The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought

Elizabeth Bott Spillius, Jane Milton, Penelope Garvey, Cyril Couve, Deborah Steiner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136717369
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

The New Dictionary of Kleinian Thought provides a comprehensive and wholly accessible exposition of Kleinian ideas. Offering a thorough update of R.D. Hinshelwood's highly acclaimed original, this book draws on the many developments in the field of Kleinian theory and practice since its publication. The book first addresses twelve major themes of Kleinian psychoanalytic thinking in scholarly essays organised both historically and thematically. Themes discussed include: unconscious phantasy, child analysisthe paranoid schizoid and depressive positions, the oedipus complex projective identification, symbol formation. Following this, entries are listed alphabetically, allowing the reader to find out about a particular theme - from Karl Abraham to Whole Object - and to delve as lightly or as deeply as needed. As such this book will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists as well as all those with an interest in Kleinian thought.

Part I
Main entries

1
Unconscious phantasy

Definition

In Kleinian theory unconscious phantasies underlie every mental process and accompany all mental activity. They are the mental representation of those somatic events in the body that comprise the instincts, and are physical sensations interpreted as relationships with objects that cause those sensations. Phantasy is the mental expression of both libidinal and aggressive impulses and also of defence mechanisms against those impulses. Much of the therapeutic activity of psychoanalysis can be described as an attempt to convert unconscious phantasy into conscious thought.

Freud introduced the concept of unconscious phantasy and phantasising, which he thought of as a phylogenetically inherited capacity of the human mind. Klein adopted his idea of unconscious phantasy but broadened it considerably because her work with children gave her extensive experience of the wide-ranging content of children’s phantasies. She and her successors have emphasised that phantasies interact reciprocally with experience to form the developing intellectual and emotional characteristics of the individual; phantasies are considered to be a basic capacity underlying and shaping thought, dreams, symptoms and patterns of defence.

Key papers

Freud, S. (1911, 1916)

1911	‘Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning’. Phantasy functions according to the pleasure principle, equating ‘reality of thought with external actuality, and wishes with their fulfilment’ (p. 225). Phantasies are likely to arise when instinctual wishes are frustrated.
1916–1917	‘The paths to the formation of symptoms’, Lecture 23 of Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

Sources of ‘primal phantasies’ (primal scene, seduction by adults, castration) lie in instincts and are part of innate, phylogenetic endowment. Phantasy as psychical reality.

Klein, M. (1921, 1923a, 1936, 1952, and indeed most of her papers)

Klein does not define phantasy, but stress on it is evident throughout her work with both children and adults.

1921	‘The development of a child’. Vivid description of a child’s unconscious phantasies accompanying his reality-based activities.
1936	‘Weaning’. Klein’s belief that analysis shows phantasies are in the mind of an infant ‘almost from birth’.
1952	‘Observations on the behaviour of young infants’. Unconscious knowledge of the breast exists at birth and is phylogenetic inheritance (p. 117).

Other

1948	Isaacs, S. ‘The nature and function of phantasy’. Unconscious phantasy defined as ‘the mental corollary, the psychic representative of instinct’ and ‘the primary content of unconscious mental processes’ and described as defence against anxiety.
1962	Bion, W. Learning from Experience. Assumes that individuals are born capable of ‘preconceptions’ that, if ‘realised’ in experience, may give rise to ‘conceptions’.
1991	Segal. H. ‘Phantasy’, in Dream, Phantasy and Art. Phantasy is a central concept in Kleinian thought, regarded as the core primary activity expressing both impulses and defences. There is continual mutual interaction between phantasies and perception.
1991	Hinshelwood, R.D. A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought, 2nd edition. Emphasis on Klein’s finding that phantasies may accompany ‘realistic’ activities. Unconscious phantasies tacitly express the belief that bodily sensations are caused by internal mental objects. Detailed discussion of unconscious phantasy in Controversial Discussions, 1941–1945.

