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"[[fantasy]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[fantasme]]'')
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>
Indeed, the oirgin 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.
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.
Therefore the change in [[Freud]]'s ideas in 1897 does not imply a rejection of the fundamentally 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.
[[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 [[fantasy|fantasized]]" ([[Frscene]] may be [[conscious]] or [[unconscious]]. '' When [[unconscious]], the [[fantasmeanalyst]]'')must reconstruct it on the basis of other clues.<ref>Freud. 1919e.</ref>
