Unconscious symbiotic fantasy: a ubiquitous therapeutic agent

Abstract

Evidence is presented that supports the proposition that the deliberate or inadvertent activation of unconscious fantasies of symbiotic gratification can have an ameliorative effect on psychopathology of various kinds. The evidence includes (1) clinically based reports scattered in the psychoanalytic literature on the role of symbiotic gratification in everyday living, in nonanalytic therapies viewed as effecting transference improvements, in meditation, in group activity therapies, and in psychoanalytic treatment, and (2) data from a large number of laboratory experiments coonducted with double-blind procedures and other stringent investigatory controls. In addition to providing powerful support for the clinically derived proposition, the laboratory results allow for extending that proposition and for a more precise delineation of the fantasy that produces symptom amelioration, which when expressed in its verbal form, is most often conveyed by the words Mommy and I are one.