranging in age from 5 to 16. The youngest group
consisted of 150 children of 5, 6, and 7 years. The dreams of the younger
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 153

children were related individually to "skilled observers", while observa-

tions in the older children were recorded in response to the request:
Write a true and full account of the last dream you can remember; state
your age; and also say about how long ago you had the dream you have
described. The children attended grade schools, industrial schools, and
schools for the blind and deaf. Kimmins reported that children delight
in telling about their dreams; that the type of dream differs from year
to year; that the majority of children's dreams are of the wish fulfill-
ment type, but that there are some which cannot be included in the
category; and finally, that the maximum number of dreams are noted
at the 12-, 13-year-old level. Further observations were to the effect that
the younger children's dreams are much simpler than those of the older
ones; also, that the children's physical health, as well as the events of
the previous day, influenced the dream experienced by the child.
Blanchard (10) in 1926 reported on a study, the object of which was
to determine the content and motivation of dreams in 230 of the 300
children under 18 years of age admitted at a child guidance clinic. All
had been in need of diagnosis and treatment. The data were obtained
from a single clinical interview in each case. There is noted a slightly
greater frequency of dreams, as reported by children over 6. Statistically,
the difference is considered significant; but the author feels that while
children over 6 tended to report more dreams than children under that
age, it is possible that if another method had been used-which did not
rely so much on verbal expression-the difference might not have been
found. There was no significant difference with regard to the relation
between mental age and frequency of dream. This is in contrast to a
report by ]ersild, Markey and Jersild (38) that children of an 1. Q. of
over 120 appeared to have fewer dreams than children of a lower 1. Q.
Reporting on the subject matter of 315 dreams of the 189 dreamers
who gave positive answers, Blanchard emphasizes that dreams about
parents are the most frequent. The death wish toward the parents,
which is given a significant place in psychoanalytical writings, appears
only in 4 of the 48 parent dreams, although 8 more dreams which re-
ported the parents as "gone away" may also be considered in this group.
The usual dream picture of the parents places them in a pleasant role.
Next to the parents, animals are the most frequent subjects. The
animals are all contemporaneous, the most popular being lions, tigers,
bears, apes and snakes. Many of the children traced their dreams to
some unpleasant experience with an animal, or to thrilling situations in
movies or stories. The large majority of animal dreams were those in
which a definite fear element was present.
The subject matter of dreams was analyzed in relation to the chrono-
logical age and mental age of the dreamer, and very little significant
154 J. LOUISE DESPERT

differences were found when the test of validity was applied. However,
there was a relative decrease in "parent" dreams in the period from
6 to 14. There was also an increase in playas subject matter between
the ages of 6 and 16, which might be considered significant; but "the
only figures which withstand the test sufficiently to seem of almost
certain significance are those showing an increase in dreams of death
between 6 and 14 years of age".
The largest number of dreams expressed wishes or fears, with a
slight predominance of wish fulfillment. Sex did not appear openly in
the subject matter of the dreams, but the finding is interpreted as pro-
bably reflecting the deficiency of the method for analyzing latent dream
content.
Jersild, Markey and Jersild (38) conducted a systematic study of
children's dreams as part of a study of the fears, wishes, likes, dislikes,
pleasant, and unpleasant memories in children. Their subjects were
400 children, 25 boys and 25 girls at each level, from 5 to 13 years of age.
The interview method was applied, with questions relating specifically
to the subject of dreams. According to the authors, dreams appeared
"to cover nearly all the events which occur to individuals during their
waking moments". The element of wish fulfillment, while closely related
to the waking life of the child, is not very prominent and it would be
"justifiable to say that dreams are a reflection of children's fears
since a large number of dreams contain the same themes that children
report when they tell about their fears. The dreams, for example, con-
cerning supernatural creatures, mysterious events, or of dreams dealing
with physical danger, activities of feared criminals, robbers, kidnappers,
and the like, and concerning misfortune befalling self and others, con-
stitute a decidedly large proportion of the dreams reported by children
in answer to an unqualified question on dreams."
The "good" dreams dealt chiefly with finding, acquiring, receiving
toys, food, clothes, money and pets (18.6 per cent) and with amusements,
travel and play (18.6 per cent). There were also children who reported
they had had no "good" dreams or could not remember any (16 per cent).
'The "bad" dreams dealt mostly with physical injury, falling, being
chased, kidnapped, and with fires and supernatural creatures. Only 10.2
per cent of the children said they had had no "bad" dreams or could not
remember them. Recurrent dreams which were recorded fell into the
following categories: unpleasant dreams 163, pleasant 67, and uncertain
28, which indicates a large predominance of unpleasant dreams as re-
current.
There was no significant age difference in the relative frequency
of pleasant and unpleasant dreams. There was a slight predominance
of dreams about magical happenings and the presence of supernatural
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 155

beings, ghosts and bogeys, in the youngest group. However, the general
similarities of dreams reported by younger and older children is more
noteworthy than the differences. The youngest children more frequently
reported that they had no "bad" dreams or could not remember any:
19.9 per cent at the 5-6 year old level, and 7.9 per cent at the II-12 year
level.
There were no marked differences in regard to sex of the child, and
differences in mental age were present only- in relation to pleasant
dreams; that is to say, children with an I. Q. of 120 and above reported
less pleasant dreams than the other two groups with I. Q. of 80-99 and
IOO-II9, in which there was an equal frequency of unpleasant dreams
in the more intelligent group.
The majority of the children said that they had good dreams more
frequently than bad, but this claim seems to be in contradiction with
other statements made by the children. Actually, when asked to report
dreams (unqualified), the children described a greater number of un-
pleasant than pleasant dreams. The authors set forth the explanation
that possibly pleasant dreams are forgotten more readily than unpleasant
ones, and also that the extreme vividness in which night terrors and
nightmares appear may be an important factor in eliciting future recall.
They point out, however, that further research is necessary for a com·
plete understanding of this problem.
Foster and Anderson (24) conducted a study on unpleasant dreams,
using 519 children between the ages of I and 12 inclusive (81 children in
the 1-4 age level). Each morning, during a period of 7 consecutive days,
the parents answered a set of questions about possible unpleasant dreams
experienced by the children during each preceding night. Some data
pertaining to the family set up and sleeping conditions were also
collected.
In the 1-4 age group, 43 per cent of the children are reported to
have had bad dreams. However, the criterion used as evidence of bad
dreams is questionable, since the majority of the children considered
as having had bad dreams were so considered because of a positive
answer to the first question: "Did you hear the child cry or moan during
the night?" Variations in terms of age levels are reported as significant,
and the tables show the frequency of unpleasant dreams to diminish
with the increase in age.
The authors found no relation between the number of siblings
and the presence or absence of unpleasant dreams. On the other hand,
they established a relationship between sleeping conditions and fre-
quency of unpleasant dreams; children sleeping in a bed or in a room
alone did not experience as many unpleasant dreams as others. They
156 J. LOUISE DESPERT

also report that the health of the child is a significant factor, in that
children who had been ill within the 6 months prior to the investigation
showed a greater frequency of unpleasant dreams. The type of illness
is also commented upon, the authors suggesting that nose and throat
difficulties were predominantly responsible. As to the possible factors
affecting the appearance of the dreams, the events of the previous day
were considered important, especially when these experiences were
"exciting or emotionally toned".
A final observation is to the effect that "almost no recurrent
dreams of the type that has been emphasized so much in the literature
were reported. This may indicate that in young children, dreams, like
waking mental states, have relatively less organizations than in older
persons."

