The Structure and Function of Unconscious Fantasy in the Psychoanalytic Treatment Process

Abstract

We have surveyed the history of the concept of unconscious fantasy, from its inception in Freud's theorizing to the transformation of its structure and function in the late 1960s. The demands of clinical practice, the increasing focus on the nature of the analytic relation and the increasing attention to patient's actual experiences in infancy and childhood contributed to the waning of reconstruction of the core-unconscious fantasy (the Oedipus complex) in the treatment process. Drastic changes in the concept occurred from the 1970s to the present, beginning with Kohut's reformulation of psychoanalysis, followed by contributions of intersubjectivity theorists, relational psychoanalysts and the Boston Study Group's innovative ideas. In the changes referred to in this article, Kohut's shift from drive-based unconscious fantasies to affective, lived, experience-based fantasies are the most significant ones. The introduction of the selfobject transferences confirmed the importance of our earlier finding (Ornstein and Ornstein, 1992) that patients enter into analysis and psychoanalytic psychotherapy with a set of curative fantasies. With excerpts of two analyses we illustrated how the recognition of the curative fantasy, which embodies the patient's hopes and expectations (the search for a new beginning) may promote the analytic process.

Notes

¹Regarding such reformulations the question arises: Is psychoanalytic knowledge cumulative or not? This issue cannot be examined in the present context.

²On account of our relative unfamiliarity with Kleinian theory, we have not included a review of that literature. Unconscious fantasy had played a central role in that theoretical system than it has in the Freudian tradition (see Steiner, 2005). A recent, comprehensive survey of the theories of unconscious experience from a self psychological perspective is offered by Hans-Peter Hartmann (2005).

³We describe this momentous event as a “shift” because Freud did not give up the seduction theory completely—and with it the contribution of reality-based experiences in coproducing the neuroses, even as he minimized the role of the latter. In his notion of a “complemental series” he maintained both drive-related fantasy as well as the impact of reality as causative agents in different proportions. The reality, however, was always considered distorted by unconscious fantasy.

⁴A detailed discussion of this case and the relationship between pathogenesis and reconstruction is in Fantasy or Reality? An Unsettled Question in Pathogenesis and Reconstruction in Psychoanalysis (A. Ornstein, 1983).

⁵The modifications involved mainly the reconceptualization of the primary and secondary processes as described below, as more significant than whether the fantasies were conscious or unconscious.

⁶ Noy (1969) offered the most comprehensive reassessment of the structure of the primary processes, as well as the secondary processes, in light of the structural hypothesis—both of these were organized but the former, subjectively, centered on the needs of the self, and the latter objectively, was in accordance with the reality principle.

⁷This claim is not altogether valid. Gifted artists, novelists, and poets find access to the repressed via introspection and often uncanny observations of others.

⁸We would rather say dynamically unconscious to stress the quality of the experience and avoid the connotation of the system unconscious of the topographic theory.

⁹Implicit relational knowing describes the way that individuals relate to one another without focal attention and conscious verbal experience of it (Lyons-Ruth, 1999).

¹⁰The discussion of the emphasis that relational theory places on the patient's experiences with the analyst as a “new object” is beyond the scope of this article.

¹¹Taking her clue from the way affects illuminate the meaning of experience, A. Ornstein (1978, 1991) suggested that the “compulsion to repeat” ought to be recognized as an instance of “dread to repeat” (1991, p. 381). Repetitions are unavoidable; however, such repetitions are accompanied by a sense of dread as patients struggle to achieve and maintain changes as these occur in the course of the analysis, in spite of the pull toward repetition.

¹²A similar point was made by Schwaber's published exchange with Arlow.

¹³Various segments of Mr. K's analysis have been described in great detail before and are excerpted here, highly condensed, with a different focus (P. H. Ornstein, 1993, 2004; P. H. Ornstein and Ornstein, 1994). In what follows, we borrow liberally from them, especially from P. H. Ornstein, 2004, without additional attribution.

¹⁴My willingness and unwillingness became a major issue for some time. When he experienced the former, everything went much more smoothly; when he experienced the latter, the difficulties mounted (P. H. Ornstein, 2004).

¹⁵This statement turned out to be a transference-reference to his mother's nonemotionally involved care, once a new sibling was born, but it was also a correct sensing on his part of my initial misconstrued “neutrality.”

¹⁶Without realizing this at first, whenever Mr. K. seemed close to “making it,” I became more silent, letting him get to the other side alone, assuming that he could now make it. This is what he experienced as my “abandonment” of him.

¹⁷ Response, as used in this article, encompasses all intended verbal and nonverbal interventions, as well as nonintended ones. The latter the analyst can only find out about from the patient's reactions or direct communications.

¹⁸This focus on what is more aptly termed the “Laius complex” aspect of the oedipal cluster of fantasies seems to have triggered Mr. K.'s unconscious curative fantasy to undo the impact of his father's treatment of him.

¹⁹This case was originally reported in The Casebook (Goldberg, 1978).

²⁰ Kohut (1971) made the point that in childhood and adult perversions a painful affect becomes sexualized in an effort to stem the tide of regression at times in response to severe frustrations.

²¹Infantile grandiosity is an infantile psychic structure that had undergone repression and/or disavowal. The dynamic presence of these repressed infantile structures is conceptualized in a manner similar to the conceptualization of fixation points that occur in response to traumatic frustration of libidinal and aggressive impulses, namely that they give rise to symptoms, inhibitions, and, in the analytic process, to specific forms of transferences.