ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses phantasies categorized into three groups: positive and negative phantasies of the transference; phantasies recollecting infancy, and onanistic phantasies. It illustrates the way to make use of ‘forced phantasies’. As with ‘active’ interventions generally, the tasks in phantasying are justified practically always only in the period of detaching, i.e. at the end of the treatment. One must add, to be sure, that such detaching never occurs without painful ‘deprivations’, that is, without the activity of the physician. As to what phantasies to put to the patient, one cannot in general say; that must be decided by the analytic material as a whole. If the phantasy-suggestion is tried in the wrong direction (which occurs in those most practised in it occasionally) it may unnecessarily protract, though it is intended to shorten, the treatment.