III. Clinical data

1. Collecting Data: Method and Comments
The records of 43 consecutive children, of 2 to 5 years of age, ad-
mitted at the Payne Whitney School were studied; and all the material
relating to their dreams was analyzed. One hundred ninety dreams
experienced and related by 39 children were compiled. In the records
of several of the children, no material could be accepted as dreaIIUi.
although some fantasies might have been related to their dreams. No
material was entered as dream unless it could be ascertained that it was
an actual dream experience of the child. A great many more dreams of
young children, which bring additional evidence to the observations
reported here, have come to the attention of the writer, but the dif-
ficulties of analyzing and integrating the total records of the children
observed since 1937 compelled the writer to limit the number of cases
used in this series.
There were three distinct sources for obtaining the data: individual
play sessions, daily behavior notes, and reports from home. It is a common
observation that young children seldom report their dreams spontane-
ously. It is also noted that they often respond to a direct question about
their dreams by answering: "I forget," "I don't know," "I don't dream,"
or "I don't remember." On the other hand, under certain circumstances.
they readily recount their dreams and freely elaborate upon them, as in
the following illustrations:
When asked "Do these people dream?" (referring to the dolls), a
40-year-old girl stated: "Oh no, they don't go to sleep... they don't
sleep." ("And what about you? Do you dream?") "Oh, I dream a little
bit, but I don't dream very often." ("What do you dream when you
dream a little bit?") "I dream about bad dreams ... I dream about the
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 157

bad witch, I dream about the wolf and the tiger, and I dream about
everything like that."
The following excerpt from a play session (21) presents a slight
variation in technique. The child was "pretending" that he an~ the
physician were respectively the father and mother of two chlldren
(dolls); he was dramatizing many details of his home life, when the
physician introduced the subject of the children's dreams ("... Say, do
they dream ... these children?") "You ask them!" ("All right. Then I'll
ask and then you answer ... you see? Tommy (name the boy had given
to the boy doll) do you dream?" (laughing voice) "No." ("Oh, you don't
dream, Tommy? I see. Do you have nice dreams or bad dreams?") "He
does-I dream but .. ." ("Oh, you dream! \Vhat do you dream?")
(Knocks of dolls) ("What do you dream?") "I'm not gonna tell you
what they dream. That means they don't dream." (Knocks of dolls)
("Oh, that's right-he wasn't answering. But you say you dream. Are
they good dreams or bad dreams that you dream?") (not audible)
("Oh, but you said you dream, before. Didn't you?"). (knocks) "What"
("What are the dreams that YOU have?") "Tommy?" (Are they nice
dreams or bad dreams?") (knocks of dolls) "Tommy has bad dreams."
("Oh, Tommy has bad dreams. I wonder what kind of bad dreams they
are?") "Ask him." As can be seen, the child was at first resistive to
reporting his dreams, but the short excerpt of conversation reproduced
here became the introduction to elaborating on his own dreams.
During an individual play session, a child may be play-actmg a
family scene with the dolls in the role of the members of the family.
The same child who might have said, "I don't know," will respond
actively to the question, "Do they dream?" when the question applies
to the dolls. It could be taken for granted that when the child brings
dream material, presumably related to these dolls, he uses his own dream
material. Repeated experience and observation have shown that this is
so. However, additional evidence is provided by the child himself;
having started with the dreams of the members of the family (his own),
the child leads spontaneously to his own dreams or, interchangeably,
talks about his dreams and the dreams of the dolls in the roles assigned
by him. This is a process of "facilitation" commonly observed in the
play of young children. Furthermore, a check is made on the experience
by asking the child when the experience was taking place, what he was
doing while having this experience, and how does he know that it was
a dream? To these questions, he usually answers relevantly that the
dream took place at night while he was asleep and that when he woke
up, "it wasn't there" or the experience had ceased.
As regards the daily behavior records, a child frequently brings up
fantasy material which might be interpreted as dream, but this is not
entered as a dream experience if it does not comply with the require-
ments outlined above. On the other hand, a child may refer to a dream
he has had because another child in the group has referred to his own.
The reading of a story may start off spontaneous accounts of dream
"experiences. For instance, a teacher was reading a story about a boy
158 J. LOUISE DESPERT

flying a plane, and which turned out to be a dream. When the latter
statement was read, a girl of 4 years, 9 months, volunteered: "I dreamed
a witch killed me, then another witch killed him and made me alive."
There was no question that this was a dream experience; especially as,
in this case, it had been both reported by the child and observed by the
parents that witches appeared in her nightmares, as some of the figures
involved.
Similarly, reports from home were carefully checked; not only as to
the information given, but also against a knowledge of the child's dream
experience known through other channels. This careful checking on the
sources of information, as well as on the actual emotional experience of
the child, is imperative since children pass so readily from dream to
fantasy material in their verbal accounts and play activities. The fact
that these three categories of experiences (dream, fantasy and play) are so
closely related, and interchangeably expressed, does not preclude their
clear demarcation in the mind of the child.
Sometimes, with no apparent stimulus, a child may report a dream;
as when a boy 4 years, 5 months, turned suddenly to his companion at
lunch time and asked, "Do you have things in your room at night? Do
you have things that will bite you?" The question went unanswered;
but the statement about the dream tallied with checked reports by the
same child on his dreams of wolves, birds, snakes, alligators, and "fishes"
which might or actually did bite or eat him up.
Although a total number of 190 dreams were collected on 39 chil-
dren, and an effort was made to classify these dreams from the point of
view of content, the study is by no means a statistical one. The numbers
are too small, and the method of collecting data did not in any way
conform with the requirements of a statistical approach. As can be
seen from this brief presentation, there was considerable flexibility as
to the sources of material, the one rigid requirement being: to be in-
cluded as dream, the material was subjected to definite criteria. Thus,
some "night terrors" were reported by the parents which could not be
entered as dream material, because the dream content could not be
ascertained. It is also obvious that under such circumstances, while con-
tent could be analyzed, observations on relative frequency could not be
considered reliable.

2. Clinical Findings
There were considerable variations in the number of dreams which
were collected on individual children: from no dream on 12 children
(one record considered incomplete) to a maximum of 30 on 1 child. While
no attempt was made to establish a relation between frequency of dreams
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 159

