Article
Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality
Fantasme originaire, fantasmes des origines, origines du fantasme
An essay by Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, first published in Les Temps modernes (no. 215, April 1964), translated into English in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1968 and issued as a book by Hachette in 1985. It starts from Freud's difficulty, in the Wolf Man case, in deciding whether the primal scene had been lived or imagined, a difficulty that led him to seek a foundation beyond both individual experience and imagination in inherited primal fantasies. The authors recover this neglected concept and read the primal fantasies (the primal scene, seduction and castration) as fantasies of origins: like myths, each stages an answer to the enigma of the origin of the subject, of sexuality, or of the difference between the sexes. They describe fantasy as a scenario with multiple entries, in which the subject is present in the scene rather than in a fixed place, and they set Freud's notion beside the Kleinian conception of unconscious phantasy. Laplanche later called the essay the historical recovery of a concept with which he no longer agreed.
Main ideas
- Unable to decide whether the primal scene was lived or imagined, Freud sought a foundation beyond both individual experience and imagination, in primal fantasies he took to be inherited.
- The primal fantasies of the primal scene, seduction and castration are fantasies of origins, answering the enigmas of the origin of the subject, of sexuality and of the difference between the sexes.
- Fantasy is a scenario with multiple entries: the subject is present in the scene without being fixed to one position in it.
- The essay sets Freud's notion of fantasy beside the Kleinian distinction between the passing imagery of daydreams and the structural, lasting function of unconscious phantasy.
- Laplanche later disowned the concept, rejecting its grounding in phylogenetic inheritance and placing what is primal in codes supplied by culture.
What it shows
- 1967
Jean Laplanche collaborated with Jean-Bertrand Pontalis
Schoolfellows at the Lycée Henri IV, they co-wrote the essay on primal fantasy (1964) and, over eight years of work prompted by Daniel Lagache, the Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (1967).
- 1964
Jean Laplanche developed Primal fantasy
In ‘Fantasme originaire, fantasmes des origines, origines du fantasme’ (1964), Laplanche and Pontalis read Freud's primal fantasies (the primal scene, seduction and castration) as fantasies of origins. Each stages an answer to an enigma of the subject's beginning: the origin of the subject, of sexuality, and of the difference between the sexes.
- 1964
Jean-Bertrand Pontalis developed Primal fantasy
Pontalis wrote the 1964 essay with Laplanche. It treats Freud's primal fantasies as fantasies of origins and as the structure within which the subject's own fantasy takes place.
- 1915
Sigmund Freud introduced Primal fantasy
Freud named the Urphantasien in ‘A Case of Paranoia Running Counter to the Psycho-Analytic Theory of the Disease’ (1915): the fantasies of observing parental intercourse, of seduction and of castration. In Lecture 23 of the Introductory Lectures (1916–17) he suggested they were a phylogenetic endowment.