Fantasy and Social Movements

Fantasy and Social Movements
Studies in the Psychosocial Series

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HAUNTINGS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND GHOSTLY TRANSMISSIONS
Uri Hadar
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIAL INVOLVEMENT
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Margarita Palacios
RADICAL SOCIALITY
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James S. Ormrod
FANTASY AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
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Also by James S. Ormrod

COSMIC SOCIETY: TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE (co-author)
Fantasy and Social
Movements
James S. Ormrod
University of Brighton, UK
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Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction: Fantasy and Social Movements in Context 1
Part I Fantasy in Constellation: Fantasy, Reality, the

Unconscious, Action and the Collective
1 Fantasy in Freudian Theory 29
2 Fantasy in Kleinian Theory 67
3 Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 98
4 Modes of Fantasy 134
Part II Fantasy and Social Movement Theory

5 Social Movement Theory and Types of Action 141
6 Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour 184
7 A Typology of Social Movements 200
Part III A Case Study of the Pro-Space Movement

and Fantasy
8 Fantasy in the Pro-Space Movement 215
9 The Pro-Space Movement and Social Structure 231
10 The Pro-Space Movement and Ideology 243
11 The Pro-Space Movement and Political Organization 257
References 273
Index 288
v
Figures
4.1 Modes of fantasy 135

7.1 A typology of social movements 201
vi
Acknowledgements
The roots of this book lie in the nine years I spent in the Department
of Sociology at the University of Essex as an undergraduate, post-
graduate and teaching fellow. Though hopefully my arguments have
moved on, this book is still very much anchored in my Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded doctoral research and all the
acknowledgements made there must still apply. A few should be reiter-
ated. I would not have undertaken the doctorate, let alone completed
it, were it not for the guidance of Eamonn Carrabine. I must thank
all those members of the pro-space movement who helped me dur-
ing my research. It was through reflecting on discussion with Kevin
Hetherington and Mike Roper, who examined my thesis, that I came
to see the potential for this book. The greatest thanks must be reserved
for Peter Dickens, whose engagement with my writing transformed my
thinking during my doctorate, and has continued to do so ever since. He
also provided much needed comments on a very early draft of this book.
The book has, however, been developed from within the School of
Applied Social Science at the University of Brighton. I have been lucky
enough, in particular, to teach an undergraduate course for several years
on the sociology of social movements, as well as a newer course on
the sociology of the universe. It is impossible to identify the numer-
ous ways in which my understanding of both areas of sociology has
changed as a result of teaching such engaged students on these and
other courses. I also owe a debt to my academic colleagues, especially
those who have commented on my ideas as they were clumsily pre-
sented at our Festivals of Humanities and Social Sciences. I have also
benefitted from presenting work at a number of inspiring conferences,
especially the Annual Conference of the Association for the Psycho-
analysis of Culture and Society, the International Conference of the
Utopian Studies Society, the Conference of the Psychosocial Studies Net-
work, and the Alternative Futures and Popular Protest conference at
Manchester Metropolitan University. Working on this manuscript I have
benefitted from encouraging exchanges with other academics work-
ing on fantasy and politics, especially Keith Jacobs and Jason Glynos.
Together with Wendy Hollway, Jason Glynos provided important com-
ments on the draft manuscript for this book without which it would be
vii
viii Acknowledgements
much the poorer. The same is true for the comments of two other refer-
ees looking at the original book proposal. I am grateful to Nicola Jones,
Maryam Rutter and especially Elizabeth Forrest at Palgrave Macmillan
for all their help and patience.
Please note that parts of this book have previously been published
as part of the following papers (reproduced with permission): Ormrod,
J. S. (2012), ‘Leader Psychobiography and Social Movement Studies:
A Kleinian Case Study of Bruce Gagnon and the Outer Space Protec-
tion Movement’, The Psychoanalytic Review, 99(5): 743–779; Ormrod,
J. S. (2011), ‘ “Making Room for the Tigers and the Polar Bears”:
Biography, Phantasy and Ideology in the Voluntary Human Extinc-
tion Movement’, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 16(2): 142–161;
Ormrod, J. S. (2009), ‘Phantasy and Social Movements: An Ontology
of Pro-Space Activism’, Social Movement Studies, 8(2): 115–129 (www.
tandfonline.com); Ormrod, J. S. (2007), ‘Pro-Space Activism and Nar-
cissistic Phantasy’, Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 12(3): 260–278.
Introduction: Fantasy and Social
Movements in Context
What part does fantasy play in social movements? This may appear to
be an odd question to ask. It stirs up some of the most fundamental
dichotomies in the history, not only of social movement theory but
of the social sciences in general: collective/individual; real/imagined;
action/escape; rational/irrational. Social movements have commonly
been defined as collective enterprises responding to real social condi-
tions and acting to change them in some positive way, and in most
recent theory they have also been understood as expressions of (albeit
perhaps ‘bounded’) rationality on the part of their participants. Fantasy,
on the other hand, is often thought of as private and therefore highly
individual, and as representing a turn away from reality and social
action. As Knafo & Feiner (2006, p. 1) define them, ‘fantasies are our
own private form of psychodrama, where we are both author and pro-
tagonist’. And insofar as this book engages with psychoanalytic notions
of fantasy specifically, and psychoanalysis generally acknowledges the
existence of both unconscious fantasies and conscious fantasies or day-
dreams, it might be seen as threatening to associate activism with the
unconscious, the irrational and even the pathological. It is certainly gen-
erally accepted that fantasies are not ‘chosen’ by the fantasizer. The most
fundamental argument of this book is that fantasy does nonetheless
play an important role in activism. Considering the existence of fantasy
within social movements challenges us to engage with these dualisms as
more than clear-cut oppositions. But I am not alone in making such a
point in recent years. As Rose (1996, p. 2) has argued, ‘if fantasy is private
only, revelling in its own intimacy out of bounds, then however outra-
geous its contents, it will be powerless to affect or alter the surrounding
world’. And yet social bonds are indeed based on fantasized identifica-
tions and wishes, and so fantasy ‘is not therefore antagonistic to social
1
2 Fantasy and Social Movements
reality; it is its precondition or psychic glue’ (1996, p. 3). Rose’s work

focuses on the fantasmatic foundations of nation states, but as Jason
Glynos (2011, p. 73) makes clear, it is not only important in underpin-
ning social structures, but for challenging them as well; ‘Fantasy has
an ontological status vis-à-vis the subject: it is a necessary condition for
political mobilization and change as much as it is functional to social
passivity and maintaining the status quo’.
Fantasy is a slippery term to use in conjunction with social move-
ments. There are other concepts – ‘the imaginary’ and ‘utopia’ are
perhaps the most significant – that can easily slide over or underneath
fantasy, and which have a great deal more currency when discussing
social movements. The idea that social movements might collectively
imagine the future they are fighting for, and that this might have
some significant part to play in their mobilization (whatever role that
might be), should hardly be a contentious one. Indeed, it could even be
argued that the existence of such a vision is what distinguishes social
movements from other forms of collective behaviour such as riots or
lynchings. These images of the future can be of totalizing utopias, but
they can equally represent changes in social practices affecting just one
aspect of social life or one social group. Terms such as the imaginary
and utopia have an extremely long history in this context, but it might
also be said that, largely through revitalizing developments that have
consolidated utopian studies as a field (through the likes of Fredric
Jameson and David Harvey) and the influence of Lacanian political the-
ory and its critics (Ernesto Laclau, Slavoj Žižek, Cornelius Castoriadis
and others), they are achieving a new prominence, maybe even instigat-
ing an ‘imaginative turn’ in theory. This turn has been interwoven with
the evolution of what remain the dominant narratives of social the-
ory: Marxism and feminism. As political projects, both have drawn on
psychoanalytic traditions in order to reformulate their politics in line
with emergent understandings of the part played by fantasy in social
and political life.
Especially amongst the latter group, drawing on a notion common to
all psychoanalysis, the imagination is positioned in contrast to linguistic
descriptions of the future or of alternative realities. The Communist Man-
ifesto, for example, provides a clear outline of the principles upon which
a future communist world could be built (see Marx & Engels, 1848,
especially pp. 104–5; for more recent discussions see Žižek & Douzinas,
2010; Žižek, 2013). But it is not, in the sense in which I use the term
here, imaginary. It lacks the colour of the imagination (I use the term
‘colour’ here synecdochically as it is so often used as an example of that
Introduction 3
which defies description). This book is about fantasies of life in ‘utopian’

futures. I posit that activists’ conscious fantasies (though maybe rarely
discussed openly with others) form a bridge between unconscious fan-
tasies and the political projects they are engaged in. Understanding the
relationship between the imagination and the language that betrays it
remains one of the most divisive and complex issues involved in the
imaginative turn.
Regrettably, despite increasing acknowledgement that the grievances
and opportunities around which movements coalesce are imaginatively
constituted, this turn is yet to have the same impact upon mainstream
US social movement theory (resource mobilization, political process and
framing theories, along with the recent cultural approaches to emotion
associated with the work of James Jasper and others). The field of social
movement studies in the US has incorporated only those elements of the
cultural and affective turns it has deemed compatible with its liberal,
rationalistic model of the activist (ignoring the linguistic turn almost
completely).
In contrast, European ‘New Social Movement Theory’ has, I think
largely because it has retained a much greater dialogue with general
social theory, employed a more sophisticated notion of subjectivity.
This is especially true when considering the centrality afforded to affect,
identity, cultural symbols and (more recently) play and creativity. These
terms are closely related to fantasy. In this, New Social Movement The-
ory forms an important part of the context to this book. But having said
that, fantasy is a distinctive concept, and New Social Movement Theory
only takes us to a certain point. This is compounded by its widespread
avoidance of any serious engagement with psychoanalysis in favour of
other sociological and psychological paradigms.
It is no easy task, but in this book I attempt to bring together debates
within social movement theory and the debates that fuel the imagi-
native turn in social theory more generally, paying close attention to
the ways in which fantasy as a concept might help drive forwards our
understanding of activism.
Fantasy and social movements in historical perspective
In taking up such a challenge, this book attempts to go beyond revisit-

ing reified debates. The issues it engages with are, as I hope to show in
this introductory chapter, a dynamic and historically pertinent concern
for social movement theory. It has been argued that social movements
now operate within, and are in the process of making concessions to,
an ‘age of fantasy’ (Duncombe, 2007). This is arguably an age captured

by Slavoj Žižek’s assertion (addressed by other Lacanian theorists such
as Stavrakakis, 2010, see the further discussion in Chapter 3) that ‘we
are no longer interpellated on behalf of some big ideological identity,
but directly as subjects of pleasures, so that the implied ideological
identity is invisible’ (2008, p. xiii). If the banner of a great cause once
masked the pleasures of such an identity, these pleasures now lie on
the surface of activism. Historicist claims such as these require serious
ontological interrogation of the relationship between fantasy and social
movements. But before turning to this in the remainder of the book,
I want to spend a moment longer sketching four interrelated dimen-
sions to the changes supposedly affecting the place of fantasy within
social movements. The desirability of such changes depends on the
ontological, theoretical and political perspective of the observer. Some
have celebrated them whilst others have recoiled in horror.
Fantasy, social movements and the collective: The privatization

of Utopia
Much has been said about the fate of utopia over the past few decades.
Whilst it has been possible for some to remark on the decline of utopia
as a correlate of the end of modernism, the volume of debate and ambi-
guity surrounding the possibility suggests the situation is nothing like
as clear-cut. The emergence of the so-called ‘new social movements’ has
itself been read as a sign of either the exhaustion of utopian energy (see
Habermas, 1990, as cited in Calhoun’s 1993 critique) or its resurgence
(Turner, 1994). To complicate things, the breadth of meaning of the term
utopia has proved more elastic than it once was, arguably emptying it of
much of its usefulness. Maffesoli (2005), for example, has pointed to the
demise of the term ‘utopia’ in its singular, totalizing form. Monotheistic
religions, including Marxism, and their myths of progress and faith in
saviours are decried. Political concepts such as ‘citizen’, ‘democracy’ and
‘freedom’ are considered empty and abandoned. Maffesoli looks instead
to a plurality of ‘utopias in the gaps’, ‘in the little interstices of exis-
tence, in other words daily life’. His suggestions for the forms these ‘little
utopias’ may take – ‘sexual, religious, cultural, musical or otherwise’ –
make it clear that these are not attempts to challenge social or political
structures. Maffesoli (2005, p. 27) refers to the new utopias as ‘ingressive’
rather than progressive. Ingress is ‘a progression that is inner and does
not move towards the outside’, ‘a dynamic that is not directed towards a
distant project but, for better or worse, promotes the expression in vari-
ous ways of something to do with the emotions: a culture of the feeling
Introduction 5
of belonging based on a given place’ (see Ormrod, 2011a, for an allegory

and critique). Maffesoli is only one writer to reconceptualize utopia in
this way. John Holloway’s (2010) Crack Capitalism, albeit more progres-
sive, uses the same metaphor of interstices as he draws links between the
multifarious ways in which people refuse the rule of money, searching
for or creating cracks and faults in the advance of capital. He accepts the
possibility that the cracks we see may be no more than fantasy, ‘simply
the product of our own wishful thinking’ (p. 13). But acting on the basis
that these cracks are real, by exploring the potentials of our own misfit-
ting within the capitalist walls that surround us, is better than ‘[poring]
over a map that does not exist’.
Maffesoli and Holloway are far from lone voices in a drift that ranges
from anarchist Hakim Bey’s (1991) temporary autonomous zones to dis-
cussions about the design of temporary and pluralized micro-utopias
(e.g. Wood, 2007). This is further complicated by the reconceptualiza-
tion of utopia as method or practice or praxis (Levitas, 2013; Sargent,
2010) rather than as a blueprint for the future, and talk of ‘utopian
figures’ (Jameson, 2005), all of which transform our thinking about
utopia. Classic debates based around utopias like that of Thomas More
and their well-worn criticisms (from such disparate sources as Engels
(1880) and Karl Popper (1948)) have, to an extent, moved on.
The decline of the utopian, at least in the way in which we used to
think about it, has been mourned and celebrated in something like equal
measure. The Lacanian theorist Yannis Stavrakakis’s (1999) understand-
ing of the nature of utopia, which he sees as the political equivalent of
fantasy, as an impossible order in which the antagonisms of the present
are overcome through violence exacted on some arbitrary scapegoat, has
led to a celebration of the abandonment of utopia (or, more precisely, a
commitment to traversing utopia) in favour of a more radical democracy
tolerant of antagonism and difference. This academic position, by no
means confined to Lacanians, has attracted as much criticism as move-
ments that have embraced this ethos. Not only does it open the door to
less desirable utopian projects, but it also leaves untouched our existing
preoccupation with individualized consumer fantasies.
Stavrakakis’s work quite deliberately conflates utopia and fantasy. It is
only where fantasy and utopia are distinguished, as they are in the anti-
anti-utopianism of Fredric Jameson, that we can see what utopia adds to
fantasy as wish-fulfilment, and therefore what is lost when the utopian
disappears. Jameson understands utopia as ‘collective wish-fulfilment’
(2005, p. 84). He draws on Freud, and in particular Creative Writers
and Day-Dreaming (1908), in which Freud raises the possibility that
myths might be ‘distorted vestiges of the wishful phantasies of whole

nations, the secular dreams of youthful humanity’ (cited in Jameson,
2005, p. 152). Jameson suggests that utopias represent the kind of soft-
ening of fantasy that Freud describes as part of the creative writer’s craft.
‘Universality’, Jameson says,
is less a social possibility than the very disguise that makes [fan-
tasy’s] cultural appearance possible: something like a non-figurative
system of ornamentation and elaborate decoration which simulates
impersonality and offers an abstraction in which everyone can acqui-
esce: a more perfect society ‘that no one shall go hungry any longer’,
‘happiness for everybody, as much as you want’.
Jameson attempts to understand utopia as some admixture of ideology,

such as might be found in a political pamphlet, and wish-fulfilment
fantasy, but without reducing it to a dualistic combination of the two
separate entities. He points to the need ‘to identify a process distinct
from Utopian ideology or the gratification of the narcissistic punctum’
(Jameson, 2005, p. 72).
The abandonment of the social critique that many have suggested is
inherent in utopia (see, for example, Mannheim’s (1936) famous dis-
tinction between ideology and utopia) in favour of utopia as little more
than a shell for individual wish-fulfilment is described powerfully by
Zygmunt Bauman (2008). He makes a distinction between the ‘maps of
utopia’ or models for ‘a good society’ that accompanied what he calls
solid modernity, and the empty spaces that take their place in ‘liquid’
modernity. He looks back to a time when ‘the pursuit of happiness was
understood as a search for a good society’ and ‘images of a good life were
matter-of-factly public and social’ (2008, p. 27). He sees these public or
social utopias as casualties of neoliberalism. They are contrasted with
contemporary utopias:
The privatized utopias of the cowboys and cowgirls of the con-

sumerist era show instead vastly expanded ‘free space’ (free for my
self, of course) – a kind of empty space of which the liquid-modern
consumer, bent on solo performances and solo performances only,
never has enough. The space that liquid modern consumers need and
are advised from all sides to fight for can be conquered only by evict-
ing other humans – and particularly the kind of humans who care for
others or may need care themselves.
(Bauman, 2008, p. 54)
Introduction 7
The violent exclusion of the Other has been the basis for a number
of critiques of classical utopianism, but Bauman suggests this is not
avoided by contemporary utopianism. And yet despite Bauman’s obvi-
ous concerns about the ‘ressentment’ and unwillingness to confront the
Other that are apparent in this hollowed-out utopia (if this is still the
appropriate term), his hope for the rebuilding of ethics is based on
the individualization from which it emerged. His hope for a ‘solidar-
ity of strangers’ is based on ‘our acquired skills of living with difference
and engagement in meaningful and mutually beneficial dialogue’ (2008,
p. 256).
Fantasy, social movements and the unconscious: Identity

