ABSTRACT

The fantasy-percept is always concrete, containing one single definite image, being thus akin to apperception and remembrance, and distinct from thought, with its abstractions. The concrete imagery of the fantasy-percept is not, however, the direct production or reproduction of outer impressions, but the result of inner working; in fantasy-pictures man frees himself from directs connection with the outer world. Fantasy is never capable of creating from nothing; its elements must rather be founded on actual experiences. The obvious nature of the fantasy-percept depends upon the vigour of the apperception and the memory. The child's individual fantasy-percept is at first indistinct and insignificant. This is a result, not only of the general laws of perceptual development, but also of certain symptoms in the working of imagination itself. The relation of fantasy to reality appears in a new light as soon as the ideas of fantasy are considered in a symbolical sense.