THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SATANIC CULT INVOLVEMENT: AN ...

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12.2 The role of fantasy in psychological life
The nature and function of unconscious fantasy in psychological life is an obvious point
to begin exploring the parallels between Jungian and object relations theory. Jung
considered fantasy to be the psyche's most characteristic activity (Samuels, et aI, 1986).
Klein and Fairbairn, too, considered fantasy to be the foundational activity and content of
psychic life. All three theorists accepted the importance of the related fantasies of
introjection and projection as serving normal, pathological, and defensive functions. All
identified projective processes as the means by which an aspect of the self is
unconsciously externalised and personified. Furthermore, Jung's concept ofparticipation
mystique, which he used to describe a relationship in which a subject is partially and
unconsciously identified with an object, and hence has influence over it (and vice versa),
is little different from Klein's concept of projective identification. This is particularly
evident in his 1957 description ofparticipation mystique:
When there is no consciousness of the difference between subject and object,
an unconscious identity prevails. The unconscious is then projected into the
object, and the object is introjected into the subject, becoming part of his
psychology. Then plants and animals behave like human beings, human
beings are at the same time animals, and everything is alive with ghosts and
gods (p. 45).
The shared emphasis on the role of fantasy can be taken much further. Certain analytic
authors (Gordon, 1985; Lambert, 1981; Samuels, 1985; Solomon, 1991) have
acknowledged a striking similarity between the Kleinian concept of fantasy and Jung's
concept ofarchetypes. This will be explored in the following section.
12.3 Fantasy and/as archetype
Fordham recognised that Jung's description of archetypes as "a psychic expression of the
physiological and anatomical disposition" (cited in Astor, 1990, p. 266) was close to the
Kleinian definition offantasy as the mental corollary ofinstinctual impulses and activities
(Isaacs, 1952; Klein, 1952). Samuels (1985) states that "it is Klein's notion of
unconscious fantasy ... that is the psychoanalytic idea most closely aligned with