Phantasy in Everyday Life: A Psychoanalytical Approach to Understanding Ourselves

by Julia Segal

Examines British discoveries in psychoanalysis, discusses perception, emotion, relationships, guilt, responsibility, and work, and looks at how psychoanalysts observe their patients

Genres: Psychoanalysis

1 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 1985

Reviews

[Alina Voinea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Din nefericire, scriitura este dezlânată, iar ideile sunt dezorganizate, înșirate alandala sub niște titluri altminteri promițătoare. Nu am rămas cu nimic ce aș putea folosi și mi-a dat impresia unei colecții de speculații și idei neexplorate îndeajuns, ca și cum autoarea ar fi scris cum gândește, sărind de la o idee la alta, lăsându-le adesea neterminate. Obositor și frustrant.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Her book on Melanie Klein is my favorite introduction to Klein, but I didn’t get as much out of this one.

[elle-angelique · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book an endlessly fascinating piece of work on the psychoanalytical concept of the “phantasy:” the false ideas we have about the world stemming from childhood memories that we frequently deny the existence of, which as a result leave an inevitable mark on our perceptions of the world. Segal, like Freud and many psychoanalysts of his era, links the majority of psychological dysfunction with childhood events: “Some ‘unintended’ action is probably in some way motivated by denied phantasies.”
I found her descriptions and ideas fascinating, but the exhaustive reiteration of the same ideas throughout almost every chapter can make it grating to read. Shining examples of novel thought, such as the idea of a person’s traits being attributed to a member of their family: “The strength of the self may have been in phantasy put into someone else - a father, it seems, very often - and then that father in phantasy is taken back inside (…) He remains as a ‘foreign body’ in the psyche, telling the ‘self’ - now very weak and drained of all strength - what to do,” are represented in fleeting moments without as much elaboration as they are warranted - rather, they are sucked back into the book and are followed by repetitions of the same phrases and concepts which were already clearly indicated prior.
What I found most interesting was Segal’s profiles of certain psychological types which are commonplace today: what is commonly known as an example of a Cluster B disorder in our language today is represented in a phantastical sense in her book: “Some people seem to be greedy about having lovers. they may move from one lover to another in a desperate attempt to deny their own feelings of dependance and unworthiness for love, and to pass them on to others. for such people the message passed in the sexual relationship is not one of love but of spoiling: ‘You are just dirt,’ or ‘I am just dirt.’ (…) For such people the value of the lover is lost once they are seduced.” I found the description of these sorts of harmful pathological drives very fascinating, particularly through the language of phantasy.
This attribution of psychological pain to everyday behaviours and habits has always intruiged me and the ideas held within are endlessly intruiging, but I found that after extracting a collection of interesting quotes there is not much value in rereading the entire book again. The flawed layout of the book, structured in a way that it is inevitable certain points will be repeated over and over, is a major detractor that makes it at times difficult to get through. Worth reading once in my opinion, but I’ll wait a while before picking it up again.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this, and some sections were interesting, but it was often written in an overly complicated way. Not sure how accessible this would be to the 'general public' as advertised on the back cover.