Primal Fantasies

The term "primal fantasies" connotes those fantasy formations (observation of sexual intercourse between the parents, seduction, castration) which are typical in character in that they transcend individual variations and which in Freud's hypothesis are part of a phylogenetic inheritance. Though evoked in "A Case of Paranoia" (1915f), the notion of primal fantasies was essentially bound up with Freud's reflections on the primal scene, as developed in connection with the "Wolf Man" case (1918b [1914]) and reviewed during the same period in...