FOUR

PHANTASIES
I N RELATIONSHIPS

In this chapter I want to look at some of the ways people use their
relationships with other people and with the outside world.
Just as the t ~ e world
r of phantasy is likely to confuse what has
happened in phantasy with what has happened in reality. so it is likely to
confuse what happens in the self and what happens in other people.
Ownership of characteristics, emotions, abilities and parts of the self can
be attributed or actually given in phantasy to other people, to inanimate
objects or to animals. In our attempts to get rid of parts of ourselves - 'good'
or 'bad' parts - we may help along the denial of our ownership by
emphasizing their presence in other people. To gain reassurance and help
from outside against the terrors and fears of destruction within, we may
use the external world, just as we may at other times escape from the
external world into fantasies, We may endow other people and objects
with meaning derived from our inner world and watch what then hap-
pens, as part of our struggle to deal with terrifying anxieties.
In the process of using the world in this rather self-centred way, we may
discover that the real characteristics of the external world have a potential
we never dreamt of but can perhaps use. Sometimes we cannot use what
we perceive at the time but store it up for the future. Trying to make a
giraffe out of soft Plasticine we may discover that it falls naturally into a
dinosaur which looks even better than the giraffe we had planned. Trying
to make my husband into the loving father-mother-brother-sister I always
wanted, I may discover that he has his own characteristics which are even
better. The initial contact with him and with the Plasticine was motivated
partly by my desire to find some approximation in the real world to
phantasies in my inner world, but, if1 am lucky, I may be able to take back
into my inner world modifications to the phantasies which give even more
satisfaction.
There are many speciec phantasies to do with relationships: in this
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

chapter I want to concentrate on phantasies of putting parts of the selfinto

others; in the next I shall be looking In more detail at phantasies of taking
parts of others into ourselves.
One of the most straightforward ways in which we confuse the inner
world and internal perceptions with the outside world and external per-
ceptions shows up when we attribute our own desires and feelings to other
people. We tend to make mountains out of molehills, interpreting a slight
piece of evidence for someone else's feelings with our knowledge of such
feelings which comes from our own experience. We know what feelings
of rejection are like: we may see other people's feelings as being just the
same. We know what it is like to be jealous: we may use this knowledge
by assuming that other people feel just the same in similar situations. We
can sometimes sympathize and empathize with other people because we
know what we would feel in their situation. Most of the time this is
necessary, useful and sdlicient.
But often our own feelings are exaggerated in one of the ways I described
in the last chapter, and sometimes we do not allow ourselves to feel certain
emotions at all. This will interfere with the process of understanding others
too. When we use the& exaggerated phantasies about what feelings mean
to interpret other people's feelings or behaviour we may be making quite
false assumptions and getting into all kinds of misunderstandings. Often
our own acknowledgement of such fears or feelings is prevented by the
enormity of the phantasies behind them, but this does not prevent their
being perceived in a 'safer' situation - where they can be attributed to
others, for example.
Margaret was quite unable to refuse to be 'on tap' for a Mend whenever
the friend wanted her. Talking with me, she rediscovered that when she
was six her own mother had gone out to work, and Margaret had been
furious that her mother was no longer always available all the time. She
quickly realized that she was expecting the friend to feel the same kind of
powerful feelings Margaret had felt at the age of six if she was ever not
there when the friend wanted her. After this discovery, Margaret was able
to laugh at herself, and make more realistic choices about when she was
available and when she was not.
Sometimes there can be a phantasy that we have actually 'handed over'
a certain set of feelings. Watching someone else get passionately excited,
I may find myself becoming cool and reasonable as I feel or think to myself
'I wouldn't get that excited!' The excitement i would otherwise feel might
actually get lost as I see It expressed by somebody else. When my son's
Mend became bad tempered and cross one day, my son suddenly became
Phantasy Ln Everyday Life

a paragon of virtue. His own tired bad temper seemed in some way satisfied
by seeing his friend express it, and only emerged when his friend went
home.
People do this in the adult world all the time. Feelings not recognized
in ourselves are attributed to others - with many consequences. Seeing
my own selfishness in someone else may help me to feel I am not so selfish.
Accusing them of being selfish. I may be able to reassure myself that the
selfishness in me is 'not the real me' - 'r do not approve of selfishness. The
need to state what I am not, just as Nicholas needed to state that he had
not broken the spaceship, may lead me to find a representative of whatever
I want to deny, in order to enable me to deny it firmly. Unless I care very
much about my own say, stupidity, I am not going to bother about other
people's. Seeing it in them I reassure myself that it exists -elsewhere, not
in me. Samuel Beckett's brilliant monologue Not 1 depends upon this
mechanism.
Partly, this mechanism can be seen as an attempt to do away with an
internal conflict. The conflict between being selfish and not being selfish
is a real one which can cause us trouble. Sometimes we simply try to set
this conflict up in the outside world rather than bear it ourselves. Paul,
when he was three, said to an adult friend: 'My panda used to be afraid
of you. but he's not any more.' He had never actually shown any fear of
her, and I think he had been partly afraid, partly not afraid. The panda
was to carry one side of the conflict, and he was to carry the other. This
happens frequently in marriages.
One partner may express one set of feelings, and the other its opposite,
as a means of getting into the outside world an internal conflict. The desire
to attack people, to be sarcastic or mocking or indignant or critical may
be expressed by one, and the desire to protect people, to keep them safe
or impotent or placated by the other. One can say 'no' all the time, and
the other 'yes' - to spending money, having sex, letting the children stay
out late, lending things, or whatever. One can be soft and the other hard;
one mad and the other sane; one wild and the other boring. Each may use
the other to express a hidden part of the self; in phantasy they may
actually feel they have handed it over and no longer need feel any
responsibility for it. Sometimes, as with policemen using the 'hard and soft'
technique, partners realize what they are doing and are grateful to the
other for acting as a brake, or for 'giving permission' for something which
would be hard for themselves. Sometimes one of the partners may get
increasingly angry - for example because the mother gets all the disciplin-
ing and the father all the fun with the children. Frequently, both partners
 Phantasies h Relationships (1)

