References by R.D. Laing in Chapter 1, Self and Others to
a paper by Susan Isaacs (1952)
WE talk, in
a tough and ready way, of acts and experiences 'in memory', 'in dreams', 'in imagination',
and 'in reality'. Some psychoanalysts propose that we can also talk about
experiences 'in' 'unconscious phantasy'. But is unconscious phantasy a mode or a
type of experience? If
it is, it is with a difference. If not, what is it, if not a figment of
imagination?
The psychoanalytic
thesis can be stated
thus: it is not possible to prove the existence of unconscious phantasy
to the person who is immersed in it. Unconscious phantasy can be known to be
phantasy only after the person's own emergence from it. This way of putting it
is riddled with difficulties, and so is every other way. The situation is not
assisted by the fact that the concept of unconscious phantasy has received very
little scrutiny from an existential and phenomenological perspective. And yet
no comprehensive account of human relations can ignore it.
A paper by
Susan Isaacs (1952) on 'The nature and function of
Phantasy' provides
a convenient starting-point. I choose to begin with this version of the
psychoanalytic theory of phantasy because it remains an influential study that
has not been superseded and because Isaacs seems to regard phantasy as, among
other things, a mode of experience.
Isaacs states that
she is ‘mostly concerned with the definition of
"phantasy"; that is to say, with describing the series of facts
which
the use of the term helps us to identify, to organize and to relate to other
significant facts’.
She summarizes her argument as follows:
a)
Phantasies are the primary content of
unconscious mental processes.
b)
Unconscious phantasies are primarily about bodies,
and represent instinctual aims towards objects.
c)
These phantasies are, in the first instance, the psychic representatives
of libidinal and destructive instincts. Early in development they also become
elaborated into defences as well as wish-fulfilments and anxiety contents.
d)
Freud's postulated 'hallucinatory
wish-fulfilment' and his 'primary identification', 'introjection', and
'projection' are the basis of the phantasy life.
e)
Through external experience, phantasies become elaborated and capable
of expression, but they do not depend upon such experience for their existence.
f)
Phantasies are not dependent upon words,
although they may under certain conditions he capable of expression in words.
g)
The earliest phantasies are experienced as
sensations: later they take the form of plastic images and dramatic representations.
h)
Phantasies have both psychic and bodily
effects, e.g. in conversion symptoms, bodily qualities, character and personality,
neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and sublimations.
i)
Unconscious phantasies form the operative
link between instincts and mechanism. When studied in detail, every variety of ego-mechanism
can be seen to arise from specific sorts of phantasy, which in the last resort
have their origin in instinctual impulses. ‘The ego is a differentiated part of
the id.’ A 'mechanism' is an abstract general term describing certain mental
processes which are experienced by the subject as unconscious phantasies.
j)
Adaptation to reality and reality-thinking
require the support of concurrent unconscious phantasies. Observation of the
ways in which knowledge of the external world develops shows how the child's
phantasy contributes to his learning.
k)
Unconscious phantasies exert a continuous
influence throughout life, both in normal and neurotic people, the differences
lying in the specific character of the dominant phantasies, the desire or
anxiety associated with them and their interplay with each other and with
external reality.
The term
phantasy is intended to point to a series of facts. What is the domain
of this series of facts? Are they facts of experience? Of my experience? Of your
experience? Of my experience of you, but not of your experience of yourself? Are they
facts, not of my experience, but inferred from facts of my experience? By me about me?
By me about you? Does their domain lie anywhere in the experience of self and
other, or outside all experience, albeit inferred from it? Phantasies are experienced as dramatic representations.
What does this mean? Can dramatic representations be experienced as phantasy?
Whose, and by whom?
Isaacs's paper is mainly concerned with inferences by self about other. In my experience, self does not
experience the experience of other directly. The facts about other
available to self are actions of other experienced by self.
From the
perspective of self seeing other, Isaacs infers from her experience of the
other's actions certain things about the other's experience,
An adult
infers what a baby experiences. The baby does not tell us. The adult infers
from the baby's behaviour that the baby's experience of a situation common to
the adult and the baby is the same as, or different from, the adult's
experience of the 'same' situation.
Isaacs states:
'Our views about phantasy in these
earliest years are based wholly upon inference, but then this is true at any
age. Unconscious phantasies are always inferred, not observed as such; the technique of
psychoanalysis as a whole is largely based upon inferred
knowledge'.
To be
consistent, we appear to have no option but to maintain that self's knowledge
of other's experience, of any kind, conscious or unconscious, is based at any
age of self or other entirely upon inference, as Isaacs states firmly in the second
sentence above about unconscious phantasy. Since, to Isaacs, phantasies are 'inner', 'mental'
events, only one's own phantasies are directly available to self. They can only be inferred by the other. The idea that 'the
mind', 'the unconscious', or 'phantasy' is located inside a person and, in
that sense, is inaccessible
to the other, has far-reaching effects on the whole of psychoanalytic theory and method.
Isaacs, in referring not simply to imagination, daydreams, or reveries, but to 'unconscious phantasy',
is making two types of inference from her position as the own person,
namely: she is inferring something about the other's experience, and she is inferring that this is
something of which the other is unaware. This seems to mean that there is a whole
type of experience, as well as specific 'content' of experience, of which the other who 'has' the imputed experience knows,
or may know, nothing. From her premises, corroboration of her self's inferences
by explicit testimony from the other is not necessary to confirm these
particular inferences.
When self
is the analyst and the other the analysand, the own person states:
The personality,
the attitudes and intentions, even the external characteristics and the sex of
the analyst, as seen and felt in the patient's mind, change from day to
day (even from moment to moment), according to changes in the inner life
of the patient (whether these are brought about by the analyst's comments or by
outside happenings). That is to say, the patient's relation to his analyst
is almost entirely one of unconscious phantasy.
The own
person infers from the other's behaviour that the other's behaviour has
a 'meaning' to which the other is blind and, in that sense, the other cannot
'see' or 'realize' what his (the other's) actions are implying.
The analyst then says: 'The patient is dominated by an "unconscious" phantasy.'
Let us
distinguish two usages of 'unconscious'. First, the term 'unconscious' may
refer to dynamic structures, functions, mechanisms, processes that are meant
to explain a person's actions or experiences. Such structures,
functions, mechanisms, or processes are outside experience but are used to
'explain' experience, whether called conscious or unconscious. These concepts lie outside
experience, but start from inferences about experience. If these inferences are
incorrect, everything built upon them is completely wrong.
In the
second place, 'unconscious' may signify that the user of the term is claiming
that he or the other is unaware of part of his own experience, despite the
apparent absurdity of this claim.
We may ask:
what is the experiential status of 'unconscious phantasy' as Isaacs uses this
term? Isaacs, time and again, states that unconscious phantasy is an
experience:
A mechanism is an abstract general
term describing certain mental processes which are experienced by the
subject as unconscious phantasies.
Phantasy is (in the first instance)
the mental corollary, the psychic representative, of instinct.
There is no impulse, no instinctual urge or response which is not
experienced as unconscious phantasy.
On the basis of those principles of
observation and interpretation which have already been described and are well
established by psycho-analytic work, we are able to conclude that when
the child shows his desire for his mother's breast, he experiences this
desire as a specific phantasy – ‘I want to suck the nipple’. If desire is very
intense (perhaps on account of anxiety), he is likely to feel: ‘I want to eat
her all up’.
For Isaacs,
unconscious phantasy is a way of experiencing our desires which plays a part in
our personal relations throughout life.
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
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