movements and the impulsive temper
The decline of the modern utopia is closely related to the changing role
of identity in social movements. ‘Identity’, albeit a term used highly
ambiguously (Stryker et al., 2000, p. 6) and in a taken-for-granted man-
ner (Larana et al., 1994), has taken on a new significance within both
movements themselves and social movement theory over the last few
decades. Identity has come to be seen as something emerging through
activism, and often as an end in itself, rather than as a ‘discovered’
and subsequently politicized precondition for some other end. It can
be argued that over the last few decades interest politics have receded as
people have found it harder and harder to identify their own interests
and instead spent their energies attempting to shore up some sense of
who they are in the first instance. Larana et al. (1994) refer to this as a
move from ideology (which specified an injustice suffered by a particu-
lar class) to identity, expressed in neo-fascist as well as more progressive
forms (see also Tarrow, 1998). Linked to this was a rising tide of anti-
essentialism and recognition of the fluidity of identity. The refusal on
the part of new social movements to identify a ‘privileged revolution-
ary subject’ or create a total model of society inspired post-structuralist
social movement theorists (for example, Laclau, 1985; Mouffe, 1984).
But whilst Laclau saw radical potential in the new social movements’
indeterminate view of the future, reflexive modernization theorists such
as Giddens (1991) and Beck (1992) were celebrating the emergence of a
more individualized form of ‘lifestyle politics’ coterminous with con-
sumer capitalism. In the wake of this, Brown (1999) diagnosed a new
‘Left melancholia’; the result of the Left’s attack on the ‘lost object’
of Marxist orthodoxy with which it had narcissistically identified, and
which was no longer historically relevant. But Jodi Dean (2013) has
more recently argued that Brown misidentified the ‘lost object’ of the
Left. Its guilt, she suggests, comes as a result of the Left’s many com-
promises and betrayals. In one sense this represents a loss of desire, but
at the same time ‘for such a left, enjoyment comes from its withdrawal
from responsibility’ (p. 87).
One suggestion is that movements are now less concerned with
challenging the external social and political structures they inhabit
and more concerned with the inner lives of their participants. This
is no doubt a correlate of the emergence of a ‘post-material politics’
(Inglehart, 1977) and of the rise of the so-called new social movements.
If Touraine (1994, p. 168, cited in Castells, 1994, p. 22) is right that ‘in
a post-industrial society, in which cultural services have replaced mate-
rial goods at the core of production, it is the defense of the subject, in its
personality and in its culture, against the logic of apparatuses and markets,
that replaces the idea of class struggle’, or if Melucci (1989, pp. 177–8)
is right that a ‘freedom to have’ has given way to a ‘freedom to be’,
then it is hardly surprising that the new social movements were seen
by some as more introspective. But this was not how everyone read
them. Indeed, some, including Habermas (1981), had seen in the new
movements the potential for an interrogation of the foundations of the
modern industrial order that had even more far-reaching implications
than what had been demanded in previous eras of radical politics (even
if their emergence was initially reactive).
Turner (1994) makes an indicative historical distinction between
‘institutionals’ and ‘impulsers’. Institutionals think their identities
through traditional social roles and structural positions, and ‘recognize
their real selves in their achievements, in their pursuit of ideals, and, for
many, in altruistic self-sacrifice’. Impulsers, on the other hand, seek an
identity distinct from such constraints, finding themselves ‘in freeing
their behaviour from the constraints of reason and social norms so as
to act strictly on impulse, and in establishing relationships with others
within which they can safely speak and act on impulse’ (p. 88). This
was not merely permissible, but culturally demanded (see Craib, 1994).
Turner’s distinction captures the tension within contemporary move-
ments between mobilizing social/collective identities and establishing
personal/self-identity within the space provided by a movement (see,
for example, Larana et al., 1994).
This dimension maps imperfectly onto another relating to whether or
not reason and social norms (including those norms established within
a movement) constrain the pursuit of individual wishes. In the 1970s
Daniel Bell suggested that ‘the post-modernist temper demands that
what was previously played out in fantasy and imagination must be
Introduction 9
acted out in life as well’ (1976, p. 53). Sennett (1974) also argued that
there was a cultural demand for self-expression and self-gratification.
By the time Turner was writing, the supposed ‘acting out’ of fan-
tasy had become a central component of late or postmodern culture.
One aspect of this was a refusal to conceptualize the self through its
dependency on others (arguably distinguishing the ethos of contem-
porary activism from its May 1968 precursors). Another element was
that these movements were taking place in the context of widespread
acceptance that activists were not acting on some authentic, previously
repressed enjoyment, but that through expressing their ‘impulses’ they
were simultaneously creating themselves as subjects.
Though there are key differences between Turner’s work and Bell’s (see
Hetherington, 1998), an early indicator of these shifts came in Lasch’s
(1979) description of the new type of activist. One of the starting points
for Lasch’s Culture of Narcissism is the observation that clinical psycho-
analysts were now dealing with chaotic and impulse-ridden patients
who ‘ “act out” their conflicts instead of repressing or sublimating them’
(1979, p. 37). When Youth International leader Jerry Rubin claimed that
wearing judicial robes to attend court proceedings was ‘a way of act-
ing out fantasies and ending repressions’, Lasch responded by saying
that ‘[a]cting out fantasies does not end repressions, however; it merely
dramatizes the permissible limits of antisocial behaviour’ (1979, p. 83).
From reading Susan Stern’s Weathermen memoirs he realizes that her
need was to establish an identity through her activism, rather than ‘to
submerge her identity in a larger cause’, something he seems to asso-
ciate with previous (mass) movements. The past few decades have no
doubt witnessed a shift in the orientations of social movements in the
Western world from both the mass movements of the 1930s/1940s and
the radical movements of the 1960s, and there have been many attempts
to capture the nature of these changes. For Lasch, the Weathermen,
like other supposedly radical movements, bore the mark of their parent
culture. They lived, says Lasch, in ‘an atmosphere of violence, danger,
drugs, sexual promiscuity, moral and psychic chaos – derived not so
much from an older revolutionary tradition as from the turmoil and
narcissistic anguish of contemporary America’ (1979, p. 8).
Rubin’s memoirs describe life as a participant in the ‘inner revolution
of the seventies’ (cited in Lasch, 1979, p. 15), and the ‘spiritual’ con-
sumption that became so much a part of it: ‘I directly experienced est,
gestalt therapy, bioenergetics, rolfing, massage, jogging, health foods,
tai chi, Esalen, hypnotism, modern dance, meditation, Silva mind
control, Arica, acupuncture, sex therapy, Reichian therapy, and More
House – a smorgasbord course in New Consciousness’ (1979, p. 14).

These people did not, says Lasch, embrace radical politics in order to
achieve real social change, ‘but because it served as a new mode of self-
dramatization’ (Lasch, 1979, p. 83). Heelas (1996) later writes of such
‘New Age’ movements, seen partly as the product of a loss of certainty,
that the common component is a ‘self-spirituality’ in which ‘the self
itself is sacred’ (p. 2). It is an individualizing of religion based around
developing the individual’s sense of power and maximization of their
capacities in the material world. Indeed, Heelas (1996, p. 154) has put
it to New Agers that they share many of the values and assumptions
of the enterprise culture of Thatcherism and Reaganism. But, as Lasch
makes clear through his use of Freudian psychoanalysis (and, in the
1991 ‘Afterword’, Kleinian theory), this was not the expression of a
confident or assertive individualism. In the absence of inner direction
based on the internalization of a coherent social conscience, frighten-
ing ‘archaic superego precursors’ haunted the narcissist, who looked to
reflections from others to shore up a sense of self-worth.
Murray Bookchin’s (1995) polemic against the abandonment of ‘social
anarchism’ in favour of ‘lifestyle’ or ‘narcissistic anarchism’ (p. 25) is
one of the most persuasive attacks on some of these trends, and demon-
strates that even ‘old’ social movements have not been immune from
the turn inward (and the distinction between old and new movements
has been critiqued by Calhoun, 1993, in any case). ‘The revolution-
ary and social goals of anarchism are suffering far-reaching erosion’,
he laments, ‘to a point where the word anarchy will become part of
the chic bourgeois vocabulary of the coming century – naughty, rebel-
lious, insouciant, but deliciously safe’ (Bookchin, 1995, p. 3). Like Lasch,
he rails against the aegis of bohemian lifestyle, as the anarchist move-
ment abandons its appeal to the working class in favour of ‘fiery tracts,
outrageous behaviour, aberrant lifestyles, sexual freedom, innovations
in art, behaviour and clothing’ (1995, p. 7). Coherent ideologies have
given way to ‘a basically apolitical and anti-organizational commit-
ment to imagination, desire and ecstasy’. ‘Inverted protests’ become
‘a playground for juvenile antics’ as the anarchist movement’s goal of
progressive social change is abandoned.
All this is especially troubling for those who cling to the idea that
popular disengagement from institutionalized democratic politics rep-
resents not a declining political consciousness but merely a move
towards politics conducted through the actions of new social move-
ments. Though he did not wish to dwell on the point, even Lasch
suggests that the ‘flight from politics’ may in fact represent ‘not a retreat
Introduction 11
from politics at all but the beginnings of a general political revolt’, the
result of a ‘healthy scepticism about a political system in which public
lying has become endemic and routine’ and a growing ‘unwillingness
to take part in the political system as a consumer of prefabricated spec-
tacles’ (1979, p. xv). Rallying as this optimism is, Frank Furedi (2004)
argues that political disengagement is reflected not just in our relation-
ship to institutionalized politics but also within social movements. In his
understanding, ‘political engagement involves action directed at influ-
encing aspects of life of a wider communal project’ (p. xiv), an aspiration
against which the ‘live and let live’ attitude of self-expressive politics just
does not hold up. Alain Touraine (1981, p. 1) claimed that ‘at the heart
of society burns the fire of social movements’, which were becoming
‘more than ever the principle agents of history’ (p. 9). If Furedi is right
about the emphasis social movements are now placing on media pub-
licity at the expense of actual change, however, then in the so-called
‘social movement society’ (Meyer & Tarrow, 1998) this fire is producing
little heat, even where protest events and campaigns succeed in illumi-
nating particular social issues (which for some is now their central and
proper function). Activists become little more than ‘proverbial canaries
in the mine, except they sing out rather than quietly expire’ (Jasper,
1999, p. 13).
Fantasy, social movements and reality: The abandonment

of truth
The issue for many of those above is that social movements, rather than
resisting some of the trends of contemporary cultural life, have suc-
cumbed to them. As mentioned previously, Stephen Duncombe locates
leftist politics in the context of an ‘age of fantasy’:
Today’s world is linked by media systems and awash in advertising

images; political policies are packaged by public relations experts
and celebrity gossip is considered news. More and more of the econ-
omy is devoted to marketing and entertainment or the performance
of scripted roles in the service sector. We live in a ‘society of the
spectacle’, as the French theorist Guy Debord declared back in 1967.
(2007, p. 5)
For Duncombe, politicians, no less than advertisers, have learnt to

‘speak to people’s fantasies and desires through a language of images
and associations’ (2007, p. 8). Politicians now create their own realities
through the management of information, a process apparently generally
accepted by the electorate. But for Duncombe, progressive movements

are being left behind, handicapped by their affinity for the truth, which
hangs like a millstone around their necks. They now appear more con-
servative than their counterparts on the right, who appeal to people’s
love of simplicity through the production of manufactured simplified
spectacles designed to delight them. Duncombe’s advice for progressives
is ultimately reducible, despite his protestations to the contrary, to
accepting ‘if you can’t beat them join them’:
Whether one approves of it or not, fantasy and spectacle have

become the lingua franca of our time [ . . . ] If we want our ideas to
lead and not trail the politics of this country, then we need to learn
how to think and communicate in today’s spectacular vernacular.
(2007, p. 9)
He urges progressives to learn ‘from those who do spectacle best: the

architects of Las Vegas, video game designers, advertising’s creative
directors, and the producers and editors of celebrity media’ (2007, p. 15).
It is, however, unclear exactly what we should be learning. He is quick to
say that ‘this does not mean adopting flashy techniques to help us make
sexier advertisements for progressive causes (though this wouldn’t hurt).
It means looking deep into the core of these and other examples of pop-
ular spectacle to divine exactly what makes them so popular’ (p. 15).
But he goes on to assert that we should not be learning about either
the content or form of spectacle from such sources. The main difference
would be that progressivist spectacles are participatory and created by
the grassroots themselves. And yet he notes himself that appearing to
cede creative control to the consumer has become a popular tactic by
advertisers which hampers real social transformation.
Bookchin and Duncombe make very similar observations of the
changing forms of protest on the far left. But their reactions could
hardly be more different. Bookchin’s indignation becomes Duncombe’s
celebration of groups that have ‘taken on the mantle of imagination’:
With environmental protestors dressed in sea turtle costumes in

Seattle, theoretical skits involving the militant jesters of the Clan-
destine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army in London and New York, or
Yo Basta! in their padded tutti bianchi (white jumpsuits) in Prague
and Genoa, these protests are infected with a general spirit of spir-
ited anarchy. Declaring that means are as important as ends (if not
sometimes troublingly more so), these mass protests create temporary
Introduction 13
autonomous zones: a living, breathing dancing imaginary form of a

world turned upside down.
(Duncombe, 2007, p. 23)
Duncombe is clear that progressive politics have to appeal to desire

rather than the ‘Truth’ if they are to be successful. Fantasy stages
desire; ‘realizes what reality cannot represent’ (2007, p. 30). ‘Progressives
should have learned to build a politics that embraces the dreams of
people and fashions spectacles which give these fantasies form – a
politics that understands desire and speaks to the irrational; a poli-
tics that employs symbols and associations; a politics that tells good
stories.’ Though Duncombe’s theoretical framework seems somewhat
loose, Žižek endorses the book as ‘the sine qua non for any renewal
of Leftist politics’.
How this abandonment of appeals to truth is seen depends on the
answers to deep ontological questions. The perspective of post-Marxist
theory, and most notably that of Laclau (for example, Laclau, 1996),
abandons the classical Marxist concept of ideology as false conscious-
ness. The function of ideology is not to mask social reality, but to
construct it. The purpose of social critique is not to counterpoise ide-
ology with reality (destined to be another ideological edifice), but
the continual revelation of how things could be otherwise. This has
been the bedrock of a range of post-structuralist perspectives, perhaps
most notably Judith Butler’s queer theory (for example, Butler, 2004a).
It makes sense within this perspective that a movement’s point of attack
should not be where reality reveals itself through the cracks in an ideol-
ogy, but the symptoms and fantasies produced in accordance with the
ideology itself by virtue of its own inherently incomplete, flawed and
self-contradictory construction of reality.
Things are very different if the current mediation of the world
through images, spin and spectacle is seen as a historical phenomenon.
If we are to hold on to the notion that at some point in the past we
had more direct access to reality, then we also hold on to the possi-
bility of separating reality from the imaginary. Distinguishing between
these two arguments, crucial as they are, is not always straightforward.
The work of Jean Baudrillard, which occasionally uses the term ‘fantasy’
as a synonym for the concept of the simulacrum for which it is better
known, has been open to contestation in this respect. Baudrillard says
that in contemporary America the question is one ‘of concealing the fact
that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle’
(1994, p. 13, cited in Adams, 2004, p. 6). The ‘no longer’ is vital here, as
Adams notes. It underscores Baudrillard’s position that this is a histor-

ical development, and that fantasy and reality can, in other times and
places, have different relationships. Seen this way, the idea that social
movements might abandon their appeals to reality alongside the archi-
tects of Las Vegas is less ontological necessity, and instead a (more or less
necessary) process of conspiring with a historical trend.
Fantasy, social movements, action and the blurring of protest

and festival
There is an argument that protest has embraced the spectacular and
‘carnivalesque’ to the extent that lasting memories of protest events
are often what was seen rather than what was said. Costume, play, cre-
ativity, humour, irony and partying have come to be seen as central to
activism, revitalizing traditions drawn from situationism and beyond as
the May 1968 slogan ‘jouissez sans entraves’ obtains a new resonance.
How new such a phenomenon is can quite reasonably be debated, but
what is undoubted is that a new wave of writing has been inspired by
this resurgence of what one writer calls ‘protestivals’ (St John, 2008).
Shepard’s (2011) recent book on this subject reveals many of the
contradictions around such protests. He suggests playfulness has been
understood both as an instrumental political tool and as a form of
expression important to sustaining life within a movement. Unlike
Duncombe, however, Shepard’s argument for the former fails to appreci-
ate the changed social context in which playfulness takes place. Shepard
clings to the idea, central in his account of situationism, that play is
inherently subversive. Such an argument hinges on a (Weberian) under-
standing of modern social life wherein need, labour and sacrifice are
core values (citing Plant, 1992, p. 2). Shepard is clearly one of those
social critics Lasch (1979, p. xvi) refers to as naively still attacking the
repressive institutions of an earlier phase of modernity. It is difficult to
argue that capitalism is still sustained by these puritan values. In a world
in which fantasy, creativity and playfulness are central to the project
of consumer self-authorship, Shepard’s use of play as ‘a shorthand for
free activities’ seems naive. Suggesting these ‘free activities’ often find
expression ‘as a gesture, performance, or ritual’ (Shepard, 2011, p. 20)
is oxymoronic at the best of times, but even more so at a time when
Western capitalism manufactures gestures, performances and rituals as
much as material goods. And as Stavrakakis (2010) argues, where there
is a command to enjoy, this is far from liberating or enjoyable. If play
cannot be understood as inherently subversive in its manifestation as
carnivalesque ‘fun’, there is still, however, an argument to be made that
Introduction 15
biting satire, irony and parody, the dark side of humour, may represent a
genuine political challenge, though these are not necessarily the central
focus of Shepard’s study.
There are, however, other ways in which the carnivalesque can be
efficacious. Shepard points out how much harder it is for authorities to
retain legitimacy when repressing the kinds of colourful, light-hearted,
playful protest he has in mind: ‘Jesters carry no weapons; thus they
apparently offer less of a threat to the power-that-be’ (2011, p. 21). This
is no doubt true, but it is what, if anything, lies beneath the surface
of this appearance, that needs unpicking. Even if they do not carry the
threat of violence, or even of numbers (see Della Porta & Diani, 1999,
on ‘logics of protest’), a protest must represent some kind of threat. That
this can be the case in protest organized around the logic of bearing wit-
ness is evident in the claim that the toppling of Ben Ali in Egypt could
be traced to the self-immolation of a single street vendor (Jacinto, 2011).
This is a far cry, of course, from the ‘larking about’ of anarchist street
jesters. The danger, of course, is that such antics become a substitute for
more direct forms of protest.
Ehrenreich (2007, cited in Shepard, 2011, p. 3) notes that gratification
cannot be deferred until after the revolution. But, in Marcusian vein, we
might ask whether pleasure experienced within a movement, initially
perhaps a ‘coping mechanism’ (Shepard, 2011, p. 21), becomes a form of
repressive satisfaction. If one conception of play in social movements is
that they should add flavouring to complement a campaign (‘without a
little seasoning the stew of social protest becomes bland’, Shepard, 2011,
p. 2), it is important to track the danger when excessive spice masks
problematic or absent substance. Such a conceptualization of play as
supplement sells it short, however. At points, Shepard seems to reduce it
to the kind of camaraderie that necessarily accompanies any form of col-
lective action. Citing McAdam’s (1988) work on Freedom Summer, for
example, he points to the ‘social eros, dancing, beer drinking, singing,
hooking up and an unbridled sense of social connection’ (p. 18). Yet this
was all quite distinguishable from the campaign itself, and this was very
different, therefore, from movements wherein play is the protest.
A final avenue for discussion of playfulness in contemporary move-
ments is the possibility that play can be used as a ‘mechanism to
cultivate creativity, solve problems, and generate ideas’ (Shepard, 2011,
p. 12). The benefits of play, understood this way, have much in com-
mon with the supposed benefits of fantasy. And yet play has the crucial
advantage that fantasies and utopias are ‘tried out’ in relation to the
material objects of the ‘real world’ so that they might in principle be
evaluated and reformulated. There is a parallel here with Freud’s notion

