ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to establish two further links, the connection between phantasy and personality structure and that between phantasy and higher mental functions like thinking. Phantasy-forming is a function of the ego. The view of phantasy as a mental expression of instincts through the medium of the ego assumes a higher degree of ego-organization than is usually postulated by Sigmund Freud. Susan Isaacs, in her paper “On the Nature and Function of Phantasy,” elaborates Melanie Klein’s view on the relation between unconscious phantasy and instincts and mental mechanisms. The consideration of the use of unconscious phantasy as a defence raises the problem of establishing what is its exact relation to the mechanisms of defence. Briefly, the distinction lies in the difference between the actual process and its specific, detailed mental representation. Phantasy belongs originally to functioning, in the terms of the pleasure-pain principle.