and anxiety in young children, since the findings on frequency could

not be considered statistically reliable, an observation was made to the
effect that while all children who had frequent dreams were among
anxious children-with the exception of one-it was not conversely true
that anxious children necessarily reported dreams to any degree of
frequency. The one exception was that of a 4YJ!-year-old girl who was
imaginative and apparently non-anxious, but presented transitory dif·
ficulties in adjustment at school 3 years after her discharge from Payne
Whitney Nursery School. The content of her play activities was pre-
dominantly made up of oral sado-masochistic fantasies (for instance, of
animals biting her or others); and she was a nail-biter. The lack of
relationship between frequency of reported dreams and anxiety, how-
ever, is only apparent for it obviously refers to degrees of repression and
inhibition. As a rule, the anxious children, whose records contained
little or no evidence of dream material, were also inhibited in their
fantasy expression as well as in their play expression, either within the
group or in individual play sessions.
Dreams were more readily collected from play sessions than from
any other form of records. The closer the child was to the 5-year level,
the easier it was to obtain verbalization; and also to ascertain the de-
marcation between dream, fantasy, and realistic accounts of play activ-
ities. The younger the child, that is to say, the closer the child was to
the 2-year-old level, the less verbalization was possible. However, this
was not necessarily a hindrance in obtaining dream material; for while
the 2-year-old may be unable to give a relevant account of his dreams by
means of words, he is often able to dramatize dream content and clearly
indicate that such action took place during the night while he was sleep-
ing. For instance, in individual play sessions a little girl of 2 threw on
the floor several times the baby doll, which she called by the name of a
recently born baby brother, with marked emotional display and scream-
ing. Whenever asked when these things happened, she would put her
head on the doll pillow, close her eyes and say, "Sleep." Coincidentally,
reports from home indicated great agitation and screaming during her
sleep. ("Nol Go away! .. .") (also the baby's name). As is usually the
case, her fantasies as well as her play activities carried the same theme
of hostile attitude and wish for destruction of the baby brother.
From the point of view of content, the dreams were classified under
three headings: human beings, animals, and inanimate objects. This clas-
sification, established for purposes of convenience, is avowedly arbitrary;
and there is considerable overlapping: one dream may include one or
several of the categories, the dominant motive being the determinant
factor for classification. Thus, it was noted that in the total number of
39 children with complete records, there were 75 dreams with human
160 J. LOUISE DESPERT

beings as predominant motives (43 from home reports and daily be-
havior records, and 32 from individual play sessions); 55 with animals
(35 from home reports and daily behavior records, and 20 from individ-
ual play sessions); and finally, 60 dreams with inanimate objects (29
from home reports and daily behavior records, and 31 from individual
play sessions). .
Human motives were, in part, represented by parents in benevolent
roles; such as saving the child from a painful situation, or providing him
with some form of satisfaction, predominantly oral. Following are
illustrations of these two trends:
A girl of 3 years, 10 months, recounted an anxiety dream in which
a lion appeared in the room to eat her up. A policeman came and
scolded her, and finally "My mother came in and put me right in the
other room." ("Why did your mommy put you in the other room?")
" 'Cause, 'cause, 'cause, 'cause the lion didn't like me, so that's why she
did it." The home report indicates that the child had screamed that
night, and that the mother had taken her to her bed.
A girl of 4 years, 9 months, gave the following dream: "Once I
dreamed my daddy had a birthday cake, and it was covered with ice
cream, and I ate it:' It is significant that parents do not appear directly
in hostile, aggressive or destructive roles. This, however, is obviously
the effect of repression; since in the course of fantasying, elaborating,
associating or playacting, children very often link the parents in the
dreams with fearful animals, about which more will be reported later.
A boy of 4 years, 6 months, who in his daily behavior was mildly
inhibited and insecure, reported dreams in which "big bad bears" ate
him up; and immediately dramatized the bear as doing the destructive
things that he, himself as the father, was engaged in doing in the play
session. The identification was clear, and was later confirmed by his
spontaneous defensive statement that it wasn't the father who did all
these things but the bear. Elsewhere in his record there are numerous
identifications of the father with powerful destructive animals, bears
recurring frequently in this role; and hostility toward the father, who
was estranged from his family, was frequently expressed.
People, exclusive of parents, were most frequently placed in fearful
roles; and in several cases, it was also made spontaneously clear by the
child that animals were identified with people. For instance, a boy of
5 years, 2 months, had been in the habit of asking at bed time that the
light be left on in his room, and that someone be nearby. Once when
his teacher was visiting and he was being put to bed, his mother reported
on the boy's "bad mannils" which frightened him. When his teacher
asked if they were animals, he answered, "No, people:' When she asked
if they were as big as she was, he shouted, "No, as big as this house'" He
further commented that they were "all black". This illustration is fairly
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 161

representative of the role taken by people in children's dreams; they are

frequently destructive, superhuman in size and power, and sometimes
supernatural. In the latter category belong ghosts and witches which
appear in the third and fourth year, especially if the child has become ac-
quainted with fairy tales, in his contact with older children or adults. It
is a matter of speculation what form their dreams would take if 3-, 4-, and
5-year-olds were completely cut off from folklore and fairy tale stories.
Undoubtedly, some other forms would serve the same purpose. It is ap-
parent that the affective structure is the same, whether animals (realistic
or otherwise) or supernatural beings are involved.
A girl of 4 years, II months, when asked about her dreams, stated:
"I dream only the kind of dreams that I hate ... oh, the bad old things ...
I don't know ... I said they were bad old things ... they just do every-
thing ... things that make people die ... I dream about an old woman
sticking people's eyes ... with an umbrella ... I can't think of any good
dreams," During a later play session, she indicated that she had a "nice
dream" on the previous night; however, this dream was almost identical
with an anxiety dream which she had reported earlier about Snow White
and the poisonous apple. On this date, when stamping the dream as
"nice", she specified: "I like the happy part ... it's the part when the
dwarfs went and Snow White slept on the dwarf's bed,"
A girl of 4 years, 8 months, referring to the dolls, reported: "They
dream BAD dreams ... they just dream BAD dreams," ("About what?")
"Oh, they dream people are killing them, and you know... they're
killing them, and there's a war and they have to get cut .. ," ("They
dream all that? And what do you dream?") "I just dream things in my
bed at ~~ght... One day, I dreamed this thing was killing me, you
know ...
While a mere enumeration of human subjects does not necessarily
represent a true and inclusive picture, it may serve to illustrate the
variety of motives found in young children's dreams:
A girl of 3 years, 10 months, reported in her dreams: bad men,
Santa Claus, policemen, a witch policeman, and a "witch bride". A boy
of 4 years, 6 months, related dreams about a doctor in a destructive role,
an older boy (unrelated to him) also in a destructive role, and Santa
Claus. A boy of 3 years, 3 months, gave the following human motives:
a giant, a clown, a cannibal, all in destructive roles (eating and biting);
God playing a part in a simple wish fulfillment dream; his father being
eaten by a cannibal in one dream, and in another, having his leg eaten
by the cannibal. (The mother had a similar fate in one dream.)
Another illustration is that of a girl of 4 years, 6 months: She
dreamed about "my new baby ... not the one that was killed," (She had
a newborn baby sister); also of the baby being fed by the mother; of
"two men with wooden heads" whom she feared because of their "funny
faces" and from whom she hid behind her father; she also dreamed of
Santa Claus in a simple wish fulfillment dream.
162 J. LOUISE DESPERT

