Omnipotent Fantasies Research Articles

Family caregivers of patients with Head and Neck Cancer seen at an oncologic outpatient service of a Brazilian public university: A qualitative study on reports regarding interpersonal emotional handling

IntroductionHumanistic studies applied to the health-illness clinic go beyond explaining cause-effect relationships among disease phenomena, treatments, and preventions. Qualitative research aims to understand symbolic relationships built in life experiences among the manifestations and the people. How to act in front of a person whose physical appearance and odour can be unpleasant, such as in the HNC - Head Neck Cancer? Or whose life history may have been marked by deviant behaviours and negligence in self-care?ObjectivesTo interpret emotional meanings attributed through open interviews conducted with relatives about the domestic care of patients with HNC under clinical treatment.MethodsSample composed of family caregivers of patients with HNC, sent sequentially by colleagues from the clinical service who were informed of the research. The study used the Clinical-Qualitative Method (Turato. Portuguese Psychos. J, 2000 2(1): 93-108). Semi-Directed Interview with Open-ended Questions In-Depth and Field Notes was used for data collection. The employ of the Seven Steps of the Clinical-Qualitative Content Analysis (Faria-Schützer et al. Cien Saude Colet. 2021; 26(1): 265-274) has permitted the understanding of the topics. Sample closed with 12 persons according to the information saturation strategy (Fontanella et al. Cad Saude Publica. 2008; 24(1): 17-27), conducted by the first author, a female psychologist. To interpret the empirical material, we use Medical/Health Psychology, the psychodynamics of relationships of the Balintian framework, disease and illness while modes of un-health, psychic defence mechanisms against anguish. Validation by peers from the Lab of Clinical-Qualitative Research Laboratory, at the State University of Campinas.ResultsFor this presentation, we listed three categories from the free-floating re-readings: (1) Certain need to recognize the care provided as a handling strategy with effort, putting in this ‘validation’ their relief regarding natural suffering of the care process; (2) Caregiver’s psychological fantasies of omnipotence in the care process, frequently perceiving the reality a phenomenologically and necessarily distorted by the caregiver. (3) Moments of impotence feeling in front of the finitude reality that it knows will arrive.ConclusionsThe family caregivers can present certain emotional defences, such as subtle magical thinking, in which they distort the reality experienced as a management strategy and validation of their care. They act so to alleviate their psychological and existential suffering. Group meetings with family members to talk openly about the difficulties on the psychological management of patients with HNC, coordinated by a psychotherapist, are effective as a space for creativity in daily management at home and a space for catharsis.Disclosure of InterestNone Declared

Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Psychoanalyzing democracies: Antagonisms, paranoia, and the productivity of depression

Terry Eagleton's Divine Comedy


 
 
 This essay reflects on the links between comedy and religion in Terry Eagle- ton’s writing since 2000. It proposes that religious thought provides the same kind of occasion and imperative to take comedy seriously as Marxist theory had done earlier in Eagleton’s career. The essay argues that the connecting principle between Marxism, Catholicism, criticism and comedy is the body, especially in its conjoining of absurdity and abasement. It proposes that comedy is best regarded as the enactment of the fantasy of cognitive omnipotence, or the abstract will-to-enjoyment in constant search for occasions. We therefore likely joke for the same reason as we pray, for the pleasure of getting above ourselves, which includes the gratifying prospect of seeing ourselves tumbling off the ladder, which might be a slapstick translation of the felix culpa, or fortunate fall. If Eagleton’s critical comedy is officially offered as a salutory foretaste of the pleasure of redemption, its gratifications seem always also to lie down where all the ladders start, in suffering and finitude.
 
 

CINEMA AND SCIENCE: THE HYBRID BODY

The relationship between science and cinema has not always been peaceful. If film has been fundamental to scientific and technological progress thanks to the register of movement, when cinema took over fiction, it became interested in the literary stories of mad scientists, who chose to transgress the ethical codes of their field in the name of creating a perfect humanity. Artificial genetic creation laboratories are a reality close to home today, with the insertion of human cells into animal embryos. From Dr. Moreau to contemporary research, the cinematic imagination allows us to examine the fantasies of omnipotence that easily seize researchers,and confront them with the destructive consequences of their megalomania.

Bound by Infinities: Technology, Immediacy and Our Environmental Crisis.