of ‘trial action’, as well as with many notions of prefigurative utopias
that begin with an engagement with the real world. This is also, of
course, central to many attempts to distinguish play from fantasy (see
discussion of Caillois, 2003, in Shepard, 2011, p. 13). Some form of
‘action’ is clearly taking place, but there are questions over where this
constitutes political action, and the extent to which that which begins
as fantasy, or even play, actually manages to become something more.
In this climate, the distinction between media-produced spectacles
designed to conceal reality and the events designed to expose them
becomes blurred (hence whilst Debord’s (1970) work remains a cru-
cial launching point for many contemporary discussions, thought has
moved much beyond him). Sobieraj (2011) charts the consequences for
activist groups of their equation of media coverage with political suc-
cess. Social movement leaders, slogans, organizations, and indeed whole
movements, have often in this period fallen prey to commercialization
(see Della Porta & Diani, 1999, p. 149). Academics have proved to be
almost as fascinated by the ‘Che Guevara brand’ as the public, whilst
the practice of ‘guerrilla gardening’ was co-opted into an Adidas com-
mercial quicker than academics could say anything about its subversive
potential. Marcuse argued some time ago that ‘ideas, aspirations, and
objectives that, by their content, transcend the established universe
of discourse and action are either repelled or reduced to terms of this
universe’ (1964, p. 14). The challenge, he argued, was not providing
people with what they wanted, but changing what they wanted. The
more radical our utopia, the harder it is to imagine from within the
existing social order, and yet the closer a utopia comes to something
realizable, the more easily it is assimilated into current arrangements.
Such an observation finds new support continually, as does Lefebvre’s
(1971, p. 95) lament: ‘Has this society, glutted with aestheticism, already
integrated former romanticisms, surrealism, existentialism and even
Marxism to a point? It has, through trade, in the form of commodities.
That which yesterday was reviled today becomes cultural consumer-
goods, consumption thus engulfs what was intended to give meaning
and direction.’
The above extends elements often taken to define new social move-
ments, though the turn inwards is both more and less than a feature of
new social movements. One element is that attention has shifted away
from political efficacy and towards what happens within the movement
itself. Melucci (1985, p. 800) has argued that new social movements
are not things that come together just in moments of visible political
Introduction 17
contestation, but exist as ‘networks of groups submerged in daily life’.

This has also meant that the movement has become a space for celebra-
tion as much as protest actions aimed at transforming the world beyond
itself (even to the extent that they might be seen as having established
a new sectarianism (Furedi, 2004)). Ironically, the development of social
practice art has meant that the expressive world of artistic practice now
has more pretentions to change the social world around it than many
social and political movements, which have contented themselves with
celebrating their own spaces of self-expression. A related aspect of this
is that emotional experiences, often associated with cultural practices,
become pure ends in themselves. Some time ago, Marcuse (1964) gave
the example of a march that just ended in kissing.
The argument of the book
Even insofar as these descriptions might be assumed correct, I would not

hold to any straightforward linear narrative about them. Whilst it is cer-
tainly possible to point to selective events that seemingly confirm these
hypotheses, there are also examples, both historical and contemporary,
that buck these trends. I began writing this book before the events of
the Arab Spring, which reinforced the fact that any linear narrative was
impossible to sustain.
The aim of this book is to explore the ontological underpinnings that
allow us to even hypothesize that such trends are taking place. In par-
ticular, this means thinking critically about the relationship between
fantasy, reality, the unconscious, action and the collective, which I refer
to as an ‘ontological constellation’. In doing so, it hopes to develop
a better understanding of the role fantasy plays in social movements.
To this end, I develop the concept of ‘modes of fantasy’, suggesting
that the constellation of fantasy, reality, the unconscious, action and
the collective can be manifest in different ways in different activists.
I identify narcissistic, depressive, hallucinatory, interventionist, disso-
ciative and fatalistic modes. Different psychoanalytic and psychosocial
theorists have, I argued, provided ontological accounts of fantasy that
fit better with different modes of fantasy, and I attempt to provide some
overall synthesis. Accepting that movements hold together activists
with both different fantasy formations and different modes of fantasy,
I then map my model of modes of fantasy onto a typology of social
movements. This identifies hostile crazes, institutionalized movements,
hedonistic movements, prefigurative movements, escapist movements
and millenarian movements. Each type of movement is characterized
by a dominant mode of fantasy. The emergence of this particular

mode as dominant within the movement occurs through a number of
dynamic processes. The historical claims outlined above can be under-
stood within this framework as shifts in the predominant types of
movement.
The organization of the book
The book is conceived in three parts. These parts, and the chapters
within them, are intended to stand alone to some extent, though
my argument also builds throughout the book. The parts are writ-
ten without assuming too much prior knowledge. Part I focuses on
psychoanalytic understandings of fantasy and its relationship with real-
ity, the unconscious, action and the collective. Readers familiar with
psychoanalysis will find some of the chapters in Part I cover well-
worn territory, but it is hoped that new interpretations and syntheses
are drawn out, and their relevance to activism foregrounded, especially
through the work of social theorists engaging with the psychoanalytic
theories covered. Part II focuses on social movement theory, and the
place of psychoanalysis, and psychoanalytic understandings of fantasy
more specifically, within it. Readers familiar with social movement the-
ory will no doubt recognize some of the history and critique of the
field presented. But, again, it is hoped that some original arguments are
forged out of this, and convincing connections with the psychoanalytic
literature are made. Part III presents a case study of the pro-space move-
ment in which the arguments and concepts developed earlier in the
book are applied. It is argued that the contemporary pro-space move-
ment represents a ‘hostile craze’ according to my typology. I hope
to draw attention to the role of fantasy within the movement, but,
moreover, how fantasy is worked over within a movement to produce
particular forms of mobilization.
Within Part I, Chapter 1 begins with Sigmund Freud’s account of
how fantasy emerges during the infant’s development. This begins as
hallucinatory satisfaction, as the infant suffering from discomfort hal-
lucinates a satisfying object. But due to the inadequacies of such a
response, the infant develops the apparatus needed for ‘reality-testing’
and secondary process thought, and ultimately for finding the satisfying
object in reality. Hereafter, Freud makes an essential distinction between
fantasying, still a response to an unsatisfying reality but an activity car-
ried on in the context of ‘reality-testing’, and hallucinatory satisfaction.
I argue that there are a number of subsequent ambiguities in Freud’s
Introduction 19
argument, and these open up the possibility for recognizing further

modes of fantasy. At one point Freud argues that fantasy is stimulated by
the present to produce an image of the future based on the model pro-
vided by the past. It arises first in the pre-conscious system, from which
it might then enter consciousness. Freud accepts that pre-conscious fan-
tasy can be verbally thought or thought in images, the latter remaining
closer to the unconscious. He also acknowledges various ways in which
the wish-fulfilment represented in fantasy might be compromised to
meet other demands. This includes the incorporation of the materials
of the present, and also the softening of demand to include the satis-
faction of others. Finally, he can be interpreted as acknowledging the
role played by fantasy in the determination of action. Freud therefore
had a complex, if sometimes unclear, incomplete and even problem-
atic notion of the role played by fantasy in social life. But much of
his work nonetheless demonstrated a deep concern about the effects
of fantasy on the individual and social levels. As I demonstrate, many
of these concerns are mirrored in the work of Marx and Engels. And yet
the Marxist tradition has developed far more positive ideas about fan-
tasy, without abandoning the fears evident in Freud, Marx and Engels.
Such developments are found in work on utopia, including that of Bloch
and Jameson, and on anti-Semitism, such as the research conducted
by Adorno. It is important to retain a sense of both the positive and
negative ways in which fantasy can be implicated in activism, whilst
incorporating both into a more sophisticated ontology.
Chapter 2 focuses on the persuasive work of Melanie Klein and her fol-
lowers. The concept of unconscious phantasy [sic] plays a much greater
role in Klein’s work than it did in Freud’s and she drew out the prob-
lematic nature of many of the distinctions made by Freud. In particular,
Klein suggests that unconscious fantasies are present almost from birth
as the representations of instincts, subsequently modified by experience.
We relate to the world through unconscious fantasy, which therefore has
the potential to shape our perceptions and actions. Fantasy is particu-
larly important in what Klein called the ‘paranoid-schizoid’ position.
Here the infant, and later the adult in times of stress and guilt, splits
objects into good and bad internal imagos, which it then acts loving and
aggressively towards respectively. The former involves the idealization of
a good object, whilst the latter can involve acts of projective identifica-
tion in which an unwanted part of the ego is attributed to something or
somebody else. In normal development, the paranoid-schizoid position
gives way to the depressive position, in which objects are integrated
again, and the subject is reconciled with, and attempts to repair, the
external world. Whilst Klein herself avoided extending her work into
the realm of social theory as Freud had done, the chapter examines the
work of psychosocial theorists who have drawn on her work. In dif-
ferent ways, Rustin and Alford both valorize the depressive position as
the grounds for political action and, intentionally or not, associate rad-
ical activism with paranoid-schizoid subjectivity. Elliott’s work, on the
other hand, provides a strong argument that it is in the combination
of paranoid-schizoid and depressive mechanisms that our best hopes
for the future lie. This is important for thinking about which mode
of fantasy represents the greatest possibility for progressive activism.
I later suggest that what Elliott is talking about brings us close to the
interventionist mode of fantasy.
Chapter 3 engages with Jacques Lacan’s return to Freud. This involved
a radical reworking of the notion of fantasy, which is seen as belonging
to the register of the imaginary, set against both Lacan’s symbolic under-
standing of social ‘reality’, and the Real that lies beyond the symbolic
and imaginary. It also meant accepting that fantasy was not simply an
image of the fulfilment of a pre-existing wish, but something that tells
the subject what it wants in the first instance. Fantasy is constituted
not from biological instinct but from intersubjective social experience.
Insofar as fantasy is seen as central to the constitution of the subject’s
identity, and essential for action because it tells the subject what it
wants, Lacan’s understanding has important implications for the pos-
sibility of abandoning fantasy in activism. Persuasive and important
though Lacan’s arguments are, especially at turning our attention to the
ways in which the symbolic fails the subject, I argue that his account
of neurotic fantasy relates only to one relevant mode of fantasy, namely
the narcissistic mode. This is the case because Lacan assumes that sub-
jectivity is founded on the fantastic attempt to recover the jouissance
lost as the infant enters the imaginary and symbolic as part of normal
development. I think it is possible, in something like Klein’s depressive
mode, for the infant to accept that it will be failed by the external world,
and to develop a mode of fantasy in which whatever is fantasized about
is not invested in as the source of total enjoyment and full identity.
This opens up space for a more positive social engagement on the basis
of fantasy. The Lacanian notion of ‘traversing the fantasy’ comes close
to recognizing this, but there are subtle and important differences. The
chapter also looks at how social theorists, including Laclau, Stavrakakis
and Žižek, have grounded their understandings in Lacan when look-
ing at social movements. Again, this body of work provides important
insights. But it has tended to approach fantasy from the angle of the
Introduction 21
political discourse it sustains. In so doing, it has obscured how it is that

the subject’s fantasy is shaped before it arrives at a particular discursive
position. Drawing on Scott’s work on feminist history, I argue that it is
important to understand the interaction between discourse and fantasy
over time, and in a way that allows that where the subject has a loose
enough grip on fantasy there might be a degree of indeterminacy in the
way in which fantasies are articulated within political discourse.
Chapter 4 is a short chapter synthesizing the discussion in chap-
ters 1–3. It argues that some of the discrepancies between different
psychoanalytic arguments can be resolved by accepting that there are
different modes of relating to fantasy. Three primary modes are iden-
tified: the hallucinatory, the narcissistic and the depressive. In the
hallucinatory mode, what is wished for is presented to the senses with-
out ‘reality-testing’ and without the possibility for an engagement with
others or with objects in the external world more generally. In the
narcissistic mode action is not only possible, but necessitated, but the
subject is so in thrall to the object that they relate to the external
world only through the lens of the fantasy. Objects, including fellow
activists, are therefore denied their own independent reality and sub-
jectivity. In the depressive mode the subject reconciles itself to a reality
outside of fantasy, allowing for more positive association with others.
Three further modes – fatalistic, interventionist and dissociative – are
identified as being in tension between these primary modes. It is the
interventionist mode, which exists in tension between the narcissistic
and depressive, that comes closest to what Elliott identifies as a progres-
sive dialectic between paranoid-schizoid and depressive functioning,
and to what Lacan refers to as traversing the fantasy.
Within Part II, Chapter 5 outlines a now common historical and geo-
graphic classification of different social movement theories. It reworks
this on the basis of Weber’s typology of action – affective, instrumentally
rational, value-rational and traditional action – suggesting that dif-
ferent schools of social movement theory have tended to reduce all
activism to just one of these forms. I examine, in turn, theories focus-
ing on affective action (rooted in crowd psychology, but extending
to the collective behaviour tradition, and then the challenges of the
recent ‘affective turn’), instrumentally rational action (especially the
Rational Actor Theory tradition founded on Olson’s work, but also
Rational Choice Marxism), value-rational action (focusing on particu-
lar strands of European New Social Movement Theory) and traditional
action (especially those theories drawing on Bourdieu’s work). I argue
that none of these models can provide a universal account for social
movements. I believe that this reflects Weber’s original intention that

these forms of action should be understood merely as ideal types, and
that every instance of action combines these types to some degree.
Weber understood, moreover, that the unconscious had an important
role in determining action. But this does not preclude the significance of
instrumentality, orientation to social values, or ingrained habit. As the
psychoanalytic and psychosocial theories discussed in Part I understand,
the importance lies in the way in which these are combined in activism.
Chapter 6 engages with Neil Smelser’s work on collective behaviour
as the theory of social movements that has most thoroughly engaged
with psychoanalysis. I argue that Smelser provides both a useful model
for understanding the shaping of episodes of collective behaviour by
various social factors, but also an important synthetic psychosocial
model for combining the social and psychological determinants and
meanings of collective behaviour. Smelser initially provided a typol-
ogy for forms of collective behaviour – panics, crazes, hostile outbursts,
norm-oriented and value-oriented movements – and identified six deter-
minants responsible for shaping collective behaviour into one form or
another – structural conduciveness, structural strain, generalized belief,
precipitating factors, mobilization and social control. He associated fan-
tasy with ‘lower’ forms of collective behaviour such as the panic and
craze, but also argued that such elements were to be found underpin-
ning social movements. What this therefore allows us to think about
is the way in which fantasy is shaped by social forces in determining
social movements. This is advanced further in later work looking specif-
ically at how psychodynamic factors influence activists’ investment in
structural social issues. Smelser’s theory is a functionalist one, founded
on a number of problematic assumptions. But I argue that his ontology
can usefully be reworked so as to reflect a greater understanding of the
centrality of conflict to social life, to clarify the relationship between
social strains and the social shaping of the personality, and to address
issues around movement organization. It is argued that his model could
then be understood less mechanically, and offer a fruitful way forwards
in understanding the different ways in which fantasy can be manifest in
social movements.
Chapter 7 attempts to map the different modes of fantasy identified in
Chapter 4 onto a typology of movements. In this respect it builds upon,
but offers an alternative to, Smelser’s typology as outlined in Chapter 6.
I argue that these types of movement are associated with activists relat-
ing to their fantasies according to one particular mode of fantasy. Three
primary types of movement are identified: the hedonistic, associated
Introduction 23
with the hallucinatory mode of fantasy; the hostile craze, associated

with the narcissistic mode; and the institutionalized, associated with the
depressive mode. Hedonistic movements celebrate spaces within which
wishes are temporarily felt to be fulfilled or readily realizable. Hostile
crazes function to sustain narcissistic fantasy by reinforcing images of
an idealized future and identifying impediments to such a future that
must be removed. Institutionalized movements concede the fantastic
nature of the object they are pursuing, and adjust themselves to the
routines and possibilities of the formal political structure. Again, three
types are also identified in the tensions between these types: the mil-
lenarian, the prefigurative and the escapist. It is argued that it is in
prefigurative movements that activists retain the image of a fantasized
object, but make concessions to the current political context insofar as
this promises fuller satisfaction in the future. They also facilitate fuller
and more productive relationships with others both within and outside
of the movement. Following the discussion in Chapter 5, I emphasize,
however, that these are only ideal types of movement, and that actual
movements never actually exemplify any of these types.
Within Part III, Chapter 8 demonstrates that fantasy is central to
understanding the pro-space movement, and that activists’ space fan-
tasies are determined in early childhood. Only later do activists come
to form political demands. Three basic formations of fantasy are out-
lined: weightlessness, conquering outer space, and the view of Earth
from space. I argue that these represent different ways in which narcis-
sistic fantasies can respond to loss, foregrounding the desire for unity,
omnipotence and reparation respectively. But I also argue here that
whilst these fantasies emerge from within the subject’s historical expe-
rience of space missions and space fiction constructed from within
particular discursive structures, these fantasies are not destined to return
to such frameworks. Provided the subject is not too in thrall to these
fantasies, there is room for them to be rearticulated within different
ideological frameworks.
Chapter 9 examines the social conditions influencing the mode of
fantasy of the pro-space demographic. I argue that theories about the
development of a culture of narcissism in the US around the 1970s are
capable of explaining the emergence of the pro-space movement. Pro-
space activists belong to the kind of demographic most associated with
narcissism. I also hypothesize that in the background of many pro-space
activists this might have been exacerbated by family dynamics. Based
on a comment made by activists themselves, it is argued that pro-space
activists can be distinguished from ‘emasculated’ science fiction fans on
the basis of their (narcissistic) mode of fantasy. Against Lasch, who views
space colonization as a survivalist fantasy, I argue that pro-space fan-
tasies can potentially sustain the subject, provided consumer fantasies
are not made too readily attainable, an issue I return to later in the book.
Chapter 10 provides an analysis of pro-space discourse. I begin by
noting that in order to articulate persuasive political demands, the
movement cannot attach value to the spacefaring fantasy itself, and
so must legitimate it in relation to established discourses. I argue that
the contemporary pro-space movement is dominated by a libertarian
Right discourse which articulates together concepts such as consump-
tion, growth, prosperity, freedom, inspiration and peace. The fantasy of
a spacefaring civilization serves to sustain such an ideology from the
outside through the promise of future satisfaction. The chapter also out-
lines the way in which pro-space discourse itself can be supported by a
sociobiological fantasy about human nature, and by the romanticizing
of the frontier.
Chapter 11 looks at the political organization of the pro-space move-
ment, and the ways in which it might function to shape the movement
as a hostile craze. It is argued that this involves the management of
fantasy and enjoyment for narcissistic activists. This includes consid-
eration of processes working to both sustain fantasy and channel it
towards concrete political objectives. The chapter discusses the ‘sup-
plementary’ creation of the movement’s ‘spacefaring culture’, which
takes place through social parties and the reproduction of filk music
and space art. It is argued that this has contributed to a shared social
imaginary necessary for investment in the movement. It is also argued
that the hierarchal organization of the moment serves to sublimate the
pro-space fantasy, providing a new source of enjoyment through inter-
nal politics. It also examines the tensions between narcissistic forms
of leadership, which it argues are central to supporting activists’ own
narcissism, and pragmatic forms of leadership, which become neces-
sary when the promises of narcissistic leaders appear to be failing but
which also provide a source of enjoyment for activists as they resent the
approach of such leaders. It finishes with a consideration of the ways in
which the pro-space movement is evolving, and what its fate might be
in the future given its commercialization.
Part I
Fantasy in Constellation: Fantasy,
Reality, the Unconscious, Action
and the Collective
Postponing for the moment a discussion of ‘social movement theory’

