Unconscious phantasy: Some historical and conceptual dimensions

This paper seeks firstly to grasp both conceptually and historically the different phenomenologies that are captured by the term ‘Unconscious Phantasy’. The term is shown to refer to a number of distinct though overlapping conceptual domains. These include: phantasy as scene, phantasy as representation of drive, phantasy as representation of wish as its fulfilment, phantasy as split off activity of the mind functioning under the aegis of the pleasure principle; phantasy as representation of the minds own activities (which Wollheim calls’ the way “the mind represents its own activities to itself’’). Lastly unconscious phantasy is understood as being the basic foundation of all mental life, including drives, impulses, all anxiety situations and defences. Having mapped out this territory through following the development of the concept in the work of Freud and Klein, the author draws on the work of the philosopher Richard Wollheim who, the author contends, has made a fundamental contribution to our conceptual understanding of unconscious phantasy. In the last section of the paper, the author draws a distinction between what he terms ‘objects’ (namely psychic objects) and what he terms ‘facts’. It is suggested that this distinction, though implicit in much of our work, benefits from being made explicit and that in so doing an important dimension of analytic work is illuminated. We aim to help the patient to discover what he is like, to understand the ways in which he conceives and misconceives himself, to unravel the fact‐ness of himself and his world from its ‘object qualities’, to differentiate between unconscious phantasy and reality.     

Identity theft1

Abstract

Psychoanalysis has almost disappeared from the curricula of most American universities, which I illustrate by the case of the department of psychology at my own university, Harvard. Courses on psychoanalysis are very rare there and it is mostly seen as a part of history of psychology and not as a set of ideas that can be useful nowadays. Personality models developed by Freud or Melanie Klein, as well as many more contemporary psychoanalysts, are, however, still very relevant for the humanities. This is particularly the case for Shakespeare studies and I am trying to show that despite the fact that psychoanalysis can enrich this field, less and less students show interest in it or are willing to admit that they themselves may have unconscious reactions. I focus on the usefullness of the concept of projective identification and propose the thesis that is another name for the activities of theater, and indeed for theater itself.     

On the immediacy of unconscious truth: understanding Betty Joseph's 'here and now' through comparison with alternative views of it outside of and within Kleinian thinking

Psychoanalysis emphasizes that in discovering psychic truth what is needed is not abstract or distant knowledge of this truth but rather an immediate encounter with it. In this paper the author examines the meaning of this immediacy through the study of Betty Joseph's notion of 'here and now,' which in recent years has been most directly associated with it. The author shows how Joseph's notion of 'here and now' continues a legacy beginning in Freud and taken up by Klein regarding the immediacy of unconscious truth that differs from other available analytic formulations of the term. To highlight the uniqueness of Joseph's contribution the author goes on to examine what distinguishes it within the kleinian framework. She does this in part through comparison with the clinical approach of Hanna Segal, whose focus on unconscious phantasy adheres to the same foundational legacy. The author points to the differences between Joseph and Segal and their significance, which have not been sufficiently elaborated in the analytic literature. She argues that viewing these differences within the context of a shared perspective on the role of unconscious truth in the analytic process and task enriches our understanding of the complexity of kleinian thinking and the meaning of truth in psychoanalysis. This understanding is also furthered by the recognition that many uses of the term 'here and now' in the analytic literature refer to something very different from what Joseph refers to and are based on a perspective that is fundamentally opposed to hers.     

CHARACTER,PSYCHOANALYTIC IDENTIFICATION,AND NUMERICAL IDENTITY

Identification figures prominently in moral psychological explanations. I argue that in identification the subject has an ‘identity‐thought’, which is a thought about her numerical identity with the figure she identifies with. In Freud's psychoanalytic psychology character is founded on unconscious identification with parental figures. Moral philosophers have drawn on psychoanalysis to explain how undesirable or disadvantageous character dispositions are resistant to insight through being unconscious. According to Richard Wollheim's analysis of Freud's theory, identification is the subject's disposition to imagine, unconsciously, her bodily merging with the figure she identifies with. I argue that this explanation of identification is not adequate. Human character is held to be capable of change when self‐reflection brings unconscious identifications to conscious self‐knowledge. I argue that for self‐knowledge these identifications must be an intelligible part of the subject's self‐conception, and that Wollheim's ‘merging phantasy’ is not intelligible to the subject in this way. By contrast, the subject's thought that she is numerically identical to the figure she identifies with does provide an intelligible starting‐point for reflecting on this identification. This psychoanalytic account provides a clear conception of identification with which to investigate puzzle cases in the moral psychology of character.     

