Digital Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Digital Archive of
PSYCHOHISTORY
Articles & Texts
[Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal]
[
Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]

COMMENT
BY HOWARD F. STEIN
The Journal of Psychohistory. 13(2). Summer 1985

"On Doing Fantasy Analysis"

First: The fantasy analysis project as a courageous "first." It is easy for any outsider to say what he or she thinks ought to have been done; it is more difficult to accept, and even be grateful, for what could be done. It behooves us to be compassionate with others' anxieties - and what they do with these anxieties - at the same time as we are critical and urge upon them yet different (usually more difficult) resolutions.

Second: The sample of respondents in this paper consisted exclusively of psychonistorians, albeit with varying degrees of experience doing fantasy analysis, who were all familiar (again, to varying degrees) with the work of deMause and associates. I also assume that all participants have had some degree of analytic training or therapy. The sample, therefore, is biased toward some degree of conformity-more, perhaps, than simply conformity with imagined expected "right" answers, but involving the wish to join or compete with "the big boys." The next step in validating and expanding the scope of fantasy analysis might be the addition of (at least) two types of control groups: (1) the first group which, although wholly unfamiliar with psychohistory or fantasy analysis, is first explain-ed the method, then given the set of rules, and is given the two documents to analyze; (2) a second group which is described only the ap-proach or method, but not given the rules, and then assigned the two documents to analyze. At a much later point, it would be interesting to consider employing fantasy analysis as something of a projective pro-tocol, wherein one could compare responses of various ethnocultural, religious, professional, etc. populations for fantasy emphases much as has been done over the past five decades with the Rorschach.

Third: How one is to use deMause's (or anyone else's) "rules for fantasy analysis" is problematic. Should they be used literally? Are they ego devices or superego ones? Are they formulas that promise revelation of the unconscious? Are there yet undiscovered rules? There is the danger in fantasy analysis that the technique will be exclusively mechanical rather than creative, which is to say relying on the defense of isolation rather than permitting the essential free floating attention to the document, speech, movie, etc. Through an over identification with deMause, the overarching rule for fantasy analysis might well become: "Where deMause was, there shall fantasy analysis be," an approach which, however understandable, violates the very psychoanalytic spirit with which deMause originated and developed the rules. Applied mechanistically - that is, as anxiety - diminishing defenses against the unconscious - they can hardly reveal the unconscious message of the document, speech, movie, etc. Any "insights" derived from such an approach are already compromise formations. For fantasy analysis to serve as instrument of insight into the unconscious and into the working of the unconscious in social reality, there must be a constant oscillation between rigor and free association. I am here reminded of Gustav Mahler's saying that, "The most important part of the music is not the notes." One must be able to play the notes in order to make music, but music is more than the rules of composition and performance technique. In teaching fantasy analysis, we must devote more attention to the larger at-titudinal and theoretical issues that have to do with interpretation: whether interpretation of patients, documents, or cultures. From the outset, we need to stimulate and discipline the unconscious of our colleague or student into getting a feel for interpretation, testing one's interpretations, and the like. When rules and other techniques are later introduced, they will make inherent sense as facilitating the interpretive enterprise. If the rules of fantasy analysis are introduced prematurely, or not taught as discovery-facilitating devices, then we inevitably subvert our very purpose in doing fantasy analysis. More than anything, fantasy analysis needs to be approached as a form of playfulness. (I wish to acknowledge the influence of Casper Schmidt, M.D., upon these thoughts about fantasy analysis. Several telephone conversations with Dr. Schmidt have clarified my own thinking about fantasy analysis.)

Fourth: My final comment concerns the question of "meaning" in fantasy analysis. Late in the paper the authors compare the "use" theory of language (i.e., how words are actually used by a language community, corresponding to what anthropologists call the "emic" construction of reality by the native interpreter of his own world) with the view that and that all these meanings, conscious and unconscious are all contemporaneously present, irrespective of which meanings hold a dominant or official position at a given time (a view which is supported by Freud's 1919 paper on "The Uncanny," and an approach which corresponds to what anthropologists call the "etic" construction by the outside observer-interpreter). I don't think that one should have to choose between these models, for I regard them as occupying different levels or positions in the topography of language.

