Arlow's “Fantasy, Memory, and Reality Testing”: The World Found and Refound

READING ARLOW

As with any interpretive project, there are a number of ways to approach a writer like Arlow and this paper in particular. A previous revisit in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly of another classic paper by Arlow, his “Unconscious Fantasy and Disturbances of Conscious Experience” (2008/1969; hereafter “Disturbances”), was given two quite different readings, by Shapiro (2008) and Moss (2008). Although his “Disturbances” paper was published concurrently with the one we are currently revisiting, “Fantasy, Memory, and Reality Testing” (1969; hereafter “Fantasy”), it was in fact presented several years earlier, in 1963, and stands in relation to it as a prototype.

Shapiro (2008) gave an appreciation of Arlow's “Disturbances” and of his legacy in analysis. It was written from the perspective of someone who was taught by and studied with Arlow when he had become a venerable figure, and his reading aimed to deflect looming critiques of Arlow's classical theory and technique. He observes, along with Moss (2008), that the

reader of 2008 may notice the absence of the detailed case descriptions and exploration of the analyst's experience that have become common, if not indeed normative. Then, however, Shapiro and Moss diverge. As Shapiro remembers things, against the background of topographical theory and related technique, Arlow and his American colleagues were “the ‘moderns’” (2008, p. 49). He briefly praises Arlow's style as “almost lyrical” in places (p. 52). He fills in some gaps in Arlow's exposition, for example noting that he used the idea of Nachträglichkeit without naming it (p. 51). And he makes theoretical points, noting for