Monday, May 03, 2010
French Thought - Vallejo
From excellent new site Concept and Form: The Cahiers pour l'Analyse and Contemporary French Thought:
In an early draft from 1897, Freud had already begun to speculate on the specific 'structure' and 'construction' of early childhood fantasies: 'Fantasies arise from an unconscious combination, in accordance with certain trends, of things experienced and heard […] Fantasies are constructed by a process of amalgamation and distortion analogous to the decomposition of a chemical body which is compounded with another one' (SE 1: 252). During the process of construction, the original memories on which they are based disappear, leaving only the libidinal structure. The idea that fantasies were constructed step-by-step gave Freud a means of reconstructing or analysing in reverse the structure of fantasies as they presented themselves in patients. Freud returns to the idea of the 'construction' of the fantasy in his key paper on the subject 'A Child is being Beaten' (1919). He develops the idea that the fantasy may be approached from different angles, according to whether one is a subject in it, or outside it. Thus fantasy figures may express desires that are not straightforwardly those of the person having the fantasy. The dreamer may themselves be in the fantasy, or may not. If he is in it, he may be playing an active or passive role.
In an early draft from 1897, Freud had already begun to speculate on the specific 'structure' and 'construction' of early childhood fantasies: 'Fantasies arise from an unconscious combination, in accordance with certain trends, of things experienced and heard […] Fantasies are constructed by a process of amalgamation and distortion analogous to the decomposition of a chemical body which is compounded with another one' (SE 1: 252). During the process of construction, the original memories on which they are based disappear, leaving only the libidinal structure. The idea that fantasies were constructed step-by-step gave Freud a means of reconstructing or analysing in reverse the structure of fantasies as they presented themselves in patients. Freud returns to the idea of the 'construction' of the fantasy in his key paper on the subject 'A Child is being Beaten' (1919). He develops the idea that the fantasy may be approached from different angles, according to whether one is a subject in it, or outside it. Thus fantasy figures may express desires that are not straightforwardly those of the person having the fantasy. The dreamer may themselves be in the fantasy, or may not. If he is in it, he may be playing an active or passive role.
# posted by Lamb Mouton @ 8:52 AM 
