Comments

One could not expect a more beautiful collection of papers than those presented here. The creative efforts of the people who have been affected by my work is tribute more than one could hope for. In the space allotted, I cannot hope to do justice to their contributions. They are most stimulating and full of ideas, and I will start by responding specifically to each presentation.

One of the most dramatic and daring examples of the use of the concept of unconscious fantasy was that of Dr. Kafka, when he touched on an issue which is universal and constantly enters into the work we do, namely, the use of unconscious fantasies to communicate our feelings to others. Dr. Shapiro's discussion of the use of language for the communication of unconscious meaning is closely related. These ideas are most important because communication of unconscious fantasy forms the essence of our technical work. While the language, figures of speech, metaphors, tone of voice, posture—all these forms of expression—may not be immediately available for interpretation at the verbal level, they all provide information to the analyst. As a result, the process of empathizing with the patient is facilitated and what results is the evocation of an unconscious fantasy shared in common. As Lewin (1968) pointed out, while the analyst is working with his patient's dreams, he transposes the visual elements of the patient's dream into corresponding verbal elements and adds pictorial elements of his own experience. This is the way in which he shares the experience that the patient is reporting to him. In my paper with Dr. Beres on “Fantasy and Identification in Empathy” (1974), I gave an example of an actual visual waking dream I experienced during a session with a patient. This dream corresponded exactly in content, if not in form, with the dream that the patient was presenting.