You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Unconscious Phantasy is part of the series Psychoanalytic Ideas, intended to bring together “the best of Public Lectures and other writings given by analysts of the British Psycho-Analytical Society on important psychoanalytic subjects.”
The book's editor, Riccardo Steiner, is a member of that society who with Pearl King published The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941—1945, a volume recognized by the American Association of Psychoanalysis as “Book of the Year” for 1993. Steiner's immersion in a controversy in which unconscious fantasy occupied a significant theoretical place well prepares him to edit a book on the subject.
In his introduction, Steiner traces the origins and evolution of the concept of unconscious fantasy in Freud's writings, as well as the changes to Freud's theories wrought by Klein and her followers, French psychoanalysts, and the recent contributions of the Sandlers. Steiner considers unconscious fantasy “one of the most important theoretical and clinical concepts of psychoanalysis” (p. 1). It has profound theoretical and clinical implications for understanding the workings of the mind, as well as for the therapeutic process. The book reprints foundational essay “Formulations of the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (1911) and four significant British contributions to the subject: “The Nature and Function of Phantasy” by (1948); “Phantasy and Reality” and “Imagination, Play, and Art” by (1994, 1991); and “Phantasy and Its Transformations: A Contemporary Freudian View” by and (1994). French psychoanalysis is represented by and “Fantasy and the Origin of Sexuality” (1968). In addition, Mark Solms contributes a chapter written specifically for the book, “Do Unconscious Phantasies Really Exist?” in which he reflects on the nature of perception of external and internal reality and the status of unconscious fantasy.