Now, fantasy analysis relies upon the free floating attention of the in-terpreter who endeavors to understand the meaning, at multiple levels, of a written text, movie, or informant. We must begin by inquiring how a document's writers and readers, or how an informant or patient, are us-ing words or phrases, otherwise our associations and interpretations may become contaminated with projections and externalizations. We need to begin with "use" in order to stimulate our unconscious to gain access to the group's or patient's unconscious. Otherwise the ostensibly "universal symbols" or "natural symbols" we purport to talk about will tell us only about ourselves in the guise of illuminating the text. For instance, consider the following brief list of organizing images or metaphors from recent American history: "Alamo" (during the Viet Nam war), "Evil Empire," "bottom line," "corporate," "Star Wars." I submit all of these require considerable explanation before we have a right to infer anything. Doesn't one need to know, for example, what an "Alamo" is before going any further in interpretation?

There is no short cut or instant group fantasy "mind reading" in authentic fantasy analysis. Once we understand the "use" or ego level of language in fantasy, it is then and only then legitimate to begin to piece together deeper interpretations. For instance, while a snake can represent male, female, or bisexual fantasies, interpreters from primarily post-Biblical Judeo-Christian traditions may assume that anybody's or any culture's snake image is predominantly phallic, or psychoanalytic investigators may assume that all levels of sexuality are equally important in a patient or group. Yet, what we call a universal may in fact be our projection.

Let me use another, even simpler, example: for the panel on cultural relativism at the 1985 IPA convention, l arrived at the image of the "triptych" as an organizing principle or framework for the three differing presentations (by Henry Ebel, Casper Schmidt, and myself) which offered distinct perspectives on the same subject. Dr. Schmidt, in a recent telephone conversation, brilliantly commented that triptychs are typically located on altars, and altars are places for sacrifices: and that indeed we were preparing to offer up, for once and for all, the ideology of relativism! Now, I submit that had Dr. Schmidt no idea of what a trip-tych was artistically, culturally and historically, that is, the ego level, he could not have inferred accurately to the deeper level that held the shared meaning of the word. What is more, at that point Dr. Schmidt and I shared more than a similar meaning of the word "Triptych," for in our several discussions and correspondence we already had numerous word and phrase associations-e.g., the final debunking of cultural relativism as a framework of comparative analysis-within which the image of "triptych" was not only embedded but emerged as a kind of solution. This is the same-as in reading a document and discovering the multiple meanings of key images in the preceding and succeeding words, phrases, and temporally related documents. In any text or conversation, we rightfully infer the meaning of a word from what else it is associated with: that is, from a "whole" not merely the word or phrase itself While the frequency of the use of a term or phrase is informative about its importance in the overall narrative, the term or phrase alone conveys at best only part of its meaning.

Finally, in conducting fantasy analysis, it is important that we attempt to construct the organization of wishes, affects, fantasies, and defenses, and not exclusively talk about the deepest, or earliest meaning as if it were the only one worth bothering about (a point recently made by Daniel Dervin in The Journal of Psychohistory, 12, 2, Fall 1984).

Howard R. Stein, Ph.D., teaches in the Department of Family Medicine, The University of Oklahoma, is Editor of The Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, and a contributing Editor of this journal The above comments were made in the panel. "The Fantasy Analysis Project: A Symposium Presentation at The Eighth Annual Convention of the Inter-national Psychohistorical Association, Hunter College, City University of New York, June 12-14, 1985.

"On Doing Fantasy Analysis"

Digital Archive of PSYCHOHISTORY Digital Archive of
PSYCHOHISTORY
Articles & Texts
[Books texts] [Journal Articles] [Charts] [Prenatal]
[
Trauma Model] [Cultic] [Web links] [Cartoons] [Other]

To report errors in this electronic
transcription please contact:
[email protected]

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1