Dreams about the Inner World
Dreams about the inner world revolve around natural needs (classical “instincts”), dispositions, and internal regulations aimed at maintenance of mental balance and integration. As I wrote in a paper that described this category of dreams:
“Dreams of endogenous origin arise from inner needs which include all the somatic needs, feelings and states which accompany organismic adjustments to maintain equilibrium and homeostasis, and the correlates to system regulation. Dreams of endogenous origin mirror the inner world and are grouped into ten types of dreams. Five types that belong to this category, simple wish-fulfillment dreams, traumatic dreams, dreams of convenience, self-state dreams, and self-esteem dreams, and are defined in the general literature on dreams.
The order of dreams in the following table corresponds approximately to the developmental order of emergence of subjective types of dreams. From the structural perspective, need dreams are least complex and developmentally most primitive. These dreams hearken to early experience prior to recognition of causal determinants. Traumatic dreams include some, usually repetitive, enactment of conditions that accompany frightening emotion. Simple wish-fulfillment dreams and dreams of convenience involve some representation of prior conditions linked to need satisfaction. Functional and part-object dreams are similar in structure to simple wish-fulfillment dreams, but usually involve some need state which is more complex or developmentally more advanced than that associated with organic needs. Self-state dreams are analogous and in addition presume some representation of the self. Self-esteem dreams are still more complex and implicate some investment of self-worth in some idealized image of self. Functional personifications, topographical/structural, and transformational dreams draw upon relatively sophisticated, differentiated self-representations (van den Daele, 1992).”
Dreams that Arise from Inner Needs, Wants, Feelings, Emotions, Dispositions, and/or Imperatives
Dream Type by Order of Complexity |
Brief Description |
| Need | Characterized by experience of undisguised feeling or need state associated with endogenous determinants. |
| Traumatic | Involves intense negative emotional states where emotion over-rides adaptive dream action. |
| Wish-fulfillment | Portrays gratification of relatively direct, often emotional or biological needs and desires (Freud, 1900). |
| Dreams of Convenience | A special case of simple wish dreams which counter hardship (Freud, 1900). |
| Part-object | Aspects of the self or others are depicted in a purely functional relation to need state. |
| Functional Person-ifications | Represents needs, attitudes, behavior, or aspects of the self in the guise of other animate and sometimes inanimate objects (Bonime, 1962). |
| Self-State/ Diagnostic | Reveals how the self is experienced (Kohut, 1971; 1977). Diagnoses and prognosticates physical well-being (Hunt, 1988). |
| Self-Esteem | Provides a real-time representation of the changes in self-state (Kohut, 1977). |
| Topographic/ structural | Provides a map of the inner organization of the self (Jung, 1930). |
| Transformational | Usually complex dreams which portray self-organization and transformation, typically with import for the self’s general interpersonal relations and attitude to life (Jung, 1930). |
Table reproduced from van den Daele, L.D. (1992). Direct interpretation of dreams: Typology. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 52, 307-326.