are actually maintaining such situations, even if they complain bitterly

about them. The phantasy 'getting rid of' or 'lending out of' feelings is
often helped along by provoking behaviour of some kind to make sure that
the other behaves in a way which fits the phantasy. Where the sharing
out of the feelings like this remains temporary and disowned feelings are
not denied in the long-term, this can be a useful way of making phantasies
lose some of their exaggeration.
If, in phantasy. I hand over my own 'wildness' which scares me too
much to my sister or my husband. I may be able to gain considerable
reassurance from their ability to be a bit wild without going over the top.
As a result I might gain the confidence to try out my own. My husband
showed me that it was 'all right' to 'waste time' - to read the newspaper.
not to work every minute of the day. I showed him that it was 'all right'
to spend more time working. Each of us could show the other that latent
desires in ourselves could be expressed and fulfilled without taking over
entirely: work need not entirely drown out play and vice versa. (For a time
it seemed we had simply changed over, that he had learnt to work all the
time, and I had lost the ability entirely. This kind of feeling is common in
these situations: it is not so easy to lose the fear that something can take
over completely. As in this case, the fear, on closer inspection, t u n s out
more often than not to be unrealistic.)
For years we lived with a friend who was very much tidier than we were
and who used to get upset when the kitchen was in a mess. I used to go
to great lengths to keep the kitchen clean 'for her', being prepared even
to battle with other members of the household on her behalf in a way
that I would never have done for myself at the time. It was not until we
left the house that I discovered that the need to have the kitchen clean
and tidy was mine as much as hers. In the process of fighting for her I had
learnt that it was possible to demand the right to a relatively tidy kitchen
for myself, both from myself and from other people I have lived with since.
Through the phantasy that a denied part of myself (which liked a tidy
kitchen) was in her, I came to modify my attitude to that part of me,
becoming far less ashamed of it and frightened it would take over my life.
What can happen is that in this kind of way we learn to accept parts
of ourselves which previously scared us too much, or were felt to be
unrealistically important. It is as if we have inside us at times desperate,
unspoken, conflicting demands: 'I should keep the kitchen extremely clean
all the time' and at the same time 'I should be doing really important work
- that is, not housework - all the time.' The difficulty is to recognize these
demands and to become able to speak them -at which point they become
Phantasy in Everyday Ufe

quite clearly incompatible and probably exaggerated. Once spoken, they

can be modified into more realistic longings or wishes: 'I'd like to ...' Such
realistic wishes can admit the possibility of being given up; failure to
achieve them then becomes cause for regret rather than huge guilt and
blame. We can be helped by other people to recognize these demands
inside ourselves; other people by their existence and their way of life can
show us how we feel about things and how we could in fact change these
feelings.
Where both partners in a marriage can come to share their acceptance
of the part of themselves they previously put into the other, each can
modify their expectations and discover that it is not possible nor necessary
to be as perfect as they previously feared they had to be. There is no longer
a need to deny wanting the kitchen tidy; both can regret that it is not tidy,
and perhaps actually tidy it up. There is no longer a need to deny the need
to keep back some money for bills; both partners can regret the necessity
and enjoy spending what they can spend, where previously one took
responsibility for spending and one for saving, and each attacked the other
and the 'dangerous' part of themselves in the other. It seems that we often
fight off the need to see discrepancies between logically incompatible
desires. and may go to some lengths to maintain that both are possible.
By fighting the battle between one person who 'wants' one and another
person who 'wants' another, a modification of both positions may eventu-
ally be worked out.
Often these incompatible desires, especially those fought out between
husband and wife, represent ones which in phantasy stem from fears for
existence.
The need to hang on to money may be a way of keeping at bay deep
anxieties about starvation which would be triggered by not having
enough: being unable to keep any money may be a way of denying this
fear, and continually 'proving' that other people will in fact bail you out.
The need to be mad and the need to be sane. both in slightly excessive
ways, may arise from deep anxieties about insanity in each, and from
anxieties about not deserving to be loved, having to 'earn' love or having
to prove that it will be given in spite of being very strongly tested. The need
to keep a house excessively clean, and to struggle with a partner who
makes a mess all the time, may be related to infantile phantasies about
being capable of messing up the whole world and being left utterly uncared
for. Where one partner is expressing dependence and the other indepen-
dence in ways which lead to continual conflict, there may be powerful
fearsof being unable to survive on your own and being unable to love and
 Phantasies in Relationship (1)

value the separate existence of people who have the ability to hurt you,
where this hurt feels so dangerous it could kill.
For some people these anxieties are so enormous that it is very difficult
to 'disprove' them in everyday life. But where they are not too powerful,
a husband or wife or a friend may be able to show that the fears are
unrealistic, that food and love and understanding will be given in spite of
temrs to the contrary. Other people can also force the recognition of one's
own destructiveness in reality, and so bring about a modification of some
of the underlying phantasies. Edna had for years allowed her husband to
treat her like a doormat until one day she left him for another man. Her
husband was suddenly faced with his own love for her, which previously
he had totally failed to recognize in his scornful ill-treatment of her.
Suddenly it seemed that he was the one who was being 'trampled all over'.
For years, it seems, neither of them had admitted that his behaviour was
extremely destructive, partly because it fitted in with their expectations of
men. Consdously he had never been aware of loving feelings - except
when drunk - and also that his behaviour was bound to destroy any love
anyone could have for him. (I suspect that one of his fears was that his
love could swallow his wife up completely and that she would die, just as
his mother had died when he was fitteen. It was not until he actually lost
her that he could feel safe enough to love her wholeheartedly - by which
time it was too late to mend the marriage.)
The conditions under which people can help each other are interesting
and of course complex. For this kind of phantasy to work there needs to
be some kind of agreement about what aspects of the self another person
can or will 'hold' and how they do this will affect the process.
If a woman starts complaining about her husband to a woman Mend,
the friend who defends him may 6nd he is attacked even more; the friend
has refused to 'hold' the attacking part of the wife even temporarily, but
has taken over the 'defender' role for both of them. If the friend responds
to the complaints by adding her own - 'Yes,I know he's dreadful, do you
know what he said to me?' - the wife will probably begin to defend him,
and may take the husband's side against the friend. If the friend manages
to 'accept' or 'hold' the attack, without either adding to it, endorsing it
or denying it, she may enable the wife to look at it as part of what she feels,
and so to discover other parts of herself which feel quite dilTerently about
him.
This is part of understanding. Understanding does not add to or subtract
from feelings or behaviour, but states them as they are, complete with real
guilt, real anxieties and real fears. Understanding in this way helps to
Phantasy in Everyday We