Animals as motives in young children's dreams are almost always

sadistic and often totally destructive. They have characteristics which
are of great significance, in that while they may vary in size and shape,
their activities are identical; they bite and devour the child; and they
often chase him, whether as a preliminary to final destruction or as an
unique goal. The records are replete with such examples, and several
typical dreams are quoted for purposes of illustration.
A boy of 4 years, 5 months, at first denied that he had any dreams,
called the boy doll by another name than his own, and proceeded to tell
about the dreams of this boy doll. "He dreams of faxes and bears and
lions ... he just dreams about them but they never come in." He des-
cribed these dreams as "bad dreams", and the activities of the animals
as "they eat Tommy up". It is interesting that at first he had even
denied that Tommy or the other dolls dreamed, stating emphatically,
"I'm not gonna tell you what they dream ... that means they don't
dream." Shortly after, he spontaneouly said, "Tommy has bad dreams,"
and asked the physician to question Tommy directly about his dreams,
which brought the answers reported above.
The following dream of a boy of 4 years, 7 months, is given in detail
because it illustrates the method of approach in obtaining dream ma-
terial as well as the interplay between actual dream material, reality
testing, and awareness of the dream as a dream experience. In this case,
the dream was brought spontaneously by the boy in the midst of his
playing with the boy and girl dolls. Thus, he began: "One time when
I was sleeping, I saw ... (lowers his voice) ... a sly old fox. It was real."
("A sly old fox?") "A sly old fox, and a seal too." ("And a seal?")
"Yes ... (with an excited voice) '" yes, and when ... when ... when the
seal come down, came down, he didn't bite me. When the fox came
down, he bi ... he bi ... he didn't bite me. He said 'I'm going to eat
you up.''' ("He did?") "I said 'I'll ... ,' I said 'I'll ... I'll shoot you
with my gun.' " ("When was that?") .. It was a long time." ("Was it in
the night, or during the day? When was it?") "It was in the night,
during the night." ("During the night?") "Yeah." ("Were you sleeping
or were you awake?") "I was sleeping." ("Was it a dream, or was it
just thinking?") ..... It was real." (The child obviously means that it
was real in the dream.) ("Oh, it was real-I see.") "... And the boards
on the top of the... the boards on the ceiling... the BOARDS .. ."
("What kind of boards?") "Just real ... just make-believe ones." (As
later ascertained, he was referring to beams at the ceiling of his room,
which were "real" in his dream.) ("Make-believe ones?") "Yes, but
when morning came ... when morning came, there wasn't any boards."
(The child gave the above account with an expression of intense anxi-
ety.) ("When morning came, there wasn't any boards? How do you
explain that?") .. 'Cause there wasn't any ... 'cause there wasn't any.
See?" ("You mean in your room?") "Yes, my room ... really, in my
room." ("And was that something you dreamed, or something that hap-
pened?") "It was a real one," (i. e., a real fox) ("How did you know
that?") .. 'Cause I saw it." ("Oh, you saw it?") (with an excited voice:)
"I saw it come down, and it ... and it ... and it talked." ("It talked?
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 163

How did it talk?") (excited voice:) "It said ... it said ... 'gr .. : for
the talk .. :'
Following is an enumeration of the animals reported in the dreams
of a girl of 3 years, 10 months: 8 dreams of wolves; 2 dreams of a wild
beast (without further clarification); and single dreams of a bear, lion,
cow, police dog, rabbit, duck, monkey, elephant, and tiger; and one of
"wolfers and things:' The animals in the dreams of a boy of 4 years,
5 months, were: circus animals, wild animals, wild cat, lion, elephant,
monkey, tiger, and a "fox head" (all motives appearing in single, non-
recurring dreams.) A boy of 3 years, I month, reported (also in single
dreams) : horses, a cat, a lion, mice.
Animals appearing frequently in other records are: dogs, horses,
elephants, tigers, lions, wolves, "big bad wolves," "moisters (monsters)
like bad wolves," fish and alligators. Snakes appear infrequently (single
instances in the records of 2 boys and 2 girls, four-year-olds); and
animals which also appeared only once were: mice, a beetle, lobster,
seal, an ant-eater, and "dead octopuses:'
In the dreams of a girl of 2 years, 8 months, there frequently ap-
peared an owl which frightened her. The owl threatened to bite and
eat her. The child, however, referred to this bird by its French name
"hibou". It neatly illustrates how a child's anxiety is expressed through
forms provided by his environment. This child's nurse was a middle-
aged woman of French provincial origin, who was deeply imbued with
the superstitions and folklore of her childhood. To her, the owl was a
messenger of death, and she had carried this connotation to the child.
This nurse was threatening and punitive in her handling of the child
and, at the same time, intensely possessive of her. Other animals ap-
peared in this little girl's dreams, some of them in the French language
as well as with the specific superstitions arising from French provincial
folklore. It was so with frogs, doves and fish. The mention of "hibou",
doves, and frogs is unique in this series, but recurs frequently in the
dreams of this child.
Inanimate objects in children's dreams are found in the back-
ground of human and animal activities, but they also appear as active
agents. Water plays an important role; especially in the bed-wetters
who frequently dream of rivers or water in other forms, such as rain,
invading their room or their bed.
A boy of 3 years, 6 months, woke up one morning after having wet
his bed, as was frequently the case, and proceeded to paint a picture
which he brought to school. This activity, as later ascertained, had been
stimulated by a dream which had awakened him. While the dream
structure was relatively simple, he elaborated on a number of details in
his picture. There were "trees", one of which turned out to be "an
elephant"; then "a nice duck", and "some funny ducks" swimming in
the "rain that's already come down," while other spots of color indicated
164 J. LOUISE DESPERT

"the rain coming down." The association with the bed wetting was
made spontaneously by the child, when he identified the paint and the
"rain" on his pajamas.
No fire dream was reported by any of the children, although many
in the group were bed wetters. Other inanimate objects mentioned
were: umbrellas which were used "to poke the eyes", houses, blood and
parts of the body.
In this connection, it is interesting to note the change in the dreams
of a boy, who was observed from 3 years, 7 months, to 5 years, 4 months,
and was seen again at lOy:! years when he had developed a delinquency
problem (stealing fairly large sums of money, lying, etc.) and was doing
poor work at school. While at the Payne Whitney Nursery School, he
was wetting his bed almost nightly, and the reported dreams were pre-
dominantly of drowning and being eaten by fish. When seen at lOy:!
(the bed-wetting had then ceased) he reported terrifying dreams in
which men from Mars pursued him with "queer things ... They had
electrical spears and electrical guns on their fingers-so when they
pushed their thumb down, they put electrical shocks into anything they
want" (fear of passive homosexual wishes) .
A girl, who was at the Payne Whitney Nursery School from 2 years,
10 months, to 4 years, 5 months, and was seen again at 10 years, was also a
bed wetter through her stay at the nursery school. Reported dreams were
frequently about the river flooding her room and her bed; this theme
appeared frequently with minor variations. When seen at 10 years for
minor social adjustment difficulties (no enuresis), she reported a re-
current anxiety dream in which the barn of the family's country home
was burning; this had been activated by a fire at her boarding school.
A boy of 8y:! years (not included in the Payne Whitney Nursery
School series) was brought to treatment with the presenting complaint
of bed-wetting, but was also found to be a very anxious and asocial
child. He reported nightmares in which fire, as the destructive agent,
played an important part; he also reported earlier dreams of drowning.
It would seem, therefore, that in the dreams of these bed-wetters, water
and fire appear in a definite sequence.
An important characteristic of young children's dreams is their sim-
plicity. Even when the child, in his excitement, seems to be giving a
wealth of details, actually it is noted that the details are repetitions,
with only minor modifications, of the essential structure. The dream
of a boy 4 years, 7 months, reported above, illustrates this point. The
structure of the dream itself was extremely simple; an animal ("a sly old
fox") threatened to bite him and made appropriate sounds; the set-up
was his room, with ceiling beams called "boards"; the action, direct,
uncomplicated, took place in a set-up of minimal complexity.
Cosmic dreams are extremely rare in the series of children's dreams
collected from this 2-to S-year-old group; in three different dreams there is
a brief reference to "the sky", "angels in the sky", and "the moon".
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 165

