The wise baby as the voice of the true self

Sander Ferenczi wrote about a typical dream of the "Wise Baby" and Eater us ed this figure to represent the child who is traumatized into precocious wi sdom, who becomes "the family psychiatrist." We discuss Ferenczi's theory o f traumatization and the "split self," noting how it was taken up in D. W W innicott's "True Self/False Self" conceptualization. We then present three patients' wise baby dreams to show how these trauma theories can be used in dream interpretation and how dream interpretation can support them.