reduce the power and the volume of what has to be hidden. Reassurance
does not change the truly frightening feelings if it simply covers them up;
it does not offer the same 'holding on to' capacity which allows them to
come into contact with other feelings and so to be changed of their own
accord. Reassurance of too quick a kind may in fact be understood to be
confirming the risks of considering the bad feelings too carefully.
When a friend accused me in a letter of treating him aggressively in a
seminar, other members of the seminar tried to make me feel better. Some
said 'You weren't aggressive to him', and this was comforting as a state-
ment of solidarity and intention to reassure. But as a statement of fact I
knew it was false, and it left me with my fears and my guilt unchanged.
Other people said 'Yes, you were aggressive, but ...' The discussion of just
how and why I had been aggressive, how misunderstandings might have
arisen and how other people had actually enjoyed the challenge of similar
treatment was much more helpful. I could sort out where 1 was in the
wrong and where I had nothing to be ashamed of. This kind of understand-
ing was helpful in two ways. It left me feeling I had really shared my
burden of guilt and that it had been recognized for what it was, no more
and no less. And it also enabled me to get beyond my immediate pre-
occupation with my own guilt and bad behaviour and to begin to think
about the friend himself. Seeing it from his point of view, and also actually
criticizing him, was only possible after I had had help with bearing my own
guilt.
Similar interactions take place between children and parents and be-
tween husbands and wives. The parent who helps a child to recognize the
extent and limits of the pain, the guilt, the nisery it is sdering and has
innicted on others will engage the child's anxieties about it all and be able
to help the child bear it more. As a result the child will be able to feel real
concern for others and will learn to be more realistic about pain in itself
and in others. 'Don't be silly, it's not really hurting' is likely to be less
effective in general than a serious, matter of fact enquiry about how much
it is hurting, or exactly how long it is going to go on hurting: until bed-
time, or until tomorrow, or until next week. A parent who lays the guilt
on thick - 'You're a monster, you've really hurt Johnny!' - when Johnny
is not seriously hurt at all, is likely to confirm the child's enormous guilt
and fears about having damaged Johnny for ever, and having tremendous
power to inflict serious injury. As a result the child is likely to respond by
denying the pain and the guilt: 'I don't care!' is a natural response, when
cariag seems too painful and hopeless. Not only is Johnny likely to become
an enemy, but also adults lose their ability to help and become persecutors
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

who make things worse. The child may simply learn to lose touch with
its loving feelings, so that it can really innict injury without caring. One
of the people who treated my mother for a back injury earned her undying
respect by telling her just how long and how much she would suffer from
pain after he had treated her. His precision and accuracy enabled her to
bear with fortitude several days of pain, knowing that it would be over.
This can even apply to death. It does hurt when someone dies: being
able to talk about the pain somehow does create a feeling of having shared
it, and in phantasy this may have happened. This can also be a reason
people give for not talking about their pains. Sometimes there is a fear that
another person would suffer too much, and there is a desire to protect such
people from the agony. The very concrete nature of this feeling comes out
in the assumption that the listener would actually suffer as much as the
mourner, even though a more 'reasonable' view would be that no one can
ever suffer as much if they are not personally involved. Once such fears
are spoken they may lose their power, just as the other fears and secret
agonies associated with death can lose their power to some extent when
brought into the realm of common sense and allowed to be felt and then
to pass.
It seems that a necessary condition for someone to help by 'holding'
fears or anxieties or other feelings for us is that they understand them, that
they can recognize them fully. It is far more comforting talking to someone
else who has suffered as we have - be it with a serious illness, with the
death of family members in a war. with the troubles of having a handi-
capped child In the family - than it is taking to someone who does not
'really' understand in this way. In order to enable a lover or a friend to
help me to get in touch with and use parts of myself I previously could
not bear, or to engage with my deepest fears and anxieties so that I can
feel them for a while as unlimited, I have to h d someone who understands
them from the inside, someone whose own fears and anxieties are suf-
ficiently close to mine. It is no help if they really do not see the problem
in any way. But the risk is that I will simply find someone who will join
me in playing out my worst anxieties and will in fact add to them.
The process begun as a normal method of trying to make phantasies
more realistic may instead ' c o n h ' their exaggerations. Not only is there
a risk of losing part of yourself when you hand it over to someone else,
but the way they treat those parts of you may be no better. And you may
also End yourself in a situation where you have to worry excessively about
what you are doing to the other person.
Let us look at some examples of this.
Phantasy in Everyday Life

Valerie seemed for a while to 'cany' the calmness that her husband
could not accept in himself. But her behaviour just 'confirmed' to him that
this calmness meant almost total withdrawal, apathy and being utterly
boring. As a result, her husband's own calm was denied even more. His
frantic behaviour then 'confirmed' his wife's phantasies that doing any-
thing at all was too much. Similarly, Ursula was expected by her husband
to cany excessive responsibility for being sexually experienced. The in-
ternal and external pressure to do this was felt to be so great that it could
not be given up; she had to seek more experience outside the relationship
to avoid having to admit that some experience goes along with some
ignorance. And her husband. who 'had' to deny his own sexual know-
ledge, received confirmation of the feeling that such knowledge is
dangerous indeed - it drives you to seek out new partners. And so his own
approach to sex became even more inhibited and 'innocent', so encourag-
ing Ursula to feel even more alone with her sexuality.
In each case the partner in the outside world had been used as a testing
ground, but not consciously. In each case, the problem involves the fact
that parts of the self are not acceptable and accepted. Other people's
behaviour is being interpreted in a phantasy world which is full of exces-
sive phantasies and which includes a refusal to see a part of the self which
is being attacked or seems dangerous. And the message received from the
outside world is a c o n h a t i o n of the frightening phantasies.
The difficulties involved in handing over parts of the self to others do
not end here.
In the process of handing over unwanted or feared parts of yourself
(your sexual desire, your meanness, your insanity, your cold reason. your
rejection of others), you may also hand over parts which are valuable and
necessary (your aliveness, your control over your generosity, your spon-
taneity, your knowledge of realities, your ability to be a separate person,
say). Not only do you have to work hard to deny your ownership of those
characteristics, but you also need to keep a close eye on the part of yourself
which you have disowned but cannot live without. In the process you may
get involved with keeping a very tight rein on the person to whom you
have 'given' that part of yourself: you may need to watch their movements
closely, or try hard to influence them in one direction or another, for your
own purposes. which may not be in the interest of their welfare.
You may feel a great need to worry about or actually control the person
who b 'holding' or 'looking after' the part of yourself you are rejecting or
even trying to attack. You may, for example. worry excessively about the
sex life of your neighbour or your husband or your daughter or the French,
 Phantasies in Relattonships (1)

