Golden fantasy

Golden fantasy is a secret (or not-so-secret) expectation that all one's problems can be solved by interaction with a perfect and all-caring relationship figure. The fantasy can be found both in psychotherapy and in ordinary life.

Structure

The golden fantasy was first named as such by Sidney Smith in 1977.[1] Arguably however, the concept had been anticipated by Karen Horney,[2] and by Charles Brenner;[3] and it was rooted in earlier psychoanalytic understanding of passive-receptive mastery.[4]

Such a fantasy may resonate to unfortunate effect with the therapist's own “rescuer” phantasies; and has to be gradually given up, and mourned, if progress in therapy is to be made.[5] In the form of compulsive acting out of the fantasy in real life, it can constitute a formidable obstacle to analysis of the transference.[6]

Later writers have placed more emphasis on the adaptive nature of the fantasy in ego-maintenance – its role in fending of a primitive sense of angst[7] - and on the necessity of its sensitive handling, to strengthen the therapeutic alliance.[8]

Residential care workers see the fantasy emerging in split form, with carers first seen as fulfilling it in entirety, in opposition to the bad parents; and then the parents being seen as the answer to the golden fantasy, with the care home becoming all bad.[9]

Cultural examples

See also

References

  1. ↑ Glen O. Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (2010) p. 143
  2. ↑ I. Solomon, Karen Horney and Character Disorder (2005) p. 98
  3. ↑ L. M. Vaillant, Changing Character (1997) p. 136
  4. ↑ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 561
  5. ↑ Glen O. Gabbard, Long-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (2010) p. 160 and p. 171-2
  6. ↑ I. Solomon, Karen Horney and Character Disorder (2005) p. 98
  7. ↑ S. Teitelbaum, Illusion and Disillusion (2007) p. 113
  8. ↑ Adaptive nature
  9. ↑ D. P. Zimmerman, Psychotherapy in Group Care (2013) p. 67
  10. ↑ E. Bronfen, Sylvia Plath (1998) p. 38

Further Reading

Sidney Smith 'The golden fantasy: a regressive reaction to separation anxiety', International Journal of Psychoanalysis 58:311-324 (1977)

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