Wading on the Shores of the Unconscious: Exploring the Roles of Fantasy and Imagination in Therapy
By: Stillpoint Magazine
Tags: Fantasy, Therapy

The capacity for fantasy is an integral element of the therapeutic relationship. On a whole, human beings place enormous stock in the things they believe about themselves and the world around them. Often people don’t consider that perhaps their perception is flawed and that what they call fact might really be a fable. Much of my therapeutic work, therefore, involves a process of unraveling the constructs and myths of perception clients have unknowingly erected, then found themselves trapped within. Time, gentle encouragement, and steady support can go a long way to helping clients perceive and experience the true futility of their unworkable fantasy-based solutions.

This brings me to the part of the mind that exerts steady power over our daily lives yet frequently goes overlooked: the unconscious. Just what is the unconscious? The unconscious is the part of our mind that exists largely outside of our everyday awareness. It’s the part that was shaped significantly by our early experiences and it has the ability to influence our judgments, feelings, and behaviors without our realization. As the repository of all our accumulated knowledge, learning, and memories, it’s why you can tie your shoes without thinking, easily remember the lyrics of your favorite song from twenty years ago, and it’s also why people often become more and more like their parents as they age (perhaps much to their chagrin). Moreover, the unconscious is also the seat of a great deal of untapped potential and internal strength, especially when it affects our fantasies, but I’ll expand upon later, for now, let’s loop back around.

Therapeutically, when working with fantasy so much of the process is a gentle attempt to peel back the protective layers of unconscious deception that comprise self-destructive fantasy. The mind often tends toward avoidance, after all, it feels safer than diving into our fears, shame, anger, and sadness. Evolutionarily we are wired to seek safety above all else, even if that safety is only from the fear of being emotionally exposed. So many clients wish for quick fixes and easy solutions; without realizing their fallacy they both seek and expect the easy road to be the road out of suffering. I remember the distinct timbre of incredulous disappointment in a client's voice as she exclaimed, “Wait, so these pills won’t completely eliminate my anxiety?!” “No.” I tentatively responded, “But within a few weeks they’ll likely lower it to the point where you’re able to work through what you’re feeling without becoming completely overwhelmed.” What a let down that revelation was. In the throws of unconscious extremes, other clients have been known to tumble into the dangerous and diametrically opposed abysses of either worthlessness or self-aggrandizement. Without a thought, they compare themselves to others with tiered and inaccurately extreme quality judgments. Once one client exclaimed, “I’m such a loser. I mean look at me, I’m so depressed I lost my job and my sister is a rich corporate CFO.” He paused and started up again before I could interject, “But I’m not as big a loser as my neighbor who’s an alcoholic! I might be depressed but I never drink!”

When we fall prey to these illusions of the extreme, the inner landscape transforms into one of angels or devils, good and bad, right and wrong. This is an intra-psychic playground for the haves and the have-nots within. Down the rabbit hole, the mind tumbles, and the myriad complexity of the self is diminished in favor of unattainable perfection fueled by the sheer terror of imperfection — it’s a desperate quest to be “good” gone terribly awry.

However, there’s a flip side to all this chaos and tendency toward fantasy. The ability to construct illusions about ourselves is at times a necessary mechanism for psychological self-preservation. It’s part of what gives humanity resilience and the ability to endure awful circumstances. When confronted with horrible truths about the nature of our reality, inexplicable losses, or profoundly traumatic experiences, our minds will often cleave the facts from our conscious awareness and scuttle them off to dark corners of our unconscious so that self — the conscious, day to day functioning self — can continue on with the business of life. This disconnection serves as a necessary and protective illusion. It operates in the client whose father died when she was seventeen. Confusingly, she never cried or experienced any concrete sadness despite the power of their bond. At thirty-eight she’s now struggling with panic attacks, depression, and a morbid fear of death, wake’s, and funerals. It operates in the eight-year-old child who survived a serious car accident, though his brother didn’t. Since the accident, he behaves well at home and at school. His expression of grief was minimal, but he now nightly wets the bed and is prone to extended bouts of unshakeable silence.

The strategy of psychological disconnection in response to trauma works up to a point, the problem arises when it no longer functions smoothly. When we grow anxious, angry, and sad, when we begin to feel worthless, hopeless, and terrified of life itself the fantasy of disconnection as a workable solution has failed. These kinds of psychological disruptions are the mind’s desperate attempt to reestablish the integration of difficult experiences that have been banished to the unconscious and forgotten by the conscious mind. To disconnect from the fluid whole that comprises the link between the conscious and unconscious minds creates an internal schism, and the self is always attempting to move toward wholeness and integration.