Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

101fathers’ ghosts are rather what Abraham and Torok call “phantoms.” 33 The focus of my chapter isthe transgenerational haunting that is conveyed through the concept of the “phantom.” AsAbraham defines it in The Shell and the Kernel,the ‘phantom’ is a formation in the dynamic unconscious that is found there not becauseof the subject’s own repression but on account of a direct empathy with the unconsciousor the rejected psychic matter of a parental object. Consequently, the phantom is not at allthe product of the subject’s self-creation by means of the interplay between repressionsand introjections. The phantom is alien to the subject who harbors it. Moreover, thediverse manifestations of the phantom, which we call haunting, are not directly related toinstinctual life and are not to be confused with the return of the repressed. (181)These are unconscious secrets passed down from one generation to the other. The phantom,however, re-appears not as disseminated symptoms but in the unconscious as the inadmissiblesecret of the Other. This secret could be anything. As far as The Scarlet Letter is concerned, thefilial secret is to carry on the Puritan patriarchal project. Knowing the secret, however, leads us,via the concept of transhistorical haunting, to a new understanding of the symptom and thephantom as they slide toward death.The “phantom” is associated with the ghostly presence of the dead ancestors in the livingnarrator’s ego and with the prevention of its historical and traumatic secrets from coming to thefore. These secrets are incorporated in the phantom’s discourse and voice which hides anunspeakable secret of the othera love object. Abraham continues to argue that:The phantom is a formation of the unconscious that has never been consciousfor goodreason. It passesin a way yet to be determinedfrom the parent’s unconscious into thechild’s. Clearly, the phantom has a function different from dynamic repression. Thephantom’s periodic and compulsive return lies beyond the scope of symptom-formation in