An interesting aspect of the dream life of the young child is what

has been referred to, in previous publications, as segregation of emotional
experiences. Seldom does a child report spontaneously on his dreams.
Even when in the midst of experiencing a nightmare he may acknow-
ledge the "bad dream" experience and even refer to the subject, he
generally refrains from giving details, and may have "forgotten" his
dream in the morning.
This is clearly brought out in the "sly old fox" dream of the boy of
4 years, 7 months, reported above. Several days prior to the recounting
of his dream to the physician, the child had become restless and anxious
at bedtime; he was reluctant to be left alone in his room and found
many reasons to detain his mother who had become somewhat impa-
tient: "I don't know what's come over Tommy lately-he used to sleep
so well." She described the specific demands that the boy put upon her;
she was to check on the ceiling to see if there was anything there, look
behind the window draperies, and then set them in a certain way. This
ritualistic behavior was unintelligible to the mother since the child had
not indicated any fears, and had not, at any time, told his mother of his
dreams. This is a general phenomenon which cannot be overemphasized,
especially since so little is understood about it.
An anxious, verbal girl of 4 years, 11 months, has given a possible
clue to the clarification of this segregation. Her record includes 30
dreams, most of them expressing anxiety such as monsters cutting her
in pieces, eating her up, etc. Furthermore,. she was a bed-wetter and
reported many dreams of water-a river for the most part-invading her
room and her bed. Actually, she frequently got up during the night and
tried to get into her mother's bed. Once, when she reported to the
writer going to her mother's bed to escape from the "monsters", she was
asked: "Did you tell mommy you were scared of the monsters?" and she
answered emphatically: "No-I never'" When asked "Why not?" she
answered in a whisper: "I don't want her to know such a terrible thing."
("You don't? Why?") "'Cause I just don't want her to know." (Ambi-
valence toward mother.)
This tendency toward segregation is a general phenomenon. The
child's unreadiness to tell his parents about his dreams has been men-
tioned, but this is also present in a variety of situations, and the explana-
tion for it is not always clear. For instance, a child may have elaborated
freely on a dream in the course of an individual play session; yet, at
some later time (either at a later session or at the end of the same session
and with the same observer), he may give some indication of having
"forgotten" the material previously brought out. Indeed, he may
become annoyed when reminded of his earlier statements, and may even
deny the whole incident as ever having been brought up by him. It
would appear that the need for emotional expression and repression
varies considerably in terms of time, persons, and circumstances.
While the 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds frequently report dreams of specific
166 J. LOUISE DESPERT

animals eating them, etc., the very young child may report the fear of
being eaten, etc., without mentioning a specific agent. There are several
instances of 2-year-olds who, when questioned about their dreams, stated:
"Chase me"... "Bite me"... "Eat me up." What they report is a fright-
ful experience occurring during their sleep, but there is no further in-
dication of the "how" or "who" involved in this experience. Similar
statements were reported to have been made at night when they had
awakened in terror. Another verbal expression tied up with nightmares
of these young children is: "Hold me," which probably represents a
"fear" of falling.
As indicated above, no systematic record of frequency could be made
under the conditions of this study. The parents were not asked specific-
ally to report all the dreams of their children, although they usually
included such reports under the heading of SLEEP in the daily Home
Report. However, since time relations are always indicated and the
total records include reports on physical illness, it is possible to check
on the relation, if any, between the occurrence of dreams and physical
illness. This seems a rather important point to establish, in view of
observations reported in the literature. For instance, Foster and Ander-
son (24), in their investigations of unpleasant dreams in a large number
of children, have concluded that children who had been ill (referring
particularly to upper respiratory infections) within the 6 months prior
to the investigation showed a greater frequency of unpleasant dreams.
The selection of such a long span of time seems arbitrary, but especially
so as applied to the preschool age level. An analysis of the total records
of the children in this series does not bring supportive evidence to the
reported relation between physical illness ,and increased frequency of
unpleasant dreams. Since young children seldom report their dreams
spontaneously, and also since the dreams which are reported by the
parents are likely to be those associated with restlessness, outcries, and
other signs observable by the adult, it is very likely that more dreams
were reported during a period of illness, although this would not neces-
sarily mean an actual increase in "unpleasant dream" frequency. In
contrast to the periods when a child is well, he is likely to be more
closely watched during sleep when he is ill. In the present series, dreams
are not reported more frequently by the parents during the children's
illnesses. However, another factor needs to be considered; namely, the
psychosomatic expression of anxiety as represented in particular by the
tendency of some anxious and insecure children to have upper respira-
tory infections (20).
Another finding which is at variance with observations in the litera-
ture (3, 24, 31, 38), is the lack of relation between the dream content
and the actual traumatic experiences of the child. One need only point
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 167

to the type of animals which are most commonly present in the anxiety
dreams of the child to note the contradiction embodied in this state-
ment. These are not domestic animals about whom the child could
have had first-hand knowledge and contact in his home life; most of
them are animals with which he is not actually acquainted except
through occasional visits at the zoo, and through fairy tales or the fan-
tasies of other children and adults.
Observations were made before, during, and after traumatic episodes
experienced by children of the group. The cases of two children are cited,
as they bear on the point:
A boy, who was observed from 1 year, 10 months, to 4 years, 8 months,
came very close to death by drowning during a summer vacation when
his parents were away for the day, and he was rescued by a large dog
who had been his play companion. He was resuscitated but severely
shocked, and spent several days in a hospital. The reaction to this
traumatic experience is of great significance: the dream content which
was recorded before and after the episode did not show any conspicuous
change; the drowning did not appear in any reported dream; neither
did experiences associated with water symbolism, directly or indirectly.
Approximately 10 months after the near-drowning experience, a spon-
taneous reference was made by the boy at the end of a morning spent
on the roof, when the children as a group had played with water, run-
ning around naked and splashing under the hose, and he had gotten
very wet. At lunch that morning, he said without apparent display of
emotion, "You know, yesterday I got drowned. I drowned in the water,
and my mommy saved me. She bumped me out of the. water with her
teeth. She bited me out of the water." A further brief reference was
made 2 days later when the children as a group were speaking of their
respective hospital experiences. The boy then volunteered, "I was in
the hospital, too, when 1 drowned." The following summer, he showed
a fear of water, but only for a brief period (importance of delayed re-
action defense).
A 4-year-old girl was badly bitten by a dog on the forehead, cheeks,
and scalp. The face injuries were cauterized but the scalp wounds had
to be stitched, and the child was taken to the hospital and given an
anesthetic. When she awoke from the anesthetic, her first question was,
"Did daddy burn the hornet's nest?" (She had been stung twice by
hornets earlier in the day.) Although the mother later reported a few
nightmares of dogs "chasing her and biting off buttons" during the
following period of several weeks (vacation), the child rarely mentioned
the incident even to her parents. Following her return to school in the
fall, approximately 2 months after the biting, there was never reported
any mention of the traumatic incident although the whole staff was on
the lookout for any significant reference. In individual play sessions,
there was no change in the dream content; i. e., biting animals appeared,
but this was at no time a dog. Throughout the whole school year the
actual episode was never mentioned by the child, in spite of the fact
that other children in her group occasionally brought up their own fear
of dogs or their observations of dogs biting other children or their pets.
168 J. LOUISE DESPERT