“淑女之争”与“君子协议”:回眸英国精神分析学会的“论战”

20世纪40年代,英国精神分析学会内部爆发一场影响全世界精神分析学发展的"战争"。以Anna Freud和Melanie Klein各自为首的精神分析师团体围绕潜意识幻想、本能与力比多以及精神分析培训与教学等一系列主题展开激烈争论,即历史上著名的"Freud-Klein论战"。这场"论战"就精神分析培训问题达成协议,并直接导致克莱因学派、维也纳学派和独立学派三"组"鼎立的英国精神分析时局。"论战"促使了客体关系精神分析与自我心理学的分离,推动了精神分析研究从驱力模式向关系模式的范式转变,奠定了后续精神分析运动发展的格局。     

The Latin American contribution to the psychoanalytic concept of phantasy

The author argues that the ubiquity of phantasies at various levels of mental functioning is undisputed in the current schools of psychoanalytic thought; however, she demonstrates some variations in their understanding of how the psychotherapeutic access to different configurations occurs. In the process of examining and acknowledging the central role played by unconscious phantasies in his patients’ symptoms, Freud gradually broadened the vernacular meaning of the German word ‘Phantasie’ that refers to imagination and the world of imagination, conferring on it the specific features that came to characterize its use in the psychoanalytic vocabulary. Later, the expansion of the concept derived from Melanie Klein’s clinical material obtained from child analyses gave rise to important debates. The author discusses the main points of disagreement that led to these debates, as well as their various theoretical and technical implications. Psychoanalytic associations in Latin America were strongly influenced by Klein and her followers. Thus, most of their scientific writings use the concept of unconscious phantasy put forward by the Kleinian school. Taking Kleinian principles as their starting point, Baranger and Baranger made the most original Latin American contribution to the concept of unconscious phantasy with their works on the unconscious phantasies generated by the analytic pair.     

Unconscious phantasy and its conceptualizations: An attempt at conceptual integration

That there is a lack of consensus as to how to decide between competing, at times even contradictory theories, and about how to integrate divergent concepts and theories is well known. In view of this situation, the IPA Committee on Conceptual Integration (2009–2013) developed a method for comparing the different versions of any given concept, together with the underlying theories and fundamental assumptions on which they are based. Only when situated in the same frame of reference do similarities and differences begin to appear in a methodically comprehensible and reproducible form. After having studied the concept of enactment followed by the publication of a paper in this Journal in 2013, we proceeded to analyze the concept of unconscious phantasy while at the same time continuing to improve our method. Unconscious phantasy counts among the central concepts in psychoanalysis. We identified a wide range of definitions along with their various theoretical backgrounds. Our primary concern in the present paper addresses the dimensional analysis of the semantic space occupied by the various conceptualizations. By way of deconstructing the concepts we endeavoured to establish the extent to which the integration of the different conceptualizations of unconscious phantasy might be achieved.     

Trieb und Instinkt

To say that human beings also have a self-preservation instinct just as animals is only meaningful in the sense of attachment and affection mediated by mutual communication. It is from the beginning covered up by the truly human sexual phenomena of seduction and narcissistic reciprocity. Beside that we have a sexual drive which has a more important, not to say, decisive role from birth until puberty. This latter is the subject of psychoanalysis because it is anchored in the unconscious. Finally, we also have an (innate, endogenic) sexual instinct which appears in puberty persisting the whole adult life and meets at its appearance the infantile sexual drive which was existing all the time. It is very difficult to give an epistemological definition of the (innate) sexual instinct because it does not manifest itself in a pure form, but only in unclear transactions with infantile sexuality dominating the unconscious. The subject of psychoanalysis is the unconscious and the unconscious is itself the sexuality sensu Freud, the pre-, para- or genital infantile sexuality. The sexual has its origins in the phantasy which is naturally anchored in our body.     

