ABSTRACT
Phantasy creates a response in the social environment and this is a constituent part of it. When the social environment ceases behaving in a particular defined and familiar way then the phantasy is no more. This chapter presents a clinical example of female patient who had the phantasy that men just use women as objects to satisfy their sexual impulses. Phantasy is real, though it is a strange type of reality. Its reality is similar to the reality of a dream or a hallucination. The phantasy stimulates part of the object area of the analyst's mind and then his or her attitudes receive their colouring from this underlying base. The phantasy does not exist just in the patient or just in the analyst, but is in the communication system between the two. The clinical consequence of this is that interpretations focusing on the agency of the patient or that of the analyst are not reflecting the truth.
