In contrast with many assumptions that phantasma is a psychopatological event in childhood, some psychiatrists are considering phantasmatisation as a benefic activity of the mind.In the present paper some evidence of this point of view is brought about. The arguments are provided by neuropsychiatrical works, by introspective findings, are found in essays and litterary fictions and in the proper profesional experience of the autor. It is concluded that phantasmatisation is the way by wich the child bilds up his personality, and finds his psychological identity.Phantasma in childhood has the signifiance of a kind of project of the world, wich is, or not, confirmed by reality and of a device for resilience in adolescence.

Mental imagery is seen as a flow of visual representative developments.

Phantasm contains a suite of unusual ideo-affective combinations.

Phantasmatizationvis triggered by mnestic, engramming evocations, where the sensory elements are intimately entangled into accompanying emotions.

In his article “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming”, Freud says that a happy person has not fantasy but only one unfulfilled fantasy, the motivating forces of fantasy being the unsatisfied desires and each fantasy as is a fulfilment of a diligence, a correction of the unsatisfying reality.

This view has led to considering phantasmatization as a way to turn one’s back to reality, having the same meaning as hallucination and not as a modification of reality into a desired direction. Further, in the case of the child, dominated by the pleasure principle, the unsatisfied distinctive needs for food, warmth or comfort, lead to a reaction hallucinating their satisfaction. In another article, which also greatly influenced the psychiatric interpretations, „Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning”, Freud postulated force the gradual replacement of the force of pleasure principle with the reality principle as the child matures, a theory that would explain the adult’s rationalism.

Unlike Freud, Anthony Storr believes that the internal imaginative world is a biological ability given to humans and that phantasm can build a bridge between this world and the external one. To prove this, we use D.W. Winnicot’s theory of transitional objects that explains the infant’s attachment to familiar objects or toys by the fact that they give him a feeling of comfort and security when going to sleep. Their meaning would be, according to the author, the material relationship between the external world and the phantasmal one.

Anthony Storr does not consider the use of transitional objects in children as pathological, but he suggests that the positive role of imagination begins very early in life. Transactional objects express a certain mental stability of the child who uses them, just as phantasmal solitude is the evidence of a nascent, but stable, self, fundamentally differing from the psychical condition of the reclusive child.

Another personality who supports the constructive role of phantasmatization is Jean de Ajuriaguerra who, in his “Manual of Child Psychiatry”, extensively develops this thesis.

A play with reality, in which its possible extent is tested, building with blocks made of archetypal material, serving to shape a configuration of «primordial» arguments, phantasmatization is a semi-consciousness into which children are sinking voluptuously to dominate space and time in oneiric combinations with the concrete.

Jacques de Lacretelle in “The Troubled Life of Jean Hermelin” makes a substantial description of the special state of consciousness during phantasmatization.

For an adult, the dream or fantasy is an escape outside reality, but the child does not escape into the story, he is living in it. His reality is not the same with that of an adult but an amount of possibilities, of huge possibilities, of unthinkable conquests.

How does the reality we are talking about form during adulthood? A child imagines he can fly, jump from steps several times, but he does not accept the claim that man can fly. The reality is, in a manner of speaking, a feeling of our infirmity, and a record of our failures. The history of the little girl who, while getting bored while alone, invents an imaginary story where imaginary wolves scare her is proof that the most important result of the child phantasmatization is the merger with images, making them inseparable in memory; summoning those images gives birth to the feelings that they accompanied.

The difference between dream and phantasmatization is probably caused by the mnestic material, which these two states operate with.

If the dream uses mnestically unprocessed images, representing, in fact, the process of their elaboration, in pantasmatization images are in a closer connection to experience.

By contrast, in hallucinations, the structure of living involves only a low participation of memory elements and they are in a state of disintegration.

Child phantasmatization seems to be related less to the dissolution of consciousness from Henri Ey’s concept than to K. Dabrovski’s theory of positive disintegration.