depending where it is that you 'see' your own denied sexuality. (Attempts
to control. watch or attack homosexuals are often interpreted in this way,
as forms of excessive zeal on the part of members of the establishment or
teenage boys whose own sexuality gives reason for anxiety. There may
be good reasons for some laws about homosexuahty, but some of the
enforcing of such laws does smack of protesting too much.) You may be
unrealistically concerned that other people's sexuality would lead to ter-
rible trouble, like your own would. you fear, if you did not control it so
tightly. You may watch or control your husband's or wife's behaviour
with money jealously, to see that they do not overstep certain limits
which are more to do with unrealistic anxieties than with real ones.
You may be excessively concerned with your child's deceitfulness or
obstinacy, while your own is apparently quite acceptable or totally denied.
You may complain incessantly about your husband's or wife's lack of
desire for excitement, maintaining that it is only your consideration for
them which causes you to lead such a boring existence. In all of these
cases there may be a realistic worry or complaint as well as the less realistic
one.
The desire to deny your own jealousy or your own tactlessness may well
latch on to some real example of someone else's jealousy or tactlessness:
there may be real reason to wony about your child's behaviour at school
or your husband's or wife's or sister's sexual behaviour. But the phantasy
that you have landed the other person with a part of yourself that you
cannot bear may considerably add to the real worry. Sometimes this extra
burden simply increases your sense of anxiety; sometimes it can make
things seem so bad that you actually deny the feelings and fail to take the
real worry seriously enough in an attempt to avoid recognizing your own
share in it.
Sometimes people seem to believe that such processes of handing over
have gone on to the extent of causing damage, when the damage is better
explained by some totally different cause. Children who have a sibling with
some kind of disability may easily believe that they have handed over their
own (phantasied) disabilities and actually caused the sibling's problems.
Girls may believe they have handed over their own penis or 'masculinity'
to their brothers, and brothers believe they have handed over their 'femi-
ninity' - whatever that means for them - to their sisters. So, for example,
a girl may feel responsible if her brother is hurt fighting another boy,even
if she has nothing to do with it: in her phantasy it may have been her
physical aggression which 'made' her brother fight. Or the boy may feel
guilty when he sees his sister crying, as if it is his own sensitivity which
Phantasy in Everyday Llfe

is causing her trouble. Here we can see more precisely something I

mentioned in Chapter 2.
The excessive need to watch over or control others which arises from
these phantasies may itself be denied in the self and 'seen' in others. This
may give rise to a strong sense of being watched -by your brother or sister
or spouse or parent -or feelings of having them 'on your back' all the time.
The sense of being trapped comes from these phantasies. You may 'know'
what someone else demands that you should do, without them ever telling
you - so there is no real discussion, no real opportunity to challenge the
assumption. 'The kitchen must be precisely this clean for him/her - much
cleaner than I would bother to have it.' 'I cannot buy that pair of socks
without asking my mother or my husband first; I know they would
consider it extravagant.' 'If I look at myself in the mirror I can "feel" my
sister saying "You are too fat."' 'I cannot go out because I know my
children need me at home.' The trapped person may feel they cannot do
what they want for fear of what the other person would say. Sometimes
the other person would not say it at all: the conviction is often so strong
it never gets tested out. Sometimes the external world has been so arranged
that somebody is found who will say what is expected and so prove that
the self is in fact 'controlled' by somebody else. In extreme cases, there is
always prison. In these ways, the controlling part of the self may also have
been successfully 'put' into someone else.
One of the most frightening parts of this kind of phantasy is the fear of
being utterly depleted. If bits of the self are continually being left around
in other people. like possessions left by a guest, the self may well begin to
feel rather empty and weak. This feeling of weakness may well have been
at the root of the process already, the stronger parts of the self being felt
to be too dangerous because the acceptable parts were so weak. Some
mothers feel they 'give' their lives and their strength to their children: in
return the children may 'give' their weakness and helplessness to her.
Emotionally and physically she may feel drained and exhausted, perhaps
at the mercy of her children and the world in general. Unless she keeps
hold of enough of her strength, she may die early; or her children may
never dare show their own weakness for fear it 'means' this incapacitating
weakness. Some mothers may be felt by their children to be utterly
rapacious, draining them of all their strength and resources: the truth in
this phantasy may be matched by the simultaneous truth that the child
wants to do precisely this to her. The fear of being depleted is matched by
a fear of greedily depleting those you love. Where the demands made by
the world are felt to be too much, there may be a sense that one or the
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

other has to happen. It is only by finding out that the world can be satisfied
with something less than this that the fears can be calmed and both the
self and the loved person can be felt to be safe.
Where parts of the self are being seen or evoked in others as a means
of denying them in the self, not only is there a sense of injustice at the
hypocrisy involved, but there is also a real danger of empathy being
destroyed. Instead of saying 'I know how you feel, and I don't like feeling
it either', and so sharing the guilt and shame and painfulness or whatever.
both partners may be saying 'I don't understand you at all'. Sympathy and
understanding are not allowed in, for fear of having to acknowledge one's
own share of the real burden. In one sense it is true that neither under-
stands the other; in another sense it is a lie, and felt as such. Consciously
there may really be a lack of understanding, but on a deeper level, in those
thoughts which flash through our minds and are then gone, perhaps there
is a great deal of unrealistic understanding. And the price of denying this
kind of understanding may be a gradually increasing sense of loneliness.
The kind of maq, to take an example, who claims he does not under-
stand how his wife can be so emotional and unreasonable may himself be
highly emotional and unreasonable in other relationships: he does under-
stand only too well how difficult it makes life. By being reasonable with
his wife, he may be not only 'showing her how to behave' but also
reassuring both of them that someone in the family can remain cool. Both
of them may believe that it would be only too easy for both of them to
explode together, and so destroy everything. But by behaving in such a
cool way when his wife is getting upset, he is also (on one level uninten-
tionally) provoking her to become more emotional and making her feel
guilty for expressing the emotionality which he is disowning and fighting
off. He may also be making her into an enemy when she could be an ally.
sharing the burden of guilt and emotionality, and making kt seem less
threatening.
Often this kind of interaction can be traced by looklng at how people
feel they used to be. A man who worked in a remand home for boys told
me how he used to be a naughty and 'dirty' boy but had changed
drastically at the age of twelve. His Life was now devoted to helping the
boys in his care to change too, he said: but it appeared to me and some
of his colleagues that his life was in fact more directed at punishing the
boys in his care for being like he was. His frustration was the greater, I
think, because he had not fully separated himself out from the boys; in his
phantasy they were not real people but were seen as no more than a dirty
and dangerous part of himself. He dared not view that part of himself with
Phantasy ln Everyday We

