ABSTRACT
Fantasy is a theme that J. Lacan explored in great depth, at least during the middle part of his teaching during the 1960s. The Lacanian doctrine regarding the fundamental fantasy relies heavily on "A Child is Being Beaten", and in particular takes account of S. Freud's insistence on the second, repressed, phase of feminine fantasy which is never either recalled by the subject or reconstructed in analysis. The chapter establishes a group of functions of the symptom, already drawing on the final phase of Lacan's work. It presents this in a more theoretical way, opposing it, on certain points, to Freudian theory. In neurosis, the concept of the sinthome condenses the pair "symptom and fantasy", including the determination of the former by the latter. The sinthome also presupposes a certain know-how with regard to the sexual partner and sexuality, palliating the impossibility of the sexual relation.
