Fantasy and Early Phases of Self-Representation

DURING THE ANALYSIS of a married man, who had come into treatment at the age of 35 with a long-standing problem of premature ejaculation and an uncertainty about his identity, several important mental representations emerged in dreams, fantasy, active imagination, and reconstruction, developed and were returned to as their meaning in the transference and in the different phases of development became more clear.

They appeared clinically to be rooted in body sensation, and though loosely linked and in conflict, to form some kind of nucleus. These foci were not only poorly integrated but were under threat continually from parental images, and it was this instability which formed the basis for his symptoms. Disturbing feelings of a discontinuity, and a lack of some inner consistency, convinced him that he was not realizing his potential and that others were aware of his inner deficiency.

It is the nature of these representations with their powerful affects which this paper raises for theoretical discussion. Clinically, they appeared as partial self-representation at times fused with part objects, and then separate differentiated and in dynamic relationship with them and with each other. It seemed that they might be based on underlying deintegrates, as postulated by Fordham (1958), and form a series of sub-systems, with sub-identities, an early phase of the continuous developing relationship between the central archetype and the ego, the later phases of which may be represented by the symbols of wholeness with which we are more familiar.

As four of these dominant images were part phallic, it is relevant to quote from the chapter on the structure and dynamics of the self in Aion, in which Jung wrote, ‘Where there is an undervaluation of sexuality the self is symbolized as a phallus. Undervaluation can consist in an ordinary repression or in overt devaluation. In certain differentiated persons a purely biological interpretation and evaluation of sexuality can also