Reflections on the work of Hanna Segal (1918–2011),

This paper is based on a talk given at the conference to celebrate the Work of Hanna Segal and attempts to summarise her contribution to psychoanalysis. I suggest that in addition to being the important presenter of the work of Melanie Klein, she made major contributions to our understanding of many analytic ideas, for example, symbol formation, the usefulness of the concept of the death instinct and the relation between phantasy and reality. She was a pioneer in the analytic treatment of psychosis and sh wrote important papers on literature and aesthetics. She was a great teacher and emphasised the central role played by the analytic setting in representing the attitude of the analyst.     

Unconscious phantasy as a structural principle and organizer of mental life: The evolution of a concept from Freud to Klein and some of her successors

Starting with Freud's discovery of unconscious phantasy as a means of accessing his patients’ internal world, the author discusses the evolution of the concept in the work of Melanie Klein and some of her successors. Whereas Freud sees phantasy as a wish fulfilling imagination, dominated by primary process functioning and kept apart from reality testing, Klein understands phantasies as a structural function and organizer of mental life. From their very beginnings they involve object relations and gradually evolve from primitive body‐near experiences to images and symbolic representations. With her concept of projective identification in particular, Klein anticipates the communicative function of unconscious phantasies. They are at the basis of processes of symbolization, but may also be put into the service of complex defensive operations. The author traces the further evolution of the concept from the contributions of S. Isaacs, the theories of thinking proposed by W.R. Bion and R. Money‐Kyrle, Hanna Segal's ideas on symbolization and reparation all the way to the latest approaches by R. Britton, J. Steiner and others, including the understanding of transference and counter‐transference as a ‘total situation’. Points of contact with Freud are to be found particularly in connection with his concept of ‘primal phantasies’. In the author's view, the idea of the transmission and communicative potential of unconscious phantasies enabled these authors to overcome the solipsistic origins of drive theory in favour of a notion in which unconscious phantasies both set down the coordinates of the inner world and form and reflect the matrix of inter‐subjective relations.     

Patriarchy and phantasy: A conception of psychoanalytic sociology

The nature versus nurture controversy in the history of the social sciences is compared with the heredity versus environment debate in the history of psychoanalysis. Generally, psychoanalysis addresses the question of human thought in contrast to the social disciplines, which examine human behavior. This division of science may be considered the representation of a fundamental dichotomy between internal (latent) and external (manifest) aspects characteristic of human existence. This universal duality is based on the division between the sexes, the union of which reproduces life. This paper attempts to draw attention to the common structure of the mind and society by showing that the same pattern of manifest and latent content exists within each entity. The manifest aspect of existence is reflected in patriarchal social structure and the latent aspect in the structure of unconscious phantasy. These aspects are dialectically interrelated in that patriarchy is the manifest form of phantasy and phantasy the latent form of patriarchal order. This model of the integration of psychoanalysis and sociology is based on the work of Juliet Mitchell, particularly Psychoanalysis and Feminism. Psychoanalytic sociology is defined as a discipline that investigates the relationship between mental life and social organization.     

Further developments of the concept of fantasy

After the Isaacs' seminal work on the nature and function of unconscious phantasy (1948), several authors (mostly in the British Society) have reflected on the topic and tried to extend the concept of fantasy. In this paper I shall examine the contributions of Winnicott, Gaddini, Joseph and Anne Marie Sandler that aim at broadening this psychoanalytic concept. The authors that I have considered share a focus mostly on the early stages of child development. Both Winnicott and Gaddini belong to a line of thinking that explores the vicissitudes of the primary emotional development of the infantile self (in the mother‐infant relationship) involving the earliest processes of holding and bodily and kinaesthetic fantasy that form the bodily integrity of the person. The Sandlers focused mostly on the concept of the past unconscious understood as a place of primitive vicissitudes with a deficit in figuration where the process of repression is missing. The present unconscious phantasy (that is located in the here and now) has the function of rendering the past unconscious phantasy partly accessible; otherwise it would remain unknowable.     

“Figuring” the Self: Unity and Multiplicity in Clinical and Theological Imagination

This paper considers the relationship of unconscious fantasy to theory, with the focus on the issue of unity and multiplicity. The purpose of the paper is to explore the deep structure of unconscious fantasy, which is understood as that which promotes and organizes our experiences of the “one” and the “many” and serves as a driving force in the formation of the self. Using Thomas Ogden’s reformulation of Melanie Klein’s theory of fantasy (phantasy) and his vision of the Kleinian subject, alongside Christian Trinitarian theology, the paper argues that unity and multiplicity persist in a generative and interpenetrating dialectic that unfolds within/toward a transcendent unity-in-process, an eternal “becoming one.”     