The relationship of child phantasmatization with Dupré’s or Logre’s imagination delirium or with the phantasmal pseudology of some German authors, is controversial. They differ from mythomania, which is a constitutional tendency to alter the truth, to lie or to simulate. When this trend achieves ​​fictitious relationships, to which the subject assigns confidence and makes them conform to a certain activity, mythomania becomes delirious and then it identifies itself, according to Dupré, with the imaginative delirium. Degrading the child’s activity of phantasmatization, we reach the so-called physiological mythomania of the child. In fact, the attribute of physiology is not appropriate here because the phenomenon always occurs under the more or less pronounced pressure of reality – not as an advantage but in the sense of un-acceptance.

The case of a child who, at the age of 10 years witnessed the discovery of his father,who had committed suicide by hanging, is illustrative. The child refused to accept this reality consciously and, when asked about the paternal character, he offered a fantastic story, always the same, in which his father is metamorphosed into a captain who is not present because he is currently on a ship that wanders into an imaginary country.

The child’s phantasm does not have the content of the adult’s phantasm, postulated by classical psychoanalysis, namely the imaginary living, free from the censorship of the superego of sexual desires; on the contrary, it should be understood as an act of knowledge, a movement toward the discovery of the unknown, an enhancement and not a replacement of reality. In this way, the phantasmatical differs from the fantastic, which, after Todorov, stems from the indecision to explain rationally or supernaturally an unnatural fact.

Man has to solve an issue of utmost importance, which is to discover, accept, improve and accomplish his own nature; he must detect sense of life, then establish a project to be materialized, thus becoming his own self, in order to engage with his whole being into existence, as it presents itself.

The experience that enables this process is the phantasmatization, which joins the euphoria of the being’s grandeur of knowing how to guide its own becoming with the suffering of being prevented to some extent in its course by the constraint into the settled. Nevertheless, phantasmatization also achieves the fusion of other opposing tendencies, namely between progress and regression into psycho-dynamics. In this privileged land, the biologically programmed aspirations of advancement may meet with the need to go back, to the moment of the ego’s impact with frustrating situations.

One may also highlight another difference between the adult’s reverie and the child’s phantasmatization; the former is a solitary experience, the latter may all too well be a shared one like what happens toJean Cocteau’s “Terrible Children».

Are there differences between the objectual phantasmatization of the toddler and the «free» phantasmatization of the schoolchild?

In the environment full of objects, and, perhaps, in the one with the others, the fantastically lived scenario is equivalent to a test of reality of the type “it may or may not be like that”, having more to do with the transition from doing to thinking. Space and skills are tested; moreover, solutions to conflicts are sought. The further efficiency depends largely on this type of manipulation.

Nevertheless, often, the older child’s phantasmatization, being disregarded or suppressed as ridiculous, unnecessary or morbid, is underpinning the construction of the imaginary. It would be one step from here to delirium, passing through Dupré’s imaginative

delirium or Kahlbaum’s confabulation, as demonstrated by the existence of cases where the adult’s paranoid delirium makes room for aphantasmatization of the confabulation type that occurs in periods of remission.

The importance of Ajuriaguerra’s concept on child phantasmatization is continuous in postulating its structuring function on the future personality namely to establish a «living space» for the child’s own ego.

By contrast, the imaginative excess of the Dupré or Logre type does not possess this feature, since the discussed phenomenon lacks the attribute of living. Here is the place to define for the child the difference between experience and practice, the latter being possibly regarded as an experience that includes a configuration in the ego, which is interested to confirm its existence, i.e. its matching or congruence with reality.

So the child’s phantasm would be an experience adequate to the progressive forms of building up the person and it would correspond to the individual’s momentary dynamic level of integration, thereby leaving a trace, a stable footprint.

The degree of fusion occurring in the child’s consciousness between the inner life and the exterior life is surprising. The child sees, feels, tastes, touches all the things that he thinks about in a massive process of introspection.

Illusion in children is so robust that resists the contrariety of a contradicting reality. In a crude drawing that he explains, a pupil recognizes, where we do not see anything, all the elements of a phantasm. If it is true that the changes experienced by the child’s soul repeat the mental development of human kind, this happens in the phantasmal activity. Thousands of people, whom we do not know anything about, brought to the individual, as Montaigne said «each one, a piece of their substance» to the fact of existing in the world.