This paper explores the relationship between human desire, technology, and imagination, emphasizing (1) the phenomenology of this relationship, and (2) its ontological and ecological ramifications. Drawing on the work of Bion and Winnicott, the paper will develop a psychoanalytic container for attitudes contributing to our current climate-based crisis, paying special attention to the problematic effect technology has had on our sense of time and place. Many of our technologies stunt sensuous engagement, collapse psychic space, diminish our capacity to tolerate frustration, and blind us to our dependence on worlds beyond the human. In short, our technologies trouble our relationship to our bodies and other bodies. The paper argues that omnipotent fantasies organizing our relationship to technology, to each other, and to the nonhuman world, have cocooned us in a kind of virtual reality that devastates a sense of deep obligation to the environment.

Transcorporeal becoming: the temporalities of Searles and the nonhuman

As critical theories center on co-emergent interspecies relationalities, psychoanalysis continues to reproduce a fantasy of narcissistic omnipotence and exceptionalism. But theories of interspecies becoming have failed to adequately address human ambivalence and conflicts of interest that are inherent in their ideals of dispersive agencies and unfolding potentialities/uncertainties. There is still a need for a theory of subjectivity that can explore the ongoing processes of human disavowals and dissociations that reify the human exceptionalism motivating planetary destruction. Psychoanalysis remains one of the only theories of subjectivity that creates space for ambivalence, conflict, and unconscious motivations. This paper melds psychoanalytic theories of the non-human with critical and indigenous theories of interspecies emergence, to create a space where dispersive agencies, unconscious ambivalences, and the potentialities of multiple temporalities can be held.

가즈오 이시구로의 『남아있는 나날』과 포스트제국주의 우울증

This paper aims to examine Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day through Paul Gilroy’s theory of postimperial melancholia, and then shows that Stevens is a postimperialist who cannot embrace the loss of the Empire but instead insinuates its glory. Gilroy argues that postimperial melancholia results from people’s refusal of acceptance of “the loss of a fantasy of omnipotence” (99), in which the multilayered trauma, political, economic, cultural and psychological, is generated. According to Gilroy, the postimperialists’ inability to mourn the loss of empire induces shame and guilty and on the other hand displays antipathy toward immigrants and aliens. Stevens, as a butler, is unable to conceal his postimperialism, revealing his ethical immaturity about racialism and multiculturalism. He identifies his concept of dignity with Englishness, by advocating the greatness of Lord Darlington who was anti-Semitic or had association with the British Union of Fascists. In this, reading The Remains of the Day through postimperial melancholia reveals that Stevens is unwittingly bound up with the rehomogenization of his lordship and at the same time he tries to adjust to his new American host’s bantering in revitalizing the Darling Hall with American capitalism.

