Phallic Fantasies, Fear of Death, and Ecstacy

The unconscious mechanism of ecstatic states seems to be one of the central problems in understanding creative activity. In his analysis of Paul Hanns Sachs 1) describes how ecstasy, suddenly exploding, by its almost hallucinatory force is man's only weapon to conquer death. But ecstasy is brief. When it has passed, the ego cannot keep the illusion of eternal life. Other mechanisms, less fascinating, less effective, never reaching consciousness, are mobilized as a defense against the inexorable fact that life is short and that we all are mortal. The fantasy of the phallic mother and a special variation of it, the child's unconscious fantasy of being his mother's phallus, seem to be a less drastic but more lasting defense against fear of death. If this phallic fantasy is weakened through increased pressure of fear of death, the ego is in danger of giving up both itself and its object relations. Its last resort is to turn away momentarily from reality, to revert to magic feelings of omnipotence, to the happiness of a sudden blaze of ecstasy.

Yet the defense mechanisms are alike, in the unconscious but continuous phallic fantasy and in the brief, conscious state of ecstasy. In both cases the ego wards off the fear of death through denial, through reversal into the opposite, and through the feeling of double identity. The difference is that, in ecstasy, the ego gives up reality testing and the double identity becomes conscious. Hence the triumphant experience that one is chosen and called. In the phallic fantasy the certainty of being the chosen one is weaker, reduced to obscure doubt, to a battle between a feeling “as if” one