“Grown-Up” Words: An Interpersonal/Relational Perspective on Unconscious Fantasy

Abstract

I offer the view that the concept of unconscious fantasy remains of heuristic value only if the phenomenon to which it refers is acknowledged as a dissociated, affect-driven experience rather than as a form of symbolized thought that is repressed. I argue that what is taken to be evidence of buried unconscious fantasy is an illusion created by the interpersonal/relational nature of the analytic process during the ongoing symbolization of unprocessed affect. As cognitive and linguistic symbolization gradually replaces dissociation as the automatic safeguard of a patient's self-stability, increased self-reflectiveness fosters the illusion of something emerging that has been always known but warded off. Thus, if we hypothesize the unconscious existence of something called fantasy, it is essential to accept that it is not a fantasy possessed by the person but vice versa; the person is possessed by the fantasy—a “not-me” affective experience that is denied self-narrative symbolization. With regard to whether I believe the concept is central to psychoanalytic theory and practice at this point in time, I hope that a “let's wait and see” attitude might best support the relational shift from metatheory to clinical theory already taking place among diverse schools of thought.