Africa in the Novels for Young People in France and in Germany by Élodie Malanda

Reviewed by: Africa in the Novels for Young People in France and in Germany by Élodie Malanda Sibylle Weingart Translated by Nikola von Merveldt L'AFRIQUE DANS LES ROMANS POUR LA JEUNESSE EN FRANCE ET EN ALLEMAGNE 1991-2010. Les pièges de la bonne intention. [ Africa in the Novels for Young People in France and in Germany.] By Élodie Malanda. Series: Francophonies; 12. Honoré Champion éditeur, 2019, 583 pages. ISBN: 978-2-7453-5071-8 L'AFRIQUE DANS LES ROMANS POUR LA JEUNESSE EN FRANCE ET EN ALLEMAGNE 1991-2010. Les pièges de la bonne intention. [Africa in the Novels for Young People in France and in Germany.] By Élodie Malanda. Series: Francophonies; 12. Honoré Champion éditeur, 2019, 583 pages. ISBN: 978-2-7453-5071-8 About seventy years ago, certain colonial structures changed in many of Africa's fifty-four states. African men and women fought for formal independence from the former colonial powers then and in the following decades. However, these "formal" forms of independence were only snapshots of the ongoing political, economic, and cultural struggles for Africa's real and lasting independence, not only from Europe. One of the decisive steps of decolonization is cultural in nature, as the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiongo points out in his seminal essays "Decolonising the Mind" (1986) and "Moving the Centre—the Struggle for Cultural Freedom" (1993). In these essays, Ngugi calls for cultural self-empowerment and the self-liberation of African people from colonial projections or racist violence by Europeans. This call was also addressed to white Europeans and white authors, with the appeal to engage in self-critical self-reflection, to be aware of one's own privileges, to think about "whiteness," to question socialization with colonial clichés regarding Africa and African people, and to challenge racially grounded stereotypes in one's own writings and thoughts and actions. In times of Black Lives Matter, this call has gained new urgency. In her doctoral dissertation L'Afrique dans les romans pour la jeunesse en France et en Allemagne (published by Honoré Champion, Paris, 2019), the Luxembourg researcher Élodie Malanda expertly examines the question of what "African images" contemporary children's and youth literature from France and Germany, both former colonial powers in Africa, "send" to their readership today: of the continent in general, of [End Page 116] individual countries, and of African men, women, and children. She bases her analysis on 150 selected novels of contemporary children's and youth literature published in France or Germany between 1991 and 2010, including some translations from English. In her book, Malanda examines the important question of the extent to which colonial discourse and colonial "fantasies of omnipotence" are perpetuated in contemporary children's and youth literature, or whether and to what extent there has been a change in discourse, a disruption or a critical reflection of the "forms of representation" of Africa and African people in French and German children's literature. The subtitle of the doctoral thesis, Les pièges de la bonne intention (The Pitfalls of Good Intentions), already dampens expectations of great changes in the "Africa images." It may remind readers of the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," pointing out the jarring contradiction between the intention and literary outcome of many of the novels examined. Many of these books are indeed imbued with the authors' and characters' sense of mission to promote understanding among nations, to sensitize the readership to political problems, and to put the colonial idea of white superiority in the text itself in its place. Forewords, blurbs, and biographical information about the authors also bear eloquent witness to this. In addition, some of the authors (such as Yves Pinguilly, Hermann Schulz, Nasrin Siege, and many others) claim the status of "friend of Africa," "white African," or "Africa expert" for themselves, and insist on their intimate knowledge of the countries based on regular visits or longer stays. But this does not save them from traps in their own texts, which sometimes reproduce subtle or even crude colonial clichés, as Malanda can demonstrate with her astute interpretative work. Malanda investigates how these contradictions between good intentions and controversial...

Discussion of “The Therapeutics of the Fee in Psychoanalysis”

This discussion of Dr. Pauley’s paper (this issue) on the therapeutics of the fee first highlights the various valuable contributions Pauley makes. It applauds his unusual openness in sharing his internal vulnerability with patients around fees, his raising the question about why fee setting is so complicated for analysts and patients alike, his focusing on omnipotent fantasies in the transference and countertransference, and his uncovering of the multiple meanings money has for therapists beyond just their income. Berger picks up on Pauley’s invitation to therapists to be more curious about their own discomforts with money. Drawing on her own teaching, writing and clinical experience, she adds to Pauley’s more global ideas, stressing instead the more specific meaning of money in each treatment dyad. Among these specifics, Berger highlights the chronic avoidance of teaching about money in analytic institutes. She clarifies some Freudian ideas about how money can become tied up with anal witholding, and offers examples of how she got stuck with three patients around setting and raising their fees. Berger describes how these patients’ believed that their fees could mean safety, value or exploitation and how these attribuitions generated countertransference blind spots for her. The discussion urges clinicians to keep digging hard into themselves for the many meanings of money, to pay attention to the devil in their own details, and thereby maximize the richness of their work with patients around a topic so loaded for all of us.

Atoning for Nostalgia in Ian McEwan’s Atonement

Many critics have pointed out the ambiguities of Atonement, a postmodernist anti-nostalgic novel that brings to the fore all the traditional topoi of Englishness in order better to denounce them as sham. In Atonement, the nostalgic longing is linked to the desire of Briony (the protagonist/narrator) for a return to a state of innocence which, I will argue through a close analysis of the text and its recurring images, is as much an atoning for her crime as a longing to be at-one in a state of harmony. Literally utopian, this nostalgic longing appears as a fantasy of omnipotence by an immature ego. Yet Briony’s being born into a writer entails a facing of the other within the self, an atoning for her nostalgic bias, not by erasing it, but by acknowledging her full responsibility in it, a process the reader is also invited to go through. From a regressive quest, nostalgia thus turns into an opening to otherness and to new potentialities. The unbridgeable gap between nostalgic desire and its fulfilment is what fuels our longing, keeps us alive and allows for creation.

