Relationship phantasy and surreal relationship

Abstract: In this paper, I explore phantasy in relation to the drive and work out the hypothesis that phantasy is part of the requirement of psychic labour that the drive demands in order to subjectify the body. What distinguishes drive from instinct is the phantasy of relation: it emerges from the body, it learns from the body the procedures of functioning with internal and external reality, for the Ego before being the Ego is the bodily Ego. The phantasy of relation, as a form of investing the object with affects, sets the psyche to work in order to access the reality of the other, beyond its own pleasure principle. Going along the lines of the body drive and phantasy, I reach what I call the surreal relationship, which a person creates by denying anatomical/genital parts, subsequently repressing them. I refer to the psychic movement as an act of living immersed in the interior, denying the principle of reality in the inner life: one denies the body, parts of the drive, and the drive needs to satisfy itself with a dream or a phantasy of relation. When the principle of reality cannot be established, access to the object and access to the self are blocked. The anxiety of the body takes the form of the anxiety of the self, and relations are surreal. I use vignettes to illustrate relation phantasy and the surreal relation.