The crypt and the phantom

In 1978, two Hungarian-French classical Freudian psychoanalysts, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok, published a collection of their articles in a book called L'Ecorce et le noyau, partially translated into English under the title The Shell and the Kernel. ¹ This book introduces the concepts of the “crypt” and the “phantom,” drawn from their clinical research. They worked with patients who said they had done this or that without understanding why. The patients' families explained that they really “acted as if they were somebody else.” Abraham and Torok postulate that these experiences occur as if there were an “acting ghost” which speaks like a ventriloquist and even acts in the person's place.