Figures de la souffrance et du deuil des soignants

Caregivers' grief and emotions are often considered to be inappropriate and unjustified. This suffering is not often addressed in the care environment, as if its presence signalled a lack of professionalism. However, whether it is linked to fantasies of immortality or omnipotence, to an ideal of care or to personal injuries, this grief testifies unanimously to the ordeals endured collectively by the caregiving teams. A work of verbalisation and symbolisation is essential in this context.

The porn retreat: Narcissism and adolescence

The ready availability and intense imagery of contemporary pornography raises considerable public concern about its effect on society in general and on the minds of young people in particular. This paper seeks to understand its transgressive nature and its widespread appeal from a psychoanalytic perspective with reference to Chasseguet- Smirgel’s (1984) concept of the ‘anal-sadistic universe’ and Kohut’s (1972) theory of narcissism. The world of pornography can be seen as providing the individual with the possibility of narcissistic retreat from the frustrations and humiliations of the outside world. In this essentially self-enclosed illusory inner experience, he or she can conjure up a fantasy of unchallenged omnipotence in which, through the screen, anything can be arranged and commanded. Pornography feeds on normal adolescent narcissistic preoccupations; it provides a special, private place in which to hide and play out various fantasies without restraint. This is much more problematic for those adolescents who are more insecure and vulnerable and whose need to take flight from the external world and seek in pornographic fantasy a sense of grandeur and sexual potency is all the greater. It is these adolescents who become so much more immersed in their porn retreat and are so much more at risk of suffering emotional harm.

Psychoanalytic Understanding of The Novel, 'The Tin Drum'

The purpose of this paper is to make a psychoanalytic investigation on the novel, ‘The tin drum’ which was written by the Gunter Grass. For this purpose, I made a summary of the contents of the novel, and introduced Gunter Grass’s autobiography which appears in his work, ‘Peeling the onion.’ I examined his personal history. Gunter Grass subtly expressed his unresolved oedipal conflicts in his autobiography. I have tried to analyze and interpret his novel with regard to his unresolved oedipal complex which contains and connotes multiple meanings such as patricide, love toward his mother, triangular relationships, anger, jealousy, guilt, omnipotent fantasy, masochism, regression, fixation, further development and sublimation.

FERENCZI'S EVOLVING CONCEPTION OF NARCISSISIC PATHOLOGY AND ITS BASIS IN TRAUMA.

Ferenczi's landmark contributions to understanding and treating psychological trauma are inseparable from his evolving conception of narcissism, though he grasped their interrelationship only gradually. Ultimately, he saw narcissistic disorders as the result of how children cope with abuse or neglect, and their aftermath-they identify and comply with the needs of the aggressor, and later of people more generally, and dissociate their own needs, feelings, and perceptions; and they compensate for their submission and sacrifice of self by regressing to soothing omnipotent fantasies-which, ironically, may facilitate continued submission. Ferenczi's experiments in technique were designed to help patients overcome their defensive retreat to omnipotent fantasies and regain their lost selves. His earliest experiment, active technique, in which he frustrated patients, was a direct attack on their clinging to omnipotent fantasy. But as he came to see such narcissistic personality distortions as a way of coping with the residue of early trauma, his focus shifted to the underlying trauma. His loving and indulgent relaxation technique was intended as an antidote to early emotional neglect. His final experiment, mutual analysis, characterized by the analyst's openness and honesty in examining his own inevitable insincerities, was an attempt to heal the damage from parents' hypocrisy about their mistreatment, which Ferenczi came to see as most destructive to the child.

Golden Dawn through a psychosocial lens

The economic and sociopolitical factors related to the current Greek crisis are translated into intrapsychic and interpersonal mechanisms in order to explain the political phenomenon of Golden Dawn. I draw on psychoanalytic concepts to reflect on how the crisis has functioned as a mechanism for the production and control of individual and collective subjectivities. I argue that the crisis has created immense insecurity and has fuelled feelings of desperation, fear and anger. For some, these feelings have been displaced onto a substitute reality offered by a transcendent group represented by Golden Dawn; personal boundaries have loosened, and subjectivities have been absorbed by a large, collective “false self”. At the centre of the notion of this substitute reality is the fantasy of omnipotence, channelled through the mechanism of projection onto the leader of the group. History is used and misused in order to cement the psychic life of the group and as a compensatory mechanism for the felt national shame. Moreover, collective denigration, or even extinction, of immigrants serves to displace negative feelings and impulses onto the “other”. I borrow Freud’s contention that when evil is not condemned, raw and wild impulses are let loose –hence, the assassination of a leftwing rapper that has landed Golden Dawn in court.

