ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the ways that imaginal experience has increasingly lost its illusion of privacy and is subject to criminal legal codes as well as professional administrative codes of ethics. The criminal prosecution and exoneration of New York police officer Gilberto Valle, the so-called Cannibal Cop, is discussed. Valle’s participation in online conversations about gruesome fantasies of rape, murder, and cannibalism led to criminal prosecution for conspiracy. The role of the internet as a medium for the expression and elaboration of shared fantasy is examined. A passage from the Jungian analyst Nathan Schwartz-Salant’s book The Borderline Personality: Vision and Healing, is used to illustrate the layered ethical dimensions of working with fantasy in a clinical setting. Schwartz-Salant’s approach, in which he joined with the patient in a shared erotic fantasy, is critiqued.
