ABSTRACT
While Lacan accepts Freud’s formulations on the importance of fantasy and on its visual quality as a scenario which stages desire, he emphasises the protective function of fantasy. Lacan compares the fantasy SCENE to a frozen image on a cinema screen; just as the film may be stopped at a certain point in order to avoid showing a traumatic scene which follows, so also the fantasy scene is a defence which veils castration (S4, 119-20). The fantasy is thus characterised by a fixed and immobile quality.
