Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life

by Adam Phillips

Freud is describing a simple process: you are hungry, you fantasize a delicious meal, this fantasy doesn’t satisfy you, doesn’t nourish you or fill you up, and you start working out how in the world you can have this meal that you imagine. You begin by hallucinating, that is, fantasizing, and you end up trying to get the wishedfor meal in the real world, which will at best be only an approximation of the one you wanted, but has the advantage of being one you can actually eat. It is the failure of the anticipated satisfaction, its non-arrival once fantasized, that is crucial; it is disillusionment that leads the desiring individual to reality. His first recourse, faced with his frustration, is to attempt to satisfy himself, in fantasy, with a perfect, non-frustrating figure; when this fails, his only recourse is to reality. The failure of an initial wished-for satisfaction leads to the possibility of a more realistic satisfaction. Once satisfaction by means of fantasy breaks down, then, Freud says, the individual has ‘to form an idea of the real circumstances in the outside world and to endeavour actually to change them’. There is a world of difference between erotic and romantic daydream and actually getting together with someone; getting together is a lot more work, and is never exactly what one was hoping for. So there are three consecutive frustrations: the frustration of need, the frustration of fantasized satisfaction not working, and the frustration of satisfaction i...