New approaches to understanding unconscious processes: Implicit and explicit memory systems

Abstract

Freud viewed the unconscious as being roughly equivalent to dynamically repressed wishes, needs, and motivations. Findings from developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience over the past 40 years have dramatically changed our views of unconscious processes and the human mind. It is now clear that Freud's dynamic unconscious is only a minor segment of information that is processed at subsymbolic, implicit, and automatic levels. Only a fraction of this information is further processed at explicit conscious levels. Moreover, the vast majority of the information that remains nonconscious is adaptive and has major consequences for development. We examine some clinical implications of these views.     

Wishful Thinking and the Unconscious: A Reply to Gouws

Abstract

This paper argues against the view that the Freudian unconscious can be understood as an extension of ordinary belief-desire psychology. The paper argues that Freud’s picture of the mind challenges the paradigm of folk psychology, as it is understood by much contemporary philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. The dynamic unconscious postulated by psychoanalysis operates according to rules and principles that are distinct in kind from those rules that organise rational and conscious thought. Psychoanalysis offers us a radical reconception of our ordinary way of thinking about our own minds.     

On Attachment to Internal Objects

This paper considers some clinical implications of attachment theory from the perspective of the theory of internal object relationships and the unconscious phantasies that derive from such relationships. The paper focuses on the contributions of Bowlby and his followers, particularly Mary Main, who has developed a language-based methodology to study representational processes in adults and children, bridging the gap between the systematic study of human behavior and clinical psychoanalysis. The theory of inherent role responsiveness in the internal object world—mental representations of self and other in interaction and externalized in complementary role relationships through exchanges of unconscious and conscious messages—is presented as the psychoanalytic complement of Bowlby's theory of internal working models of attachment. Role responsiveness occurs internally as well as externally, so that one can speak of attachment to phantasy objects as well as external objects. Clinical examples illustrate how the therapist, through maintaining a free-floating responsiveness to the patient's enactments, may reconstruct the internal working models of attachment and their origins in the transference. The paperthus illustrates the way in which the origins of phantasy derive from the wished for and feared states related to early experiences of felt security, or lack of it, in relation to the attachment objects, thereby integrating the psychoanalytic theory of phantasy with attachment theory.     

Family matters The descendants of Freud and Jung

A brief history of what it has meant to be a Jungian analyst and/or analytical psychologist in the United States and England is portrayed. At first the differences between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology were very great, and there was great animosity between the two schools. The conflict was much stronger in the United States than in England where Jungians developed a much better rapport with psychoanalysis. Recent theoretical developments within psychoanalysis, such as the development of self theory and intersubjectivity, as well as speaking about religious issues in a new way, have brought psychoanalysis closer to analytical psychology. On the other hand, analytical psychology has been enriched by an increased awareness of the importance of developmental issues and transference and countertransference. The implications for both psychoanalysis and analytical psychology are explored.     

Sexual metaphor and the language of unconscious phantasy

This paper investigates the attempt to find a 'bedrock' for psychic life in the idea of unconscious phantasy. Through a detailed examination of the development of the concept of unconscious phantasy, especially in Kleinian discourse, it is argued that unconscious phantasies are inherently metaphorical and have no 'concrete' existence in the unconscious. The use of unconscious phantasy as metaphor enables a 'two-way' form of interpretation that describes sexual behaviour and fantasy in terms of object relations (interpreting 'away from sex', while simultaneously describing object relations in terms of the sexual body (interpreting 'towards sex').     

Unconscious fantasy: introduction

Freudian psychoanalysis has long been a depth psychology with devotion to the idea that unconscious fantasies dictate behavior. That concept is traced from its origins to the present to expose its various forms as ego psychology has emerged.     

Über die Bindung an die inneren Objekte

Sandler sees the possibility of constructing a bridge between attachment theory and psychoanalysis by extending the concept of motivation to involve now a primary need for attachment. Attachment to the object is the basis for the existential feelings of safety and well-being. Connections to the development of internal object relationships and to unconscious phantasy are discussed. Consequences for psychoanalytic countertransference are shown.