Matters related to the formation of one’s identity are even more challenging in the mid-21st century, given the multiple images that inundate us every day, and that saturate our sense of self (Gergen, 2020). How then are these challenges of contemporary times addressed in our dreams? As Kohut (Kohut, 1977) emphasizes, an agile yet stable self-state is critical to our sense of security and well-being. The self-state dream is common in our mid-21st century. And a self-state that is complex, containing nested self-states that interact with one another, might be requisite to successful life in this contemporary setting. This type of self-state might require transformational change from the simpler and often isolated type. It is in our transformative dreams where this struggle for change is often incurred (Stolorow and Atwood, 1992, p. 282):
“These dreams portray in their manifest imagery ‘the dreamer’s dread vis-à-vis some uncontrollable ten-increase or his dread of the dissolution of the self.’ Kohut suggests that the very act of portraying . . .archaic self-states in the dream in a minimally disguised form ‘constitutes an attempt to deal with the psychological danger by covering frightening nameless processes with nameable imagery.’”
As I have already mentioned, the engagement of imagery rather than words can provide the dreamer with not only the ability to synthesize and integrate diverse material, but also the capacity to hide or obfuscate a troubling thought or set of words in an ambiguous image or symbol. It is in the struggle to establish an agile, yet stable, self-state that there is the greatest temptation to use this capacity to hide and obfuscate. A clear sense of self (a mature self-state) can be found in dreams that relate to our past. This includes our history (real or imagined) and the homes and rooms in which we have lived (a topic of one of my previous essays on dreams: Bergquist, 2025). There are also identity-related themes in dreams that relate to our present reality. These concern our sense of competence as manifest in the tests we might imagine taking, as well as the profound changes (real or imagined) in which we are now engaged concerning our identity. Each of these themes also shows up in our transformative dreams (change in identity) and supportive dreams (competency).