Proliferations of Omniscience

Proliferations of Omniscience A. C. Facundo (bio) The conception of the current moment as one of proliferation induces anxiety, because it threatens a phantasy of omniscience. The exponential speed and mass of the digital world threatens the scholar's projected capacity of seeing or knowing what others do not. So we've seen a surge, a proliferation as it were, in interpretive turns and burgeoning reading practices in an effort to keep up with an overwhelming sense of ever-accumulating information. And I am indeed contributing to that pile with my book, Oscillations of Literary Theory: the Paranoid Imperative and Queer Reparative, published in 2016. Sedgwick's now famous inauguration of the reparative turn in Touching Feeling has sparked many variations. We can characterize the reparative turn as a turn away from paranoid critique, which sees the world in an implacably negative light. Paranoia is associated closely with omniscience in its compulsive desire to know, its compulsive projection of knowledge into uncertainty. I think a cynical way of looking at critique would be that the more staggering its negativity, the more impressive the scholarship seems, and some scholars are trying to move away from this project of disenchantment. In queer theory, these two attitudes mark a split between the anti-social and the reparative: the former is associated with the psychoanalytic [End Page 7] drives and the latter with affect theory, and this debate is ongoing. Outside of queer theory, in literary studies more generally, Rita Felski's book Limits of Critique revises the hermeneutics of suspicion to theorize what she calls "postcritical reading": "What afflicts literary studies is not interpretation as such but the kudzu-like proliferation of a hyper-critical style of analysis that has crowded out alternative forms of life" (9). Stephen Best and Sharon Marcus's article, "surface reading," introduces an approach to literature that repudiates depth and attempts accurate descriptions of literature, self-consciously limiting critical agency. These are only a couple of examples in an emerging debate, but we are seeing a split, I would say even an ideological split, between what we could roughly characterize as negative and positive, as this hermeneutical proliferation continues. My own book tries to synthesize both sides of split so that interpretive proliferation is integrated into a single reading strategy. I do take issue with the resistance to psychoanalysis both in surface reading and in the reparative turn in queer theory. Given the suspicion of critique in Felski's and Best and Marcus's work, they either directly or indirectly reject (a misreading of) psychoanalysis based on its application in the humanities that was common up until the late 1990s, in which psychoanalysis was heavily associated with "hidden depths," "unconscious contents," and "symptomatic reading." My own research on psychoanalysis understands the unconscious not as hidden in "depths," not as a repressed "content" or "meaning" which can be accessed through a "symptom," but something that unfolds in plain sight between self and other through the formal aspects of language—an unfolding that is the prerequisite to relational intimacy. Perhaps Sedgwick is right: negative hermeneutics like critique do not suffice in this proliferative world, but neither does doing away with omniscience altogether. As subject to failure as it is, omniscience is necessary to the process of reading. Omniscience can refer to a narrative perception that claims knowledge of past, present, and future events in both external world and inner lives of the characters. In psychoanalysis, omniscience comes from a phantasy of omnipotence, the idea that the triumphant baby has absolute power over the external world because he or she isn't yet fully differentiated from it. Melanie Klein explores the fantasy of omnipotence at length in her essay, "The Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States." This fantasy is both the prerequisite for the development of social relations and a project doomed to failure, since omniscience can exist only as a fantasy. For me, the literary implication of psychoanalysis hinges less on the symptom than on the work of mourning. The reading practice I introduce in my book stretches [End Page 8] beyond symptomatic reading through a process that mourns—that lets go of—the proliferative "meanings" that textual "symptoms" might...

Rev Billy vs. the Market: a sane man in a world of omnipotent fantasies

This paper presents a case study of anti-consumerism activist William Talen, aka Reverend Billy, who founded the Church of Stop Shopping. Rev Billy’s radical critique of the worship of markets and money complements his creation of a vibrant Earth-loving community. The case is reviewed in light of Nietzsche’s vision of ‘the madman in the marketplace’. The analysis suggests that the dream of an infinitely expanding world market is a fantasy of omnipotence that acts as maladaptive defence against feelings of powerlessness. This fantasy of market omnipotence is in practice endangering human existence. Rev Billy teaches us to rediscover our reverence for the Earth, and set ecological sustainability as our supreme goal (rather than financial growth).

