Interacting with a Kerr medium, an input coherent field evolves into a
generalized coherent state. We show that at the interaction time lamb
dat = pi/N, where lambda is the nonlinear coupling coefficient, the ge
neralized coherent state is transformed into a superposition of N cohe
rent component states. Using the Wigner-function phase-space formalism
, we show that the noise reduction takes place along rotated quadratur
e axes for the superposition states and for the generalized coherent s
tates. The influence of a dissipative environment (vacuum reservoir) o
n the squeezing properties of these multicomponent superposition state
s is investigated. In the stationary limit, the noise is again reduced
to the vacuum level. Deterioration of squeezing is related with the r
apid decay of quantum coherences under the influence of the reservoir.