Chronology and discussion

The term ‘unconscious phantasy’: Spellings and meanings

Strachey makes the definitive exposition, as follows:

‘Phantasy.’ The spelling of this word causes a good deal of annoyance. The ‘ph’ form is adopted here on the basis of a discussion in the large Oxford Dictionary (under ‘Fantasy’) which concludes: ‘In modern use “fantasy” and “phantasy”, in spite of their identity in sound and ultimate etymology, tend to be apprehended as separate words, the predominant sense of the former being “caprice, whim, fanciful invention”, while that of the latter is “imagination, visionary notion”.’ Accordingly the ‘ph’ form is used here for the technical psychological phenomenon. But the ‘f’ form is also used on appropriate occasions (see, for instance, Standard Ed. 17, 227 and 330).

(Strachey, 1966, p. xxiv)

Susan Isaacs (1948, p. 80) suggests the use of the ‘ph’ spelling for unconscious phantasy and the ‘f’ spelling for conscious phantasy. Some analysts have adopted Isaacs’ suggestion, but most British analysts now use the ‘ph’ spelling for both unconscious and conscious phantasies, at least in part because it is often difficult to be sure whether a patient’s phantasy is unconscious, tacitly conscious or fully conscious. Laplanche and Pontalis (1968) criticise Isaacs’ usage because in their view it disagrees with the profound kinship that Freud wished to emphasise between the conscious phantasy of perverts, the delusional fears of paranoid patients and the unconscious phantasy of hysterics. The spelling situation is further complicated by the fact that most American analysts use the ‘f’ spelling for both conscious and unconscious phantasies.

The problem of the meaning of the term phantasy, however, is as complex as its spelling. Whatever its spelling and formal definition, the term obstinately continues to imply the contrasting meanings described by the Oxford Dictionary and Strachey. The first meaning, ‘caprice, whim, fanciful invention’, describes something that is trivial, not true or significant according to accepted beliefs about material reality. The second meaning, ‘imagination, visionary notion’, has a connotation of a possibly greater truth that may transcend accepted beliefs about material reality. Neither the Oxford Dictionary nor Strachey describes a third possibility, namely, that phantasies might conform to generally accepted beliefs about reality. Thus the term ‘phantasy’, and the term ‘unconscious phantasy’ to an even greater extent, contain intrinsic contradictions that have allowed and often exacerbated argument and disagreement in psychoanalysis. In general the tendency in everyday speech and among psychoanalysts is to think of the first meaning as the dominant one, that is, to expect that phantasies will not conform to material reality and that they are likely to be unreal and trivial.

Freud’s and Klein’s views on unconscious phantasy

Freud introduced the concept of unconscious phantasy, but in his earlypublished work, especially The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), he hardly uses the term; his method of interpreting dreams uses the idea of the ‘unconscious wish’ but the relation of the unconscious wish to unconscious phantasy is not explicitly discussed. Phantasy appears in the Dora case history (1905), and even more explicitly in ‘Hysterical phantasies and their relation to bisexuality’ (1908), in which Freud says that some phantasies are ‘unconscious all along’ but that most exist first as daydreams, that is, as conscious phantasies, which are later repressed.

Freud stresses several aspects of phantasy in different papers. In ‘Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning’ (1911) he describes the first aspect as follows:

With the introduction of the reality principle one species of thoughtactivity was split off; it was kept free from reality testing and remained subordinated to the pleasure principle alone. This activity is phantasying, which begins already in children’s play, and later, continued as day-dreaming, abandons dependence on real objects.

(Freud, 1911, p. 222)

… The strangest characteristic of unconscious (repressed) processes… is due to their entire disregard of reality-testing; they equate reality of thought with external actuality, and wishes with their fulfilment… Hence also the difficulty of distinguishing unconscious phantasies from memories which have become unconscious.

(Freud, 1911, p. 225)

The second aspect of unconscious phantasy he describes particularly clearly in 1916, saying that there are certain universal ‘primal’ phantasies that are part of the human phylogenetic inheritance. In his view there are three such phantasies: the primal scene, seduction by an adult and the threat of castration (Freud, 1916–1917). Later in the same paper Freud grapples with questions...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Main entries
• Part II General entries
• Bibliography of Kleinian publications 1920–1989