The phantasmatization capacity is a sign of the child’s confidence in human reality, because, in evaluating the so-called dissociated personalities, Stublefield noted the difficulty that these children have to share dreams, reveries, precocious memories and funny stories.

In addition, these children cannot establish limits to their selfish skills because their parents did encourage them, consciously or unconsciously, to phantasmatize. The energy unused to phantasmatization finds its way out in bouts of violence.

The role of formative craft to adjust dynamic models of personality is elucidated in the period of appearance of narcissism, that is, of arrogance, rebellion, opposition to the rules and of nonconformity. However, narcissistic isolation is threatening the keeping in touch with objects and this isolation has a tone of fear and loneliness. Alienation from objects is compensated by a rich phantasmal life and by the testing actions in imagination that increase the gentleness of sensual experiences with the outside world. Moreover, keeping daily diaries maintains fantasy at least partially linked with objects. The phantasmal cathexis prevents repression, allows detachment from the affective objects of previous stages and creates a game with small amounts of libido. This exercise strengthens the ego, representing for its ability, what mathematical exercise represents for logics and symbolism.

In what way is phantasmatization essential for the formation of personality, establishing is as an element of first order in this process? During adolescence, the ego is offered the opportunity to revise those solutions to Oedipus conflict selected during latency period, a review that has been postulated by some authors (Eissler). Further, this opportunity is approached by dissolving or liquefaction of certain structures of the ego that happened in phantasmatization.

This provides a «partial regression», an essential step in the next development of the ego that needs it to achieve the interim status of any restructuring, i.e. the undifferentiated phase of objectual relationship. It is considered that this partial regression is normal and, due to the phantasmal experience, it allows the removal of some objectual categories, with a view to prepare certain adult objectual relationships. Thus, this phantasmatic experience cancels, in each independent phase, the effect of objectual loss that, for Margaret Mabler, is an in herentlytied threat.

The first signs of phantasm appear around the age of 4 years, when there is an inflorescence of imagination and the skill to play games is developed. In the first year after this age, game takes much more room than the phantasm to which it remains intimately attached.

Then, phantasmatization exceeds the game increasingly, remaining in adolescence the major mental succedaneum of the latter, having like it, inter alia, the role to discharge tension and emotional intensity after stress, being able to achieve mental catharsis. However, most important of all is the role of phantasmatization in checking adult identity through dramatic scenarios.

Phantasms arising from Oedipus complex, namely the fight for exclusive possession of the parent of the opposite sex and the rivalry in it with the parent of the same sex lead to fear of deprivation and achieve the displacement of this fear toward external objects. These outputs are important in developing the conscientiousness base. In families where a certain amount of love is circulated, children develop an ethical and moral system of freely contracted natural rights. This system contrasts with conscientiousness based on terror, fear of deprivation in the case of incontinence that leads to a ritualized and rigid moralism.

But the genuine conscientiousness of the studying teenager, annoyed by the rigging of the existential fair-play by the hypocritical administration of the previous generation, induces nonconformity of varying degrees, from protest to violence.

Together with Ekstein, one may discover a metaphorical communication that adults can have with their children, be it the fantastic space-time type, or the religious and biblical type, and finally in the form of fantasy sections. This has the advantage of drilling the individual shell which non-acceptance creates against the intrusion of another ego into the infant one, the greater the resistance as the person is emotionally distant. Most of the times, the child does assimilate the educational and moral fragments in this form. The language may be one of symbolic achievement in «science fiction», stories, mythology, poetry. The stories are ad hoc creations of the adults presenting to children metamorphosed scenarios their life with lessons drawn from the running the events. All these metaphorical ways of communication that appeal to allegorical similarities have many virtues. First of all, they do not create reactions towards imposing appearance or negativity. Secondly, they keep the distance between the transmitter and receiver of information, being ways to resolve conflicts specific to children, showing obstacles and sparing the child from the clash with such obstacles. Finally, they provide moral commands without imposing them. With a happy phrase, one may say that metaphorical language travels between communication and communion.

To date, the specialised literature, with the exception of Ajuriaguerra’s “Manual of Psychiatry”, did not distinguish between the pathological phantasms, as in masturbation, for example, and phantasmatization, a physiological process of personality construction. Regarded in this way, phantasm has a pathological attribute that is not its own. Moreover, the phantasmatization that is involved in masturbation is an indispensable mechanism in overcoming the Oedipus complex and the genital manipulation is coincidental and pathological in itself.

