ABSTRACT
Jean Nassif argues that Freud's study has larger significance than a discussion of one genre of phantasy. The interest of Freud's analysis of masochistic phantasy derives neither from recognizing his blindness to this contradiction at the heart of his argument nor from overcoming it. Two consequences of the third stage must be accounted for here: the first involves the displacement of the phantasy from the familial scene; the second the overdetermination of the male gender in the phantasy. It is unclear from Kaja Silverman's essay how the heterocosmic impulse of phantasy might inform mass cultural as opposed to private narratives, and what the consequences of this impulse might be for textual analysis and ideological criticism. The polymorphous, unrestrained sexuality of the child confronts a social authority demanding that sexual division be represented by only two choices, and thus legislates who gains what rights of sexual identity by deciding what their bodies may signify.
