- nificant signs of the patient's active imagination. The critics are
not so wrong when they say that their neurotic patients have no such phantasies. I have no doubt that patients are unconscious of the greater part of their own phantasies. A phantasy only "really" exists in the unconscious, when it has some notable effect upon the conscious, e. g., in the form of a dream; otherwise, we may say with a clear conscience that it is not real. Every one who overlooks the frequently nearly imperceptible effects of unconscious phantasies upon the conscious, or renounces the fundamental, and technically incontestable analysis of dreams, can easily overlook the phantasies of his patients altogether. We are, therefore, inclined to smile when we hear this repeated objection. But we must admit that there is some truth in it. The regressive tendency of the patient is strengthened by the attention bestowed on it, and directed to the unconscious, that is to say, to the phantasies he discovers and forms during analysis. We might even perhaps go so far as to say that, during the time of analysis, this phantasy-production is greatly increased, as the patient is strengthened in his regressive tendency, by the interest taken by the physician and originates even more phantasies than he did before. Hence, our critics have repeatedly stated that a conscientious therapy of the neurosis should go in exactly the opposite direction to that taken by psychoanalysis; in other words, it has been the chief endeavor of therapy, hitherto, to extricate the patient from his unhealthy phantasies and bring him back again to real life.
