Changes

fantasy ( fantasme) The concept of fantasy (spelt 'phantasyTherefore the [[change]] in [[Freud]]' s [[ideas]] in 1897 does not imply a [[rejection]] of thefundamentally discursive and imaginative [[nature]] of [[memory]]; [[memory|memories]] of [[past]] events are continually [[being]] reshaped in accordance with [[unconscious]] [[desire]]s, so much so that [[symptom]]s originate not in any supposed "[[objective]] facts" but in a [[complex]] [[dialectic]] in which [[fantasy]] plays a vital [[role]].

Standard Edition) [[Freud]] uses the term "[[fantasy]]", then, to denote a [[scene]] which is central presented to Freud's workthe imagination and which [[stages]] an [[unconscious]] [[desire]]. The [[subject]] invariably plays a part in this [[scene]], even when this is not immediately [[apparent]]. The [[fantasy|fantasized]] [[scene]] may be [[conscious]] or [[unconscious]]. Indeed When [[unconscious]], the origin [[analyst]] must reconstruct it on the basis of psycho-other clues.<ref>{{F}} "[[Works of Sigmund Freud|A Child Is Being Beaten]]," 1919e. [[SE]] XVII, 177.</ref>

analysis is bound up with ==Jacques Lacan=====Protection Function===While [[Lacan]] accepts [[Freud]]'s recognition 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]]; just as the [[film]] may be stopped at a certain point in 1897 that memories of[[order]] to avoid showing a [[trauma]]tic [[scene]] which follows, so also the [[fantasy]] [[scene]] is a [[defence]] which veils [[castration]].<ref>{{S4}} pp. 119-120</ref> The [[fantasy]] is thus characterized by a fixed and immobile quality.

seduction are sometimes ===Defence and Clinical Structure===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 product root both of [[Lacan]]'s [[idea]] of [[fantasy rather than traces ]] and his [[notion]] of [[clinical structure]]; both are conceived of realas 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]].

sexual abuse. This crucial moment ===Neurotic Fantasy===The [[neurotic]] [[fantasy]], which [[Lacan]] formalizes in the [[matheme]] ('''$ <> a'''), appears in the development [[graph of Freuddesire]] as the [[subject]]'s thoughtresponse 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'' <> $'''.<ref>{{Ec}} p. 774</ref>

===Fantasy of the Hysteric and Obsessional Neurotic===Although the [[matheme]] (which is often simplistically dubbed '''S <> a''') designates the general [[structure]] of the abandonment [[neurotic]] [[fantasy]], [[Lacan]] also provides more specific [[formulas]] for the [[fantasy]] of the seduction[[hysteric]] and that of the [[obsessional neurotic]].<ref>{{S8}} p. 295</ref> While the various formulas of [[fantasy]] indicate the common features of the [[fantasy|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.

theory===Fantasy and the Subject===These unique features express the [[subject]]') seems to imply that s particular mode of ''[[jouissance]]'' though in a distorted way. The [[distortion]] evident in the [[fantasy]] marks it as a compromise [[formation]]; the [[fantasy ]] is opposed thus both that which enables the [[subject]] to realitysustain his [[desire]], a purely illusory<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>

product of ===Fundamental Fantasy===[[Lacan]] holds that beyond all the imagination myriad [[images]] which stands appear in [[dream]]s and elsewhere there is always one "[[fantasy|fundamental fantasy]]" which is [[unconscious]].<ref>{{S8}} p. 127</ref> In the way course of a correct perception [[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 "[[fantasy|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]]''.

reality===Image and Symbolic Structure===Although [[Lacan]] recognizes 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> <!--===Kleinian Account of Fantasy===[[Lacan]] criticizes the [[Klein]]ian 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. However272</ref> In the 1960s, such [[Lacan]] devotes a view [[whole]] year of his [[seminar]] to discussing what he calls "the [[logic]] of fantasy cannot be maintained ," again stressing the importance of the [[signification|signifying]] [[structure]] in psycho[[fantasy]].<ref>{{S14}}</ref>-->

analytic theory== In the work of Slavoj Žižek ==Like many of Žižek’s foundational theories, fantasy derives from the [[psychoanalytic]] work of Freud and Lacan. For Freud, fantasy emerged in his 1897 discovery that [[memories]] of seduction may be the result of fantasy as opposed to actual sexual [[violence]]. In common parlance, fantasy denotes a [[separation]] from reality, a [[construction]] that is fictional and therefore opposed to reality. Freud’s discovery, though, challenges this widespread [[understanding]]. For psychoanalysis, reality is problematic when it is assumed that it distinguishes authentic or unmediated [[experience]] for the subject. Reality is more properly [[understood]] as a way of perceiving that is already stained by the [[human]] subject’s desire. Therefore, since reality is not seen already a [[subjective]] [[process]] mediated by desire and constructed discursively. Fantasy, then, [[acts]] as an unproblematic given a scene that stages desire in the imagination of the subject. For this [[reason]], Lacan states in his fourteenth seminar, ''The [[Logic of Fantasy]]'': “Desire is the [[essence]] of reality” (''S''XIV: 6). The principal point for Lacan, here, is that fantasy is the setting for desire where fantasy provides the [[matrix]] through which[[subjects]] begin to desire.

