Beating Fantasies and Daydreams
Anna Freud
(1922)
In his paper 'A Child Is Being Beaten'
Freud (1919) deals with a fantasy which, according to him, is met with in a
surprising number of persons who seek analytic treatment on account of a
hysteria or an obsessional neurosis. He thinks it very probable that it occurs
even more often in other persons who have not been forced by a manifest illness
to come to this decision. This "beating fantasy" is invariably invested
with a high degree of pleasure and is discharged in an act of pleasurable
autoerotic gratification. I shall take for granted that you are familiar with
the content of Freud's paper -- the description of the fantasy, the
reconstruction of the phases which preceded it, and its derivation from the
oedipus complex. In the course of my paper I shall frequently return to it.
In this paper Freud says: "In two
of my four female cases an elaborate superstructure of daydreams, which was of
great significance for the life of the person concerned, had grown up over the
masochistic beating fantasy. The function of this superstructure was to make
possible a feeling of satisfied excitation, even though the masturbatory act
was abstained from"(p. 190). I have been able to find one daydream, among
a large variety of them, which seemed especially well suited to illustrate this
brief remark. This daydream was formed by a girl of about fifteen, whose
fantasy life, in spite of its abundance, had never come into conflict with
reality. The origin, evolution, and termination of this daydream could be
established with certainty, and its derivation from dependence on a beating
fantasy of long standing were proved in a rather thoroughgoing analysis.
I
I shall now trace the development of
the fantasy life of this daydreamer. In her fifth or sixth year -- the exact
date could not be established, but it was certainly before she entered school
-- this girl formed a beating fantasy of the type described by Freud. In the
beginning its content was quite monotonous: "A boy is being beaten by a grownup.
"Somewhat later it changed to: "Many boys are being beaten by many
grownups." The identity of the boys as well as that of the grownups,
however, remained unknown, as did in almost all instances the misdeed for which
the castigation was administered. We can assume that the various scenes were
quite vivid in the child's imagination, but her references to them during the analysis
were quite scanty and vague. Each one of the scenes she fantasied, frequently
only very briefly, was accompanied by strong sexual excitement and terminated
in a masturbatory act.
The sense of guilt which in the case of
this girl, too, immediately became attached to this fantasy is explained by
Freud in the following way. He says that this version of the beating fantasy is
not the original one, but is the substitute in consciousness for an earlier
unconscious phase in which the persons who have now become unrecognizable and
indifferent were very well known and important: the boy who is being beaten is
the child who produced the fantasy; the adult who beats, the child's own
father. Yet even this phase is, according to Freud, not the primary one; it was
preceded by an earlier phase which belongs to the period of the greatest
activity of the oedipus complex and which by means of regression and repression
was transformed into the version appearing in the second phase. In the first phase
the person who beats also was the father; however, the child who was being
beaten was not the fantasying child but other children, brothers or sisters,
i.e., rivals for the father's love. In this first phase, therefore, the child
claimed all the love for himself and left all the punishment and castigation to
the others. With the repression of the oedipal strivings and the dawning sense of
guilt, the punishment is subsequently turned back on the child himself. At the
same time, however, as a consequence of regression from the genital to the
pregenital anal-sadistic organization, the beating situation could still be
used as an expression of a love situation. This is the reason for the formation
of a second version which because of its all-too-significant content must remain
unconscious and be replaced in consciousness by a third version that is more
appropriate to the requirements of repression. This is how the third version or
phase becomes the carrier of excitement and guilt; for the hidden meaning of
this strange fantasy can still be expressed with the words: "Father loves only
me."
In the case of our daydreamer the sense
of guilt that arose in the wake of her repressed strivings for her father was
at first attached less to the content of the fantasy itself -- though the
latter too was disapproved of from the beginning -- than to the autoerotic
gratification which regularly occurred at its termination. For a number of
years, therefore, the little girl made ever-renewed but ever-failing attempts to
separate the one from the other, i.e., to retain the fantasy as a source of
pleasure and, at the same time, to give up the sexual gratification which could
not be reconciled with the demands of her ego. During this period the fantasy
itself was subjected to a great variety of alterations and elaborations. In the
attempt to enjoy the permissible pleasure as long as possible and to put off
the forbidden conclusion indefinitely, she added all sorts of accessory details
that in themselves were quite indifferent but copiously described. The child
invented complicated organizations and complete institutions, schools, and
reformatories in which the beating scenes were to take place, and established definite
rules and regulations which determined the conditions of gaining pleasure. At
that time the persons administering the beatings were invariably teachers; only
later and in exceptional cases the fathers of the boys were added -- as
spectators mostly. But even in these detailed elaborations of the fantasy, the acting
figures remained schematic, all determining characteristics such as names,
individual faces, and personal history being denied to them.
