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In this chapter I make a fresh attempt to show the subtle qualitative differences that exist between varieties of fantasying. I am looking particularly at what has been called fantasying and I use once more the material of a session in a treatment where the contrast between fantasying and dreaming was not only relevant but, I would say, central.1
The case I am using is that of a woman of middle age who in her analysis is gradually discovering the extent to which fantasying or something of the nature of daydreaming has disturbed her whole life. What has now become clear is that there is an essential difference for her between fantasying and the alternatives of dreaming, on the one hand, and of real living and relating to real objects, on the other. With unexpected clarity, dreaming and living have been seen to be of the same order, daydreaming being of another order. Dream fits into object-relating in the real world, and living in the real world fits into the dream-world in ways that are quite familiar, especially to psychoanalysts. By contrast, however, fantasying remains an isolated phenomenon, absorbing energy but not contributing-in either to dreaming or to living. To some extent fantasying has remained static over the whole of this patient's life, that is to say, dating from very early years, the pattern being established by the time that she was two or three. It was in evidence at an even earlier date, and it probably started with a ‘cure’ of thumb-sucking.
Another distinguishing feature between these two sets of phenomena is this, that whereas a great deal of dream and of feelings belonging to life are liable to be under repression, this is a different kind of thing