there For Žižek, fantasy is not an exercise in fulfilment, contentment or [[satisfaction]]. Instead, it provides a scene for a privileged yet [[arbitrary]] object that embodies the force of desire. The foundational premise of fantasy in this rendering lies in the [[claim]] that desire is not something that is given; rather, it is assembled. Therefore, fantasy acts as a structure that provides the coordinates for a subject’s desire. That is , fantasy provides the idea of a single objectively correct way privileged object that desire fixates on in order to provide the subject with its [[position]] in relation to it. This privileged object acts as the ''[[objet petit a]]'' or object-[[cause]] of perceivingdesire. This object [[structures]] the subject’s experience of the [[world]] in so far as this object is taken as more than its [[material]] property. The object that consumes desire and therefore occupies the fantasy of the subject must first fall prey to the [[illusion]] that it is more than its pragmatic material. The object is marked by this structure as being more than its materiality, as being endowed with the promise to [[satisfy]] the desire that necessitates it. Thus, but fantasy acts as the mode whereby the subject learns to desire because through fantasy the subject is situated as something which[[desiring]].

The role fantasy plays is twofold: [[universal]] and particular. Fantasy is a universal structure that indexes, points or directs our desire towards a [[physical]] manifestation that occupies desire. Yet, what is particular to each and every subject is the way fantasy structures the relation to the trauma of lack predicated by desire. This constitutive lack that the privileged object promises to fulfil acts as a screen that orients each fantasy, which in turn supports desire in order to shield the subject from the trauma of lack itself discursively constructed. Therefore In this way, fantasy bestows reality with a fictional [[coherence]] and consistency that appears to fulfil the change lack that constitutes [[social]] reality. Hence, Žižek’s foremost contribution to this long-theorized notion lies in Freudshowing how fantasy serves as a [[political]] structure. He reveals how fantasy can fill in [[ideological]] gaps and provide access to [[obscene]] ''s ideas [[jouissance]]'', and he contends that a failure to explicate the essence of political beliefs does not imply any failure in the hold these beliefs have over us. Instead, political [[ideologies]] serve to give subjects a means of envisioning the world in which such a failure emerges as evidence as to how transcendent is their particular [[ideology]]. Fantasy serves [[politics]] precisely in that each political group must recognize its point of view as manifested inthe extrapolitical fantasy [[objects]] customary within that specific [[nation]], [[culture]] or [[religion]]. If not, these groups must displace the sitting ideologies’ fantasy objects with their chosen manifestations. Consequently, for Žižek, fantasy goes beyond the usual symbolic coordinates, so that [[traversing]] the fantasy does not mean getting rid of the fantasy but being even more taken up by it.

1897 does Fantasy, therefore, acts as a way for the subject to envisage a way out of the [[dissatisfaction]] produced by the [[demands]] of [[social reality]] through these objects or ideas (e.g. [[freedom]], brotherhood, the [[Church]]). In this [[sense]], fantasy is a [[psychological]] structure that manifests itself in a [[phenomenological]] [[form]]. And, while fantasy might not imply provide us with the object itself, it can provide something of equal consequence: the scene of attaining the privileged object that renders attainment as a possibility. Fantasy organizes and domesticates the ''jouissance'' that provides the framework through which we experience reality; therefore, this structure – and the arbitrary object that animates it – acts as a defence against the [[traumatic]] [[loss]] of ''jouissance'' that occurs through entering [[the symbolic]] order. In turn, fantasy can surface in a more evident socio-symbolic way in which it assuages unrest by depoliticizing the social [[body]] for the purposes of accepting a ruling ideology. Fantasy thus serves as a way to distract, even encourage, the [[social body]] from directly engaging with the dissatisfaction of lack. Although lack is constitutive of every human subject, the political advocacy of a social body can [[help]] organize a rejection [[society]] better to manage dissatisfaction as a by-product of the veracity demands of all memories that social reality. Therefore, fantasy acts as a way to fracture political [[unity]] by focusing attention on [[individual]] satisfaction imagined to be the promise of sexuala unique privileged object.