anything more than disgust and fear in case it regained Its powerful hold
over him. The attraction of being 'like that' was denied, not defused.
Another man I knew had to be away on business quite a lot of the time.
His wife used to get so upset about being left on her own that he made
great efforts to come home early, travelling long distances late at night or
early in the morning to be at home with her. He claimed that he knew
she got anxious when he was away but it was not something he could
really understand: he liked being away from home. He was Bnding her
anxiety a terrible tie and was seriously considering leaving her. But when
we were once talking about our school days he remembered crying
hysterically at primary school whenever he knew that his mother intended
being out for the day. As a result the school would send him home and
his mother was unable to go out. It seemed that he did indeed 'know' what
his wife's feelings might be. By in phantasy putting into his wife that
crying child part of himself he seemed to have bolstered a picture of himself
as a very independent man struggling with a dependent wife. His picture
of what it meant to be independent was in fact somewhat lacking: it could
not incorporate dependence, but had to fight it OK He so disowned the
dependent part of himself that he was able to consider leaving it and his
wife entirely. My feeling that his attempts to leave would not succeed was
confirmed when I met him again several years later and he was still living
with his wife. It is interesting that a man who showed such anxiety as a
child should take a job which took him away from home so often, and a
wife who found it so difficult. It is possible that he was trying to use the
real world to help him with some very deep anxieties about being left.
One of the sad things about this kind of interaction is that the harder
people work to change the behaviour of their spouse, the worse things may
seem to get. The more my friend tried to show his wife that she was 'all
right' on her own, by going away and leaving her overnight. the more
upset she got. The more the 'cool' husband tries to show his wife how to
be cool, the more emotional and unreasopable she may seem to get. The
more the 'mean' partner tries to control the spending of money, the more
the 'generous' or 'spendthrift' partner may feel it is safe and necessary to
show that spending money is all right. I sat in the back of the car once
with my son behind me. He was shouting in my ear and I was being
deafened, so I spoke more softly to make him lower his voice. But. as I was
facing forward and the car was noisy, he could not hear so he shouted
louder in my ear to make me speak up. Thls went on for a few exchanges
before I realized what was happening and was able to saM to him that I
wanted him to speak more softly - whereupon he was able to say that he
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

wanted me to speak up. We both found our extreme Irritation changed

to laughter. This can happen in marriages too, when fighting couples
realize that they have been doing something like thls to each other for
years.
It seems that the 'showing' kind of behaviour is more primitive and
more automatic than the 'telling' kind. When the phantasies involved are
very excessive there may be a lot of hidden fear which makes it hard to
stop and think about them and to let them go. Sometimes there is a feeling
that 'as long as I don't talk about it it isn't true'. Sometimes the dieaculty
arises from the fact that such prlmltive mechanisms often have a secret,
denied punltive element in them, stemming kom early beliefs that some-
one must be to blame for everything. The other partner may recognize
only thls blame element and fall to see a real desire for change all round.
The paradox is that it is only by sharing the responsibility for unwanted
characteristicsthat the excessivenesscan be reduced. Only when the 'cool'
husband or wife shows some emotion may the 'emotional' partner cool
down a bit. Only when the partner who saves all the time begins to spend
can the partner who spends begin to save. Only when the partner who
'wants sex all the time' learns to say no when they do not want it can the
partner who normally says no make the first move. Only when the partner
who claims to want to keep the marriage together admits to the advantages
of separation can the partner who wants to leave admit to the parts of
himself or herself which would suffer from the separation.
But here it is clear what a risk is involved. If both partners start saying
that they want to separate, what will keep the marriage together? If both
get emotional, when will it end? If both say no to sex there will never be
any; if both say yes, they will never get any sleep. It takes knowledge,
courage, belief and trust to accept that desires are not just 'on' or 'off ';that
holding one does not mean having to give the other up entirely; that
expressing both desires, and the conflict between them, will most likely
lead the other to express both too. And the risk of losing what you have.
however unsatisfactory it is, may seem too enormous.
The phantasy of putting parts of the self into others can work to increase
the excessiveness of the phantasy part, not only because of the way the
other person deals with it but also because of the lack of practice and
experience of the denied part. Where a husband 'puts' all his understand-
ing into his wife and never uses his own, he may well increase and confirm
his own weakness of understanding. Where a wife 'puts' all her ambition
into her husband and never tries out her own, she may well maintain a
picture of success which does not quite fit with reality. In the course of
Phantasy In Everyday Life

having a job or a career, or using one's understanding, the realities of life

force a gradual modification of aims to fit the possibilities. Where the wife
or husband (or parent or anyone else) does not experience the constraints,
she or he may be less able to accept that they are real. Similarly with
housework and childcare: some husbands seem to expect a quite unrealis-
tic level of cleanliness and tidiness, particularly when they have never
tried to do the job themselves over a long period of time. Lack of such
experience may mean that they have not had to modify their picture of
how to live, nor discovered the costs of maintaining the standards of their
mothers - or, more likely, their phantasy mothers. It may particularly be
men who spent large parts of their childhood in institutions who have an
unrealistic idea of keeping house. I must confess that I came across this
problem more in Germany: men have been doing housework, and treating
women better for it, for longer in England, I suspect - Engels reports it In
Victorian Manchester, for example, though with true Germanic horror.
These excessive demands - for cleanliness or power or money - may
give rise to excessive guilt when they are never confronted and modified
and given up in their pure form. The guilt then feels like an attack and
is fended off and denied, as I described before. To the guilt of never living
up to an impossible ideal is added the guilt and resentment of loading the
other person with unbearable parts of the self, and the fear that they will
be damaged as a result. The guilt becomes far too heavy and unrealistic
to be borne. As a natural next step, the partners may deny their own guilt
and try to make their partners feel sorry. But the more they try to do this
the more each is likely to feel utterly hopeless and helpless about ever
making sufficient amends. Each fluctuates between depression and 'I don't
carel', between accusing the other and accusing the self. Neither can help
the other reduce the burden of their own guilt, for fear that any admission
that one is not totally guilty will lead to an assumption that they are not
guilty at all. In which case, the other 'must' be guilty. It seems that the
concept of 'a llttle bit guilty', or 'a little bit sorry', or 'a little bit sad' is one
which some people do not recognize. For them 'a little bit' always means
'this is Justthe tip of the iceberg'; there is no alternative to 'on' or 'off' when
it comes to guilt, sorrow, sadness or anger.
What can often happen goes something like this.
The husband. for example, seems not to care very much for the famlly
and the wife takes over more and more responsibility for everything to do
with it. Because she takes over more and more of the responsibility her
burden becomes bigger and bigger as time goes on, and her husband never
learns to care for the household as she has learnt. He loses all the skills
 Phantasies in Relationshtps (1)

