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"[[fantasy]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[fantasme]]'')
==Sigmund Freud==
The concept of [[fantasy]] is central to [[Freud]]'s [[Works of Sigmund Freud|work]].<ref>"[[Fantasy]]" is spelt "[[fantasy|phantasy]]" in the ''[[Standard Edition]]''.</ref>
===Fantasy Versus Reality===Indeed, the oirgin origin of [[psychoanalysis]] is bound up with [[Freud]]'s recognition in 1897 that [[memory|memories]] of [[seduction]] are sometimes the product of [[fantasy]] rather than traces of real sexual abuse.
This crucial moment in the development of [[Freud]]'s thought (which is often simplistically dubbed "the abandonment of the seduction theory") seems to imply that [[fantasy]] is opposed to [[reality]], a purely illusory product of the imagination which stands in the way of a correct perception of reality.
When [[unconscious]], the [[analyst]] must reconstruct it on the basis of other clues.<ref>Freud. 1919e.</ref>
==Jacques Lacan==
While [[Lacan]] accepts [[Freud]]'s formulations on the importance of [[fantasy]] and on its visual quality as a scenario which stages [[desire]], he emphasizes the protective function of [[fantasy]].
[[Lacan]] compares the [[fantasy]] [[scene]] to a frozen [[image]] on a cinema screen; jut as the film may be stopped at a certain point in order to avoid showing a [[trauma]]tic [[scene]] which follows, so also the [[fantasy]] [[scene]] is a [[defence]] which veils [[castration]].<ref>{{S4}} p.119-120</ref>
The [[fantasy]] is thus characterized by a fixed and immobile quality.
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Although "[[fantasy]]" only emerges as a significant term in [[Lacan]]'s work from 1957 on, the concept of a relatively stable mode of [[defence]] is evident earlier on.
This concept is at the root both of [[Lacan]]'s idea of [[fantasy]] and his notion of [[clinical structure]]; both are conceived of as a relatively stable way of defending oneself against [[castration]], against the [[lack]] in the [[Other]].
Each [[clinical structure]] may thus be distinguished by the particular way in which it uses a [[fantasy]] [[scene]] to veil the [[lack]] in the [[Other]].
The [[neurotic]] [[fantasy]], which [[Lacan]] formalizes in the [[matheme]] ($ D a), appears in the [[graph of desire]] as the [[subject]]'s response to the enigmatic [[desire]] of the [[Other]], a way of answering the question about what the [[Other]] wants from me. (''Che vuoi?'')<ref>{{E}} p.313</ref>
The [[matheme]] is to be read: the [[bar]]red [[subject]] in relation to the [[object]].
The [[perverse]] [[fantasy]] inverts this relation to the [[object]], and is thus formalized as ''a'' D $.<ref>{{Ec}} p.774</ref>
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Although the matheme (SO a) designates the general structure of the neurotic fantasy, Lacan also provides more specific formulas for the fantasy of the hysteric and that of the obsessional neurotic.<ref>{{S8}} p.295</ref>
While the various formulas of fantasy indicate the common features of the fantasies of those who share the same clinical structure, the analyst must also attend to the unique features which characterise each patient's particular fantasmatic scenario.
These unique features express the subject's particular mode of ./OUISSANCE, though in a distorted way. The distortion evident in the fantasy marks it as a compromise formation; the fantasy is thus both that which enables the subject to sustain his desire,<ref>{{S11}} p.185; {{Ec}} p.780</ref> and "that by which the subject sustains himself at the level of his vanishing desire."<ref>{{E}} p.272</ref>
Lacan holds that beyond all the myriad images which appear in dreams and elsewhere there is always one 'fundamental fantasy' which is unconscious.<ref>{{S8}} p.127</ref>
In the course of psychoanalytic treatment, the analyst reconstructs the analysand's fantasy in all its details. However, the treatment does not stop there; the analysand must go on to 'traverse the fundamental fantasy."<ref>{S11}} p.273</ref>.
In other words, the treatment must produce some modification of the subject's fundamental mode of defence, some alteration in his mode of jouissance.
Although Lacan recognises the power of the image in fantasy, he insists that this is due not to any intrinsic quality of the image in itself but to the place which it occupies in a symbolic structure; the fantasy is always 'an image set to work in a signifying structure."<ref>{{E}} p.272</ref>
Lacan criticises the Kleinian account of fantasy for not taking this symbolic structure fully into account, and thus remaining at the level of the imaginary; 'any attempt to reduce [fantasy] to the imagination . . . is a permanent misconception."<ref>{{E}} p.272</ref>
In the 1960s, Lacan devotes a whole year of his seminar to discussing what he calls 'the logic of fantasy' (Lacan, 1966-7), again stressing the importance of the signifying structure in fantasy.
