ABSTRACT
In ‘Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality’, first published in 1908, Freud gave the following brief account of the ‘favourable circumstances’ in which a female patient was able to ‘capture’ an unconscious fantasy in the process of making its way into her conscious fantasy life or daydream:
After I had drawn the attention of one of my patients to her phantasies, she told me that on one occasion she had suddenly found herself in tears in the street and that, rapidly considering what it was she was actually crying about, she had got hold of a phantasy to the following effect. In her imagination she had formed a tender attachment to a pianist who was well known in the town (though she was not personally acquainted with him); she had had a child by him (she was in fact childless); and he had then deserted her and her child and left them in poverty. It was at this point in her romance that she had burst into tears.
