Steiner gathers the papers that made unconscious phantasy a contested term and sets them so a reader can follow the argument from Freud through to a Kleinian account and its critics. The volume reprints Freud's "Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning", Susan Isaacs's "The Nature and Function of Phantasy", and work by Hanna Segal, the Sandlers, and Laplanche and Pontalis, with Steiner's introduction placing them against the Controversial Discussions between Klein's group and Anna Freud's.
The through line is a disagreement the collection keeps open rather than settles: whether phantasy is a late elaboration of thought or the mental corollary of instinct, present from the start and active in every object relation and every defence against anxiety. Freudian, Lacanian, and neuroscientific readings sit beside the Kleinian one.
For the clinician, the book supplies the primary texts behind a word used daily in supervision and case discussion, and shows why the spelling with "ph" carries a specific claim about mental life.
About the authors
Riccardo Steiner
Riccardo Steiner is an Italian-born British psychoanalyst and historian of psychoanalysis. Educated in Italy, he trained in England and became a full member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, where he served as its Archivist. With Pearl King he co-edited The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941 to 1945, a documentary account of the wartime disputes between the followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, and he edited the collection Unconscious Phantasy (2003). His scholarship examines Strachey's English translation of Freud and the archival history of the British Society.
Riccardo Steiner
Riccardo Steiner is an Italian-born British psychoanalyst and historian of psychoanalysis. Educated in Italy, he trained in England and became a full member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, where he served as its Archivist. With Pearl King he co-edited The Freud-Klein Controversies 1941 to 1945, a documentary account of the wartime disputes between the followers of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein, and he edited the collection Unconscious Phantasy (2003). His scholarship examines Strachey's English translation of Freud and the archival history of the British Society.
Details
- 2003
- Karnac
- Karnac
- 240
- 9781855759879