This child's reaction to a lively dog, which the mother of another

child frequently brought to the school, was interesting. At fi.rst (shortly
after the traumatic experience), she was cautious but tentatIvely patted
the dog, and did not appear frightened; neither did she withdraw.
(Several other children showed such an anxiety or withdrawal reaction.)
In a very short while, she became friendly with this dog, although no
special attempt had been made to encourage her in this direction.
Approximately 6 weeks after her return to school, she was even seen
copying the little girl owner of this dog in putting her hand between
his jaws without display of fear. However, coincidentally, two significant
developments took place; the child began to take home toys and other
things which did not belong to her. (This alarmed the mother out of
proportion and she referred to it as kleptomania.) The child also
reacted excessively to the occasional biting of a boy in her group; at
first shrinking from him and running in tears to her teacher, then taking
herself to biting this boy and other children. The biting phase was
short-lived and, incidentally, was as much a group manifestation as an
expression of her own individual problem, but she reacted with marked
anxiety when the boy of whom she was afraid began to bite himself. (An
outcome of his own parents' prohibitions.) It must be added that her
nurse, to whom she was strongly attached, was quite upset by the tran-
sitory biting phase at school, and made loud disparaging comments
about it before the child.
While these two cases present dissimilarities, there is a tendency in
both to repress the traumatic episode in the waking life, dream and
fantasy medium. Since Freud, the significance of repression has been
recognized in the development of neuroses, but its mode of operation
and its bearing on normal emotional development is not as well-known.
The function of the dream as wish fulfillment is clearly brought
out in some dreams experienced by children at the time coincident with
the birth of a sibling. The dream then serves the purpose of expressing
hostility and death wishes toward the unwelcome sibling without intoler-
able guilt feeling. The same theme is frequently noted in the dreams
and fantasies of the child in his group or individual play.
An illustration is found in a case quoted above, when a child stated:
"My new baby-not the one that was killed" (referring to fantasies and
dreams of destruction). These dreams frequently appear also when a
sibling is ill and the child fantasies the possibility of the sibling's death
(death wish). A typical dream is that of a girl of 3 years, 3 months,
whose younger brother was admitted to the hospital. She reported a
dream in which she and her mother stopped at a red light, but her
brother went on and "A truck squashed him:'
Another wish-fulfillment dream, which is illustrative of positive
love object relations, is found in the record of a boy of 4 years, 6 months.
He was an only child; his parents were separated, and his father lived
and worked in a town in the Middle West. This boy reported a dream
in which he started out for his vacation at an eastern summer resort,
and the train, instead of reaching the latter destination, arrived in the
western city. Everytime he told of this dream, his expression was one of
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 169

joyful surprise. He then added with a disappointed expression that at

this point he woke up. In his play fantasies, this parental-reunion theme
recurred frequently; the parents had to be together and he frequently
locked the room to make sure that the father would not go out. He was
also very emphatic that "the daddy and the mama have to go in the
same bed." Furthermore, in accordance with a universal pattern for
boys of that age range, he was frequently identified with the father.
Direct sexual references do not appear. Some productions, however,
present devious references, and interpretations might be made on such
a dream as the following:
A girl of 4 years, 9 months, elaborated on a dream about a man
with a "made-up name" which she soon identified with her father: "He
has a big nose ... he always has blood coming out. .. and he always
picks it ... he put his hand right in the hole .. ." While this child had
the habit of picking her nose, for which she was rather severely re-
primanded by her parents-particularly her father-in the dream she
defends herself against forbidden libidinal movements by projecting the
activity on to her father. Similarly, aggression (castration) is projected in
another dream about a boy in her group. "I dreamed someone pulled his
finger off." Since young children occasionally refer to the genitals as finger
or foot, the transfer is obvious. This little girl, incidentally, was an
anxious child who was confused by rather conflicting attitudes of her
parents toward sexual matters. Generally inhibited and with a rather
strict disciplinarian approach, they made it a point of going about
naked in their apartment in the early morning, as a concession to
progressive attitudes on sex. It is highly probable that their own
insecurity was reflected in the little girl's anxiety about sexual taboo,
in addition to the universal pattern found at that age level.
A similar instance is found in the record of a boy of 3 years,
11 months, who reported several cannibal dreams. The dream reported
here was experienced approximately 6 weeks after the birth of a younger
sibling, and when the child was expressing a good deal of hostility
toward the baby in fantasy and play activity. Although, at first, he was
reported as being gentle and affectionate in his actual contact with the
baby, (his aggression toward the baby was more directly expressed when
the baby was a few months old) the dream was brought out in a play
session when he elaborated on fantasies of the mother having to wear
crutches. "She has a broken leg ... some cannibal cut it off .. , He ate
the daddy's foot too. " A tiger came out and you know, I gave one a
shot ... I didn't shoot him (the cannibal) . " You know where I shot
him? (the tiger) I shot in his mouth syrup ... with a syrup gun ...
I was dreaming that ... at night .. ." There is no question that this
account, which began as the expression of a fantasy, was in the last
analysis a dream experience, since it was brought out several times
directly as a dream, and complied with the criteria outlined above for
the testing of the material as a dream experience. Incidentally, it illus-
trates the way in which dreams are frequently brought in by young
children. The reverse is true, and an account of a dream may be a
starting point for fantasy elaboration, but the demarcation between the
two can generally be established with the proper technique.
170 J. LOUISE DESPERT

During the latter part of his mother's pregnancy, this child had
shown play activities which were definitely open incestuous wishes.
Specifically, he would engage in excited dances with the large size
mother doll which he called the "bad mother"; then he would throw
the doll down and throw himself on top of the doll. He referred to
these activities as dancing a jig. Several times, following these episodes,
he had to void and defecate; and at one of these sessions, he moved his
bowels twice. In his fantasies, the death wish toward the brother was
clear: "He (the baby) never came back ... he got lost one day .. ." and
the father was also frequently "broken" or "smacked". The sum total
of this picture indicates that the child was in the acute phase of an
oedipal conflict, with all the classical features. It was then felt that the
"conflict" was very freely expressed and that this would be satisfactorily
resolved. At a recent check (at lO~ years of age), it was found that he
had made a good adjustment, intellectually and socially.
Even from the brief sampling of reported dreams presented in this
publication, it is evident that unpleasant dreams far outnumber pleasant
dreams. The actual ratio of relative incidence may not be identical
in reported dreams and in experienced dreams; it is possible that, as sug-
gested by certain authors, the child recalls or more readily reports his
dreams when they are unpleasant than when they are pleasant experi-
ences. From the nature of the overwhelming number of reported anxiety
dreams it seems evident, however, that dreaming for a young child serves
primarily as an outlet and a means of expression for anxiety. It is also
evident that the anxiety is related to the fear of being destroyed by oral
incorporation, and chased for the latter or other purpose.
As regards the relation of intelligence to dream productivity, while
the number of children is too small to draw definite conclusions, certain
trends are noted. The 7 children who offered the largest number of
dreams (8 to 30) functioned at a high intellectual level (I. Q. range
from 118 to 157). However, in this series of 43 subjects there were
children of equally high intellectual level who reported only a few
dreams or none. On the other hand, the children with the lowest in-
tellectuallevel in this series (I. Q. 100 to 110) were not among those who
reported dreams freely. While there seems to be no definite relation
between the two factors, it can be said that the children who dreamed
more actively were not found in the group of lower intellectual level.
Recurrent dreams in the sense accepted in the literature were not
found; i. e., there was no indication that a child experienced a dream in
its exact reduplication over a period of time. The total dream records
indicate that the dream structure for each child represented well-individ-
ualized themes; these themes tended to reappear in the dreams with
slight variations, with the essential structure remaining the same. While
such patterns cannot be called recurrent dreams, there is, nevertheless,
a tendency toward repetition which bears a loose relation to the nature
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 171