I certainly do not want to imply that
such a postponement of the pleasurable scene, the prolongation and continuation
of the entire fantasy, is always the expression of guilt feelings, a result of
the attempt to separate the fantasy from the masturbatory activity. The same
mechanism is used in fantasies which are not shaped by feelings of guilt. In
such fantasies this mechanism simply serves the function of heightening the tension
and thereby also the anticipated end pleasure.
Let us look at the further vicissitudes
of the little girl's beating fantasy. With increasing age there occurred a
strengthening of all the tendencies subserving the ego, in which the moral
demands of the environment were now incorporated. As a result it became
increasingly difficult for the fantasy in which the child's entire sexual life
was concentrated to assert itself. She gave up her invariably unsuccessful
attempts to separate the beating fantasy from the autoerotic gratification; the
prohibition spread and now extended also to the content of the fantasy. Each
break-through which now could occur only after a prolonged struggle in which
strong forces opposed the temptation was followed by violent self-reproaches,
pangs of conscience, and temporary depressed moods. The pleasure derived from
the fantasy was more and more confined to a single pleasurable moment which
seemed to be embedded in unpleasure that occurred before and after it. As the beating
fantasy no longer served its function of providing pleasure, it occurred less
and less frequently in the course of time.
II
At about the same time-probably between
her eighth and tenth year (the exact age again could not be ascertained)-the
girl initiated a new kind of fantasy activity which she herself called
"nice stories" in contrast to the ugly beating fantasy. These
"nice stories" seemed at first sight at least to depict nothing but
pleasant, cheery scenes that all exemplify instances of kind, considerate, arid
affectionate behavior. All the figures in these nice stories had names,
individual faces, external appearances that were detailed with great exactness,
and personal histories which frequently reached far back into their fantasied
past. The family circumstances of these figures, their friendships and
acquaintances, and their relationship to each other were precisely specified
and all incidents in their daily life were fashioned as true to reality as
possible. The setting of the story readily changed with every change in the
life of the daydreamer, just as she frequently incorporated bits and pieces of
events she had read about. The conclusion of each rounded out episode was
regularly accompanied by a strong feeling of happiness unclouded by any trace
of guilt; certainly, there no longer was any autoerotic activity connected with
it. This type of fantasy activity could therefore take over an ever-increasing
part of the child's life. Here we encounter what Freud stressed in his paper:
the artistic superstructure of daydreams which are of great significance for
the person who forms them. In what follows I shall attempt to demonstrate the
extent to which we are justified in regarding these daydreams as a
superstructure built on a masochistic beating fantasy.
The daydreamer herself was quite
unaware of any connection between the nice stories and the beating fantasy, and
at that time would most certainly and without any hesitation have denied it. To
her the beating fantasy represented everything that was ugly, reprehensible,
and forbidden, while the nice stories were the expression of everything that brought
beauty and happiness. A connection between the two simply could not exist; in
fact, it was inconceivable that a figure playing a part in a nice story could
even appear in the beating scene.
The two were kept apart so carefully
that each occurrence of the beating fantasy-which on occasion did break through
-- had to be punished by a temporary renunciation of the nice stories.
I mentioned earlier that during the
analysis the girl gave only the most cursory account of the beating fantasy --
usually made with every indication of shame and resistance and in the form of
brief, obscure allusions on the basis of which the analyst laboriously had to
reconstruct the true picture. In contrast to this reticence, she was only too
eager, once the initial difficulties had been overcome, to talk vividly and at length
about the various fantasied episodes of her nice stories. In fact, one gained
the impression that she never tired of talking and that in doing so she
experienced a similar or even greater pleasure than in the daydreaming. In
those circumstances it was not difficult to obtain a very clear picture of all
the figures and the range of situation. It turned out that the girl had formed
not one but a whole series of stories which deserve to be called "continued
stories" in view of the constancy of the acting figures and the entire general
setting. Among these continued stories one stood out as the most important: it
contained the largest number of figures, persisted through the longest period
of years, and underwent various transformations. Moreover, from it other stories
branched off, which -- as in legends and mythology -- were elaborated into
innumerable almost independent tales. Alongside the main story there existed
various minor, more or less important stories which were used in turn but all
of which were fashioned according to the same pattern. To gain insight into the
structure of such a daydream I have selected as an example the briefest of the nice
stories winch because of its clarity and completeness is best suited to the
purposes of this communication.
