THE CONCEPT OF PHANTASY

The last two chapters have introduced the basic psychoanalytic strategy of explanation, and its associated concepts of the unconscious and wish-fulfilment. But the phenomena that can so far be explained, in terms of desire's plasticity and susceptibility to non-rational satisfaction, are circumscribed in being only intra-psychic. This means that psychoanalytic explanation does not yet stretch to irrational phenomena constituted by overt, public behaviour. So, if the psychoanalytic unconscious is to be a source of motivation which can penetrate and ramify in the daylit world of the Ratman – into his spheres of belief and intentional action – more needs to be added.

We said that the Ratman's sadistic rat-fantasy embodies, and is explained by, a wish, which is a certain kind of effect of a motivational state: one that fails to combine with belief, is not the object of awareness, does not involve choice, and is distinguished from the motivational state that causes it by having not just an aim, but an object, here the Ratman's father. When the Ratman cowers before Freud, however, what we have is a more complex phenomenon: a piece of overt, public behaviour, something that consequently engages the Ratman's powers of belief and intentional action. This is the new problem of explanation.