Imagination and Fantasy: The Dialectic Nature of the Encounter with Trauma and Dissociation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a distinction between fantasy and imagination, and endeavors to investigate its interconnectedness with trauma, as well as its implications to the therapeutic encounter with the psychic areas of trauma, dissociation, and repetition. Whereas imagination is an active phenomenon which resides within the dialectic of inner and outer worlds, increases psychic movement and works in the service of linking self-states within the subject and with his or her fellow subjects, fantasy is a phenomenon which is caused by trauma and isolates the subject both from his core self as well as from any sense of reality and connection with others. The paper offers a detailed exploration of these two modes of being and experiencing and of the psychic structures which comprise them, and demonstrates the ways by which the movement between imagination and fantasy, each with its own unique qualities, can enable patient and analyst to encounter, together, the experiences which were traumatized and dissociated. The clinical implications are discussed, and a detailed vignette is presented in order to demonstrate the elusive ways in which fantasy acts between patient and therapist in an effort to resuscitate deadened parts of the patient’s traumatized psychic life and bring them to the world of imagination and human connection.

This article is referred to by:

How Do We Stay Awake? Discussion of Daniel Levy and Boaz Shalgi’s “Imagination and Fantasy: The Dialectic Nature of the Encounter with Trauma and Dissociation

The Quest to Understand and Resolve Persistent Dissociative Processes: A Discussion of Levy and Shalgi, “Imagination and Fantasy: The Dialectic Nature of the Encounter with Trauma and Dissociation”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Winnicott’s words (1971c), taken from his encounter with a male patient that, he emphasizes, “has nothing to do with homosexuality” (p. 73), echo here: “I am listening to a girl,” says Winnicott. “I know perfectly well that you are a man but I am listening to a girl, and I am talking to a girl. I am telling this girl: ‘You are talking about penis envy’” (p. 73). Then, after the patient replies that was he to tell anyone about that girl he would be called mad, Winnicott continues: “It was not that you told this to anyone; it is I who see the girl and hear a girl talking, when actually there is a man on my couch. The mad person is myself” (p. 73). Winnicott then turns to the reader: “This madness”, he makes it perfectly clear, “was mine” (p. 73).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Levy

Daniel Levy, M.D., is a psychiatrist, teacher and supervisor at the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University.

Boaz Shalgi

Boaz Shalgi, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, head of the doctoral program: “Psychoanalysis and its Interfaces,” teacher, and supervisor, the Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Program, Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. He is the Editor in Chief, “Sihot - Dialogues”: Israel Journal of Psychotherapy.