Between Knowing and Believing: Salvaging Illusion’s Rightful Place in Psychoanalysis

Abstract

Illusion has historically received insufficient psychoanalytic attention, even though it plays an indispensable and adaptive role that helps protect individuals from becoming traumatized by the most psychically noxious aspects of reality. Trauma is mitigated by an individual’s knowing about the existence of such realities yet simultaneously believing them non-existent, with neither position granted exclusivity. Psychoanalytic theory is surprisingly predicated on the employment of illusions that picture an individual capable of controlling the potentially traumatic actions of others, just so long as the individual effectively manages his own intrapsychic processes (wishes, fantasies, impulses, etc.). The role of illusion in everyday life is highlighted.

• Illusion
• trauma
• Winnicott
• nameless dread
• fear of non-existence
• interpersonal control
• Freud