as a distinctive body of work, the four chapters of this part of the book
all address the relationships between ontic realms central to the consti-
tution of social movements – fantasy, reality, the unconscious, action
and the collective – as described in the psychoanalytic theory of Freud,
Klein and Lacan. Most people, whether psychoanalysts or sociologists,
or neither, work with some theory as to these relationships. Our under-
standing of the nature and significance of each realm depends to such a
great extent on our understanding of its connection to each of the others
that they can only be described as an ontic ‘constellation’ in the critical
realist sense of the term (see Hartwig, 2007, pp. 78–9). Yet psychoanal-
ysis itself, the discipline most concerned with such relationships, has
failed to reach any kind of agreement as to its nature.
In a seminal paper on phantasy, taken as read during the Contro-
versial Discussions, and published in 1952, Susan Isaacs returned to
Freud’s development of a theory of phantasy in the hope of clarifying
its meaning, and in so doing necessarily reminded psychoanalysis of
the contentious nature of its place within psychoanalytic ontology. She
noted that:
A survey of contributions to psycho-analytical theory would show

that the term ‘phantasy’ has been used in varying senses by differ-
ent authors and at different times. Its current usages have widened
considerably from its earliest meanings.
(p. 67)
Isaacs’s paper established her as the voice of authority on Melanie Klein’s

theory of phantasy (Leader, 1997, p. 85), but, far from uniting psy-
choanalysis, her paper brought to the fore the disagreements between
26 Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious
the various traditions around the time of the Controversial Discussions,

which arguably took the theory of fantasy as their main focus (Britton,
1995; also Hayman, 1989; Hinshelwood, 1989). And when Jacques
Lacan later situated the term as a key element of his own ontology, it
only served to obfuscate it further, to the extent that over 45 years after
the Controversial Discussions, the same observations were being made
(Hayman, 1989; Inderbitzen & Levy, 1990, cited in Infante, 1995).
In what follows, I have attempted to tread my own path through
competing understandings of the correspondence between fantasy, real-
ity, the unconscious, action and the collective. I begin in Chapter 1
with my account of Freud’s own writing. To begin anywhere else proves
extremely problematic. Britton (1995) makes the point that during the
Controversial Discussions Kleinians argued the case for their under-
standing of phantasy on the grounds of both orthodoxy (i.e. on the
grounds that their account was true to Freud’s) and accuracy (especially
in as much as they saw their ideas as extending Freud’s work). They were
attacked, correspondingly, for being both heretical and wrong. What
makes things more difficult is that it was rarely clear whether it was an
interpretation of Freud or an advance on his work that was at stake.
Having established a base in Freud’s writing it becomes easier to fol-
low how understandings of the constellation of interest differ amongst
Freud’s followers. Due to limitations of space, I have concentrated on the
two schools of psychoanalysis that have most clearly and comprehen-
sively remodelled the Freudian version of the constellation, and which
have served as the most common frameworks for social scientists grap-
pling with issues around social movements and activism. These are the
Kleinian and Lacanian traditions, addressed in chapters 2 and 3 respec-
tively. In each of these three chapters I have explored not only Freud’s,
Klein’s and Lacan’s own writing, but also how their writing has been
taken up by others and brought closer to the concerns of this book.
Chapter 4 aims to synthesize this discussion through a focus on what
I have called ‘modes of fantasy’. Freud, Klein and Lacan are not the only
psychoanalysts, of course, to have important things to say about fan-
tasy. Some other analysts are mentioned only in passing – Winnicott
and Bion, for example – when they really deserve a chapter of their
own. This is most certainly also true of Jung, who had much to say on
this topic, and whose work has also influenced political science (see, for
example, Samuels, 1993), albeit to a lesser degree.
It should be noted at this point that disagreements as to the nature
of fantasy extend as far as the spelling of the term itself. The Stan-
dard Edition of Freud’s work uses the spelling ‘phantasy’ throughout.
Fantasy, Reality, the Unconscious 27
As Isaacs (1952, pp. 80–1) notes, Freud’s English translators introduced

the ‘ph’ spelling in order to make clear the distinctive psychoanalytic
meaning of the term as referring to ‘predominantly or entirely uncon-
scious phantasies’ rather than ‘the popular word “fantasy”, meaning
conscious day-dreams, fictions and so on’. This distinction was impor-
tant for Isaacs because it reinforced Freud’s belief that psychic reality
(for Isaacs, unconscious phantasy) should be treated as just as important
as material reality. The common usage of ‘fantasy’ to mean ‘ “merely”
imagined’ tended to undermine this point. Having said this, Freud him-
self used the same term, phantasie, even when he was clearly referring
to conscious fantasies (Adams, 2004). He also referred to the most com-
mon manifestation of conscious fantasy as ‘day-dreams’, and elsewhere
seems to use the terms synonymously. Following Isaacs’s lead, Kleinians
often distinguish between the unconscious and the conscious using
the spellings ‘phantasy’ and ‘fantasy’ respectively (see the footnote in
Hayman, 1989, p. 105, for an extended discussion). It should be noted,
however, that despite this insistence, both Klein herself and her follow-
ers have frequently allowed their discussions to drift so as to obscure
whether they are talking about conscious or unconscious phantasy.
Translations of Lacan’s work and subsequent Lacanian theory, on the
other hand, use the spelling ‘fantasy’ consistently, even when theorists
have used the term ‘unconscious fantasy’. In each of the three chapters
I have endeavoured to remain true to the conventions of the tradition
being discussed. This makes it easier to make sense of quoted material,
at the expense of being inconsistent myself.
1
Fantasy in Freudian Theory
The first part of this chapter builds up a picture of Freud’s theory

of phantasy, beginning in his topographic period. As this picture is
developed, the other components of the ontological constellation I am
addressing are brought into clearer view. The second part turns atten-
tion to the ways in which Freud’s understanding of individual phantasy
has been drawn into social theory, especially as it relates to collective
behaviour.
The Freudian unconscious
‘The concept of there being unconscious mental processes is of course

one that is fundamental to psycho-analytic theory,’ says Strachey in
his editor’s note to Freud’s essay on ‘The Unconscious’ (1915b). Freud
repeatedly argued that only a small part of mental life was known to
consciousness, and here that everything that comes to consciousness
originates in the unconscious, which has ‘abundant points of contact
with conscious mental processes’ (1915b, p. 166). Although the uncon-
scious can never be directly observed, it has a profound effect on our
thoughts and behaviour, and reveals itself to analysis in symptoms,
dreams and parapraxis. Freud says we can only know unconscious ideas
after ‘transformation or translation into something conscious’ (1915b,
p. 166). Unless expressed in the form of anxiety, the release of affect
does not arise ‘till the break-through to a new representation in the sys-
tem Cs. [the conscious system] has been successfully achieved’; that is
to say, a substitutive idea has been found at the conscious level (1915b,
p. 180). This notion of translation or substitution is an important one.
What makes up the unconscious is, however, far from agreed. Freud
suggests that its basis lies in biological instincts (for both sex and
29
self-preservation), but that it is embellished during the developmental

process:
if inherited mental formations exist in human beings – something

analogous to instinct in animals – these constitute the nucleus of
the Ucs. [unconscious system]. Later there is added to them what is
discarded during childhood development as unserviceable.
(1915b, p. 195)
Freud makes it clear that he believes the unconscious contains the same
mental processes associated with consciousness, but those which are
prevented from reaching consciousness (or more correctly the, unre-
pressed but not conscious, pre-conscious system). The unconscious does
not properly consist of instinctual impulses, but of ideas that represent
instincts. Central to these are wishful impulses (1915b, p. 186). These
wishful impulses are attached to objects that have been experienced
as capable of satisfying instinctual impulses. Wishes do not, therefore,
pre-exist their objects.
Freud argues that once satisfaction has been experienced,
the next time this need arises a psychical impulse will at once emerge
which will seek to . . . re-evoke the perception itself, that is to say, to
re-establish the situation of the original satisfaction. An impulse of
this sort is what we call a wish; the reappearance of the presentation
is the fulfilment of the wish.
(1900, p. 566)
By the latter, Freud is referring to phantasy. He makes a seem-

ingly straightforward distinction between a wish and a phantasy:
the negative feeling of wanting satisfaction and the positive feel-
ing of (re-)establishing satisfaction. Such a distinction is important
analytically, though not always easy to defend.
Phantasy and hallucinatory satisfaction
In his topographical model of the psyche, Freud makes clear the lim-
itations of the unconscious system (1915b, p. 188). It knows neither
reality nor time. The unconscious system is unable to distinguish
between an idea or wish and a perception (Freud, 1917a). Nor is it
capable of action in the real world, except through reflexes. These
assertions came together in Freud’s theory of hallucinatory satisfaction
Fantasy in Freudian Theory 31
in the infant, initially formulated in ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’

(1900) but expounded more clearly in the 1915 series of ‘Papers on
Metapsychology’. In the absence of an environment in which reflexes
are able to alleviate the discomfort, and without a conscious system
capable of directing action, the very young infant creates an uncon-
scious mental image of the object that will satisfy its need, based on
past experience.
The state of psychical rest was originally disturbed by the peremp-

tory demands of internal needs. When this happened, whatever was
thought of (wished for) was simply presented in a hallucinatory
manner, just as still happens today with our dream thoughts
every night.
(Freud, 1911, p. 219)
Memories of satisfaction are experienced as perceptions (Freud, 1900).

The infant cannot, initially, distinguish between its wish and the per-
ception of the breast, and is momentarily able to experience satisfaction.
The continued experience of need in spite of the hallucination results
in the breakdown of hallucination, however. Freud says:
It was only the non-occurrence of the expected satisfaction, the

disappointment experienced, that led to the abandonment of this
attempt at satisfaction by means of hallucination. Instead of it, the
psychical apparatus had decided to form a conception of the real
circumstances in the external world and to endeavour to make a
real alteration in them. A new principle of mental functioning was
thus introduced; what was presented in the mind was no longer
what was agreeable but what was real, even if it happened to be
disagreeable. This setting up of the reality principle proved to be a
momentous step.
(1911, p. 219)
Freud asserted that the unconscious mental processes are ‘primary pro-
cesses’ governed by ‘the pleasure principle’. They seek to maximize
pleasure and minimize ‘unpleasure’. These processes are unable in them-
selves to postpone or forego satisfaction. Hallucinatory satisfaction is
the only way the unconscious is able to relieve the tension caused by
the infant’s needs intruding on its pleasurable state of psychic rest. And
yet it is not able to actually fulfil these needs in the long term. The
infant therefore develops the necessary ability to orient itself to the
real world and act within this world in order to obtain more complete
satisfaction.
‘The reality principle’ does not, however, displace the pleasure princi-
ple, but rather safeguards it by ensuring that in the long term pleasure
is actually experienced. ‘A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results,
is given up, but only in order to gain along the new path an assured
pleasure at a later time’ (Freud, 1911, p. 223). The ego works in close
relationship with the sense organs in order to achieve this. The sense
organs survey reality and create memories against which internal needs
are compared when they arise (1911).
The conscious system has to decide if ideas are real or not. It does
this by comparing the idea against reality. Freud puts together a the-
ory of how this process is achieved, beginning in ‘Instincts and their
Vicissitudes’ (1915a), where he explains how internal needs and exter-
nal stimuli are distinguished. Both are felt as stimulation, which Freud
associated with ‘unpleasure’. To distinguish them, the infant learns to
evaluate the effects of its actions on the stimulation. If physical flight
removes the stimulus then it must be an external one, and if it per-
sists (as instinctual needs always do until satisfied), then it is internal.
It is impossible to just physically turn away from internal needs in the
same way it is from sources of external irritation. Freud thus places an
implicit emphasis on the materiality of pain, which cannot indefinitely
be denied by any illusory means. Similarly, in giving up hallucinatory
satisfaction, the ego uses this process of ‘reality-testing’ to distinguish
a wish from perception, monitoring the effects of our actions on our
perceptions. Freud introduces the term in scare quotes, and this can
be taken as signalling an important distinction between the subjective
process he is referring to and attempts by others to objectively deter-
mine their reality basis. If the perception is unaltered by action, then
the perception must originate from inside the subject (1917a, p. 232).
Aware of the discrepancy between our wishes and reality, the ego is
capable of fulfilling these wishes through deliberate physical actions.
These actions are constrained and directed by secondary process think-
ing. This postpones immediate motor discharge by staging conscious
mental ‘experimental kinds of acting’ (1911). Much later he added that
‘judgment’ signals a choice of action based on this, and marks the transi-
tion from thinking to acting (1925b, p. 238). In short, rather than simply
taking an image of the satisfaction of a wish as if it were reality, the ego
plans means to achieve its true satisfaction.
From this point on, the activity of phantasying is distinguished from
that which undergoes ‘reality-testing’:
With the introduction of the reality principle one species of

thought-activity was split off; it was kept free from reality-testing
and remained subordinated to the pleasure principle alone. This
activity is phantasying, which begins already in children’s play, and
later, continued as day-dreaming, abandons dependence on real
objects.
(1911, p. 222)
Freud likens the space protected for phantasy to a spatial reservation

such as Yellowstone Park. There is no indication here, however, that
Freud equated phantasying in this sense with hallucinations in which
what is imagined is experienced as perception. As Bianchedi (1995) points
out, day-dreams are always thought, even when visual, and never hallu-
cinated. Once ‘reality-testing’ apparatus have developed, phantasies or
illusions appear to take a different place in the psyche. Later Freud talks
about the satisfaction gained from illusions . . .
which one recognises as such without letting their deviation from

reality interfere with one’s enjoyment. The sphere in which these
illusions originate is the life of the imagination, which at one time,
when the sense of reality developed, was expressly exempted from
the requirements of the reality test and remained destined to fulfil
desires that were hard to realize.
(1908a, p. 22, emphasis added)
Though not entirely clear, Freud appears to be pointing to the devel-

opment of phantasy over time, from the hallucinatory imagination to
something we distinguish from reality. Blum (1995) believes that in his
essay on ‘The Two Principles’ (1911), Freud is arguing that day-dreaming
actually depends on the day-dreamer having established a sense of reality.
Again, this emphasizes that phantasy is not the same as the attempts at
hallucinatory satisfaction that preceded it.
So Freud makes it clear that our phantastic world is distinguished from
reality and yet also kept free from ‘reality-testing’ (1908a, p. 144, 1911,
p. 222). The conceptual difficulty of reconciling these apparently para-
doxical statements is evidenced by the multiple ways in which the
contributors to Person et al’s (1995) collection On Freud’s ‘Creative Writers
and Day-Dreaming’ have attempted to give expression to them. Infante
(1995) says ‘reality testing is here set aside, but consciously’. Blum (1995,
p. 40) puts it as follows: ‘In the daydream, the individual is relatively
awake and conscious of both the daydream and reality and of the
daydream as distinct from reality.’ Lemlij (1995, p. 167) sees it as ‘the

ability to participate in two realities at the same time, and do it in a
perfect and natural manner . . . It is the creation of a world supported
in another, which does not imply the destruction of this other (real)
world.’ Britton (1995) redraws Freud’s spatial metaphor, developing the
concept of ‘the other room’ as the setting for phantasy. These are all
attempts to assert that we are able to suspend ‘reality-testing’ on one
plane, treating our imagination as though it were real, whilst retaining
‘reality-testing’ on another plane so that we are never really fooled into
taking our imaginary creations for real. This also describes our mental
state when we suspend disbelief when watching a play or film or reading
a novel.
The genesis of conscious phantasy
Freud elaborates on the formation of phantasy in his ‘Metapsychological

Supplement to the Theory of Dreams’ (1917a). Here he argues that
wish-fulfilling phantasies are first formed in the pre-conscious system.
Though he does not use the term himself, the pre-conscious system is
presented as a kind of limbo for phantasies. Once a phantasy is formed
in the pre-conscious system, there are three possibilities for its trajec-
tory. The first is that the wish regresses back into the unconscious where
it is mistaken for a perception as it would have been in the earliest stages
of life, and undergoes the primary processes of displacement and con-
densation. Hallucinatory satisfaction through the unconscious phantasy
is witnessed in dreams and in psychosis. Freud also goes on to say
that in amentia, ‘the ego breaks off its relation to reality. . . . With this
turning away from reality, reality-testing is got rid of, the (unrepressed,
completely conscious) wishful phantasies are able to press forward into
the system, and they are regarded as a better reality’ (1917a, p. 232).
This hallucination is not the same as phantasying, although in this
case Freud considers it conscious rather than unconscious. The second
possibility is that the phantasies find motor discharge. In other words
they may compel action directed towards the realization of a phantasy
without our being conscious of the phantasy as a source of motiva-
tion. In this case we might still access the phantasy retrospectively if
we wanted to; it is not repressed. The third possibility is that wishes
may find their way into consciousness where they are experienced as
day-dreams and distinguished from our current perceptions through a
process of ‘reality-testing’.
It was in his earlier paper ‘Creative Writers and Day-dreaming’ that