he ever had for caring for people, perhaps, and all his self-respect too. As
a result he seems to care less and less for the family, though somewhere
inside him he does care very much and he feels hopeless and guilty about
his failures. The discrepancy between his behaviour and hers widens and
it may seem an impossible task ever to make up for his wrong behaviour
because she has been by comparison so enormously good and long-
suffering.His hidden guilt may become increasingly intolerable and his
wife's attempts to make him feel guilty and show him how to behave
simply exacerbate the problem. Confessing his guilt to her would lay him
open to quite unrealistic demands for recompense: if not quite the death
penalty, at least total slavery for life - as his wife seems to have accepted
- in his phantasy. He may fluctuate between trying to live up to the high
standards set by the two of them in her, and giving up entirely. Every time
he tries to be a 'good' husband his attempt is doomed to failure because
their standards are so unrealistic, and his wife is likely to use it as an
occasion for pointing out his normally bad behaviour. She is also likely
to criticize his efforts partly because her own sense of worth for her
depends upon the comparison with his lack of worth. Every time he 'fails'
he receives c o n h a t i o n of his fears that he is guilty for all the problems
in their lives, including all his wife's: her own fears and resentments may
well make her deny any share, and she will use the on/off principle to
support her: 'I am not as guilty as him so I am not guilty at all.' Since she
knows, however, that she is partly responsible (and in phantasy this may
be more than partially; perhaps she believes that she drives him to
drunken irresponsibility single-handed, just as she felt she drove her father
that way when she was small), she cannot discuss the whole thing with
him reasonably. Both see the other as blaming them unrealistically, and
expect the huge blame they feel is their due and at times put on the other.
Very offen this blame and the guilt are quite out of proportion to the events
and arise from some earlier situation being daily replayed.
I have seen this kind of scenario being played out in many relationships;
it is by no means always the husband who is 'irresponsible'. Where it is
the wife she may turn to drugs rather than drink to drown her sense of
her own inadequacy and unworthiness which her husband daily pushes
down her throat. Sometimes it is possible to help such people to regain
some hope in their ability to make some recompense, partly by helping
them to grasp the more realistic nature of the grievances, teasing out the
unrealistic aspects and enabling both to confess to their enormous sense
of guilt. They may be surprised to find that the other feels guilty at all.
However, where the denials are too strong these relationshipscan be very
Phantasy in Everyday Life

hard to change: as soon as one confessesto guilt of any kind the other takes
it asconflrmation that they themselves are 'really' innocent. The possibility
of sharing any painful or conflicting feelings - blame, guilt, anger, love,
hopelessness or responsibility - may seem a totally alien concept. Good
and bad may be kept so far apart that they do not affect each other, for
fear that a little bit of badness would totally destroy all goodness. Such
couples seem to believe that the only hope for keeping any goodness is to
keep it well away from the badness, locked up in one partner at a time.
For such couples, there may be a lack of sense of time and memory: they
Bnd it hard to remember their own sense of guilt when confronted with
their spouse's, or their own sense of being all right, or being good, when
confronted with their own badness.
In this kind of relationship, there may appear to be a problem of
'breakdown of communication'. Husband and wife cannot talk to each
other at all because. each is terrified of discovering their own (unrealistic-
ally exaggerated) guilt. and each is terrified of damaging their picture of
perfect goodness, either in the self or in the other, and so being left with
nothing. But it is only verbal communication which is stopped; on a non-
verbal level there is only too much communication. The phantasy of
putting parts of the self into others is a form of very primitive com-
munication.
!on-verbal communication has great potential. Making love with sorne-
one can convey all kinds of messages: giving them a black eye or a wink
or a hug can convey something which words would express differently.
Listening to music and dreaming are both forms of non-verbal experience
which have deep effects at times. But the potential for misunderstanding
non-verbal messages is also enormous. Messages about the past or the
future cannot be directly communicated by actions which take place
always 'now'. Memory and a sense of time cannot easily be included and
may be actively denied by non-verbal behaviour. Interpreting other
people's messages through our own phantasies we may well pick up one
or more parts of their behaviour which were not intended to be communi-
cated, and we may not see or understand whole areas of meaning which
the other person wants us to see. It is hard to convey reasons for behaviour
by the simple activity or even by obvious moods, and the reasons which
are supposed to be conveyed may be so conflicting that it is not surprising
that they can be easily misunderstood.
Seeing that someone is clearly upset, it is very easy to 'understand' that
you are responsible: your mind may immediately rush to something you
have done which might have upset them. Seeing someone being with-
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

drawn it is very easy to understand that they do not love you any more;
perhaps they are thinking about a secret lover. In fact, ofcourse, they may
be withdrawn because in their phantasy you do not love them any more,
or they may be miserable about something completely different. Asking
someone what the matter is may produce a surprising answer, or it may
produce the answer 'nothing' - which leaves the speculations intact.
Many people have great difaculty in believing what people say about their
reasons for the way they feel - this is partly realistic in that people often
do not know or do not want to say what is going on in them if they do
know. Often it feels too 'silly' to say. (A practical means for daily living
with a person who has moods like this is to ask them a precise question
about the cause which is of greatest concern to you: 'Did I upset you by
.. .3' for example. The answer in the look of incredulity on the miserable
person's face may be far more convincing than words could be. Formulat-
ing the anxiety they are provoking in you can in itself be constructive:
often the answer is clear without the need to put the question.) Once words
have been put to such anxieties, there may be new possibilities for thinking
about alternatives, or for sharing the anxieties. While such feelings remain
unverbalized they simply get in the way of clear thinking. and especially
thinking about things from another person's point of view.
Handing feelings over to other people by actually evoking them is a kind
of non-verbal communication which has great potential and is used
frequently without people being aware of what they are doing. It is
perhaps the first method of communicating with someone we love; a tiny
baby can only make people understand that it needs something by some-
how evoking in them feelings which are close enough to what the baby
is feeling for them to know what to do. A baby's k t scream hurts the ears,
physically, and evokes a very powerful desire to do something to stop it.
In counselling I have experienced many different feelings about myself
as a counsellor which turned out on second thoughts to apply more to my
client. These have included feelings of being utterly useless, of being
watched in every move I made, of everything being too much for me to
handle, of being extremely competent and capable. Superficially. the
feelings experienced by the clients seemed in each case quite difl'erent from
these, but thinking about what they had said it became clear to me that
there was a strong possibility that somewhere they did have hidden
feelings, unrecognized in themselves, which corresponded to mine. Asking
the client if this was the case produced confirming evidence, and changed
my perception of my own - and their - feelings. It was as if the client had
been able to 'take back' their share of these denied feelings in a context
Phantasy In Everyday Life

in which I could help with them. The person who made me feel so
competent and capable was someone who seemed to feel quite useless
himself: when I suggested that my feelings perhaps 'belonged' to him, he
smiled and admitted to all kinds of sensible actions which he had pre-
viously seemed incapable of performing. He had been doing this to people
around him at home too, making them feel wonderful and very capable.
but also worried about him and afraid that they had to support him in an
excessive way. Quite often this kind of observation of feelings communi-
cated non-verbally can be used outside counselling situations too.
In my seminars people often discuss work relationships with me, some-
times wanting help with a boss, a child, a colleague or a friend, or also
with members of their family. In such situations I have often suggested
that the person bringing the problem thinks 'What do they make me feel?
And is there any way in which this feeling could in fact "belong" to them
too?' (It is very Important to recognize that there is likely to be a realistic
aspect to one's own share of the feeling as well as an aspect which arises
from the other person.) The answer is often quite striking. It obviously
makes sense to wonder if a man who seems quite confident but who makes
others feel totally lacking in confidence too lacks confidence himself but
cannot show it. (As my mother taught me, a True Gentleman makes you
feel wonderful: he doesn't need to make you feel uncomfortable.) A woman
who seems prepared to bite your head off - is she afraid you will bite off
hers? A child who makes you feel angry - might there be something
making them feel particularly angry just now? Often this throws a whole
new light on the problem: remarkably often some evidence is found
immediately which suggests that this feeling - quite the opposite,of their
apparent feeling - might indeed 'come from' them.
Part of the mechanism at work can be understood as an attempt to get
rid of a burden of feelings they cannot bear. Making other people feel them
does two things: it may offer an opportunity to get help with the feeling
- if the other person acknowledges it and deals with it in a different way;
or it may simply help along the phantasy that the feeling is located
elsewhere, not in them.
What is done with the new insight depends on the situation. Realizing
that they too are (possibly) in some way suffering from this feeling may
be enough to reduce your own feelings of being unjustly persecuted.
Trying simply to accuse them of loading off their own bad feelings on to
you may be appropriate for a quarrel, but not for improving relations.
However you do try to 'feed' this back into the relationship the other
person may be feeling vulnerable and may interpret what you say as
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