In her fourteenth or fifteenth year,
after having formed a number of continued daydreams which she maintained side
by side, the girl accidentally came upon a boy’s storybook; it contained among
others a short story set in the Middle Ages. She read through it once or twice
with lively interest; when she had finished, she returned the book to its owner
and did not see it again. Her imagination, however, was immediately captured by
the various figures arid their external circumstances which were described in
the book. Taking possession of them, she further spun out the tale, just as if
it had been her own spontaneous fantasy product, and henceforth accorded this
daydream a not insignificant place in the series of her nice stories.
In spite of several attempts that were
made during the analysis, it was not possible to establish even approximately
the content of the story she had read. The original story had been so cut up
into separate pieces, drained of their content, and overlaid by new fantasy
material that it was impossible to distinguish between the borrowed and the spontaneously
produced elements. All we can do therefore -- and that was also what the
analyst had to do -- is to drop this distinction, which in any event has no
practical significance, and deal with the entire content of the fantasied
episodes regardless of their sources.
The material she used in this story was
as follows: A medieval knight has been engaged in a long feud with a number of
nobles who are in league against him. In the course of a battle a
fifteen-year-old noble youth (i.e., the age of the daydreamer) is captured by
the knight's henchmen. He is taken to the knight's castle where he is held
prisoner for a longtime. Finally, he is released.
Instead of spinning out and continuing
the tale (as in a novel published in installments), the girl made use of the
plot as a sort of outer frame for her daydream. Into this frame she inserted a
variety of minor and major episodes, each a completed tale that was entirely
independent of the others, and formed exactly like a real novel, containing an introduction,
the development of a plot which leads to heightened tension and ultimately to a
climax. In this she did not feel bound to workout a logical sequence of events.
Depending on her mood she could revert to an earlier or later-occurring phase
of the tale, or interpose a new situation between two already completed and contemporaneous
scenes-until finally the frame of her stories was in danger of being shattered
by the abundance of scenes and situations accommodated within it.
In this daydream, which was the simplest
of them all, there were only two figures that were really important; all the
others can be disregarded as incidental and subordinate by-players. One of
these main figures is the noble youth whom the daydreamer has endowed with all
possible good and attractive characteristics; the other one is the knight of
the castle who is depicted as sinister and violent. The opposition between the
two is further intensified by the addition of several incidents from their past
family histories-so that the whole setting is one of apparently irreconcilable
antagonism between one who is strong and mighty and another who is weak and in
the power of the former.
A great introductory scene describes
their first meeting during which the knight threatens to put the prisoner on
the rack to force him to betray his secrets. The youth’s conviction of his
helplessness is thereby confirmed and his dread of the knight awakened. These
two elements are the basis of all subsequent situations. For example, the
knight in fact threatens the youth and makes ready to torture him, but at the
last moment the knight desists. He nearly kills the youth through the long
imprisonment, but just before it is too late the knight has him nursed back to
health. As soon as the prisoner has recovered the knight threatens him again,
but faced by the youth's fortitude the knight spares him again. And every time
the knight is just about to inflict great harm, he grants the youth one favor after
another.
Or let us take another example from a
later phase of the story. The prisoner has strayed beyond the limits of his
confine and meets the knight, but the latter does not as expected punish the
youth with renewed imprisonment. Another time the knight surprises the youth in
the very act of transgressing a specific prohibition, but lie himself spares the
youth the public humiliation which was to be the punishment for this crime. The
knight imposes all sorts of deprivations and the prisoner then doubly savors
the delights of what is granted again.
All this takes place in vividly animated
and dramatically moving scenes. In each the daydreamer experiences the full
excitement of the threatened youth's anxiety and fortitude. At the moment when
the wrath and rage of the torturer are transformed into pity and
benevolence-that is to say, at the climax of each scene-the excitement resolves
itself into a feeling of happiness.
