ABSTRACT
In 1943-1944, the British Psychoanalytical Society held the "Controversial Discussions" in an attempt to resolve various disagreements then current in the theory, practice, and teaching of psychoanalysis. This chapter assesses in some detail some of the arguments that emerged around the concepts of "unconscious phantasy" and "unconscious conflict". Attention is given to sometimes irresolvable communicative and conceptual difficulties that arose, from differences in meaning that different psychoanalytic thinkers assigned and still assign to each of the two conceptual terms, "unconscious phantasy" and "unconscious conflict". The points and arguments regarding "phantasy" that have been chosen for this account are a small selection from a wide range of different ideas about its timing, nature, and functions, and irresolvable differences over ways of assessing evidence and conceptualising about it. The "timing" of unconscious phantasy was an immediate issue. Part of Isaacs's definition stated: "Phantasy is psychic reality, the mental representative and corollary instinctual urges, which cannot operate in the mind without phantasy".
