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Abstract

[Fantasms and Reality]

Psychoanalysts has shown that it is possible to bridge the gap between dream and reality. This is so because our perception of reality selects and interprets according to subjective patterns, so that dream and reality contain some “common variance’. To understand these subjective patterns, the concept of “schema’ (Piaget) is introduced, and it is defined in a double sense : a schema, on the one hand, is a pattern of action applied to an external situation or object; on the other hand it is a pattern of self-experience. Since every action always provides simultaneously an external as well as an internal experience, we have to expect a contamination of these two spheres of experience. Reality, therefore is coloured by components of “functional’ experience. It is further argued that the subjective relationships between self and environment organize themselves into patterns (or schemas) of a more general reach. Such generalized schemas are called fantasms. Examples are given and discussed within the framework of a theory of action.