ABSTRACT
In the Kleinian/Bionian way of thinking, all internal transactions within the infant, between infant and mother, infant and world, and between objects in the world are represented as unconscious phantasies. Unconscious phantasies constitute moving narrative images and arise during the pre-lexical hegemony of imagery. Virtually everything that is mental can be thought of as related to an unconscious phantasy: body parts, the body itself, impulses, defence mechanisms, internal objects, even affects. Unconscious phantasy should be distinguished from conscious and preconscious phantasy. Klein holds that phantasies can either be phylogenetic or can form anew in the dynamic, repressed unconscious. Almost from the beginning of psychoanalysis, the concept of unconscious phantasy has played a central role in psychoanalytic thinking and practice.