The enactment of these scenes in her
imagination and the formation of ever new, but very similar scenes usually
required a few days, at most some two weeks. The systematic elaboration and
development of the single daydream elements usually succeed best at the
beginning of each such phase of fantasying. At that time she already made
extensive use of the possibility of disregarding the implications and consequences
of each situation. As was previously mentioned, she could completely ignore
what had happened before or after an incident. As a consequence she was each
time fully convinced of the dangers threatening the prisoner and truly believed
in the eventual unhappy ending of the scene. We thus see that the events leading
to the climax --the preparation for it -- were given ample scope. But if the fantasying
persisted over a prolonged period of time, memory fragments of happy endings
apparently were dragged along from scene to scene, contrary to the daydreamer's
intentions. Then the anxiety and concern for the prisoner were described
without real conviction, and the forgiving-loving mood of the climax, instead
of being confined to a single brief moment of pleasure, began to spread until
it finally also took over all that had previously served the purposes of
introduction and development of the plot. But when this happened, the story no
longer served its function and had now to be replaced (at least for several
weeks) by another which after some time met with the same fate. The only exception
was the main great daydream which by far outlasted all the minor insignificant
stories. This was probably due to the great wealth of characters appearing in
it as well as to its manifold ramifications. Nor is it unlikely that its broad
design was carried through for the very purpose of ensuring it a longer life
every time it emerged.
If we look at the various separate
knight-youth daydreams as a continuous and connected series, we are surprised
by their monotony, though the daydreamer herself never noticed it either in the
course of fantasying or in talking about them in her analysis. Yet she was
otherwise by no means an unintelligent girl and was in fact quite critical and exacting
in the choice of her reading material. But the various scenes of the knight
tale, divested of their accessory details which at first glance seemed to give
them a vivid and individualized appearance, are in each case constructed on the
same scaffold: antagonism between a strong and a weak person; a misdeed -- mostly
unintentional -- on the part of the weak one which puts him at the other's
mercy; the latter's menacing attitude which justifies the gravest
apprehensions; a slowly mounting anxiety, often depicted by exquisitely
appropriate means, until the tension becomes almost unendurable; and finally,
as the pleasurable climax, the solution of the conflict, the pardoning of the
sinner, reconciliation, and, for a moment, complete harmony between the former antagonists.
Every one of the individual scenes of the other so-called "nice stories"
had, with only a few variations, the same structure.
But this structure also contains the
important analogy between the nice stories and the beating fantasy which our
daydreamer did not suspect. In the beating fantasy, too, the protagonists are
strong and weak persons who in their clearest delineation oppose each other as
adults and children. There, too, it is regularly a matter of a misdeed, even though
the latter is left as indefinite as the acting figures. There, too, we find a
period of mounting fear and tension. The decisive difference between the two
rests in their solution, which in the fantasy is brought about by beating, and
in the daydream by forgiveness and reconciliation.
When in the analysis the girl's attention
was drawn to these surprising similarities in structure, she could no longer
reject the dawning awareness of a connection between these two, externally so
different fantasy products. Once she had accepted the probability of their
relatedness she immediately was struck by a series of other connections between
them.
But despite the acknowledgment of their
similar structure, the content of the beating fantasy seemed to have nothing in
common with the nice stories. The assertion that their content differed,
however, could not really be maintained. Closer observation showed that at
various places the nice stories contained more or less clear traces of the old
beating theme attempting to break through. The best example of this can be
found in the knight daydream with which we already are familiar: the torture
that is threatened, though not carried out, constitutes the background of a
great number of scenes lending them a distinct coloring of anxiety. This
threatened torture, however, is reminiscent of her old beating scene, the
execution of which remains forbidden in her nice stories Other forms of beating
breaking through into her daydream can be found. not in this particular tale of
the knight, but in other daydreams of this girl.
The following example is taken from the
great main story, as far as it was revealed in the analysis. In many scenes the
role of the passive, weak person (the youth in the tale of the knight) is
enacted by two figures. Though both have the same antecedents, one is punished
and the other pardoned. In this instance the punishment scene was neither pleasurably
nor unpleasurably accentuated; it simply formed a backdrop to the love scene,
their contrast serving to heighten the pleasure.
In another variation of the daydream,
the passive person is made to recall all the past punishments he suffered while
he is actually being treated affectionately. Here, too, the contrast serves to
heighten the pleasurable accent.
In a third version, the active,
strongperson recalls, just as lie is overcome by the conciliatory mood
associated with the climax, a past act of punishment or beating which he,
having committed the same crime, endured.
