Prologue

Reason, or the ratio of all that we have already known is not the same as it shall be when we know more. (William Blake, quoted by David W. Mann, 1994, p. 14)

During the last 2 decades, pluralism has become the beacon to deepen our understanding of psychoanalysis. It allows us to reexamine some of the fundamental concepts that have contributed to the edifice of the psychoanalytic model. The unconscious fantasy is one of those concepts. Virtually every analyst who was trained during the 20th century has turned to the concept of the unconscious fantasy to explain the workings of the mind and the transformations that occur in the clinical situation.

Freud's creativity in describing the unconscious fantasy as a means of explaining why patients were ill and how he was able to help them has served as the paradigm of psychoanalytic thinking. He introduced the unconscious fantasy in his initial clinical case histories as he explained that his patients had rejected an experience from consciousness that was transformed into a unconscious fantasy that returned in the form of symptoms.

Although the unconscious fantasy as a concept remains as firmly rooted in psychoanalytic thought and practice today as it was a century ago, the texture of the concept seems different, as psychoanalysis has evolved in depth and breadth. Today there is considerably more emphasis on process and development. The unconscious fantasy exists in a mind that contains a variety of object relations. The unconscious fantasy requires both objective and subjective perspectives to be followed in the clinical situation. The unconscious fantasy is considered in the context of a Self that is almost epiphenomenal, that is a subject and object at the same time.

With the importance of pluralism in psychoanalytic thinking, the most familiar and explanatory theories used by analysts are providing only incomplete understanding of the mind and the clinical situation. The necessity of using different approaches to assist in