The Fantasy

According to Sigmund Freud, fantasy plays a central role in psychoanalysis. Freud believed that fantasies are constructed around repressed wishes and desires. They employ disguise and substitution to mask the defensive processes by which desire is enacted. In fantasy, one can see from multiple positions simultaneously, dividing and dislocating subjectivity. This creates space for identification and the organization of vision. For Freud, sexuality is linked from the beginning to an object of fantasy. However, the object sought in sexuality is displaced from the original object of self-preservation and hunger, such as an infant's fantasy of the mother's breast substituting for milk. This substitution represents a further level of psychic mediation where bodily pleasure is derived from sucking itself rather than nourishment. In this way, fantasy constitutes and mobilizes desire as it stages movements away from instinct. Fantasies reveal something more important about unconscious conflicts and symptom formation in the psyche.