abuseBecause fantasy offers the promise of satisfaction as part of a privileged object, we [[understand]] this object as being apart from our [[self]]. [[Enjoyment]] derived from this fantasy image is therefore projected onto the Other. As a path to [[repress]] the idea of a non-[[lacking]] subject, the subject we fantasize and therefore imagine as a possibility, we [[project]] onto the Other the enjoyment we lack. Žižek argues that this places the subject in a position of understanding the Other obtaining enjoyment at our expense. Because we are able to fantasize an [[impossible]] enjoyment, we also misattribute this [[impossibility]] to an Other that seems to [[enjoy]] in a way we cannot experience but only imagine. Since fantasy provides us with the discovery coordinates to domesticate our [[desire,]] in order to fulfil lack we rarely attribute lack as an experience beyond our self. The [[distinction]] between our own lack of impossible enjoyment and the fundamentally discursive non-lacking status of the Other opens the possibility of a violence predicated on destroying the enjoyment we fantasize this Other to possess at our expense. [[The logic of fantasy]] in relation to lack suggests that, if I am lacking, it is because some other nefarious [[figure]] has stolen it, and imaginativethus the lack of lack, as it were, becomes an object of possession under [[capitalism]]. This rendering is consistent with Žižek’s assertion that fantasy leads to all varieties of discrimination: [[racism]], sexism, ageism and [[homophobia]], among [[others]]. Th is non-lacking status takes the form of a person or [[thing]] we understand through [[cultural]] [[myth]] or [[capitalist]] ideology.

