"Hysterical symptoms are not attached to actual memories but to phantasies erected on the basis of memories." -Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, pg. 491
Though both fantasies and phantasies are "all those representations, beliefs, or bodily states that gravitate toward [...] the preservation of the status quo" (Abraham & Torok, The Shell and the Kernel, vol. 1, pg. 125), phantasies are not fantasies.
Whereas fantasizing is conscious wish-fulfilling thought-activity which is known to be untrue, phantasies are fantasies which are unacceptable to consciousness and have been split off to the unconscious, where they are not subject to reality-testing and no longer known to be untrue. Sufficiently intensified but traumatic phantasies can circulate--"proliferate in the dark"--to become complexes ('counter-ego nuclei') which figure into the moment of re-creation in 'remembering'.
The viewing of the self and its memories as concrete, stable, essential, grounded figures denies the ways in which desires, experiences, behaviours, and orientations are subject to and moderated by complexes and phantasies. 'Intuition'--as a pre-reflective rush of emotions and sentiments--have been valorized by a number of movements as the most important way to avoid self-deception and make the right decisions: 'trust your gut feeling'; 'listen to your heart'; or, worse, that intuition zooms the mind past barriers of time and space into the realm of occult clarivoyance which knows the future... At any rate, respect for intuition is important for articulating the complexities of the mental and emotional lives of humans, but unbridled valorization effaces the origin of intuitions.
What we intuit should be significant fodder for how we orient ourselves and make decisions, but is not the 'correct answer' ever. We can slowly learn about our own complexes as we deal with the affects in our intuitions, but only if we recognize that what we don't want to talk about is exactly what we should talk about, that what we hate is what we love, and where our intuitions are steering us may be precisely what is holding us back.
Though both fantasies and phantasies are "all those representations, beliefs, or bodily states that gravitate toward [...] the preservation of the status quo" (Abraham & Torok, The Shell and the Kernel, vol. 1, pg. 125), phantasies are not fantasies.
Whereas fantasizing is conscious wish-fulfilling thought-activity which is known to be untrue, phantasies are fantasies which are unacceptable to consciousness and have been split off to the unconscious, where they are not subject to reality-testing and no longer known to be untrue. Sufficiently intensified but traumatic phantasies can circulate--"proliferate in the dark"--to become complexes ('counter-ego nuclei') which figure into the moment of re-creation in 'remembering'.
The viewing of the self and its memories as concrete, stable, essential, grounded figures denies the ways in which desires, experiences, behaviours, and orientations are subject to and moderated by complexes and phantasies. 'Intuition'--as a pre-reflective rush of emotions and sentiments--have been valorized by a number of movements as the most important way to avoid self-deception and make the right decisions: 'trust your gut feeling'; 'listen to your heart'; or, worse, that intuition zooms the mind past barriers of time and space into the realm of occult clarivoyance which knows the future... At any rate, respect for intuition is important for articulating the complexities of the mental and emotional lives of humans, but unbridled valorization effaces the origin of intuitions.
What we intuit should be significant fodder for how we orient ourselves and make decisions, but is not the 'correct answer' ever. We can slowly learn about our own complexes as we deal with the affects in our intuitions, but only if we recognize that what we don't want to talk about is exactly what we should talk about, that what we hate is what we love, and where our intuitions are steering us may be precisely what is holding us back.
No comments:
Post a Comment