ABSTRACT
According to Sigmund Freud the primary processes precede the secondary in individual development and are or become unconscious, while the secondary processes arise as a result of growth and experience of external reality and are conscious. He held that the primary processes have an intrinsic connexion with dream imagery, fantasy, and wishfulfilling hallucinatory tendencies, and the secondary processes with verbal imagery and 'reality-adaptation'. Imaginative capacity becomes disengaged from external reality and operates in a psychic realm in which images cease to represent external objects and become instead substitutes for them. Insofar, however, as dissociation does occur, fantasy becomes disengaged from external reality, emotional appreciation of which is impoverished, and becomes an activity from which the individual feels alienated. When fantasy does engage reality, condensation leads to perception of similarities and to understanding of symbolic communication. Disengagement is responsible for the infantile content of neurotic fantasy, since the resulting isolation from experience prevents maturation.