blame or persecution. Quite often, though, the situation does ease up, as
the enormity of your own feelings fades, not only with the idea that they
might be shared, but also with your own 'naming' of them to yourself. This
in itself is likely to enable you to look at the reality: 'Am I really as totally
useless as he makes me feel? Would he really have offered me the job if
I were? Am I just totally bourgeois and boring? And is that just an insult
anyway? If I am feeling attacked am I attacking in selfdefence?' Sorting
out the truth from the excessiveness may enable an element of goodness
and strength to be rescued from previously overwhelming feelings of
badness or weakness or impotence.
Before I leave this discussion of handing over feelings to others I should
like to mention jealousy in particular. One way of getting rid of feelings
of jealousy is obviously to try to get someone else to feel them 'for' you.
This does not in fact get rid of the feelings, but it may for a while create
the illusion that it has. The sense of triumph against the jealousy-
provoking person may temporarily cover up the feelings of loss and misery
and helpless dependence evoked by them. Loving and caring and
vulnerable parts of the self are actually attacked or buried in the excite-
ment of making someone jealous. Unfortunately, in the long run this can
lead to powerful feelings of being unworthy, unlovable and bad inside, as
well as very often creating the actual loss of the jealousy-provoking
person.
Sometimes people get their own back on each other's infidelities by
indulging in some action which might reasonably be expected to produce
jealousy in their lover. but both their own jealousy and their lover's are
denied. This went on a lot amongst people I knew in my early twenties.
There was a common belief that jealousy was the root of all evil; all we
needed to do was to get rid of jealousy. and we could all have as many
love relationships as we liked. Many people sulTered considerably from this
philosophy; where they could not deny their own jealousy they still felt
very strongly that they ought to. Nobody was supposed to feel jealousy,
and many people would not admit to feeling it; certainly they would not
admit that their behaviour might quite reasonably produce jealousy.
Where so much is denied, it can be hard to demonstrate that this is what
is happening. Sometimes what happened is that the denial broke down
eventually, and people began to admit to feelings they previously did not
know they had. (I suspect this happens to quite a considerable extent as
people enter their thirties and forties; denials which could be maintained
during their twenties no longer retain their credibility. Men who in their
twenties cared not a jot for their children suddenly discover what they
Phantasy In Everyday Life

have missed; women who despised childbearing and motherhood or -

earning money and working outside the home - may suddenly wake up
to a whole side of life which they previously found totally worthless. There
are many similar examples.) Sometimes people suddenly found them-
selves enormously attracted by a partner who promised to be faithful.
Sometimes relationships which were based on each partner sleeping
around broke down for apparently trivial reasons, and it looked from the
outside at least as if these trivial reasons in fact tapped the built-up
frustrations and unexpressed, unadrnitted confusion of emotions passing
between the two. In counselling I find people are frequently very surprised
at the strength of emotions which can be aroused in them on the subject
of sex and sexual jealousy in particular. Quarrels in daily life about, say,
who does the washing up, or how the children or the dogs should be
disciplined, or how often relatives should be visited, remarkably often seem
to gain their virulent passion from unexpressed and probably unrecognized
feelings about sex.
Sexual feelings tap some of the deepest phantasies there are in us. They
link up with infantile beliefs about putting parts of ourselves into our
mothers and fathers in order to make babies or good things, or in order
to destroy and punish them. They connect with our whole way of dealing
with the world: how we take in and how we give; how much goodness
and how much badness there is in us and in those around us. We seem
to be very vulnerable to 'proofs' or 'disproofs' which we glean from our
sexual relationships about how good we are, how bad we are, how loving
and how destructive. This is why a good sexual relationship casts a happy
glow. not only over the physical skin, but also over the whole outlook on
the world. And this is why any sexual (or gynaecological or childbirth)
problem can shake our faith in our own goodness to such an extent that
we become sour or sadistic or seriously depressed.
Before I conclude this chapter I would like to give one detailed example
of an incident where a child used his presentday relationships to help him
with some painful feelings left over from a much earlier time. In the process
he created a situation in which another child was 'made' to experience
something Like a situation he had experienced and the child then used this
to gain help from adults which earlier he had been unable to use.
We left London for Germany when Peter, a friend of my son Joel, was
just Bve years old. Three years later he came to visit us, now in Manchester,
having visited us in Germany in between. One day he came running into
the house and sat down at the table with his mother and me, looking as
if he were seeking protection. Eventually we asked him where Joel was,
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

to be told he was on his way. Some time later, Joel arrived in great distress,
because Peter had left him behind in a strange part of the neighbourhood,
and had run on home without him. We asked Peter in some indignation
why he had done that and Peter replied 'Joel did it to me in London.' His
mother and I looked at each other in amazement; here was an eight-year-
old talking of something that could only have happened more than three
years ago.
Neither of us believed him: there was no way that Joel could have done
this to the older and more self-assured Peter. I then had an idea and asked
'You mean when we went to Germany and left you behind?' The striking
thing was the effect this had upon Peter. He looked at me with an interest
he scarcely ever showed and began firing questions at me: why did we go
to Germany? Did Joel want to go? Why couldn't he go too? We had a brief
discussion of why we had gone and how we had felt at the time, how we
had not wanted to leave London and our friends at all. It was very clear
to his mother and me that Peter had had very hurt feelings about it which
were now, three years later, playing themselves out in his behaviour with
Joel. Peter lost his fear of Joel and came out from behind the table, though
Joel was still in fact quite violently angry.
It seems that seeing Joel again had roused in Peter phantasies which
were left over from much earlier. He had re-experienced, but not, I think,
remembered at first, the feelings his questions showed. He seemed to have
no idea that we had gone because of my husband's work, though I am
sure we would have told him. He might well have been convinced that
we left 'really' because he and Joel were fighting: it had happened often
enough in their day-today relationship. When these phantasies were
aroused, he experienced the desire to 'get his own back' on Joel by running
off and leaving him. It was a perfectly natural thing to do, and a natural
way to Rnd out what it felt like to be the person who left, for example. And
it looked as if he believed - quite rightly - that what Joel would be left
feeling was murderous. Not until we recognized and acknowledged what
was going on -by seeking the element of truth in a child's Lie, note - was
he able to ask some of the questions that he had not asked. or heard the
answers to, when he was five.
Joel was just one of several friends who played together, and Peter was
left with closer ones. But I think the importance of our leaving may have
been exaggerated for him because it triggered much more important
desertions. Before he was two he had moved house twice and had lost his
father and later a dog. both of whom he loved and missed. Reassurance
he received from the incident with Joel might in its turn have cast doubts
Phantasy in Everyday We