Oedipal phantasmis not accompanied by any feeling of guilt if it is not partaken of masturbation because it seems that finally, the taboo does not refer to the mental representation but to the act, that creates the possibility of procreation.

Assertions about phantasms (fantasies) themselves, about the link between them and the various levels of the unconscious, between the conscious content of the phantasms and their real possibility, indicate, more probably, pathological cases in which the manifestations of fear and guilt are rooted in the distorted epigenes is, in the periods preceding the Oedipal one.

Of course, phantasmatization takes also a pathological form when it becomes a sole form of refuge. However, the child’s behaviour does not allow doubts concerning the diagnosis because the child, besides the fact that he is too quiet, shy, submissive, also manifests excessive emotional withdrawal proven by isolation, an inability to form close relationships with others.

For phantasms to remain as they are and not to become pathological, there is a need for the existence of a function of the ego, postulated by Eissler and named by him as «doxaletheic» (from Greek «Doxa» = illusory truth, opinion «Aletheia» = truth, knowledge that is can be confirmed).

This doxaletheic part of the ego protects the phantasmatized subject against the maddening effect of archaic, hallucinatory and magical experience of excessively imaginative feelings and helps him escape from the chaos of irrational modes of thinking.

The state of phantasmatization will be slightly different from the twilight states where amnesia is a rule and from the autistic states, where the conclusion from perception and memory is manifest.

Is there an process going on where malignant phantasmatization evolves towards the curable psychosis of the adolescent? First, it is the moment to show that this entity is called functional schizophrenia by American authors, because here one could find a large amount of hysteroidal material. The appellative “delirious hot flash” or “transitory delirious episode” used by French authors is not a happier choice because in its pure forms the delirium is not revealed or is just sketched, as a result of confusion between phantasms and reality.

Consequently, the psychopathological content of the curable psychosis of the adolescent could be an oneiroid state in the sense of the Regis delusional – oniric psychoses, of the Kleist crepuscular episodic states, and particularly of the oneiroid states described by Mayer-Gross.

The central phenomenon is a concentrated introversion of relational existence, a transformation of the world into mental substance.

During the individuation period, the ego opts for a character, living phantasmatically scenarios where the image of the prospective adult takes different forms. Possible roles are tested in phantasmatization, which provides particular «outputs» of probable existences, but, ultimately, the final choice of a «model» takes place. However, various «masks» which the «hero» gives up are not trashed totally, therefore, as stated by Pirandello «we act a character for some people and another for other people.»

Finally, a few words about the childhood “hunger for images”, as it is seen by Bruno Bettelheim. Living is a privilege provided it has access to phantasmatization. The keys that open the doors widely of the room where images are gathered are represented by stories. The child’s psyche contains first a collection of impressions, most of them disparate and integrated in a partial manner. Then, there are certain properly observed aspects of reality, but also a far more important number of imaginary units whose function is to fill the gaps in child’s understanding, namely those that are due to the immaturity of his thinking and to his lack of information, sorted by categories.

It is necessary to fill these gaps because to develop a psychological out-,a minimum of information, both real and imagined is required, the percentage of the latter being obviously lower as the child grows older.

One should not neglect the explanation that some adolescents, with more or less deviant behaviour, did not get enough food to satisfy their «hunger for the imaginary» at an age when such images were imperiously necessary to «increase their soul.»

The normal child begins to develop his fantasy based on more or less well observed fragments of reality, but these fragments may mix in his mind up to a point where the child is no longer able to put them in order. For him to come back to reality without feeling weak or defeated, but rather strengthened by his forays into the world of phantasms, a specific order is essential. Stories organized in the same way as child’s mentality help him by showing him how a greater clarity can (and should) be derived from these phantasms.

One may also consider the idea that the activity of phantasmatization could be related to the scaffolding structure of the resilience mechanism in adolescents.

The individual whose inner world was suppressed while he was a child becomes overly compliant with external reality, loses his individuality and lives a meaningless existence.

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