of recurrent dreams. As indicated from time to time in this publication,

the theme for each child is found in the dreams, fantasies, and play
activities of the individual, with variations pertaining to the specific
medium of expression. In fact, it is in part the free-flowing of the sym-
bolic forms from one medium to the other which has led to the often
expressed belief that the child is unable to distinguish between his
dreams and his fantasies.
In the case of 4 children in this series, who were later carefully
investigated when they had developed difficulties of adjustment (4 to
G years after they had left the school at the ages of 9 to II), it was found
that dream content shows marked changes in the course of development.
This has been pointed out in relation to 2 bed-wetters referred to above
(water-fire symbolism), but it was also true of the 4 children insofar as
the total content of their dreams was concerned. Furthermore, they did
not recall their earlier dreams, and when confronted with the early
material, their reaction was either that the dreams were silly, or had not
taken place. Even when the predominant affect of the dream (anxiety)
presented similarities, the dream content in all 4 children had radically
changed. This is not to imply that the earlier dreams were altogether
repressed, but there seemed to be, at that later stage, no indication of
their being at a level of consciousness which would make them readily
available.
Needless to say, all observations about children's dreams reported
in this study refer only to the manifest content of dreams and associa-
tions to these dreams spontaneously brought out by the children.

IV. Discussion
As already indicated, this series of 190 dreams collected from a group
of 39 children, 2 to 5 years old, is not taken to represent an all inclusive
picture of the dreams of all children. However, it can be assumed that
it is fairly representative of dreams in that age group, especially if one
considers that the means of collecting data were reasonably objective,
and that a rather extensive knowledge of the total and dynamic picture
of the child's emotional life was part of the data studied.
While it is widely recognized that a child dreams as early as the
first year of his life, dream content can seldom be ascertained before his
second year, coincidentally with the advent of verbal expression. Sleep-
lessness, restlessness, and outcries would not in themselves be sufficient
evidence, as they might be only an expression of somatic discomfort; it
is indeed likely that many such manifestations, also observed during the
sleep of 2-year-old children, are free from meaningful and recoverable
172 J. LOUISE DESPERT

psychological content. Nevertheless, they may accompany subjective

experiences which are identifiable as dreams.
The facial expression and muscular activities seem a more reliable
index of the infant's psychic life during its sleep than vocal expression
alone; from observations reported in the literature, it is known that
dreams, for the infant, are sometimes mere reduplication of waking-hour
activities which have been pleasurable to him, for instance nursing, as
indicated by sucking movements and associated expression of satisfac-
tion (smiling). Expressions of fear with correlated muscular patterns
have alset been reported during the second year.
A few references in the literature indicate th;at even animals dream,
and the writer made such an observation. A- cat was seen making mas-
ticatory and swallowing movements while sleeping, following which he
awakened and went through the whole process of washing his face and
paws; his facial expression was one of satisfaction akin to a "smile", and
the sequence of events clearly indicated that he had "dreamed" about a
non-existent meal which required the customary post-prandial routine.
In analyzing children's dreams in relation to the age of the subject,
it is striking that the very young child (2-years-old in this series) mostly
dreams of being bitten, devoured, and chased. These are the first dreams
ascertainable from the child himself. What he experiences is an intense
fear of being destroyed in a very specific way; he never reports, for in-
stance, being hit, kicked, pinched, pushed, scratched, etc., all hostile
manifestations which the child might have personally experienced.
Furthermore, when later the agents of destruction or pursuit are named,
it is clear that they are not within the realms of actual experience of the
child, but are animistic and totemic. While there is a possibility of
phylogenetic determination of totemic fears, it seems more likely that
projection, which is historically one of the first mechanisms of defense
used by the ego in the conflicts of the oral period determines the form
of the threat pictured or experienced. There is no instance reported by
any child of his having actually been devoured or totally destroyed in
his dream, and the self-preservation instinct is always, in the end, suc-
cessfully operative in dreams from which the child is not awakened in
anxiety.
Melanie Klein (44) has given a provocative formulation of the
dynamics of anxiety associated with oral incorporation fantasies in the
young child, which also apply to the content of anxiety dreams.
"The anxiety evoked in the child by his destructive impulses takes
effect, I think, in two ways. In the first place it makes him afraid of
being exterminated himself by those very impulses, i. e., it relates to an
internal instinctual danger; and in the second place it focuses his fears
on his external object, against which his sadistic feelings are directed, as
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 173

a source of danger. This fear of an object seems to have its earliest basis
in external reality in the child's growing knowledge-a knowledge based
on the development of his ego and a concomitant power of testing by
reality-of his mother as someone who either gives or withholds gratifica-
tion, and thus in his growing knowledge of the power of his object in
relation to the satisfaction of his needs."
In the identification of powerful, destructive animals with the
parents, it must be pointed out that the father is more frequently in-
volved than the mother. In accordance with the thesis of oral incor-
poration projection this should be the reverse, since according to Melanie
Klein the oral sadistic fantasies of the infant, which are at the basis of
his fear of being devoured, are interpreted as the desire for "possession
of the contents of his mother's breasts by sucking and scooping it out."
It is widely known that the mouth plays a preponderant role in the
physiology and psychological economy of the infant. It is highly proba-
ble that, except for anal and skin reactions, all pleasurable and un-
pleasurable reactions of the infant are centered about the mouth, and
that it is the first link to reality (through the mother) experienced by the
infant. While Melanie Klein's formulation could well explain the fear
of being "incorporated" by the child's own impulse to incorporate,
through a mechanism of projection, this formulation could not apply
to the anxiety assOciated with being "chased". Since this latter fear is
expressed at least as often by the young child as the fear of being de-
voured, and obviously refers to other experiences and other dynamics,
it is important to seek some interpretation for it. It appears that the
excitement of "being chased" in the dream replaced the greater excite-
ment of being threatened by one's own blocked instinctual drives. Reac-
tion to a danger situation may bring about two solutions, fight and flight,
as is now widely accepted. In the face of overwhelming danger, as would
seem to be the case with threat of destruction, a feeling of total help-
lessness would of necessity lead to flight rather than fight. Muscular
manifestations of this attempt to flight are seen in the increased mus-
cular tonus, motor patterns of restlessness and agitation, and finally in
outcries, all of which are usually observed in the anxiety dreams of
young children. Indeed, these dreams often contain accounts of attempts
to escape danger, not fight it, utilizing in dream and fantasy the same
method of escape from an "internal danger" (libidinal frustration) as
from an external one.
The sequence in which the patterns of anxiety chronologically
unfold in the dreams of young children is highly significant. There is
first the fear of being destroyed or chased; then unfamiliar, powerful,
destructive animals are named; and finally, in response to actual trau-
matic experiences in the life of the child, the anxiety may be transferred
174 J. LOUISE DESPERT