The four versions just described
illustrate ways in which the beating theme can encroach upon the main theme of
a daydream. But it also may be worked out in such a way that it constitutes the
most essential theme of a daydream. One of the prerequisites for this is the
omission of an element that is indispensable in the beating fantasy, namely,
the humiliation in being beaten. Thus the great main story of this girl contained
several particularly impressive scenes which culminated in the descriptions of
an act of beating or punishment, the former being described unintentional, the
latter as self-punishment.
Each of these examples of the beating
theme erupting into the nice stories was furnished by the daydreamer herself,
and each could be used as a further proof for the assertion that the two were
related. But the most convincing evidence for their relatedness came later in
the analysis in the form of a confession. The girl admitted that on some rare
occasions a direct reversal of the nice stories into the beating fantasy had taken
place. During difficult periods, i.e., at times of increased external demands
or diminished internal capabilities, the nice stories no longer succeeded in
fulfilling their task. And then it had frequently happened that at the
conclusion and climax of a fantasied beautiful scene the pleasurable and
pleasing love scene was suddenly replaced by the old beating situation together
with the sexual gratification associated with it, which then led to a full discharge
of the accumulated excitement. But such incidents were quickly forgotten,
excluded from memory, and consequently treated as though they had never
happened.
Our investigation of the relationship
between beating fantasy and nice stories has so far established three important
links: (1) a striking similarity in the construction of the individual stories;
(2) a certain parallelism in their content; and (3) the possibility of a direct
reversal of one into the other. The essential difference between the two lies
in the fact that the nice stories admit the occurrence of unexpected
affectionate scenes precisely at the point where the beating fantasy depicts
the act of chastisement.
With these points in mind, I return to
Freud's reconstruction of the history of the beating fantasy. As already
mentioned, Freud says that the form in which we know the beating fantasy
is not the original one, but is a substitute for an incestuous love scene that
distorted by repression and regression to the anal-sadistic phase finds
expression as a beating scene. This point of view suggests an explanation of
the difference between beating fantasy and daydream: what appears to be an
advance from beating fantasy to nice story is nothing but a return to an
earlier phase. Being manifestly removed from the beating scene, the nice
stories regain the latent meaning of the beating fantasy: the love situation
hidden in it.
But this assertion still lacks an
important link. We have learned that the climax of her beating fantasy is
inseparably associated with the urge to obtain sexual gratification and her
subsequently appearing feelings of guilt. In contrast, the climax of the nice
stories is free of both. At first glance this seems to be inexplicable since we
know that both sexual gratification and sense of guilt derive from the repressed
love fantasy which is disguised in the beating fantasy but represented in the
nice stories.
The problem resolves itself when we
take into consideration that the nice stories also do not give expression to
the repressed love fantasy without changing it. In this incestuous wish fantasy
stemming from early childhood all the sexual drives were concentrated on a
first love object, the father. The repression of the oedipus complex forced the
child to reconcile most of his infantile sexual aims. The early "sensual”
aims were relegated to the unconscious. That they reemerge in the beating
fantasy indicates a partial failure of the attempted repression.
While the beating fantasy thus represents
a return of the repressed, the nice stories on the other hand represent its
sublimation. In the beating fantasy the direct sexual drives are satisfied,
whereas in the nice stories the aim-inhibited drives, as Freud calls them, find
gratification. Just as in the development of a child's relations to his
parents, the originally undivided current of love becomes separated into
repressed sensual strivings (here expressed in the beating fantasy) and into a sublimated
affectionate tie (represented by the nice stories).
The two fantasy products can now be
compared in terms of the following scheme: the function of the beating fantasy
is the disguised representation of a never-changing sensual love situation
which it expresses in the language of the anal-sadistic organization as an act
of beating. The function of the nice stories, on the other hand, is the representation
of the various tender and affectionate stirrings. Its theme, however, is as
monotonous as that of the beating fantasy. It consists in bringing about a
friendship between a strong and a weak person, an adult and a boy, or, as many
daydreams express it, between a superior and an inferior being.
The sublimation of sensual love into
tender friendship is of course greatly facilitated by the fact that already in
the early stages of the beating fantasy the girl abandoned the difference of
the sexes and is invariably represented as a boy.
III
It was the object of this paper to
examine the nature of the relationship between beating fantasies and daydreams which
coexisted side by side. As far as possible their mutual dependence could be
established. In what follows I shall use the opportunity provided by this case
to follow the further development and fate of one of these continued daydreams.
