Truth and fantasy in Freud. This essay discusses the relations between truth and fantasy in the thought of Sigmund Freud and its implications in the objectives of the psychoanalytical work. It presents the gradual approach that is operated between truth and fantasy in his theoretical elaborations. It demonstrates that the fantasy, initially considered only as obstacle to the truth, becomes component of the truth searched in the treatment. It argues that the historical truth in psychoanalysis is composed by the material truth and the fantasy of desire. It concludes that Freud, in his practice, starts to aim at, over all, the reconstruction or the construction with the analysand of his story, as poet, than to discover his history, as archaeologist.
Freud; psychoanalysis; historical truth; material truth; fantasy