The Bodily Ego, the Phantasy Body, and the Polymorphus Mimicry of Primary Narcissism

Abstract

After reviewing the crucial place that Freud gives phantasy in his middle period, the author integrates it with his late concept of the bodily ego to introduce the phantasy body. It is more than an inert self-representation and is connected with the mimetic or imitative dimension of primitive sexuality. It is also a polymorphous body that is ontogenetically composed of different zones and which can change form when different images are superimposed over it. Phantasy forms or symbols that interact with this body are linked to the thing-presentations or parental imagos that comprise the Freudian unconscious and to the defensive process of identification. This is illustrated through clinical vignettes in which the patient is able to superimpose an image first in their own phantasy body and then in the image of the parent or parental-substitute that caused the ego injury that led to identification. Lastly, this mimetic aspect of phantasy is conceptualized as transcendental materialism which expands upon the Kantian framework that Freud uses in his model of mind. Phantasy is differentiated from fantasy with the idea that the latter’s images do not interact with the phantasy body but instead relate to word-presentations.

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