Several years after the story of the
knight first emerged, the girl put it in writing. She produced an absorbing
short story which covers the period of the youth’s imprisonment. It began with
the prisoner's torture and ended with his refusal to escape. One suspects that
his voluntary choice to remain at the castle is motivated by positive feelings for
the knight. All events are depicted as having occurred in the past, the story
being presented in the frame of a conversation between the knight and the
prisoner's father.
While the written story thus retained
the theme of the daydream, the method of its elaboration was changed. In the
daydream the friendship between the strong and the weak characters had to be
established over and over again in every single scene, while in the written
story its development extends over the entire period of the action. In the
course of this transformation the individual scenes of the daydream were
lost; while some of the situational material that they contained returned in
the written story, the individual climaxes were not replaced by a single great
climax at the end of the written tale. Its aim -- harmonious union between the
former antagonists --is only anticipated but not really described. As a result,
the interest, which in the daydream was concentrated on specific highpoints, is
in the written version divided equally among all situations and protagonists.
This change of structure corresponds to
a change in the mechanism of obtaining pleasure. In the daydream each new
addition or repetition of a separate scene afforded anew opportunity for
pleasurable instinctual gratification. In the written story, however, the
direct pleasure gain is abandoned. While the actual writing was done in a state
of happy excitement, similar to the state of daydreaming, her finished story itself
does not elicit any such excitement. A reading of it does not lend itself to
obtaining daydreamlike pleasures. In this respect it had no more effect on its
author than the reading of any comparable story written by another person would
have had.
These findings suggest a close connection
between the two important differences between the daydream and the written
story -- the abandonment of the individual scenes and the renunciation of the
daydreamlike pleasure gain at specific climaxes. The written story must have
been motivated by different factors and serve other functions than the
daydream. Otherwise the story of the knight would simply have become something unusable
in its transformation from fantasy to written story.
When the girl was asked what had
induced her to write down the story, she herself could give only one reason of
which she was aware. She believed that she had turned to writing at a time when
the daydream of the knight was especially obtrusive -- that is to say, as a
defense against excessive preoccupation with it. She had sought to create a
kind of independent existence for the protagonists that had become all too
vivid, in her hope that they then would no longer dominate her fantasy life. The
daydream of the knight was in fact finished, as far as she was concerned, after
it had been written down.
But this account of her motivation
still leaves many things unexplained: the very situations that owing to their over
vividness are supposed to have impelled her to write down the story are not
included in it, whereas others that were not part of the daydream (e.g., the
actual torturing)are dwelt on extensively. The same is true with regard to the
protagonists: the written story omits several figures whose individual
characterization was fully executed in the daydream and instead introduces
entirely new ones, such as the prisoner's father.
A second motivation for writing the
story can be derived from Bernfeld's observations (1924) of the creative
attempts of adolescents. He remarks that the motive of writing down daydreams
is not to be found in the daydream itself, but is extrinsic to it. He maintains
that such creative endeavors are prompted by certain ambitious tendencies
originating in the ego; for example, the adolescent's wish to influence others by
poetry, or to gain the respect and love of others by these means. If we apply
this theory to the girl's story of the knight, the development from the
daydream to the written story may have been as follows:
In the service of such ambitious
strivings as have just been mentioned, the private fantasy is turned into a
communication addressed to others. In the course of this transformation regard
for the personal needs of the daydreamer is replaced by regard for the
prospective reader. The pleasure derived directly from the content of the story
can be dispensed with, because the process of writing by satisfying the ambitious
strivings indirectly produces pleasure in the author. This renunciation of the
direct pleasure gain, however, also obviates the need to accord special
treatment to certain parts of the story -- the climax of the daydreams -- which
were especially suited to the purpose of obtaining pleasure. Likewise, the
written story (as the inclusion of the torture scene demonstrates) can discard the
restrictions imposed on the daydream in which the realization of situations
stemming from the beating fantasy had been proscribed.
The written story treats all parts of
the content of the daydream as equally objective material, the selection being
guided solely by regard for their suitability for representation. For the
better she succeeds in the presentation of her material, the greater will be
the effect on others and therefore also her own indirect pleasure gain. By
renouncing her private pleasure in favor of making an impression on others, the
author has accomplished an important developmental step: the transformation of
an autistic into a social activity. We could say: she has found the road that
leads from her fantasy life back to reality.