References by R.D. Laing in Chapter 1, Self and Others to a paper by Susan Isaacs (1952)
WE talk, in a tough and ready way, of acts and experiences 'in memory', 'in dreams', 'in imagination', and 'in reality'. Some psychoanalysts propose that we can also talk about experiences 'in' 'unconscious phantasy'. But is unconscious phantasy a mode or a type of experience? If it is, it is with a difference. If not, what is it, if not a figment of imagination?
The psychoanalytic thesis can be stated thus: it is not possible to prove the existence of unconscious phantasy to the person who is immersed in it. Unconscious phantasy can be known to be phantasy only after the person's own emergence from it. This way of putting it is riddled with difficulties, and so is every other way. The situation is not assisted by the fact that the concept of unconscious phantasy has received very little scrutiny from an existential and phenomenological perspective. And yet no comprehensive account of human relations can ignore it.
A paper by Susan Isaacs (1952) on 'The nature and function of Phantasy' provides a convenient
starting-point. I choose to begin with this version of the psychoanalytic
theory of phantasy because it remains an influential study that has not been
superseded and because Isaacs seems to regard phantasy as, among other things,
a mode of experience.
Isaacs states that
she is ‘mostly concerned with the definition of
"phantasy"; that is to say, with describing the series of facts
which the use of the term helps us to identify, to organize and to relate to other significant facts’.
She summarizes her
argument as follows:
a)
Phantasies
are the primary content of unconscious mental processes.
b)
Unconscious
phantasies are primarily about bodies, and represent instinctual aims towards
objects.
c)
These phantasies are, in the
first instance, the psychic representatives of libidinal and destructive
instincts. Early in development they also become elaborated into defences as
well as wish-fulfilments and anxiety contents.
d)
Freud's
postulated 'hallucinatory wish-fulfilment' and his 'primary identification',
'introjection', and 'projection' are the basis of the phantasy life.
e) Through external experience, phantasies become elaborated
and capable of expression, but they do not depend upon such experience for
their existence.
f)
Phantasies
are not dependent upon words, although they may under certain conditions he
capable of expression in words.
g) The earliest phantasies are
experienced as sensations: later they take the form of plastic images and
dramatic representations.
h)
Phantasies
have both psychic and bodily effects, e.g. in conversion symptoms, bodily
qualities, character and personality, neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and
sublimations.
i)
Unconscious
phantasies form the operative link between instincts and mechanism. When
studied in detail, every variety of
ego-mechanism can be seen to arise from specific sorts of phantasy, which in
the last resort have their origin in instinctual impulses. ‘The ego is a
differentiated part of the id.’ A 'mechanism' is an abstract general term
describing certain mental processes which are experienced by the subject as
unconscious phantasies.
j)
Adaptation
to reality and reality-thinking require the support of concurrent unconscious
phantasies. Observation of the ways in which knowledge of the external world
develops shows how the child's phantasy contributes to his learning.
k) Unconscious phantasies exert a
continuous influence throughout life, both in normal and neurotic people, the
differences lying in the specific character of the dominant phantasies, the
desire or anxiety associated with them and their interplay with each other and
with external reality.
The term phantasy is intended to point to a series of facts. What is the domain of this series of facts? Are they facts of experience? Of my experience? Of your experience? Of my experience of you, but not of your experience of yourself? Are they facts, not of my experience, but inferred from facts of my experience? By me about me? By me about you? Does their domain lie anywhere in the experience of self and other, or outside all experience, albeit inferred from it? Phantasies are experienced as dramatic representations. What does this mean? Can dramatic representations be experienced as phantasy? Whose, and by whom?
Isaacs's paper is
mainly concerned with inferences by self about other. In
my experience, self does not experience the experience of other directly. The facts about other available to self
are actions of other experienced by self.
From the perspective of self seeing other, Isaacs infers from her experience of the other's actions certain things about the other's experience,
An adult infers what a baby experiences. The baby does not tell us. The adult infers from the baby's behaviour that the baby's experience of a situation common to the adult and the baby is the same as, or different from, the adult's experience of the 'same' situation.
Isaacs states:
'Our views about phantasy in these earliest years are based
wholly upon inference, but then this is true at any age. Unconscious phantasies
are always inferred, not observed as such; the
technique of psychoanalysis as a whole is largely based upon inferred knowledge'.
To be consistent, we appear to have no option but to maintain that self's knowledge of other's experience, of any kind, conscious or unconscious, is based at any age of self or other entirely upon inference, as Isaacs states firmly in the second sentence above about unconscious phantasy. Since, to Isaacs, phantasies are 'inner', 'mental' events, only one's own phantasies are directly available to self. They can only be inferred by the other. The idea that 'the mind', 'the unconscious', or 'phantasy' is located inside a person and, in that sense, is inaccessible to the other, has far-reaching effects on the whole of psychoanalytic theory and method.
Isaacs, in referring not simply to imagination, daydreams, or reveries, but to 'unconscious phantasy', is making two types of inference from her position as the own person, namely: she is inferring something about the other's experience, and she is inferring that this is something of which the other is unaware. This seems to mean that there is a whole type of experience, as well as specific 'content' of experience, of which the other who 'has' the imputed experience knows, or may know, nothing. From her premises, corroboration of her self's inferences by explicit testimony from the other is not necessary to confirm these particular inferences.
When self is the analyst and the other the analysand, the own person states:
The personality, the attitudes and intentions, even the external
characteristics and the sex of the analyst, as seen and felt in the
patient's mind, change from day to day (even from moment to moment), according
to changes in the inner life of the patient (whether these are brought about by
the analyst's comments or by outside happenings). That is to say, the
patient's relation to his analyst is almost entirely one of unconscious
phantasy.
The own person infers from the other's behaviour that the other's behaviour has a 'meaning' to which the other is blind and, in that sense, the other cannot 'see' or 'realize' what his (the other's) actions are implying.
The analyst then says: 'The patient is dominated by an "unconscious" phantasy.'
Let us distinguish two usages of 'unconscious'. First, the term 'unconscious' may refer to dynamic structures, functions, mechanisms, processes that are meant to explain a person's actions or experiences. Such structures, functions, mechanisms, or processes are outside experience but are used to 'explain' experience, whether called conscious or unconscious. These concepts lie outside experience, but start from inferences about experience. If these inferences are incorrect, everything built upon them is completely wrong.
In the second place, 'unconscious' may signify that the user of the term is claiming that he or the other is unaware of part of his own experience, despite the apparent absurdity of this claim.
We may ask: what is the experiential status of 'unconscious
phantasy' as Isaacs uses this term? Isaacs, time and again, states that unconscious phantasy is an
experience:
A mechanism is an abstract general term describing certain
mental processes which are experienced by the subject as unconscious
phantasies.
Phantasy is (in the first instance) the mental corollary, the
psychic representative, of instinct. There is no impulse, no
instinctual urge or response which is not experienced as unconscious
phantasy.
On the basis of those principles of observation and
interpretation which have already been described and are well established by
psycho-analytic work, we are able to conclude that when the child shows
his desire for his mother's breast, he experiences this desire as a
specific phantasy – ‘I want to suck the nipple’. If desire is very intense
(perhaps on account of anxiety), he is likely to feel: ‘I want to eat her all
up’.
For Isaacs, unconscious phantasy is a way of experiencing our desires which plays a part in our personal relations throughout life.
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