The case of the gene: Postgenomics between modernity and postmodernity.

The history of modernity is a story about humans emancipating themselves from prejudice and superstition through reason and science. Scientific research has been a major driving force of progress for human civilization since the industrial revolution in the mid‐18th century. During the past 250 years, humans have rapidly increased their use of science, as a tool not only to understand and shape their environment, but also to improve themselves with better health care and longer, more comfortable lives. Unfortunately, the application of science has not always been appropriate: Darwin's theory of natural selection was applied to social policies in the form of eugenics from the early 19th century until the second half of the 20th century. In this period, eugenics remained a popular ideology and, as a consequence, genetics was a popular science. It was also a period of significant human migration that increased racial diversity in Western nations, with resulting concerns about racial purity. Naturalism and social Darwinism were very popular throughout, while industrialization led to massive urbanization and increasing pauperism. Politically, it was a time of interventionist policies, such as the so‐called Progressive Era in the USA that led to drastic social and political change. > No more divine designer, no more life force is needed; life is determined by a genetic program and evolves as a result of chance—or human choice—and selection Eugenics gained scientific legitimacy in the early 20th century owing to Mendelian genetics, which offered a rational, scientific theory to understand, predict, and control heredity and thereby the characteristics of future generations. As pauperism, criminality, and “feeblemindedness” were thought to be genetically determined, eugenics offered a tool to eliminate these undesirable traits from the human population. Of course, the idea of a single and universal definition of “the gene” is currently disappearing together …

Destructive and Non-Destructive Tests as Complex Adaptive Systems

The results of adaptive systems are omnipotent fantasies unless they have been tested. Adaptive system testing implies testing their functionality and requires a precise design of the tests. The “trial and error” use of objects is not a pilot test.Pilot tests are the drivers of the unicist reflection processes. Pilot tests have two objectives:1) Falsification of knowledge;2) Validation of knowledge.1) Falsification – Destructive Testing:Falsification, in the field of complex problems, implies finding the limits of the validity of a given knowledge. To do so, it is necessary to develop experiences in homologous fields until the limits of validity are found. Two elements are homologous when they have the same “nature”. A whale and a dog (an extreme example) are homologous if they are considered as mammals. A dollar and a yen are homologous considering that they are both money.These two cases demonstrate that homology can be total or partial. When the knowledge necessary to influence a reality is falsified in a totally homologous field, then it is naturally secure knowledge. The extreme condition of this example is the homology of two identical elements.The falsification process is a destructive test for knowledge that is applied to realities with incomplete homologies. The destruction occurs when a condition is found to demonstrate the fallacy of the knowledge. 2) Validation – Non-destructive Testing:Validation implies the factual confirmation of the validity of knowledge. Validation is achieved when knowledge suffices to exert influence on a reality in a predictable way.The validation process is homologous to a non-destructive test in the field of material research. Validation implies cause-effect relations. Therefore, validation can only be applied to a simplified field of a complex reality.Validation provides a reliable knowledge to operate under controlled conditions. The knowledge is valid if the conditions of the application environment are analogous and homologous to the characteristics of the validation environment.

The double-edged pen: Omnipotent fantasies in the creativity and addictions of Stephen King

The legendary debate over whether a connection between creativity and addictions exists is one that is shrouded in mystery and intrigue, but also one that continuously returns to the circuitous metaphor of the chicken and the egg. In an effort to better understand nuances in the relationship between creativity and addictions, this paper examines the life of Stephen King, and the omnipotent fantasies from which both his creative processes and addictive behaviours emerged. Since the early twentieth century, psychodynamic thinkers have highlighted omnipotent fantasies as a psychological force driving creative processes as efforts towards personal transformation. Similarly, numerous psychodynamic theories have highlighted omnipotent fantasies as playing a cardinal role in the psychological processes that propel substance abuse. And yet, the construct of omnipotence has yet to be examined as a theoretical bridge to bind such theories of creativity and substance abuse together. While fostering personal meaning and self-transformation when manifested in his creative writing processes, omnipotent fantasies have also lead Stephen King down a precarious path of addictive behaviours. Through a narrative analysis of the life of Stephen King, who has written in great depth about both his creativity and substance abuse, I will illustrate how omnipotent fantasies often shape and foster both healthy, creative processes towards growth and maladaptive, addictive impulses towards self-destruction.