Organization of The Self as Reflected in Manifest Dreams

In a previous communication, 3 I described differences in pathology of organization of the self, establishing distinctions between an over-differentiated and an under-individuated self. This paper reviews additional clinical material derived from a study of the dreams reported by three women during a one-year period of analytic work. Differences were observed in the way the self appears in the dreams, in the characteristic imagery in which thoughts and feelings were expressed and in the handling of kinaesthetic-visceral-tactile experience. These differences observed in the dreams reflect characteristic differences in the organization of the self. They also help to throw some light on the process by which the pattern of organization of the self is formed.

We may suppose that as the infant grows, the self segregates itself out of a field of kinaesthetic-visceral-tactile (“body”) experiences and visual-auditory-olfactory (“distance”) experiences and that the former group of experiences is of a more primitive kind than the latter. We may suppose, further, that the visual or “distance” group of experiences are ipso facto more articulated than the normally “mute,” less articulated kinaesthetic or “body” group of experiences. An over-differentiated self has organized itself too much around the “distance” experiences and become too sharply articulated an organization, with faulty integration of body or “ground” experiences. An under-individuated self has organized itself too much around the visceral-kinaesthetic or “body” experience and too little in terms of articulated boundaries. It has become a less sharply bounded unit, organized too much in terms of “ground” experience.

In my previous report, case material from the analyses of two women was presented. A, a depressive woman with some hysterical and some anxiety symptoms, was described as having an under-individuated