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In <i>The Shell and the Kernel</i>, published in 1978, Maria Torok and Nicolas [[Abraham ]] attempted to provide a revised metapsychological approach to their [[concept ]] of the phantom. The [[work]], which is presented as a collection of older or unpublished articles, is in fact the second volume of <i>Anasémies</i>, the first volume of which appeared in 1976 under the title <i>The [[Wolf Man]]'s [[Magic ]] [[Word]]: A Cryptonomy</i>.</p><p><i>Anasémies</i> is a relatively difficult [[theoretical]]-[[clinical ]] work, "a [[psychoanalytic ]] and transphenomenological [[space]]" with an important introduction by Jacques [[Derrida]], "FORS: Les mots anglés de Nicolas Abraham et Maria Torok." The work is one that signaled a fecund period of [[reflection ]] [[about ]] the [[processes ]] of transgenerational transmission as they were initially addressed by [[psychoanalysts ]] and later reconsidered by [[child ]] psychoanalysts, especially from the point of view of so-called [[developmental ]] [[psychoanalysis]].</p>

<p>In the second volume of <i>Anasémies</i>, chapter four is devoted to the concept of the "crypt" and chapter six to the "work of the phantom in the [[unconscious ]] and the law of [[ignorance]]." The following lines appear at the head of the chapter: "The phantom is the work in the unconscious of the inadmissible [[secret ]] of an [[Other ]] ([[incest]], crime, illegitimacy). Its law is the obligation of ignorance. Its manifestation, as [[anxiety]], is the [[return ]] of the phantom in bizarre [[words ]] and [[acts ]] and [[symptoms ]] ([[phobic]], obsessive, and so on). The phantom's [[universe ]] can be objectivized in fantastic stories. There then occurs a [[particular ]] [[affect ]] that [[Freud ]] described as the '[[uncanny]]."'</p><p>By reworking and somewhat demetaphorizing the [[concepts ]] of [[incorporation]], [[identification]], crypt, and phantom, Abraham and Torok arrive at the following formulations: "The phantom is also a metapsychological fact. That is, it is not the [[dead ]] that haunt us but the gaps [[left ]] in us by the secrets of [[others]]. Although the phantom is not associated with the [[loss ]] of an [[object]], it could (therefore) be the result of a failed [[process ]] of [[mourning ]] . . . The phantom of popular [[belief ]] merely objectivizes a [[metaphor ]] that operates in the unconscious: the burial in the object of an inadmissible fact . . . . The phantom is a [[formation ]] of the unconscious, which is peculiar in the [[sense ]] that it has never been conscious—and with [[good ]] reason—and which results from the passage—whose mode remains to be deter-mined—of the parent's unconscious to the child's unconscious . . . . The phantom who returns to haunt is the [[witness ]] of the [[existence ]] of [[death ]] buried in the other. . . . By extending our [[ideas ]] about the phantom, we can see that, in all likelihood, the 'phantom effect'

is attenuated during its transmission from one generation to [[another]], ultimately extinguishing itself."</p><p>These comments illustrate the drama of the "cryptophoric" [[subject ]] and the [[dialectic ]] that arises between incorporation and identification, to the extent that the [[fantasy ]] of incorporation can play a [[role ]] as a factor of identificatory [[refusal ]] through the maintenance of the metapsychological status quo. Abraham and Torok's <i>The Shell and the Kernel</i> concludes with a study of [[Hamlet]]'s [[ghost]].</p><p>These essays are part of a line of research that has developed in [[France ]] through the work of authors such as [[Alain ]] de Mijolla, Haydée Faimberg, Jean-José Baranès, and Jean Cournut, who have assumed critical positions with respect to the [[theory ]] of the phantom and suggested other approaches to so-called transgenerational phenomena. The work of Abraham and Torok was continued by Serge Tisseron, Didier Dumas, and Claude Nachin.</p>

<h2>[[Bibliography]]</h2><ul><li>Abraham, Nicolas. ([[1968]]). L'écorce et le noyau. <i>Critique</i>,249.</li><li>Abraham, Nicolas; and Torok, Maria. (1972). Deuil ou mélancolie: introjecter-incorporer. <i>Nouvelle Revue de [[psychanalyse]]</i>, <i>6</i>, 111-122.</li><li>——. (1986). <i>The Wolf Man's magic word: A cryptonymy</i>. (Nicholas Rand, Trans.) Minneapolis: [[University ]] of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1976)</li><li>——. (1994). <i>The shell and the kernel: Renewals of psychoanalysis.</i> Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1978)</li><li>Dumas, Didier. (1985). <i>L'Ange et le fantôme: introductionà la clinique de l'impensé généalogique</i>. [[Paris]]: Minuit.</li><li>Mijolla, Alain de. (1981). <i>Les visiteurs du moi, fantasmes d'identification, confluents psychanalytiques</i>, 2d. ed. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.</li><li>——. (1987). Unconscious identification [[fantasies ]] and [[family ]] [[prehistory]]. <i>International Journal of Psychoanalysis</i>, <i>68</i>, 397-403.</li>