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In this paper I take up some examples of a favorable developmental vicissitude of the grandiose fantasy which I call the “Daedalus experience.” I shall also discuss the myth that highlights this particular psychological configuration. My study of what can be regarded as the reshaping of the grandiose fantasy in the course of its development was first stimulated by Kohut's (1966) re-examination of flying dreams and fantasies. This contribution and his subsequent reconsideration of narcissistic constellations have broadened our view of the developmental significance of the grandiose flying fantasy and have pointed the way toward placing its relation to the “whole person” (Freud, 1916-1917, p. 155) in a new theoretical framework.
In connection with the changed perspective on “the position which is held by the grandiose fantasy in the personality structure and of the function which it fulfills” (Kohut, 1966, p. 253), it is interesting to recall that Freud (1900) explicitly drew attention to his incomplete understanding of flying dreams and to a gap in psychological knowledge concerning a typical phenomenon: “I cannot … disguise from myself that I am unable to produce any complete explanation of this class of typical dreams. My material has left me in the lurch precisely at this point … and I should be glad to be able to fill up the gap by a careful analysis of clear instances” (pp. 272-273). (When Freud said, “My material has left me in the lurch,” he meant that since he had turned his attention to the subject of dream interpretation he had produced no flying dreams of his own for analytic study.)
Kohut's “analysis of clear instances” led to his conceptualization of the grandiose-exhibitionistic self, which says, as it were, “I am perfect”