Freud first discussed clearly how phantasies are ‘strung together’ (1908a).
Here he suggests that our day-dreams combine three moments in
time.
Mental work is linked to some current impression, some provoking

occasion in the present which has been able to arouse one of the
subject’s major wishes. From there it harks back to a memory of an
earlier experience (usually an infantile one) in which this wish was
fulfilled; and it now creates a situation relating to the future which
represents a fulfilment of the wish.
(1908a, p. 145)
The phantasy is not therefore the wish in a purely regressive form, but a
wish cast into the future based on the present situation. Though I prefer
to stick with Freud’s notion of phantasy formed in the pre-conscious sys-
tem than their notion of the ‘present unconscious’, Sandler & Sandler
(1995) put it as follows: ‘The unconscious wish as it first arises in the
present unconscious is modelled on the inner child’s wishes, phantasies
and internal relationships, but the objects involved are objects of the present’
(p. 72). Phantasy is capable of providing a path forward for the libido,
rather than a regressive path (see also Freud, 1918). Freud gives the
following example to illustrate these points:
Let us take the case of a poor orphan boy to whom you have given the
address of some employer where he may perhaps find a job. On his
way there he may indulge in a day-dream appropriate to the situa-
tion from which it arises. The content of his phantasy will perhaps
be something like this. He is given a job, finds favour with his new
employer, makes himself indispensable in the business, is taken into
his employer’s family, marries the charming young daughter of the
house, and then himself becomes director of the business, first as his
employer’s partner and then as his successor. In this phantasy, the
dreamer has regained what he possessed in his happy childhood – the
protecting house, the loving parents and the first objects of his affec-
tionate feelings. You will see from this example the way in which the
wish makes use of an occasion in the present to construct, on the
pattern of the past, a picture of the future.
(1908a, p. 148)
Before moving on, it should be noted that in this example phantasy

is not a hindrance to action, but at the very least accompanies it and
provides its emotional coordinates.
The origins of unconscious phantasy
In ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’, Freud had made it clear that

there are conscious and unconscious phantasies. The latter have to
remain unconscious because of their origin in repressed material (1900,
pp. 491–2). There has, however, been a great deal of subsequent debate
about the origins of unconscious phantasies. These revolve around two
interrelated considerations. The first is whether these phantasies have
always been unconscious or had once been conscious. The second is
whether they are memories of ‘real’ satisfaction or phantasies.
In ‘Hysterical Phantasies and their Relation to Bisexuality’ (1908b,
p. 161) Freud argues that: ‘Unconscious phantasies have either been
unconscious all along and have been formed in the unconscious; or –
as is more often the case – they were once conscious phantasies, day-
dreams, and have since been purposely forgotten and have become
unconscious through “repression”.’ In the latter case the content may
have changed or remained the same. Britton (1995) suggests that these
two possibilities are the basis for one distinction between Freud, who
emphasized the latter, and Klein, who emphasized the former. Freud
certainly repeatedly emphasized that the nuclei of night-dreams are dis-
torted daytime phantasies (1908b, p. 160, also 1917b). I will come back
to possible sources of phantasies that have never been conscious.
When Freud reiterates many of these points in the ‘Introductory Lec-
tures on Psychoanalysis’, he stresses the role of infantile experiences in
the formation of phantasies underpinning symptoms (I return to the
formation of symptoms later in this chapter). He suggests here that
memories of experiences may be true or false, but more likely a mix-
ture. It is, of course, one of the greatest controversies in Freud’s work
that he asserted that many of his patients’ infantile memories of sexual
abuse were in fact phantasies (the so-called ‘seduction theory’, which he
defended throughout his work). He did accept that events such as the
observation of parental intercourse, threat of castration and seduction
by an adult did sometimes happen in reality, but believed more often
they were the work of phantasy (in the latter case employed to cover
the shame of masturbation).
There is a good discussion of the basis of phantasy in reality in Freud’s
(1910b) analysis of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘childhood memory’ in which a
vulture visited him in his cradle and opened his mouth with its tail.
Freud’s analysis rests on Da Vinci having been raised by his mother
alone, having heard myths about how vultures reproduce, and using
the tail as a penis substitute; it is a fallatio phantasy. In the footnotes,
Freud carries on an interesting dialogue with Havelock Ellis about how
likely this memory is to have been based on reality, or at least have
some basis in reality later distorted by the mother. Freud notes that
childhood memories are always elicited later, and ‘put into the service
of later trends’ (p. 82). But despite whatever distortion has taken place,
Freud argues that these still represent the past of the subject. They are
the memories through which the subject is founded (see also Erikson,
1975, pp. 125–8).
At one point Freud (1918, p. 55) says unambiguously that ‘a child, like
an adult, can produce phantasies only from material which has been
acquired from some source or other’. He therefore explores the possi-
bility that the Wolf Man’s phantasies were a ‘reproduction of a reality
experienced by the child’, but that perhaps this was a memory of seeing
dogs copulating which was then transplanted onto a real scene with his
parents. But Freud forces himself to address phantasies that could not
have been witnessed by the infant. The question then becomes where
these phantasies came from if they were never experienced or conscious.
His solution was the controversial concept of ‘primal fantasies’ (a con-
cept used differently by Laplanche & Pontalis). These are phantasies
formed from memories of events experienced by ancestors, rather than
the individual. Freud described them as a ‘phylogenetic endowment’
(1917b). Freud suggests that such phantasies are inherited but does not
describe the mechanism involved in such inheritance. In his theory of
unconscious phantasy, as in so many places, Freud was speculative and
hedged his bets.
The most important conclusion to be drawn is that there is a two-way
relationship between unconscious and conscious phantasies. As Infante
(1995) says, repressed conscious or pre-conscious phantasies ‘function
exactly like the memory of instinctual satisfaction and can supply the
ideational content for impulses’ (p. 54). These repressed once-conscious
phantasies are thus capable of providing the model or mould for sub-
sequent day-dreaming. Sandler & Nagera (1963, cited in Blum, 1995)
argued that conscious phantasies both derive from and have contributed
to unconscious phantasy. Freud (1933a, p. 25) alludes to this inter-
change when later discussing the relationship between dreams and
fairytales: the former recall the latter, but in doing so throw light on
what created fairytales in the first place, even if they evolve over time.
The pre-conscious, perception and thought
Given that Freud has argued that phantasies are formed in the pre-
conscious system, it is worth taking a detour through his theory of
perception in order to understand exactly what the relationship might
be between pre-conscious images and the unconscious and conscious
thought. In The Ego and the Id, Freud situates consciousness as ‘the sur-
face of the mental apparatus; that is we have ascribed it as a function
to a system which is spatially the first one reached from the external
world’ (1923b, p. 19). He goes on to say: ‘All perceptions which are
received from without (sense-perceptions) and from within – what we
call sensations and feelings – are Cs. from the start.’ In other words
they cannot be repressed from the beginning. But in this he is not
saying that these perceptions are thought. Thought processes are ‘dis-
placements of mental energy that are affected somewhere in the interior
of the apparatus as this energy proceeds on its way towards action’.
The issue is then how these become conscious, or rather preconscious.
Freud’s answer is clear at this point – through a connection to ‘ver-
bal images’. These verbal images are memory residues that were once
perceptions. Verbal residues are derived from auditory perceptions – the
heard word – through reading, for example (1923b, p. 20). So thoughts
become conscious through connecting perception to the sound of the
word that has been connected with them.
But Freud here allows for another possibility. He says that thought
processes can also become conscious ‘through a reversion to visual
residues, and . . . in many people this seems to be a favourite method’.
Here what are significant are ‘optical memory-residues’ – things not
words. He goes on to say of dreams and preconscious phantasies that what
becomes conscious is
only the concrete subject-matter of the thought, and that the rela-
tions between the various elements of this subject-matter, which
is what specially characterizes thoughts, cannot be given visual
expression. Thinking in pictures is, therefore, only a very incom-
plete form of becoming conscious. In some way too, it stands
nearer to unconscious processes than does thinking in words, and
it is unquestionably older than the latter both ontogenetically and
phylogenetically.
(1923b, p. 21)
So Freud’s belief, as I understand it, is that we can become conscious of

phantasies that consist only of images, but that we cannot be conscious
of the essential relations between the elements in the image (what might
be called the meaning of the image) unless this image is thought in
words. Again, Freud points to a distinction – this time between fully
conscious thought and a kind of semi-conscious phantasy-directedness.
Analysis, says Freud, involves this putting into words.
The controversy of Freud’s theory of phantasy
In ‘Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming’, Freud makes a number of

claims about the nature of phantasy, which he later revised, and which
have proved highly contentious.
We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasies, only

an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied
wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfilment of a wish, a correc-
tion of unsatisfying reality. These motivating wishes vary according
to the sex, character and circumstances of the person who is hav-
ing the phantasy; but they fall naturally into two main groups.
They are either ambitious wishes, which serve to elevate the subject’s
personality; or they are erotic ones.
(Freud, 1908a)
The arguments made here are interconnected, but it is possible to extract

four controversial points.
Only unhappy people phantasize

If Freud is saying little more than that were a person completely satis-
fied with their reality then they would not be phantasizing, then there
is perhaps little room for objection. But there are two major issues of
interpretation arising. First, it is important to distinguish this from the
argument that it is abnormal to phantasize, something Freud strongly
refuted. Freud’s model of mental health was one of ‘ordinary unhap-
piness’, and so this comment should be read in the context of an
assumption that we are nearly all of the time unhappy to some degree.
Freud stressed the normalcy of phantasy, saying he believed that ‘most
people construct phantasies at times in their lives’ (1908a, p. 145).
And he was interested in the satisfactions afforded by creative processes
centred on phantasy (even if also aware of the distress suffered by artis-
tic types). But whilst emphasizing their normality, he also argues that
‘if phantasies become over-luxuriant and over-powerful, the conditions
are laid for an onset of neurosis or psychosis’, and that they are ‘the
immediate mental precursors of the distressing symptoms complained
of by our patients’ (1908a, p. 148). Both neurosis and psychosis, Freud

makes clear later, involve phantasy as a substitute for reality (rather than
a loss of reality as often associated with psychosis). The difference is
that psychosis involves a ‘new imaginary external world’ which is com-
plete, whereas neurosis involves the substitution of just one small piece
of reality (Freud, 1924, p. 187).
The concept of unconscious phantasy is central to understanding
symptoms. When a phantasy is repressed, if no other mode of sexual
satisfaction supervenes, this can lead to the formation of a patholog-
ical symptom. Hysterical symptoms are all realizations of a phantasy
fulfilling a wish, and a return to a mode of infantile, repressed sex-
ual satisfaction (even if joined with non-sexual unconscious impulses),
but also ‘a compromise between two opposite affective and instinctual
impulses, of which one is attempting to bring to expression a compo-
nent instinct or a constituent of the sexual constitution, and the other is
attempting to suppress it’ (Freud, 1908b, p. 164, following 1900). Anal-
ysis consists in making conscious the unconscious phantasy on which
the symptom is based.
The second issue is much more complex. This is that Freud can be
interpreted as suggesting that it is possible to do away with phantasy
(given the right external conditions): that phantasy is not an intrin-
sic part of human subjectivity. This is a notion challenged by Kleinian
and Lacanian theory, as explored over the next two chapters. My own
argument, which will hopefully become clearer in due course, is that
phantasy is necessary once any break in satisfaction is experienced and
is therefore socially unavoidable, as I believe Freud basically appreciated.
More importantly, unconscious phantasy remains active even when we
are not consciously phantasizing.
All phantasies are wish-fulfilments

The second argument is that all phantasies are wish-fulfilments; that is
to say, that the images presented in our day-dreams are all of a wish
being satisfied. This is a highly contentious point, not least because
common sense seems to refute it. It has been pointed out by numerous
critics that many phantasies are not inherently pleasurable, but arouse
anxiety, disgust, fear, guilt and so on. There are a number of theoretical
avenues that can be taken to rescue Freud’s argument in respect to such
phantasies.
The first, and most defeatist, can be drawn from Freud’s own later
work (1933a, p. 28) in which he was to admit of dreams that they are
only ‘an attempt at the fulfilment of a wish’, and that in cases where a
traumatic dream causes anxiety, the dreaming has ‘failed’. By extension

we might hypothesize that in some cases conscious phantasy also
fails.
The second avenue reflects a point made by Isaacs in establishing her
version of the Kleinian position, as she notes that in fact circuitously
even these phantasies ultimately serve as wish-fulfilments. The func-
tion they serve might be to provide an object against which hate or fear
might safely be directed, which might be preferable to a state of general
anxiety, and which allows for positive phantasies. For Lacan too, as we
will see, phantasy constructs horrific scenarios.
A third avenue, whilst perhaps failing to account for phantasies that
release particularly acute negative affects, explains why phantasies rarely
speak to the total pleasure we might expect. There is a great deal of
debate about the extent to which the ego is involved in the formation
of phantasy. This is something about which Freud’s work is ambiguous.
In earlier work, Freud insists that phantasy operates according to the
pleasure principle alone as in dreams (e.g. Freud, 1911). Like many of his
followers, he stresses the similarity between sleeping dreams and day-
dreams (1900, p. 492). The difference is simply that sleeping dreams
represent wishes ‘of which we are ashamed’ and that ‘we must conceal
from ourselves’ (1908a, p. 149). They are repressed, and in the process
undergo displacement and condensation (though he later recognized
the existence of ‘night-phantasies’, 1922, p. 208).
But there is a great deal of debate about the extent to which phantasies
and day-dreams represent fulfilment of wishes in their pure form.
Laplanche & Pontalis portray Freud’s notion of phantasy as ‘an imag-
inary scene in which the subject is a protagonist, representing the
fulfilment of a wish (in the last analysis an unconscious wish) in a
manner that is distorted to a greater or lesser extent by defensive pro-
cesses’ (1967, cited in Hayman, 1989, p. 105). Person (1995) suggests
that in his topographical writings Freud emphasizes a more straight-
forward relationship between the wish and the phantasy, whilst his
structural work emphasizes the defences that are also incorporated into
phantasy.
This historical break is debatable. Even at the time of ‘Creative Writ-
ers’, Freud had a notion that conscious phantasies were the result of a
compromise between repressed elements and the repressing side. This
is from his discussion of Hanold’s phantasy of Gradiva in ‘Jensen’s
Gradiva’ and its compromise ‘between supressed eroticism and the
forces that were keeping it in repression’ (1907, p. 52). Unconscious
determinants had to be married with conscious ones. Freud goes on
to explain the nature of the compromise in the case of phantasies,

which are
substitutes for and derivatives of repressed memories which a resis-

tance will not allow to enter consciousness unaltered, but which can
purchase the possibility of becoming conscious by taking account,
by means of changes and distortions, of the resistance’s censor-
ship. When the compromise has been accomplished, the memories
have turned into phantasies, which can easily be misunderstood by
the conscious personality – that is, understood so as to fit in with the
dominant psychical current.
(1907, p. 58)
But where in early writings the compromise is between past and present
interests, Blum (1995) believes that in later work day-dreams are under-
stood as compromises between the tripartite structures. In the structural
model it is the ego that is forced to renounce objects and aims, but
these are retained and kept free from ‘reality-testing’ in phantasy as
‘every desire takes before long the form of picturing its own fulfil-
ment’ (Freud, 1917b, p. 372). As mature beings we alternate between
an ‘animal of pleasure’ and a ‘creature of reason’, with day-dreams (the
‘best-known productions of phantasy’) flourishing ‘all the more exuber-
antly the more reality counsels modesty and restraint’ (1917b, p. 372).
Freud suggests that this withdrawal of libido from real satisfaction to
phantasies can be called ‘introversion’ in one sense of Jung’s term. He
returns to the nature reserve analogy, except that now he concedes that
what is preserved here in phantasy is not only what is pleasurable, but
also what is ‘useless’ and ‘noxious’.
The superego, says Freud, maintains the attitude that the infant both
ought to be like his father and not like his father (because it is his father’s
prerogative to be the way he is). Freud thus characterizes the superego
as both a deposit of object-choices (such as the mother) and a reaction-
formation against them. In this way the child erects some obstacle to the
realization of Oedipal wishes within himself, in the form of the parents.
In the Controversial Discussions, Payne, Sharpe & Brierly proposed a
different name for Oedipal phantasies that acknowledge reality, on the
one hand, and primitive phantasies, on the other (Infante, 1995). This
obstacle is derived from auditory impressions, but its energy comes from
the id, as a reaction-formation against it. However, guilt emerging from
the superego can also be repressed, leading to ‘unconscious guilt’ (or
rather unconscious criticism, since guilt is conscious). Freud’s image of
the ego is that of an agency serving three masters – external world, id

and superego.
The groundwork for accommodating the theory of phantasy into the
structural model is laid in Freud’s essay ‘A Child is Being Beaten’ (1919)
in which he addresses this supposedly common masturbatory phantasy
amongst patients, the origins of which are unclear to the patients them-
selves. Freud’s reconstruction of a typical female case runs as follows.
In its first formation the girl being beaten is usually a hated (because
rivalrous) sibling being beaten by the father. This may not yet be a fully
formed phantasy. In its second formation, which is never conscious, the
phantasizer herself is being beaten by her father. This masochistic plea-
sure comes from guilt. The persistence of unconscious incestuous wishes
gives rise to guilt arising from ‘the agency in the mind which sets itself
up as a critical conscience over against the rest of the ego’ (1919, p. 104),
in other words, the superego. But this guilt is also repressed. In its third
manifestation the beater becomes anonymous – a teacher or other father
substitute – as does the child being beaten, often replaced by a number
of anonymous children. The beating might also be replaced by some
other form of punishment or humiliation. The phantasizer meanwhile
becomes just an onlooker. This on occasion allows the phantasy to come
to consciousness so as to provide ‘masturbatory satisfaction’:
An elaborate structure of day-dreams, which was of great signifi-

cance for the life of the person concerned, had grown up over the
masochistic beating-phantasy. The function of this superstructure
was to make possible a feeling of satisfied excitation, even though
the masturbatory act was abstained from.
(1919, p. 190)
In this account all three agencies – id, ego and superego – are involved in
the genesis of the final phantasy. The third stage ‘arouses activities of the
imagination which on the one hand continue the phantasy along the
same line, and on the other hand neutralize it through compensation’
(1919, p. 195). He also notes that ‘it was always a condition of the more
sophisticated phantasies of later years that the punishment should do
the children no serious injury’ (1919, p. 180). Witnessing real beatings
gave the patient no pleasure, and was even intolerable. One final point
to take from these case notes is that Freud believes that these phantasies
originated pre-school, but were likely modified as school books gave
them new impetus. Infants then ‘competed’ with books to produce their
own phantasies.
Blum (1995) refers to a ‘softening’ of phantasy by disguise, whilst also

suggesting that in consciousness the day-dream is ‘closer to the analytic
surface’ than in dreams (p. 49). Blum bases his point on Freud’s dis-
cussion of ‘fore-pleasure’ in creative writing (Freud, 1908a). These are
the aesthetic elements of the text that serve to conceal the author’s
phantasy, which would otherwise ‘repel us or at least leave us cold’
(1908a, p. 153). Such devices actually allow for the release of greater
pleasure in the reader who feels free to enjoy his or her own day-
dreams ‘without reproach or shame’. In arguing that Freud’s paper is
‘an introduction to the study of conflict and compromise formation’
(Blum, 1995, p. 39), Blum appears to assume that the compromise
described in creative writing is not a conscious embellishment for the
reader’s benefit, but a process more inherent to phantasy itself. Freud’s
essay is inconclusive on this point, though he clearly believes cre-
ative writers have a gift in this respect that is not shared by others.
He later writes of art in almost identical terms (Freud, 1913b, p. 187).
The artist’s aim is to ‘set himself free’, but it remains unclear what
the source of his motivation is for softening his work for others. This
later becomes clear when Freud adds that in the public’s response to
his artwork the artist ‘earns their gratitude and admiration and he has
thus achieved through his phantasy what originally he had achieved
only in his phantasy – honor, power, and the love of women’ (1917b,
pp. 376–7). He also says that whilst art reconciles us to the sacrifices
we make for our culture, it heightens our identification with our cul-
ture and thus affords narcissistic satisfaction with our cultural ideals
(1927, p. 14).
It is certainly dangerous to take Freud’s assertion that phantasy is
wish-fulfilment at face value. It is important to at least recognize a num-
ber of ways in which this basic principle is compromised, if we want to
conserve it at the heart of a theory of phantasy. At the very least this
would mean recognizing a great deal of complexity in how phantasy
comes to represent wishes.
Phantasy is a correction of reality

