Concept
Unconscious phantasy
The mental expression of the drives as Kleinian theory understands it: unconscious imaginings, at first bodily and wordless, in which the infant lives out its impulses as dealings with objects, such as taking them in, attacking them or being attacked by them. Freud spoke of unconscious phantasies as repressed or never-conscious day-dreams; Susan Isaacs, building on Melanie Klein's analyses of children, argued in 1943 that phantasy is at work from the start of life, is the primary content of all unconscious mental processes, and shapes perception, thinking, symptoms and the relation to the analyst. Freud's English translators spelt it 'phantasy' to keep it apart from conscious 'fantasy'.
Development
1943
developed by Susan Isaacs
In 'The Nature and Function of Phantasy', read in 1943 at the opening of the Controversial Discussions and published in 1948, Isaacs widened Freud's notion of unconscious phantasy: phantasy is the mental expression of every drive, is active from the beginning of life, and is the primary content of all unconscious mental processes.
In The Nature and Function of Phantasy (1948)
Undated
developed by Melanie Klein
Isaacs credits Klein's analyses of young children with giving unconscious phantasy its growing weight; her own paper gave theoretical form to the concept as Klein used it.
In The Nature and Function of Phantasy (1948)
Undated
introduced by Sigmund Freud
Isaacs traces the psychoanalytic sense of the term to Freud, who came to recognise phantasies that are unconscious; the wider Kleinian concept builds on his.
In The Nature and Function of Phantasy (1948)
Relations
- 1943 developed by Susan Isaacs
In 'The Nature and Function of Phantasy', read in 1943 at the opening of the Controversial Discussions and published in 1948, Isaacs widened Freud's notion of unconscious phantasy: phantasy is the mental expression of every drive, is active from the beginning of life, and is the primary content of all unconscious mental processes.
- developed by Melanie Klein
Isaacs credits Klein's analyses of young children with giving unconscious phantasy its growing weight; her own paper gave theoretical form to the concept as Klein used it.
- introduced by Sigmund Freud
Isaacs traces the psychoanalytic sense of the term to Freud, who came to recognise phantasies that are unconscious; the wider Kleinian concept builds on his.
Works
- 1948
The Nature and Function of Phantasy
Read to the British Psycho-Analytical Society in 1943 as the opening paper of the Controversial Discussions, and later reprinted in Developments in Psycho-Analysis (1952).
See also
References
- The Nature and Function of Phantasy1948Evidence for a relation