Phantasm

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Phantasm ( ancient Greek φἀντασμα , appearance, image, imagination, face ' or a sign sent by the deity, miracle, dream image with and without a dream, ghost, spirit) is generally referred to as a mental, inner imagination , often also derogatory in the sense of a Fantasy or illusion . In the German-speaking world, Phantasma describes a perception-like scenic fact, psychiatrically as much as illusion , pseudo- hallucination and hallucination . The term is considered to be little used and ancient, cf. Cape. Concept history . Mario Erdheim looks at the phantasm both from its negative function and from the point of view of self-assertion and rebellion against unworthy conditions. In French psychiatry, phantasm generally means something like a pictorial scene in which the person concerned realizes a wish or an unconscious wish. In this respect there is equality with the daydream . The term plays an important role in the context of Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis , where it denotes a particular form of imaginary fantasy .

Concept history

The concept of phantasm has a long tradition , especially in philosophy, and is already used by Aristotle in the sense of a mental “image” ( De anima 428a). There it corresponds roughly to what we understand today by fantasy or imagination . "Fantasy" means the ability to produce mental images, while phantasm describes the images themselves produced by the imagination . - In ancient times the techniques for better memorization were based on the principle of sensualisation ( mnemonic ). Therefore one saw memory contents as memory images ( ancient Greek phantasmata, Latin imagines). The sense of sight was considered to be the highest and closest to reason. - Arthur Schopenhauer defines the phantasm as "not directly evoked by impression on the senses , therefore not belonging to the complex of experience " ( On the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason 1813, § 28). Another form of phantasm is hallucination , in which the phantasm is not recognized as a phantasm but is confused with an external sensory perception.

Use at Erdheim

Mario Erdheim regards the products that were first captured by the primary process , possibly repressed, but later necessarily (possibly newly) elaborated by the secondary process , which have thus (possibly again) become contents of consciousness, as phantasms. With regard to the negative functions of this phantasm, as they emerge from the above definition of this lemma, Erdheim emphasizes that Anna Freud confirmed as early as 1936 that in the exchange between the unconscious and the conscious, to which the repressed content tends to return, " no peaceful border traffic " take place. Using the example of forgetting names, for example, this negative function becomes clear. Perceptions disappear and insights become impossible. - However, using the example of jokes , Sigmund Freud also shows that the unconscious has a positive capacity for knowledge . In contrast to the dream work, Erdheim believes that the performance of the joke by means of the unconscious can lead to the formation of a common level of social opposition in the sense of active social resistance. The immersion in the unconscious and the repression that was reversed in the short term were part of a creative process. According to Freud, the joke arises from the fact that a preconscious thought is left to unconsciously processing for a moment and the result is immediately grasped by the conscious perception.

Used by Lacan

After Sigmund Freud attributed “fantasy” a decisive role in the constitution of the human psyche , the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan introduced phantasm as a terminological term in psychoanalytic theory from 1957 (with seminar IV on object relations ) . Lacan refers to the psychological representation of an object or a situation that the subject remembers pictorially. The phantasm thus belongs to the register of the imaginary .

Lacan specifies this initially general determination when he speaks of the phantasm as a form of defense . The development of a phantasm is often based on traumatic experiences, which, however, are repulsed and reinterpreted in the presented picture. One example of this is pornography in which the consumer designs (or consumes one) a scenario in which real inferiority and subjectively perceived inferiority are reinterpreted as sexual submission by women and unrestricted phallic power by men. The perverse phantasm turns the defeat of childhood into a sexual triumph. In this respect, Lacan describes the phantasm in particular as a defense against castration fear or, more generally, as a defense against the deficiency in the great other .

Behind the individual phantasmatic image there is ultimately a “fundamental phantasm” (in the German translation by Hans-Dieter Gondek: “basic phantasy presentation”, The Transfer. The Seminar, Book VIII , p. 138) on which the identity of the subject and the Forms of his desire are based. This scenario has to be “traversed” and worked through in psychoanalytic therapy. The subjectivity of the individual constitutes itself through the subject's handling of his fundamental phantasm ; it is a way in which the subject regulates and organizes his enjoyment, his jouissance . The objects of desire, the objects small a , are therefore also to be found in the phantasm .

Lacan sees the power of phantasmatic images - unlike Melanie Klein , for example , whom he explicitly criticizes on this point - not solely in their imaginary dimension, but above all in their embedding in the symbolic order : the phantasm is always an “image that comes into function in the significant structure ”( The direction of the cure and the principles of its power. In: Schriften I. S. 230.), and cannot be reduced to the imaginary.

literature

  • Horst Seidl (ed.): Aristoteles : About the soul. ( De Anima . ) Meiner, Meiner 1995, ISBN 3-7873-1381-8 .
  • Arthur Schopenhauer : About the fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason . (1813), §28, also as an online text
  • Jacques Lacan : The seminary. Book IV. The Object Relationship. (1956–57), Turia + Kant, Vienna 2004.
  • Jacques Lacan: The direction of the cure and the principles of its power. In: ders .: Schriften I. Quadriga, Berlin / Weinheim 1991, pp. 171–236.
  • Jacques Lacan: The Transfer. The seminar. Book VIII. (1960–61), Passagen, Vienna 2008.
  • Jacques Lacan: Le Seminaire XIV. La logique du phantasme. (1966–67, not yet in German)
  • Dylan Evans: Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Turia + Kant, Vienna 2002.
  • Robert J. Stoller : Perversion. The erotic form of hatred. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1978.
  • Drucilla Cornell: The Temptation of Pornography. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. 1997.
  • Ulrike Kadi: Imagination. Work on the imaginary. Turia + Kant, Vienna 1999.
  • Slavoj Žižek : The plague of phantasms. The efficiency of the phantasmatic in the new media. 2., improve. Edition Passagen, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-85165-384-X .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gustav Eduard Benseler et al .: Greek-German school dictionary. 13th edition, Teubner, Leipzig 1911, pp. 956 f.
  2. ↑ a b c Phantasm. In: Uwe Henrik Peters : Lexicon of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Medical Psychology. 6th edition. Urban & Fischer, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-437-15061-6 , p. 404. (online)
  3. ^ A b Mario Erdheim : The social production of unconsciousness. An introduction to the ethno-psychoanalytical process. 2nd Edition. suhrkamp pocket book science 456, Frankfurt a. M. 1988, ISBN 3-518-28065-1 , pp. 211 ff.
  4. ↑ Anna Freud : The I and the defense mechanisms. 1st edition. Munich 1936.
  5. ↑ Sigmund Freud : The joke and its relationship to the unconscious. 3. Edition. Collected Works, Volume VI, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1953, p. 189.