Kohut’s Dreams

The paper argues that Heinz Kohut’s theory of self-state dreams should be seen as a coherent general theory in a historical sequence from the dream theories of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Ronald Fairbairn, Erik Erikson, and others. Kohut stressed his notion of self-state dreams added a dimension to Freud’s theory applicable for a class of troubled patients and was not meant to replace Freud’s theories. A close look at his actual clinical work with dreams, however, suggests the more general applicability of his theory. Self-state dreams, we argue, are an integral part of the vocabulary of self that Kohut introduced into psychoanalysis and, parenthetically, have shaped current thinking and research. To test the idea of the general applicability of Kohut’s theory of the self-state dream, the authors assembled a large database of all dreams mentioned in Kohut’s writings, along with the dreams of patients whose analysts were in supervision with Kohut and few other dreams Kohut analyzes in literature and history. The database indicates the source of the dream, the patient and analyst where known, the dream as reported, the category into which it fits, and any additional thoughts where relevant. The paper is meant as an elaboration of an earlier paper in this journal, “On Dreams”. The complete database has been made available as supplemental material for this article. It can be accessed online at