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Dr Jones (Paper, read in Dr Jones's absence by Dr Glover): Mrs Isaacs has evidently first sought for a basis of agreed conclusions from which to explore later the more difficult matters of divergences, and, although no doubt scope may always be found for controversy, particularly when the further implications of her statements are considered, she has in my opinion succeeded admirably in establishing as nearly a non-controversial basis for her purpose as possible. The stress she lays in her first few pages on the apprehension of psychical reality, and the debt we here owe to Freud, is quite fundamental. I would say that the hall-mark of psychoanalysts is their feeling for unconscious psychical reality, and I agree with her remark that even among psychoanalysts this feeling is often not so highly developed as it might be – despite vocal assertions to the contrary. What distinguishes other people is their use of the words ‘only’ or ‘merely’, as doctors so commonly do when referring to neurosis, the imagination, etc.
Her main thesis is the extension of the terms of reference attaching to the word ‘phantasy’. The cry may be raised that she has changed the meaning of a familiar word, but I do not think so. I am reminded of a similar situation years ago with the word ‘sexuality’. The critics complained that Freud was changing the meaning of this word, and Freud himself once or twice seemed to assent to this way of putting it, but I always protested that he made no change in the meaning of the word itself; what he did was to extend the conception and, by