Perhaps Freud’s most controversial claim in this passage is that phantasy
is a correction of reality. Such a claim establishes a clear dualism in
Freudian thought between the ‘real world’ (understood by Freud as syn-
onymous with ‘material reality’ or the ‘external world’) and phantasy.
And there are undoubtedly places in which he uses the term ‘phantasy’
according to common usage as ‘not real’. But there are those who claim
that Freud did not contrast phantasy and reality, and emphasize the
continuity in this respect between his work and that of Klein and Lacan
(see, for example, Leader, 1997). Confusion stems at least in part from
Freud’s insistence on a ‘psychic reality’. Largely to buttress the standing
of psychoanalysis as a discipline, Freud posited that the unconscious
mind was of the same ontic standing as the material world (see also
Rose, 1996, p. 3). The following comes in the context of another dis-
cussion of whether the infantile experiences brought to light in analysis
should be considered true or false:
we should equate phantasy and reality and not bother to begin with
whether the childhood experiences under examination are the one
or the other . . . The phantasies possess psychical as contrasted with
material reality, and we gradually learn to understand that in the world
of neurosis it is psychical reality which is the decisive kind.
(1917b, p. 368)
But whilst asserting the importance of psychic reality, this makes it clear
that he nonetheless retained the dualism between psychic reality and
material reality. As Hartmann puts it, the contents of psyche are real but
not realistic (cited in Adams, 2004, p. 8). Furthermore, whilst accept-
ing phantasies ‘possess a reality of a sort’ (1908a), Freud also excluded
more transitory ideas, such as day-dreams, from his definition of psychic
reality, therefore denying them the same standing as either the material
world or the unconscious.
In a countermove to the recent turn away from Freud’s dualistic think-
ing, Knafo & Feiner (2006) have sought to defend and reinstate it at the
heart of a theory of phantasy. They aim to ‘elucidate the ways in which
fantasy joins with reality in order to create a model that gradually comes
to include more realistic modes of attaining what is missing’ (p. 26).
It is important to acknowledge, however, that when Freud refers to the
subject turning away from or ‘testing’ reality, he is referring to their
perception of reality rather than material reality itself. Freud accepted a
Kantian view of perception as subjectively conditioned (1915b, p. 171).
He even goes as far as to say that ‘internal objects are less unknowable
than the external world’. It could therefore be argued that the world that
is turned away from is the subjectively unsatisfying world, rather than
a world in which the subject’s ‘real’ needs are not met. And yet, for all
this, Freud held on to the possibility that such perceptions of the world
are, at least in principle, distinguishable from phantasy. It might rea-
sonably be said that Freud’s theory of phantasy stands or falls on such
a belief.
The distinction between reality and phantasy allows Freud to distin-

guish between libido attached to reality or phantasy (he acknowledges
he strays close to Jung here), and this becomes a clinical distinction
rather than an ontological one:
The energetic and successful man is one who succeeds by his efforts
in turning his wishful phantasies into reality. Where this fails, as a
result of the resistances of the external world and of the subject’s
own weakness, he begins to turn away from reality and withdraws
into his more satisfying world of phantasy, the content of which is
transformed into symptoms should he fall ill. In certain favourable
circumstances, it still remains possible for him to find another path
leading from these phantasies to reality, instead of becoming perma-
nently estranged from it by regressing to infancy. If a person who is
at loggerheads with reality possesses an artistic gift (a thing that is
still a psychological mystery to us), he can transform his phantasies
into artistic creations instead of into symptoms. In this manner he
can escape the doom of neurosis and by this roundabout path regain
his contact with reality.
(1910a, p. 50)
Freud then comments on how these paths might be determined in rela-

tion to the normal transference of sexual currents from the mother to
other objects not prohibited by the taboo on incest. From here it seems
that happiness results simply from the realization of phantasy. However,
the first cause of failure is if there is too much ‘frustration in reality’;
in other words, if no suitable love object can be found. The second is
if attachment to the infantile object is too strong. These are the con-
ditions for neurosis. ‘The libido turns away from reality, is taken over
by imaginative activity (the process of introversion), strengthens the
images of the first sexual objects and becomes fixated to them’ (1912,
pp. 181–2). These phantasies may become conscious if the objects are
replaced when accompanying masturbation, but the result is impotence
in reality as ‘the young man’s sensuality becomes tied to incestuous
objects in the unconscious’ (1912, p. 182). Hence, even where in con-
scious phantasy substitute objects have been found, the subject may find
himself impotent in action because of an earlier unconscious fixation
with the mother.
Importantly for the concerns of this book, Freud later argued that the
turning away from reality in neurotic phantasy was also a turning away
from society:
The real world, which is avoided in this way by neurotics, is under the
sway of human society and of the institutions collectively created by
it. To turn away from reality is at the same time to withdraw from the
community of man.
(1913a, p. 74)
Freud was clear that the move from phantasy to reality was not only
possible in therapeutic practice, but also socially desirable. Addressing
concerns that individual patients might suffer from the removal of their
symptoms, Freud argued that
the energies which are to-day consumed in the production of neu-

rotic symptoms serving the purposes of a world of phantasy isolated
from reality, will, even if they cannot at once be put to uses in
life, help to strengthen the clamour for the changes in our civiliza-
tion through which alone we can look for the well-being of future
generations.
(1910c, pp. 150–1)
Here any possible connection between fantasy and real action for
social change seems to be denied. The ontological distinction between
phantasy and reality is undoubtedly the biggest sticking point in Freud’s
theory. I believe this is best resolved by acknowledging the distinctive
existence of unconscious phantasies, conscious phantasies and material
conditions.
The wishes represented in phantasy are either ambitious or erotic

Freud here limits the basic types of wish expressed in the phantasy to
ambitious wishes (ego-preservative) or erotic wishes (libidinal). And,
indeed, he suggests that the latter are more likely. Ambitious wishes
are ultimately derived from erotic ones (see Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1995).
At this stage, Freud had yet to develop his theory of the death instinct,
and hence aggressive phantasy was interpreted as ego preservative and
hence a derivative of Eros, rather than a combination of life and death
instincts.
One important thing to note here is that Freud is merely saying that
the motivating wishes behind the phantasies correspond to these two
types. He is not saying that the manifest content of the phantasies is
always sexual or ambitious. The cognitive-affective psychologist Jerome
Singer (1975) criticizes the reduction of all phantasies to sexual or vio-
lent drives, arguing that ‘a great many daydreams during the bleak
winter months have to do with nothing more complicated than relaxing

on pleasant warm beaches beside the blue sea’ (p. 118). He is obviously
right, but Freud never suggested all of our day-dreams involve explicit
sexual gratification or violence. It would not be difficult to interpret such
a day-dream. The ‘bleak winter months’ simply offer what Freud refers
to as an ‘occasion in the present’ for the production of a day-dream.
Ambitious phantasies, on the other hand, also include omnipotent
phantasies serving to counter a sense of helplessness (Dowling, 1990,
cited in Infante, 1995) or vulnerability (Almond, 1997). This has been
important in the development of a number of analytic approaches,
and especially in theories of narcissism. Ambitious phantasies may also
reflect a sense of inadequacy. Lemlij (1995, p. 180), for example, says:
‘Fantasies make manifest whatever imbalance exists between aspirations
contained in the ideal ego and personal achievements.’
It should be noted that Freud’s argument that male and female
phantasies differ has generally either been discarded (see Blum, 1995),
or reworked so as to remove any sense that these differences are rooted
in biology rather than culture (Emde, 1995). This has enabled the
development of a wide range of dialogues between psychoanalysis and
feminism.
The conclusion must be that conscious phantasies take on a variety of
manifest contents. Beneath these, however, can be discerned ambitious,
erotic or aggressive wishes. Here the concepts of translation or substi-
tution become useful. Unconscious phantasies the content of which
cannot be made conscious can become conscious through these mech-
anisms. Dependent on the balance between the push ‘from below’ of
the unconscious and the material of the present simply being rein-
forced by the unconscious ‘from above’ (to use a distinction made
in respect to dreams, Freud, 1923a, p. 111), it might be appropriate
to talk about unconscious phantasy providing a model for conscious
phantasy, or of the present as providing vehicles for unconscious
phantasy.
Phantasy in secondary process thinking
If Freud is ambiguous about the extent to which phantasy itself is com-

promised by secondary process thinking, he is equally unclear about
the existence and role of conscious mental images of satisfaction – in
other words, of phantasy – in ‘normal’ secondary process thinking. This
omission could be taken as indication that phantasy has no part to
play in secondary process thought, and therefore in motivating action.
Indeed, Freud says clearly above that ‘what was presented in the mind
was no longer what was agreeable but what was real’ (1911, p. 219). This
seems to suggest that in accordance with the reality principle our men-
tal ‘presentations’ are constituted solely of our perceptions, rather than
phantasies. Freud very much appears to be saying that we can either
be phantasizing or perceiving, but not both. It can certainly be argued
that it is impossible to pay conscious attention to what we are perceiv-
ing whilst at the same time day-dreaming of something else. And in
his paper ‘Some Additional Notes on Dream-Interpretation as a Whole’
(1925a) Freud again distinguishes two types of mental activity. On the
one hand are those with a useful aim, involving intellectual judgements
and a more circuitous path to pleasure. On the other, there are those –
including play, phantasy and dreaming – which provide an immediate
yield of pleasure. He makes very clear that the latter are not concerned
‘with the tasks of daily life before us’, nor are they ‘seeking to find a
solution for the problems of our daily work’ (p. 126).
Even if it is accepted that moments of phantasy temporarily suspend
action, this does not rule out the possibility of a temporal relationship
between day-dreams, on the one hand, and perception and secondary
process, on the other. Many have argued that phantasy is an essential
component of thinking (as ‘trial action’, for example) but that this was
ignored in Freud’s treatment of phantasy. Blum argues that:
Related to trial action, the daydream may be prelude to actual alter-

ations of reality and behaviour that may be irrational or rationally
constructive. The daydream may be acted out in the service of wish-
fulfillment and defense, and it may function as a form of regression
in the service of the ego, facilitating artistic and scientific creativ-
ity. Although daydreams turn away from and suspend reality, they
paradoxically also permit and plan return to reality.
(1995, p. 41)
Indeed, going further, it has been argued that thought is impossible

without phantasy, which therefore serves an adaptive function. For
example, a case can be made that thought emerges from our encounter
with a problem to be solved, which comes into being as phantasy meets
with perception (see Bianchedi, 1995, who draws on Bion, for example,
or Emde, 1995, who cites Rapaport, 1960). As made clear previously,
this does not mean that phantasying is a form of problem-solving, as
some would have it, but that conscious problem-solving works on the
discrepancy between phantasy and reality.
Such a view finds support in Freud’s later work. In the short essay,
‘Negation’ (1925b), whilst making the point that what we wish for is
always based on a memory of satisfaction, Freud says that ‘The first
and immediate aim of reality-testing is not to find an object in real
perception which corresponds to the one presented, but to refind such
an object, to convince oneself that it is still there’ (1925b, p. 237).
Here he appears to be saying that ‘reality-testing’ involves both pre-
sentation of a desired object and attention paid to perception, like the
detective searching for a missing person with a photograph in hand.
Such a notion of ‘motivated looking’ can be taken further. Blum (1995),
for example, notes that in Freudian theory ‘the possible developmental
influence of the persisting daydream has only been hinted at, though
some patients attempt to live out their daydreams or protect against
their worst fantasies as major life themes’ (p. 44).
Freudian social theory
I now turn my attention to how the Freudian view of individual

psychology can inform our understanding of collective behaviour.
Freud on social issues

We have already seen some cautious suggestions from Freud that his
discussion of phantasy can be extended to cover cultural myths. In his
later work, whilst continuing to document modifications to his clinical
theory, Freud also turned his attention to the usefulness of psychoanal-
ysis in understanding social issues. As is often noted, this refocusing was
necessary for a full account even of individual psychology. For already
embedded in Freud’s theory was the central notion that psychology was
shaped through an individual’s encounter with the external world, and
in particular with other people who could thwart or gratify his or her
desires. The role of the immediate family obviously took centre stage
in this, but not only was Freud aware that familial form was a histori-
cal social development itself, but also that other social actors could play
a key part in determining the frustrations of adult life. Understanding
the individual therefore entailed understanding the social relations in
which their life was enmeshed.
However, Freud went further than this in later work, from ‘Totem and
Taboo’ (1913a) and ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego’
(1921) to ‘Civilization and its Discontents’ (1930) and his writing on
war and pacifism (1933b). Imaginary relationships underlie much of
Freud’s work on society, such as the imaginary identification between
members of a social group (see especially 1921, 1930). Post-Freudian

theory has focused a great deal on this imaginary basis for the consti-
tution of the social order and has frequently referred to this as fantasy.
It could also be argued that unconscious phantasy is what drives the
guilt inflicted by the superego (see, for example, 1913a, 1930). Freud
emphasizes the distinction between the infant’s early fear of external
punishment for wrongdoing, and the inescapable watch of the internal-
ized superego which makes no distinction between wishes and deeds.
But whilst unconscious phantasy might therefore play a part in the
social mechanisms Freud identifies, for the most part this work pays
little attention to the role of day-dreaming and conscious phantasy
in social life. The exception is his work on religion, especially in ‘The
Future of an Illusion’ (1927), where he also alludes to social movements.
It is important to acknowledge that here Freud is extremely cautious.
He suggests it is not a good idea to transplant individual development
to civilizational history, to wrench analogies from ‘the sphere in which
they have originated and have evolved’ (1930, p. 104), though he does
raise the question of whether entire civilizations can be considered neu-
rotic (he accepts this raises the question as to the standard against which
they are judged). He proceeds, he says, only by analogy, and imperfect
analogy at that. He says at one point that ‘the pathology of the individ-
ual does not supply us with a fully valid counterpart’ to society (1930,
p. 43). His statement that ‘religion would thus be the universal obses-
sional neurosis of humanity’ is said in the spirit of playing with the
boundaries of his own theory rather than as an argument. A much more
empirically grounded observation is that those who are religious believ-
ers are often spared individual neurosis, this being a far less contentious
way of linking the individual and the social.
Freud unambiguously classifies religious belief as an illusion in that
it is derived from, and represents fulfilment of, human wishes (1927,
p. 30). In this his definition of an illusion blends into his definition
of phantasy. He is less sure about whether to count it as a delusion in
contradiction with reality. He points out that not all illusions are errors.
There are, and this is a pertinent point, many beliefs that are wishful,
the reality of which might subsequently be proved true or false, but the
‘reality value’ of which cannot be judged in advance.
Illusions need not necessarily be false – that is to say, unrealizable

or in contradiction to reality. For instance, a middle-class girl may
have the illusion that a prince will come and marry her. This is possi-
ble; and a few such cases have occurred. That the Messiah will come
and found a golden age is much less likely. Whether one classifies
this belief as an illusion or as something analogous to a delusion will
depend on one’s personal attitude.
(Freud, 1927, p. 31)
Freud carries on an imaginary dialogue in ‘The Future of an Illusion’, and

one of the most forceful criticisms he raises against his own position is
the possibility that removing religion, as the imaginary underpinning
of social order, will cause civilization to collapse, and that therefore we
are better off acting ‘as if’ it were true in any case. This is especially
pertinent given that he also accepts that political regulations, relations
between the sexes, and even science, may also be illusory. He has a num-
ber of answers to this, which there is not room here to detail. It is worth
noting, however, that this shows that it was at least on his horizon
that social life, far from being opposed to phantasy and illusion, could
potentially be considered to be founded on it.
Freud questions the possibility of a golden age ‘undisturbed by inter-
nal discord’ (associating this with ‘the acquisition of wealth and its
enjoyment’), and in doing so equates the utopian with something
like unrepressed instinct. And yet his own utopian project is a highly
rationalistic one:
The ideal condition of things would of course be a community of

men who had subordinated their institutional life to the dictatorship
of reason. Nothing else would unite men so completely and so tena-
ciously, even if there were no emotional ties between them. But in all
probability that is a Utopian expectation.
(1933b, p. 213)
Accepting that humans are currently guided by instinctual wishes, he

questions whether this always has to be the case, looking to a future
where religion and illusion have disappeared and people are ‘educated
into reality’, admitting their helplessness and decentredness, that they
are not the object of divine care. He accepts it is hard to do away with
illusion and ‘religious education’ in the widest sense, and that perhaps
his utopia, guided by the God of reason, is an illusion too. But at least,
he says, it is one that can be disproved.
Finally, when outlining methods of satisfaction in ‘Civilization and
its Discontents’, Freud (1930) moves from sublimation, as achieved in
art, to the hermit turning his back on the world, and then to one more
possibility:
But one can do more than this: one can try to re-create the world, to
build another in its place, one in which the most intolerable features
are eliminated and replaced by others that accord with one’s desires.
As a rule, anyone who takes this path to happiness, in a spirit of des-
perate rebellion, will achieve nothing. Reality is too strong for him.
He will become a madman and will usually find nobody to help him
realize his delusion . . . Of special importance is the case in which sub-
stantial numbers of people, acting in concert, try to assure themselves
of happiness and protection against suffering through a delusional
reshaping of reality.
If Freud still has religious communities in mind it shows that he does

not see religion solely as a retreat from reality to illusory fulfilment,
but also potentially as an illusion seeking (however foolishly) to alter
external reality in its image, as in the idea of creating Heaven on Earth
(this relates to the two models of Christianity identified by Bloch, 1959;
see also Gutierrez, 1973).
Freud seems to contradict himself here. For his model of happiness
elsewhere is the man who turns his phantasies into reality. And even in
this book he distinguishes three types of individual – the erotic person,
who establishes an emotional relation to others; the narcissistic per-
son, who relies on their own mental processes; and the man of action,
who tests his strength against reality – and whilst counselling balance
between these, his admiration for men of action is clear. And yet those
who attempt to reshape reality in accordance with certain ‘delusions’ are
derided. Freud’s resolution is perhaps that it is through engagement with
others in work on nature that reality is established. As Erikson puts it:
Freud’s ‘reality’ really combines factuality with actuality – that is, a

consensually validated world of facts with a mutual activation of like-
minded people . . . [Ego strength cannot exist] without the mastery of
a section of reality by work and collaboration.
(Erikson, 1969, pp. 103–4)
Freud and Marxism