==References== nature of memory; memories of past events are continually being reshaped in  accordance with unconscious desires, so much so that symptoms originate not  in any supposed 'objective facts' but in a complex dialectic in which fantasy  plays a vital role. Freud uses the term 'fantasy', then, to denote a scene which  is presented to the imagination and which stages an unconscious desire. The  subject invariably plays a part in this scene, even when this is not immediately  apparent. The fantasised scene may be conscious or unconscious. When  unconscious, the analyst must reconstruct it on the basis of other clues (see  Freud, 1919e).  While Lacan accepts Freud's formulations on the importance of fantasy and  on its visual quality as a scenario which stages desire, he emphasises the  protective function of fantasy. Lacan compares the fantasy SCENE (OR fTOZen  image on a cinema screen; just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in  order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy  scene is a defence which veils castration (S4, l 19<div style="font-20). The fantasy is thus  characterised by a fixed and immobile quality.  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 (see, for example, Lacan's remark in 1951 on 'the permanent modes by  which the subject constitutes his objects'; Ec, 225). This concept is at the root  both of Lacan's idea of fantasy and of 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 formalises in the matheme (SO 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?) (see E, 313). The matheme is to be readsize: the barred subject in11px" class="references-small"><references /> relation to the object. The perverse fantasy inverts this relation to the object,  and is thus formalised as a OS (Ec, 774).  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 (S8, 295). 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,div>[[Category:Psychoanalysis]] 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 (Sll, 185; Ec, 780), and 'that by which the subject  sustains himself at the level of his vanishing desire' (E, 272, emphasis added).  [[Category:Jacques Lacan holds that beyond all the myriad images which appear in dreams and]][[Category:Practice]] elsewhere there is always one 'fundamental fantasy' which is unconscious (see  S8, 127). 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' (see S11, 273). 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' (E, 272). 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[[Category:Dictionary]][fantasy[Category:Treatment]] to the imagination . . . is a permanent misconception' (E, 272). 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.  == def == Fantasy (fantasme) The concept of fantasy is central to Freud’s work. Indeed, the origin of [[psychoanalysisCategory:Sexuality]] is bound up with Freud’s recognition in 1897 that 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 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. However, such a view of fantasy cannot be maintained in psychoanalytic theory, since reality is not seen as an unproblematic given in which there is a single objectively correct way of perceiving, but as something which is itself discursively constructed.      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 [[sceneCategory:Concepts]] to a frozen image on a cinema screen: just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy scene is a defence which veils [[castrationCategory:Terms]].<ref>s4 119-120</ref>The fantays is thus characterized by a fixed and immobile quality.   60     == def == Lacan's Conception of Fantasy If the neurotic subject does not to forego the Oedipal supposition that there is some Thing that would fully satisfy the desire of the mother, it is because s/he constructs fantasies about the nature of this lost Thing, and how s/he stands towards it. The primary means s/he deploys in this process is what I recounted above, when I noted how the difficulty in knowing the referent of the phallic master signifiers obliges subjects to construct their beliefs concerning it in a 'decentred' manner, through the Others. While the subject accepts that the Real phallic Thing is lost to him/her, that is, in his/her fantasmatic life s/he yet supposes that there are Others who do know what it is that phallic signifiers refer to, and have more direct access to the Real of jousissance. In line with this, Lacan's further argument is indeed that the deepest fantasmatic postulation of subjects is always that the Real Phallic Thing that s/he has been debarred from must be held in reserve by the 'big Other' whose law it is that discernibly structures the mother’s desire.What follows from this is the position that the manifestations of the unconscious represent small unconscious rebellions of the subject against the loss that s/he takes him/herself to have endured when s/he acceded to socialization. They are all under-girded by the more basic fantasmatic structuration of identity as constituted by the loss endured at castration. This is why Lacan talks of a fundamental fantasy, and argues that it is above all this fundamental fantasy that is at stake in psychoanalysis. Lacan strived to formalize the invariant structure of this 'fundamental fantasy' in the matheme[[Category: $ <> a. This matheme indicates that: '$', the ‘barred’ subject which is divided by castration between attraction to and repulsion from the Object of its unconscious desire, is correlative to ('<>') the fantasised lost object. This object, designated in the matheme as 'a', is called by Lacan the ‘object petit a’, or else the object cause of desire. Lacan holds that the subject always stabilizes its position vis-à-vis the Real Thing by constructing a fantasy about how the debarred Thing is held in the big Other, manifesting only in a series of metonymic or partial objects (the gaze or voice of his/her love objects, a hair style, or some other 'little piece of the Real') that can be enjoyed as compensation for its primordial loss of the maternal Thing. Lacan's argument is that the fundamental psychological 'gain’ from the fundamental fantasy is the following. The fundamental fantasy represents what occurred at castration in the terms of a narrative of possession and loss. This fantasm thus consoles the subject by positing that s/he at one point did have the phallic Thing, but that then, at castration, it was taken away from him/her by the Other. What this of course means is that, since the Thing was taken away from the subject, perhaps also It can be regained by him/her. It is this promise, Lacan maintains, that usually structures neurotic human desire. What the fantasy serves to hide from the subject, then, is the possibility that a fully satisfying sexual relationship with the mother, or any metonymic substitute for her, is not only prohibited, but was never possible anyway. As I recounted in Part 1, the Lacanian view, which is informed by observation of infantile behavior, is that the mother-child relationship before castration is not Edenic, but characterized by imaginary transitivity and aggressivity. This is why Lacan quips in Seminar XX that 'there is no such thing as a sexual relationship' and elsewhere that the ‘Woman’, with a capital ‘W’, 'does not exist'. Note then that the deepest logic of castration, according to Lacan, is a profoundly paradoxical one. The 'no!' of the father prohibits something that is impossible. Its very prohibition, however, gives rise in the subject to the fantasmatic supposition that the Thing in question is one that is attainable but only being debarred. Lacan thus asserts that the fundamental fantasy is there to veil from the subject the terminal nature of its loss at castration. This is not simply a speculation, however. It is supported by telling evidences that he adduces. The key point that supports Lacan's position is the stipulation the objet petit is an anamorphotic object. What this means can be seen by looking at even the most well-known exemplar of the Lacanian objet petit a: the 'object gaze'. Contrary to how it is sometimes read, the Lacanian 'gaze' is anything but the intrusive and masterful male gaze on the world. For Lacan, gaze is indeed a "blind spot" in the subject's perception of visible reality, “disturbing its transparent visibility". [Zizek, 1999a: 79Dictionary]] What it bears witness to is the subject's inability to fully frame the objects that appear within his/her field of vision. The classic example of the object-gaze from Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis is the floating skull at the feet of Holbein's Ambassadors. What is singular about this 'thing’ is that it can literally only be seen from 'awry', and at the cost that the rest of the picture appears at that moment out of focus. From this point on the canvas, Lacan comments, it is as if the painting regards us. What he means is that the skull reminds us that we, and with us our desires and fantasies, are implicated in how the scene appears. Here then is another meaning to $ <> a: the objet petit a, for Lacan, as something that can only operate its fascination upon individuals who bear a partial perspective upon it, is that object that 're-presents' the subject within the world of objects that it takes itself to be a wholly 'external' perspective upon. If a subject thus happens upon it too directly, it disappears, or else- as in psychosis and the well-known filmic motif of what happens when one encounter one's double- the cost is that one's usual sense of how the rest of the world is must dissipate. What this indicates is that the object petit a, or at least the fascinating effect the object which bears it has upon the subject who is under its thrall, has no 'objective' reality independently of this subject. The logical consequence of this, though, as Lacan stipulates, is that this supposedly 'lost' object can never really have been lost by the subject, since s/he can never have possessed it in the first place. This is why Lacan argues the apparently chimerical position that the objet petit a is by definition an object that has come into being in being lost.{{OK}}__FORCETOC__