ABSTRACT
The notion of “wise baby” first appeared in 1923, in a brief note of about twenty-five lines with the title “The dream of the ‘clever baby’ ” 1 (1923). Ferenczi describes a typical dream or fantasy related by many patients, in which “the newly born, quite young children, or babies in the cradle, appear, who are able to talk or write fluently, treat one to deep sayings, carry on intelligent conversations, deliver harangues, give learned explanations and so on” (p. 349). In his view, the manifest content of this dream would point, by means of irony, to a repressed wish of an oedipal nature that aims to overcome and defeat the “grown-ups”, thus reversing the condition in which the child is in relation with the adult.
