Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- PART I DIVIDING PERSONS
- PART II PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTS
- 4 Unconscious motives and Freudian concepts
- 5 Wish
- 6 Phantasy and Kleinian explanation
- PART III PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTION OF MIND
- Appendices
- Notes
- Works of Freud cited
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Phantasy and Kleinian explanation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- PART I DIVIDING PERSONS
- PART II PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTS
- 4 Unconscious motives and Freudian concepts
- 5 Wish
- 6 Phantasy and Kleinian explanation
- PART III PSYCHOANALYTIC CONCEPTION OF MIND
- Appendices
- Notes
- Works of Freud cited
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Wer saβ nicht bang vor seines Herzens Vorhang?
RilkeI am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought
YeatsTHE CONCEPT OF PHANTASY
The last two chapters have introduced the basic psychoanalytic strategy of explanation, and its associated concepts of the unconscious and wish-fulfilment. But the phenomena that can so far be explained, in terms of desire's plasticity and susceptibility to non-rational satisfaction, are circumscribed in being only intra-psychic. This means that psychoanalytic explanation does not yet stretch to irrational phenomena constituted by overt, public behaviour. So, if the psychoanalytic unconscious is to be a source of motivation which can penetrate and ramify in the daylit world of the Ratman – into his spheres of belief and intentional action – more needs to be added.
We said that the Ratman's sadistic rat-fantasy embodies, and is explained by, a wish, which is a certain kind of effect of a motivational state: one that fails to combine with belief, is not the object of awareness, does not involve choice, and is distinguished from the motivational state that causes it by having not just an aim, but an object, here the Ratman's father. When the Ratman cowers before Freud, however, what we have is a more complex phenomenon: a piece of overt, public behaviour, something that consequently engages the Ratman's powers of belief and intentional action. This is the new problem of explanation.
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- Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis , pp. 140 - 172Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993