upon the other conviction he must have held, that he was responsible for
his father leaving. If so, this would help to account for the quite startling
change in his face, behaviour and body movements which took place after
our discussion. He seemed to have been relieved of an enormous burden,
of some inner rigidity, and I think he might have been. As far as the older
losses were concerned, the relief may have been only partial and tem-
porary. but it may have set in train other thoughts and feelings which
could make it easier for him to ask the same kind of questions, if only of
himself, about his father leaving. (This incident points too to some of the
value to children of seeing parents who have left. It does give them a
chance to try out some of their frightening and angry phantasies with the
real person concerned. It can help quite serious distortions of reality to be
modaed.)
What happened with Peter shows up several aspects of phantasies. We
can see the unrealistic nature of his worries. It shows in particular the self-
centredness of the omnipotent phantasies of children which can cause
great anxiety. He seemed to think that he could be responsible for a family
of friends leaving the country; that we had done it to punish him. Piaget
described these things too, from his experimental work. These phantasies
are often noticeable in adults: many is the time I have been convinced that
I was guilty of upsetting someone when they were actually upset for
reasons which had nothing to do with me.
Peter's behaviour also shows a long-term effect on a child of an appar-
ently minor event at the age of five. It shows how this event can be stored
in phantasies which control behaviour and feelings, but may not directly
enter conscious thought. It shows how a modieed repetition of the phan-
tasy situation can then be brought about, partly as a way of punishing
people, and partly as a way of Bnding out what had happened. The value
of this kind of re-enactment, or play, should not be underestimated. Peter
was finding out, in the best way he could at the time, what the feelings were
of the person who left. But this shows how misperceptions can arise: his
enactment, based on a child's misinterpretations,instead of reducing the
anxiety in fact heightened it. His desertion of Joel was voluntary and. I
think, deliberately hurtful since this is what he believed had been done to
him. As a result he became quite terrieed of Joel. This was not normal
behaviour for him and shows the strength of feeling aroused in him by
the earlier losses, as well as the persecutory nature of them. His loss of fear
after the discussion, when Joel's fury had not abated at all, shows too the
unrealistic nature of his fear of Joel. What he feared was being on the
receiving end of the murderous feelings he had experienced; when these
 Phantasies in Relationships (1)

murderous feelings in him were reduced, by making it clear to him that

we had not left him behind out of malice, or to punish him. for example,
he no longer feared Joel so much. But the real Joel was still just as angry
as he had been: the discussion had not interested him in the slightest.
h this example we see Peter attempting to use the external world as
a testing ground for his internal fears and anxieties. In the process he
'made' another person carry some of his pain, and h the event managed
to get help with this pain and actually to change it: in this case, from
feeling attacked into feeling regretful but understanding. Both his be-
haviour and his perception of his Mend's feelings were strongly influenced
by his perception of his own three years earlier.
We can see in the behaviour of Peter that there are actually serious
dangers involved in the attempt to get rid of bad or dangerous feelings into
other people. Peter was making Joel feel murderous towards him as a
means of dealing with his own murderous feelings. Not only may there
be a risk in such situations that the person on the receiving end may
actually act out such feelings, but also, even if they do not, the person
handing over the feeling is left scared. It is common knowledge that a fear
of the opposite sex can be a result of hating them (and handing over that
hatred to them - seeing/experiencing them as hating) as well as a cause
of it.
I have been told of a man who drove his lorry into the back of a car
which was stationary at red traffic lights. The lorry driver jumped down
and ran round to the driver of the car shouting 'What the hell do you think
you're doing?' Cases where people see their own faults in others are
frequent and may be, as in this case. quite dangerous. A physical Bght
between the drivers could easily have ensued.
I have been concentrating on the more positive aspects of phantasies
of putting parts of the self into others (which analysts call projection or
projective identification, phenomena which have many forms) because
they seem to me less well known and obvious than some of the more
negative aspects. In Chapter 6 I discuss blame in some detail and take up
some more of the dangers involved.

In this chapter I have tried to look at a specific class of phantasies which

atrect people's relationships with each other. Phantasies of putting parts
of the self into others and taking over parts of them are very important
indeed. They are intimately connected with learning processes as well as
Phantasy in Everyday Life

with loving and with hurting. Just how people see this kind of transaction
taking place affects their abilities to give and to take, to love and to learn
and to keep loving relationships going over a period of time. Such phan-
tasies contribute to a lot of the difficulties in relationships. We have to be
able to give and take back parts of ourselves; to borrow and let go parts
of others. We have to learn to do it so that we and the others involved feel
strengthened at the end rather than depleted and resentful and guilty. Too
many of these phantasies can lead to feeling trapped and empty, controlled
or impotent. in ways which are not simply determined by the practicalities
of the situation.
I do not want to give the impression that I undervalue the effects of real
life. Of course some people are really trapped in some way; some people
are in some real sense under the control of others: some people have good
reason to fear their spouse's reaction to their behaviour. All I am trying
to say is that remarkably oRen what seems to be unchangeable becomes
in fact changeable once the precise phantasies have been uncovered. I
have seen quite startling changes take place in relationships when people
realized what they were doing to each other in these terms. and recognized
their own part in maintaining extremely painful situations. Once we can
separate out the physical pain or the external situation from phantasies
of what it means we frequently find that not only is the suffering more
bearable, but we can discover means to change it or simply to allow it to
change of its own accord. Naming the exact phantasy which is being used
to interpret the world around is not an easy task. The phantasy is often
dismissed too quickly as obviously implausible or foolish. Often it is impos-
sible to find such phantasies without help. If it can be done it can be an
extremely powerful method of dealing with the troubles of daily relation-
ships.
In this chapter I have dealt largely with the less well known, more
benevolent and positive aspects of such phantasies. Some of the more
negative aspects appear in Chapter 6, where I discuss their involvement
in blame.