The Importance Of Facial Expressions In Dreams

In a discussion focused on analysing defences in dreams, I described the use of superego derivatives as defences (Goldberger, 1989). I said, ‘Very important references to the superego are often contained in the facial expression … of a person in a dream’ (p. 410). At that time I did not elaborate more fully on either the phenomenon or how to help make it useful to a patient in analysis. The purpose of this brief communication is to do so.

I want to emphasise the fundamental importance of the visual sphere in the formation of the superego functions of the ego. Facial expressions in dreams provide a unique opportunity to study the vivid re-externalisation of various kinds of authority. For this reason, facial expressions in dreams can be extremely useful for the analysis of the superego. This is in keeping with Gray's view of the technical advantage of approaching superego manifestations from the point of view of hierarchical functions of the ego (1987, p. 152). Since the dreamer is both creator and interpreter of the facial expressions in a dream, the re-externalisation of authority can be more convincing than when one studies a patient's ‘reading’ of the facial expression of another person in waking life.1

I have been impressed by the frequency with which patients make only casual reference to someone's facial expression in a dream. A patient may not return to this consciously available detail unless the analyst draws his or her attention to the ‘passing over’ of the image. In other words, the superego reference is very often warded off, and by subtle means. In my experience, once the analyst simply points to the inattention, patients often discover richly affective experiences having to do with early signals of approval or prohibition from important authorities. I emphasise the visual aspects because these communications from authorities can be extremely powerful yet may never have been verbalised. Their re-emergence in the telling of a dream is often warded off exac