As we are concerned with the relationship between psychoanalysis and
theories of collective action, it seems appropriate to spend a moment
considering the relationship between Freud and Marxism.
Contrary to what Strachey suggests (in the preface to Osborn, 1937),
Freud was familiar with the historical materialist tradition, and obvi-
ously aware of events of the Russian Revolution, though reluctant to
comment on economic issues. He was highly ambivalent about social-

ism. He was clearly sympathetic towards the conditions of working-class
life at the time, appreciating that ‘underprivileged classes will envy the
favoured their privileges’, and that ‘it goes with saying that a civilization
which leaves so large a number of its participants unsatisfied and drives
them into revolt neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting exis-
tence’ (1927, p. 12). He nonetheless has an extremely disparaging view
of ‘the masses’, warns of ‘dangerous revolts’, and places his hopes in
leaders with ‘independent minds’ (1933b, p. 213). And yet, in the case of
socialist leadership, he obviously has concerns. He refers to the existing
Russian communist ideas of satisfying material needs and of equality as
illusions, given natural human aggression, keeping itself together only
by ‘hatred of everyone beyond their frontiers’ (1933b, p. 213; 1930,
p. 63). He also expresses alarm over the coercion necessary in realiz-
ing what he alludes to as the socialist plan, but says ‘the grandeur of
the plan and its importance for the future of human civilization can-
not be disputed’ (1927, pp. 8–9). He is keen to point to more material
goals; ‘a real change in people’s relation to property will be of more help
here than any ethical consideration’ (1930, p. 104). In fact, he is wholly
negative about ethics, suggesting that ethics only give the narcissistic
satisfaction that one is better than others.
But as the two most radical influences on social thought at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century it is unsurprising that attempts were
made to combine the insights of Freud with those of Marx and Engels.
Osborn’s (1937) was one of the earliest attempts to consider the philo-
sophical basis on which such a combination might be possible. On the
one hand, Osborn is enthusiastic about the two approaches constituting
a dialectic whole, with Marxism concentrating on the objective social
conditions, and psychoanalysis on the subjective. Not only was such a
dialectic epistemologically necessary, but it also represented real shifts
over time in the balance of which factors were the more important
in shaping history (Osborn, 1937, p. 167). One of the major concerns
of the time was, after all, why revolution had not gripped more of
the proletariat given that the material preconditions for socialism were
apparently in place. It was hoped that psychoanalysis might provide
some of the answers. Osborn believed Marxists needed to understand
human tendencies to escape reality. For him, normal attachment to
authority and outworn social systems was explained by the ‘irrational
conservatism’ of the superego reproducing social structures. This builds
on what Freud (1923b, p. 35) says of the superego that ‘by giving per-
manent expression to the influence of the parents it perpetuates the
existence of the factors to which it owes its origin’. And in the New
Introductory Lectures Freud argues that materialistic conceptions of his-
tory underemphasize ‘ideologies of the superego’ in perpetuating the
past, so that history is not just determined by economics (though rec-
ognizing that society’s motive for restraining instinct came from the
economic imperative of work). Having said this, Engels acknowledged
the dialectical importance of the ‘constitution of the individual’ as well
as ‘economic conditions’, the existence of unconscious motives, and the
necessity of repression for social life (in a letter to Mehring, cited by
Osborn, 1937, p. 173).
As justification for combining these approaches in such a way, Osborn
points to their ontological similarities. Both can be described as realist,
and both recognize dialectics (though Freud only implicitly). Further-
more, Freud, like Marx, was ‘a thoroughgoing and uncompromising
materialist’ (Osborn, 1937, pp. 134–5), and also an empiricist (at least
in the broadest sense). As Osborn quotes approvingly, Freud believed
the aim of science (including psychoanalysis) is
to arrive at correspondence with reality – that is to say with what

exists outside us and independently of us, and as experience has
taught us is decisive for the fulfilment or frustration of our desires. This
correspondence with the real external world we call truth.
(Freud 1933a, p. 218. Italics in the original)
Elsewhere Freud (1927, p. 31) argues that ‘scientific work is the only
road which can lead us to a knowledge of reality outside ourselves’.
And importantly for his understanding of the extent to which ‘reality-
testing’ can be suspended, he says ‘in the long run nothing can
withstand reason and experience’ (p. 54). We all, after all, abandon
the illusions we had of others as children (Freud, 1930). Because he
understands our mental apparatus to have developed through our
engagement with the external world, he sees it as a part of that exter-
nal world. If nothing else, therefore, science can tell us something about
the external world through its understanding of the psyche (see 1927,
pp. 55–6).
Engels outlines a common-sense distinction between phantastic and
real objects. In terms of his understanding of the relationship between
imagined and real objects:
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn
to our own use these objects, according to the qualities we perceive
in them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of

our sense-perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong, then
our estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be
wrong, and our attempt must fail. But if we succeed in accomplishing
our aim, if we find that the object does agree with our idea of it, and
does answer the purpose we intended it for, then that is positive proof
that our perceptions of it and of its qualities, so far, agree with reality
outside ourselves.
(1880, pp. 20–1)
For Engels, ‘reality-testing’ is a straightforward process. Such a view

assumes that our perception of success itself corresponds to reality,
discounting the possibility that this too could be phantastic.
More importantly, such a dualism between the imaginary and the
real also informs Marx’s and Engels’s view of social change and espe-
cially their distinction between utopian and scientific socialism. Engels
scolds the utopian socialists who preceded him – Saint-Simon, Fourier
and Owen – who attempted to imagine a perfect social order through
reflective reasoning and to impose this order without regard for the cur-
rent state of affairs and where this stood within the progress of history.
His own historical materialist view, endorsed by Marx, was that social-
ism could only be achieved once economic progress has reached such a
point as to have put the necessary conditions in place to make it possi-
ble. For Marx and Engels, the role of a scientific socialism was to uncover
the potentials of the existing social conditions, rather than to imagine a
set of future arrangements. Engels argues that the means for eliminating
current social abuses ‘are not to be invented out of one’s brain, but dis-
covered by the brain in the existing material facts of production’ (1880,
p. 74) (echoed in Lenin’s ‘Left-Wing’ Communism, as cited in Osborn,
1937, pp. 80–1).
For Marx and Engels, says Jameson (1974, pp. 110–11), utopianism
was a ‘diversion of revolutionary energy into idle wish-fulfilments and
imaginary satisfactions’. On Saint-Simon and others, Engels remarks:
Society presented nothing but abuses; to remove them was the task
of reflective reason. It was a question of inventing a new and more
perfect social order and of imposing it on society from without, by
propaganda and wherever possible by the example of model exper-
iments. These new social systems were foredoomed to be Utopias;
the more they were worked out in detail, the more inevitably they
became lost in pure fantasy.
(1880, p. 52)
The problem was, first, that the path to utopia did not emerge from
sufficiently extensive knowledge of existing socio-historic conditions.
Secondly, in the case of the three prominent proponents of utopian
socialism mentioned above,
Not one of them appears as a representative of the interests of the

proletariat which historical development had in the meantime pro-
duced. Like the philosophers of the Enlightenment, they want to
emancipate not a particular class to begin with, but all humanity at
once.
(1880, p. 48)
These utopian visions, as emanations most often from the minds of the
bourgeoisie themselves, failed to identify and speak to the agents of his-
torical transformation. Further to this, it is possible to read into Engels
a distaste for the phantasies produced by such imaginations, which he
believed (despite leaving it to the ‘literary small fry to quibble solemnly
over these fantasies’) were always unjust. It is certainly true that the
model settlements that Engels detested so much represented not only a
version of socialist ideology, but also the narcissistic phantasies of their
philanthropic creators (see also Darley, 1975).
Marx’s and Engels’s own relationship to utopianism has since been
disputed (see Jameson, 2005). And the subsequent development of
utopian Marxism has emphasized that the utopian need not be opposed
to real political action, thus bringing the concept of utopia closer to
the politics endorsed by Marx and Engels. This has furnished us with
a number of concepts including Bloch’s (1959) ‘concrete utopias’. This
expressed Bloch’s endorsement of a utopianism ‘rooted in objective pos-
sibility’, and ‘grounded in the ascending forces of the age’ (Geoghegan,
1996, p. 37). As emphasized by more recent writers (such as Friere), this
represents a form of praxis rather than a blueprint for the future. In such
praxis can be seen a ‘foreglow of future possibilities’ (Geoghegan, 1996,
p. 37). Jacoby (2003) locates Bloch within a tradition of iconoclastic
utopianism in this respect; one that eschews the details of the perfected
utopia.
Jameson on phantasy and utopia

Drawing on Bloch and others, Fredric Jameson’s writing on utopia brings
the Marxist tradition into dialogue with the Freudian concept of wish-
fulfilment phantasy. Jameson (2005) begins with a distinction between
the utopian form and the utopian impulse. The utopian form is a
programme committed to realizing a utopian totality in the text and
through utopian political practice such as revolution or the construc-

tion of intentional communities. The utopian form rises and falls with
‘convulsive’ moments in capitalist modernity, says Jameson. He suggests
they are composed in ‘the agitation of the various “transitional peri-
ods” ’ (2005, p. 15). Social and spatial differentiation opens up ‘enclaves’
for utopia (see also Harvey, 2000). But at the same time, utopias can only
be constructed when a fundamental ill can be named and a correspond-
ing totality mapped. Contrary to common-sense assumptions, Jameson
suggests that utopians are not those who provide positive criteria for a
desirable society. This is better associated with liberal political theory
(in Locke and Rawls, for example). True utopians and revolutionaries
‘always aim at the alleviation and elimination of the sources of exploita-
tion and suffering, rather than at the composition of blueprints for
bourgeois comfort’ (Jameson, 2005, p. 13). The utopian wish or impulse
is an idea taken from Bloch to describe the future-oriented aspect of
every part of daily life and which is present in liberal reforms and com-
mercial pipedreams as much as revolutionary politics (2005, p. 3). He
talks of utopian figures seeping into daily life and affording us ‘an incre-
mental and often unconscious, bonus of pleasure unrelated to their
functional value or official satisfaction’ (2005, p. 5). Jameson empha-
sizes the materialistic and embodied elements of these satisfactions
so as to demonstrate the corresponding lack of idealism, with cos-
metic surgery perhaps his best example. The ‘obscure yet omnipresent’
utopian impulse is key to understanding Jameson’s attempt to construct
‘a psychology of Utopian production’.
In respect to the utopian wish, Jameson makes two further distinc-
tions that map onto another. The first is Coleridge’s distinction between
the Imagination – the primary creative force of the wish – and Fancy –
the decoration of the wish with details. He then turns to Freud’s (1900)
distinction between the original wish motivating the dream and its
secondary elaboration or revision on wakening. This Jameson follows
through into Freud’s analysis in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming in
which he argues that creative writing is based, in Jameson’s words, in the
‘private history of the writer’, and is underpinned by a personal wish-
fulfilment phantasy. Jameson does not disagree, but nonetheless seems
perturbed that ‘the primal architectonic of the Imagination, plot forma-
tion – the structure of the “phantasm” – has here now abruptly been
discredited and degraded into a sheerly private hobby’ (2005, p. 46).
But, as discussed previously, Jameson appreciates that for Freud the ars
poetica lies in concealing or softening the writer’s personal phantasy (for
Jameson motivated by an unconscious resistance felt as embarrassment)
which, as another’s phantasy, would repel the reader. Lest proof of this
was needed, Jameson convincingly notes that any discomfort on read-
ing More’s Utopia comes not from the plan, but from the ‘narcissistic
punctum’ of details such as the gold chamberpots. The writer’s egois-
tic phantasies are therefore altered and disguised so that everyone can
acquiesce in them.
Jameson goes on to say:
What is then so often identified as Utopian boredom corresponds to

this withdrawal of cathexis from what are no longer seen as ‘my own’
projects or ‘my own’ daily life. This is meanwhile the sense in which
depersonalization as such becomes a fundamental or constituent
feature of Utopia as such.
(p. 97)
Though Jameson makes this point to emphasize the loss of interest

when utopias are excessively depersonalized, it also points to why
activists might prefer to soften their own projects as little as possible.
Jameson links a particular/universal phantasy distinction in Freud
to an individual/collective dualism. He states that there is a ‘collec-
tive wish-fulfilling mechanism at the heart of Utopian phantasy and
Utopian textual production’. Jameson is more comfortable discussing
the collective phantasy than the individual one; indeed, early on he
states that his study of Utopian phantasy mechanisms ‘eschews indi-
vidual biography in favour of historical and collective wish-fulfilment’
(2005, p. xivi). But Jameson is happier still when another level is intro-
duced, and this is the level he describes as ‘the primal architecture of the
Utopian Imagination’ (2005, p. 53). After the Freudian detour he feels
the need to restore ‘something of the dignity of social knowledge to the
suggestion of playful and arbitrary construction apparently inherent in
any conception of fantasy’ (2005, p. 47). Personal beliefs, he says, take
on a collective dimension through ideology. Earlier he has asserted that
wish-fulfilments are ‘necessarily clothed in ideology and as inseparable
from the latter and its historical determinants as the body from the soul’
(p. 40). He also acknowledges the restrictions placed on the expression
of phantasy by existing social structure.
Two other features of Jameson’s argument are worth noting before
continuing, though much of this makes sense only in the context of his
relationship with Lacanian theory (see Chapter 3). First, recalling an ear-
lier point of debate, Jameson accepts that phantasy necessarily evokes its
obstacles. ‘Even the process of wish-fulfilment includes a kind of reality
principle of its own, intent on not making things too easy for itself,
accumulating the objections and the reality problems that stand in its
way so as the more triumphantly and “realistically” to overcome them’
(2005, p. 83). This is certainly reflective of Freud’s later understanding
of phantasy as a ‘compromise formation’. Second, Jameson is well aware
of the inherent painfulness of realizing utopia/phantasy. Because of the
importance of the phantastic project in constituting identity in the first
place, the realization of phantasy has to be equated with loss of iden-
tity. Jameson argues for the need to capture ‘the dimension of Utopian
desire which remains unsatisfied, and which cannot be felt to have been
fulfilled without falling into the world and becoming another degraded
act of consumption’. LeGuin’s City of Illusions
allows us to glimpse again that fundamental anxiety of Utopia,

namely the fear of losing that familiar world in which all our vices
and virtues are rooted (very much including the longing for Utopia
itself) in exchange for a world in which all these things and expe-
riences – positive as well as negative – will have been obliterated.
(Jameson, 2005, p. 97)
Adorno and anti-Semitism