to the animal which actually threatened or attacked the child, or to any

painful event which actually took place. Incidentally, the latter transfer
would explain the apparent contradiction found in the literature as
regards the types of animals found in children's anxiety dreams. In the
studies of Blanchard (10), and of Jersild, Markey and Jersild (38) it is
reported that many of the children had traced their dreams to some
unpleasant experience with an animal, or to the witnessing dramatic
expressions in movies or stories; also, that they reflected the events of
their waking life. If the children in these series (most of school age)
had been studied during their early childhood years, it is highly proba-
ble that their anxiety expression would have followed a pattern similar
to the one outlined in this publication.
Anxiety dreams of very young children are so closely related to the
earliest manifestations of anxiety in the young child that they warrant
careful, systematic investigation. Freud has referred to the process of
birth as the first determinant and prototype of anxiety, and has likened
this anxiety to the later developed castration anxiety which is at the
basis of neurotic manifestations. The earliest anxiety manifestations
appear long before the I - not I is established and any ego structure
firmly defined. Of the total instinctual life of the infant, the seU-pre-
servation instinct alone seems involved and threatened in the earliest
anxiety dreams recorded.
Another arresting finding in this series of dreams pertains to the
earliest manifestations of anxiety in the young child that they warrant
instance, that in the dreams parents appear in benevolent roles (there is
not one instance of direct parental hostility toward the child); and also,
that whenever hostile attitudes of the child toward the parent appear,
they always do so in a disguised form. This is manifested as early as
2 years, and possibly earlier if content could be ascertained in the pre-
verbal stage. The fact that parents do not appear in hostile roles, except
in the identifications with powerful animals, is demonstrated through
the innumerable associations readily made by the child between these
destructive, powerful animals and the parents. The child, however,
cannot tolerate such associations except in fantasy. This, incidentally,
has probably been responsible for a good deal of the confusion pervading
our knowledge of the early development of the sense of reality in the
child. Another interesting aspect of repression is related to the early
taboo of direct sex expression in dreams. While again, associations re-
vealing such a taboo are readily brought out by the child in fantasy,
direct references are conspicuously lacking in the dream content.
It is felt that, owing in part to the phenomenon of repression, only
a very small portion of the total dream life of the child is recovered and
even perhaps recoverable. The infant is closer to the unconscious state,
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 175

as found during intra-uterine life, than at any other period of his life.
In that state, racial symbols and expressions precede the individual
consciousness, which is to develop gradually during the first years of life.
The beginnings of individual consciousness are, of necessity, almost
unknown and leave all possibilities open to speculation. Now and again,
through the emergence in consciousness of dream material, it is possible
to get a glimpse of the instinctual demands, satisfactions, frustrations
and anxieties of the individual.
The dream obviously has also a protective function, and in this
sense again, the repression mechanisms playa part. It serves as an outlet
for the discharge of anxiety; also of aggressive impulses which would
not be tolerated during the conscious state. This is emphatically brought
out by the many instances found in the children's records about their
unwillingness to bring out the dream material, and particularly their
occasional denial that they had earlier brought out such material; this,
at a time when it no longer serves a purpose of release. In the child,
more so than in the adult, there is a flexibility of expression between
levels of consciousness, which emphasizes this point. When the psycho-
logical economy does not warrant the bringing out of dream content in
consciousness, the dream is totally repressed, or, in various instances,
suppressed; in the latter case, one gets the impression of an element of
deliberateness in the child's refusal to relive the experience which he has
previously freely recounted.
The forms are influenced by the environment in which the child
lives at the time he experienced the dream. When the 4~-year-old boy
reported the "sly old fox" dream, he obviously revealed his acquaintance
with fairy tales, since the expression "sly old fox" could come from no
other source. The verbal framework, however, is relatively unessential,
and it matters very little whether the animals portrayed in children's
dreams are small or large animals, and whether biting is an intrinsic
characteristic of the animals. For instance, when the 3-year-old girl
feared that an owl would bite and destroy her, she obviously expressed
only a fear of being bitten and destroyed, without any special considera-
tion of the biting and destroying object.
The function of the dream which has been stressed in several psycho-
logical writings is the reliving of everyday life events. In the dreams
studied by the writer, this function is not conspicuous when super-
charged with affect. However, this is not to imply that everyday events
are not relived by the child in the dream; it only states that there is
more pressure on the part of the child to bring back to consciousness his
anxiety dreams, than the reduplication of his everyday life happenings.
The wish-fulfillment function of the young child's dream has been
pointed out recurrently in the clinical findings; two large categories of
176 J. LOUISE DESPERT

wishes are expressed: the simple wish-fulfillment dream which represents

a desire for positive gratification, and the anxiety-charged dreams which
indirectly express hostile impulses toward others, predominantly parents
and siblings.
As seen from the clinical data, the child himself is never directly
engaged in destructive activities in his dreams. True, among the records
of several older children (4-, a-year-oIds) there are a few instances of
direct aggressive expressions, but these are always defensive. This find-
ing is rather puzzling in view of the fact that the dream provides an
ideal medium for the expression of "forbidden" impulses. The exclusion
of these manifestations reveals that some prohibitive agency must be
operating in the unconscious. This is the more striking since coincident-
ally the child indulges in so many sadistic and destructive fantasies in
his waking life (superego operative in sleep).
The analysis of the total records shows that dream symbols reflect
and express the major and minor conflicts and problems of adjustment
found in the conscious life of the child, and provide means of releasing
the tensions associated with them. They also give valuable indications
about the child's total emotional adjustment.

V. Summary and conclusions

A summary of the literature on dreams has been presented. The
records of 43 consecutive children of 2 to 5 years of age, admitted at the
Payne Whitney Nursery School, were studied and 190 dreams were
collected and analyzed. The dreams were obtained from three different
sources: individual play sessions, daily behavior notes, and reports from
home. No material was included as dream until it had been subjected
to rigid criteria. The total history of each child was well-known, with
special reference to emotional adjustment. The method for obtaining
dream material has been described, and the various techniques devised
to overcome resistances have been illustrated.
It was found that there were considerable variations among the
children in their wish and ability to report their dreams; and, on the
whole, spontaneous expression was limited. Human beings and animals
figured predominantly. The parents appeared in benevolent roles; but,
on the other hand, were readily identified with powerful, destructive
animals which threatened the child with total destruction. People other
than parents were most frequently placed in fearful roles. While the
animals which were engaged in biting and devouring were usually large
and fearful, there were also smaller animals which engaged in the same
activities, although biting was not necessarily an intrinsic characteristic
of these animals. The dreams reported were predominantly anxiety
 DREAMS IN CHILDREN 177

dreams. Chronologically, the expression of anxiety appeared in the

following sequence: the very young child (2-year-old) expressed a fear
of being bitten, devoured and chased without naming the agent; later
(3-, 4-, 5-year-old), devouring animals were identified. The earliest
dreams of children represent a threat to the psychobiological unity of
the individual. The dream life serves in bridging the racial and individ-
ual past to the present experience. It has also a protective function, and
provides an outlet for the discharge of anxiety as well as of aggressive
impulses, which could not be tolerated during the conscious state.
Repression mechanisms are in evidence, with projection, identification,
displacement, and denial predominant as the child's mechanisms of
defense.

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