ABSTRACT
In August 1897 Freud (1887-1902) described to Wilhelm Fliess, his principal correspondent at the time, his tormenting doubts about his theory of the neuroses. A fantasy can be enough to organize the symptoms of a neurosis. Psychic reality takes precedence over external reality in Freudian thought, and so there is no point in making an exhaustive search for the causal event, especially since, he tells Fliess, there is no 'indication of reality' in the unconscious, even though it is on this level that the earliest experiences are inscribed and 'it is impossible to distinguish between truth and emotionally-charged fiction'. The fantasy of identification with Hannibal was certainly in play on the unconscious level at the moment when Freud, like his childhood hero, found himself on the shore of Lake Trasimene in September 1897. In Freud's view fantasy feeds awareness just as perceptions do, determining the subject's actions and mental productions.