A disparate range of sociologists in the mid-twentieth century endeav-
oured to combine Freudian psychology with sociological analysis in an
attempt to understand collective behaviour, and in particular the rise of
the so-called ‘mass movements’ that had characterized recent history.
Arguably the most significant of these was Neil Smelser who, working
within the Parsonian functionalist tradition, wrote the seminal text on
collective behaviour from this perspective. Smelser’s work is discussed
in much more detail in Part II, and so here I focus on another school of
thought developed around the same time.
The popularity of Freudian psychology at the time meant that in
the wake of Nazism it was to be expected that a number of promi-
nent social scientists would draw, to greater or lesser extent, on Freud’s
work in order to understand the irrational basis to anti-Semitism. One
of the best known is no doubt Wilhelm Reich (1933). However, in
my view the most systematic study, both empirically and in terms of
its engagement with Freud, is Theodor Adorno’s study The Authoritar-
ian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950). Despite their different intellectual
heritages (Adorno’s work being at the centre of the Frankfurt School’s
critical theory drawing on Weber and Marx), Adorno and Smelser share
a number of theoretical concerns and a not dissimilar ontological

framework. Adorno also raises a number of issues in regard to the appli-
cation of Freud’s theory of phantasy that will become relevant in later
chapters.
In a sense, Adorno’s study is rightly marginalized in social movement
studies. He makes it clear that in the climate in which it took place, it
was unreasonable to study those who were actively anti-Semitic. Instead,
it is a study of ‘susceptibility’ to anti-Semitism, and fascism more gener-
ally. Adorno accepts that whether or not action takes place on the basis of
this susceptibility depends on situational context, which lies beyond the
scope of the study and requires an understanding of the total structure
of society. Adorno also passes up a detailed analysis of how ideologies
are themselves promulgated in and by social groups. He sets out instead
to understand ‘what intensities of belief, attitude, and value are likely to
lead to action, and to know what forces within the individual serve as
inhibitions upon action’ (Adorno et al., 1950, p. 4). It is therefore only
partial as a study of fascist movements, despite its impressive empirical
foundation.
What makes the study useful here nonetheless is Adorno’s great atten-
tion to the relationship between phantasy, personality and various
layers of ideology within fascism. The starting point is the belief that
people’s political, economic and social convictions are the expression of
deep-lying personality trends. Anti-Semitism is seen as a symptom that
helps disorientation, fear and uncertainty in the face of the intellectual
alienation of the individual from society. It provides individuals with
an ‘orientation’ in the world. Susceptibility to fascism is thus seen to be
a syndrome, or rather a set of six different syndromes. The researchers
conclude that
a basically hierarchical, authoritarian, exploitative parent-child rela-

tionship is apt to carry over into a power-oriented, exploitatively
dependent attitude towards one’s sex partner and one’s God and may
well culminate in a political philosophy and social outlook which
has no room for anything but a desperate clinging to what appears
to be strong and disdainful rejection of whatever is relegated to the
bottom.
(Adorno et al., 1950, p. 971)
The most significant of the six syndromes, ‘the authoritarian person-

ality’ is the outcome of a sadomasochistic resolution of the Oedipus
complex, government by the superego, fear of weakness, and intense

ambivalence between conformity and rebellion.
There are a number of themes in Adorno’s approach that will later
find resonance in Smelser’s work. The first is that one of Adorno’s central
problematics is how to produce a predictive model of who will express
anti-Semitic values. His argument is that in determining ideology ‘there
is a situational factor and a personality factor, and . . . a careful weigh-
ing of the role of each will yield the most accurate prediction’ (1950,
p. 10). This necessity of adding together the insights of sociology and
psychoanalysis in the service of prediction was important mid-twentieth
century, though as an aim of social science it is abandoned in much con-
temporary theory. In terms almost identical to those of Smelser, Adorno
notes that people in the same socio-economic position frequently dif-
fer ideologically. Psychoanalysis is brought in to plug this explanatory
gap. Socio-economic analysis is found especially wanting in the case of
fascism, Adorno points out, because the actions of so many fascists run
counter to their objective material interests.
There is some important detail, however, in exactly how Adorno sees
the relationship between underlying personal needs (‘drives, wishes,
emotional impulses’) and ideology:
Though the two may be thought of as forming an organised whole

within the individual they may nonetheless be studied separately.
The same ideological trends may in different individuals have differ-
ent sources, and the same personal needs may express themselves in
different ideological trends.
(1950, p. 2)
This interest in the fit between, but analytical distinction between, the

individual ‘need’ and ideology seems important to me, though, as we
will see later, it is far from a consensual position. But Adorno’s position
is more sophisticated than this as he identifies not simply two levels,
but a number of layers to ideology:
What the individual consistently says in public, what he says when

he feels safe from criticism, what he thinks but will not say at
all, what he thinks but will not admit to himself, what he is dis-
posed to think or do when various kinds of appeal are made to
him – all these phenomena may be conceived of as constituting a
single structure. The structure may not be integrated, it may contain
contradictions as well as consistencies, but it is organised in the sense
that the constituent parts are related in psychologically meaningful

ways.
(1950, p. 5)
As I will argue in Chapter 3, there is an acknowledgement of complexity

here that is often glossed over by contemporary Lacanian theory to its
detriment.
Adorno also explains how he believes needs and ideology relate to one
another over lifetime development. Whilst personality is one determi-
nant of ideological preferences, personality itself is shaped in childhood
by social and economic factors both normative and practical. ‘Person-
ality is an agency through which sociological influences on ideology
are mediated’ (1950, p. 6). What is crucial here is that a structure is
established in the individual that endures and is relatively resistant to
changes in the external environment. Thus it can be that two people in
the same sociological situation can have different views. This also raises
one of the fetters on social change (also identified by functionalist the-
ory). It is to be expected that parents will reproduce their own psychic
structures in their children.
The fact that the views adopted on the basis of the resultant person-
ality may run counter to a person’s best interests, directed Adorno to
‘where psychology has already found the sources of dreams, fantasies,
and misinterpretations of the world – that is, in the deep-lying needs
of the personality’ (1950, p. 9). Anti-Semitism is ‘keyed onto’ uncon-
scious wishes. The acting out of anti-Semitism is thus wish-fulfilment
(1950, p. 622). He is clear that in anti-Semitism the reality principle
is abandoned and phantasies about the Jew take over. In identify-
ing them as phantasies, it is obvious that Adorno is working with
a Freudian distinction between fantasy and reality – fantasies occur
when stereotypes run wild ‘independent from interaction with real-
ity’. The existence of phantasy (at one point he talks about ‘half-
conscious wishes’) can be inferred from self-contradictory statements
or from statements incompatible with facts. The projections the Jew
receives are well known – they are seen as excessively powerful,
omnipresent, in-groupish, persecutory, invading, exerting mysterious
influence. These phantasies bear minimal relation to the actual object
of the Jew. The only necessity is that the object ‘must be tangible
enough; and yet not too tangible, lest it be exploded by its own realism’
(p. 608).
Rationalization serves an important compromise function according
to Adorno. He suggests that in the anti-Semitic phantasy the id has won
a victory, but in victory the superego becomes its spokesperson through
rationalization. In his analysis of Hanold’s actions in Gradiva, which

were rooted in unconscious phantasy, Freud talked about ‘the construc-
tion of conscious pre-texts for actions to whose motivation the repressed
has made the major contribution’ (1907, p. 52). But this rational (or
‘pseudorational’ as Adorno repeatedly refers to them) consideration is
always ‘warped by the same instinctual urges which it is called upon to
check’ (Adorno et al., 1950, p. 627).
In discussing the relationship between phantasy and ideology, Adorno
makes a particularly perceptive point. In one sense this is simple; that
the ideological reasons to kill Jews ‘never suffice fully to justify his exter-
mination fantasies’ (1950, p. 633). There is a ‘fantastic disproportion’
between Jewish guilt and judgement. This point emerges from a case
where a woman expresses her sympathy with the Holocaust despite
confessing to never having had any bad experiences with Jews. The
punishment she condones is therefore in excess of any crime she can
articulate. It might be hypothesized that this is the case in any rela-
tionship between phantasy and ideology, and perhaps even what defines
that relationship. There is always something in any ideological posi-
tion that expresses a desire that is in excess of the arguments presented,
and that cannot be captured within them. Here I stumble very close to
the Lacanian line of argument, and so I will leave this to be resumed in
Chapter 3. There it will be easier to make sense of Adorno’s observation
that the Jew emerges at the point of contradiction in American ideology
between the values of democratic equality, on the one hand, and suc-
cess, on the other, and that his eradication might thus be phantasized
to resolve the contradiction.
Adorno’s optimism about the possibility of developing a personality
more in touch with reality echoes Freud. He points to the need for
‘mature’ personalities, for people ‘to see themselves and to be them-
selves’, and to the importance of the ego. He believes, many would say
naively, that a form of ideology is possible that is grounded in facts.
And without this, ‘we should have to share the destructive view, which
has gained some acceptance in the modern world, that since all ideolo-
gies, all philosophies, derive from non-rational sources there is no basis
for saying that one has more merit than another’ (1950, pp. 10–11). But
this is not to say that emotions must be left behind, for Adorno believes,
somewhat dubiously, there is some inherent relationship between Eros
and democracy:
we need not suppose that appeal to emotion belongs to those who

strive in the direction of fascism, while democratic propaganda
must limit itself to reason and restraint. If fear and destructiveness

are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to
democracy.
(1950, p. 976)
However, Adorno is forced to acknowledge some of the difficulties of his

position, which lead us nicely into the next chapter:
There is no simple gap between experience and stereotypy. Stereotypy

is a device for looking at things comfortably; since, however, it feeds
on deep-lying unconscious sources, the distortions which occur are
not to be corrected merely by taking a real look. Rather, experience
itself is predetermined by stereotypy.
(1950, p. 617)
Adorno accepts this can happen even in mild cases. The problem thus
shifts from correcting the stereotype (we can reasonably say ‘phantasy’)
by experience, but of needing to ‘reconstitute the capacity for hav-
ing experience’, in other words the subjective proclivity to interrogate
phantasy, which is the sense in which ‘reality-testing’ should be under-
stood. If there is hope that this can happen it is reflected later in
Adorno’s insistence that ‘the prejudiced subject is dimly aware that the
content of the stereotype is imaginary and that his own experience rep-
resents truth’ (1950, p. 628). What Adorno thus seems to be saying is
that on one level the subject is always aware of the reality of their expe-
rience as well as their phantasy perception. This changes the field of
possibility considerably.
Summary
It is now possible to return to the ontological constellation under dis-

cussion in this part of the book, and conclude the following in relation
to Freud’s work. Freud’s account of phantasy emerges from his discus-
sion of hallucinatory satisfaction in the infant, which belongs to the
unconscious system. Hallucinatory satisfaction is, however, destined
to break down because it cannot remove the physical sources of dis-
comfort. In order to adapt to this, perception, ‘reality-testing’ and the
secondary process are developed. From this point onwards, phantasying
is distinguishable from hallucinatory satisfaction, even if it represents a
wish-fulfilment. Conscious phantasies are formed in the pre-conscious
system, but are modelled on unconscious phantasies. These can be
brought to consciousness only if permissible, and this requires not

only that the unconscious phantasies have been sufficiently translated
using materials of the present, but also that they have been compro-
mised in accordance with ego and superego demands, including that
they are softened so as to be collectively appealing. These pre-conscious
phantasies can make their way into conscious thought in the form of
images, in which case they can be considered ‘less conscious’ than if
they were thought in words. They are distinguished from perceptions by
the subject through a process of ‘reality- testing’. They can then poten-
tially be subject to secondary process thought as a means of arriving at a
course of action aimed at modifying external reality in accordance with
phantasy.
Freud, like Marx and Engels, expressed concern that social illusions,
including ethical utopias, did not pay attention to reality, and further-
more that they distracted from the necessary engagement in political
praxis. But they all left open some possibilities in this respect, which
have been explored in various ways by Bloch, Jameson, Adorno and
many others. These accounts have resolved the ontological uncertainties
in Freud’s account with varying degrees of success.
2
Fantasy in Kleinian Theory
Having in Chapter 1 outlined the groundwork laid by Freud, I now

turn my attention to what I find to be a largely more persuasive and
comprehensive account of the nature of the ontological constellation
between fantasy, reality, the unconscious, action and the collective,
rooted in the work of Melanie Klein. In this chapter I provide an account
of Klein’s contribution to psychoanalytic understanding of phantasy
before turning my attention to how this has been taken up in social
theory.
Identifying the Kleinian theory of phantasy
It should be noted that most discussion of phantasy from a Kleinian

perspective relies heavily on the work of other Kleinian theorists, in
particular Susan Isaacs. Isaacs took centre stage in the Controversial
Discussions, where the notion of phantasy was a crucial stake in the
disagreements between the Kleinians and Anna Freud. It is to Isaacs’s
(1952) paper ‘The nature and function of phantasy’ that many turn for
a definitive statement of Klein’s concept of phantasy. Indeed, Leader
(1997, p. 85) even refers to Isaacs as blocking the path to Klein’s the-
ory of phantasy, provocatively questioning whether Klein even had
one. Klein’s work is of course replete with references to phantasy and
its central importance for psychoanalysis. Hopefully it will be clear in
what follows when I have drawn directly from Klein, and when from
Isaacs and useful contemporary discussions such as those provided by
Julia Segal. There is widespread agreement amongst these interpretations
that phantasy is the central concept in Klein’s understanding of the
unconscious. Hayman (1989, p. 106) refers to Klein as extending Freud’s
notion of phantasy (whilst agreeing that it consisted in imaginatively
67
fulfilled frustrated wishes; something for Hayman ‘surely adhered to by

all psychoanalysts’), and arguably extending it too far. Kleinian psycho-
analysis is clear that social life is fundamentally and inseparably based in
phantasy. Leader (1997) suggests that one thing Klein and Lacan share
is a conception of fantasy as ‘organising one’s reality rather than that
which is opposed to it’ (p. 93). Leader argues that this is only being true
to Freud in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, but, as argued in
Chapter 1, there are many inconsistencies and unanswered questions in
Freud’s account. One thing Isaacs does is to clarify one set of resolutions
(enumerated in 11 points, 1952, p. 112; condensed into 4 by Hayman,
1989, p. 106).
Phantasy as endogenous
The most important divergence between orthodox Freudian theory

(at least as represented by Anna Freud in the Controversial Discussions)
and Kleinian theory is probably their respective positions on when and
how unconscious phantasy first emerges. Kleinians typically assume that
unconscious phantasy is present at a much earlier age than Freudians.
Some have argued that it is present from birth, although Klein herself
stops short of this position. She says only:
Analytic work has shown that babies of a few months of age cer-
tainly indulge in phantasy-building. I believe that this is the most
primitive mental activity and that phantasies are in the mind of the
infant almost from birth. It would seem that every stimulus the child
receives is immediately responded to by phantasies, the unpleasant
stimuli, including mere frustration, by phantasies of an aggressive
kind, the gratifying stimuli by those focusing on pleasure.
(Klein, 1936, p. 290)
This central argument reflects, or is reflected in, a series of related argu-

ments with Freudians about why phantasying arises, and from what it
is constituted (I return to the aggressive/pleasurable nature of phantasy
later). Person et al. (1995) point the way to some of these issues:
Freudians, in contrast to Kleinians, posit fantasy as dependent on the

capacity to distinguish between fantasy and reality, as constructed
rather than endogenous, as utilising experience in its genesis, and
as connected to memories of real events, distorted though these
may be through the impact of wishful thinking on perception . . . .
Fantasy in Kleinian Theory 69
Kleinians, in contrast to Freudians, posit that fantasies arise in earliest

infantile life and are by their nature connected to representations of
interpersonal relationships (internalised object relations).
(p. xiii)
There are, however, two different arguments involved in the above,

which I think it is important to distinguish.
One argument is that for Freudians phantasy can only emerge from
memories of past satisfaction. The infant cannot therefore phantasize
about something they have not experienced. As Aguinis puts it, ‘for
Freud, the wish stems from the experience of satisfaction – so that
phantasy is connected with the object and not with the instinct’ (1995,
p. 25). Anna Freud insisted that there were no object relations in early
infancy (see Britton, 1995). She assumed, along with Glover, that Freud
was right that phantasy was a response to frustration, and that as frus-
tration comes from reality, phantasy cannot be expressing the primary
content of unconscious (see Infante, 1995; Hayman, 1989, p. 110). For
several months the infant is in a narcissistic and auto-erotic phase in
which it does not ‘know’ the mother (or breast) as a separate object.
This drew clearly on her father’s assertion that ‘there is no doubt that,
to begin with, the child does not distinguish between the breast and its
own body’, and can only relate to the breast narcissistically (Freud cited
in Hayman, 1989, p. 108).
Insofar as this is the Freudian position, the orthodox Kleinian posi-
tion is clearly different. For Klein phantasy is connected to the instinct,
the object is not a specific manifestation, and phantasy exists indepen-
dent of any act of previous repression. What Aguinis is emphasizing is
that in Freud’s view the object of phantasy can only be determined on
the basis of past experiences of satisfaction associated with that object.
The instincts are not attached to particular objects a priori, and thus the
wish is not derived directly from the instinct. In Klein’s view, however,
the instincts exist in relation to ‘internal objects’ in the first instance.
The term ‘internal object’ can be used in many ways in Kleinian theory,
but is associated with mental and emotional images of external objects
(see Spillius et al., 2011, p. 40). Phantasies are inherent in instincts.
Phantasies thus express object relations before these relations have been
established in the material world. As Hayman puts it in her summary
of the Controversial Discussions, ‘no one doubted that the new-born
immediately has instinctual cravings to suck. If phantasy is “the mental
representative and corollary of instinct”, then he also immediately has
phantasies’ (1989, p. 106). So connected are the instincts and phantasies
that Hayman refers to ‘infantile instinctual phantasies’. My own take on

this is that the instincts imply the existence of an object, but that this
object is initially phantasized only in its negative form. For example,
sucking, by its very nature, demands an object to be sucked. But the
infant does not as yet have a concept of the object that can be sucked.
All it knows about the object is that it must be suckable. This is simi-
lar to what we can know about a foot from the imprint it leaves in the
sand. We know it two-dimensionally, but know nothing about its form
or substance beyond this. Crucially, we cannot know where it ends, and
so cannot formulate an image of it as a discrete object. This is not quite
the line of argument taken by most Kleinian theory.
Isaacs emphasizes that phantasies are connected initially with bodily
sensations, and only later to visual memories:
They express primarily an internal and subjective reality, yet right

from the beginning they are bound up with an actual, however
limited and narrow, experience of objective reality. The first bod-
ily experiences begin to build up the first memories, and external
realities are progressively woven into the texture of phantasy.
(Isaacs 1952, p. 93)
She is thus very clear that we do not need to have seen something, or
to understand it, to phantasize about it (giving the example of burning
or drowning the mother with urine, which she argues is independent of
experience and not primarily because of the mother getting cross when
the child has wet the bed).
The second argument is whether phantasy emerges only with ‘reality-
testing’. As I argued in Chapter 1, there is a good case to be made that for
Freud phantasying should be distinguished from hallucinatory gratifica-
tion on precisely this basis, and there is an issue with Klein’s conflation
of hallucinatory wish-fulfilment and phantasy (see also Hayman, 1989,
p. 110). Freud therefore makes a distinction around the mode accord-
ing to which we relate to phantasy, and in working with this distinction
some bridge can be opened up with Kleinian thinking. I return to this
theme below and in Chapter 2.
The centrality of phantasy to the unconscious
Freud (1915a) therefore distinguished the instinct from its object,

but also allowed that these objects could be mentally represented
in the unconscious. Klein’s object relations theory took this further,
asserting that the unconscious consists of phantasies attached to internal
representations of external objects. ‘Phantasies are the primary content

of unconscious mental processes,’ says Isaacs (1952, p. 82). They are
necessary in giving the impulses a mental form, ‘and show their direc-
tion and purpose’ (1952, p. 83). Isaacs reads this into Freud’s description
of the way the id takes over instinctual needs from somatic processes
and gives them ‘mental expression’. For Isaacs, this mental expression
is unconscious phantasy. Desire is experienced as phantasy. ‘Phantasy is
(in the first instance) the mental corollary, the psychic representative,
of instinct. There is no impulse, no instinctual urge or response which
is not experienced as unconscious phantasy’ (Isaacs, 1952, p. 83). The
parenthetical ‘in the first instance’ refers to the fact that for Klein all
subsequent events are accompanied by phantasy.
Central to Klein’s theory is the notion, developed from Freud, of
the introjection of external objects in phantasy as internal objects.
Introjection was a term Freud took from Ferenczi (1909) to refer to
the neurotic who uses it to ‘take into his ego a large part of the out-
side world and make it the object of unconscious phantasies’ (Spillius
et al., 2011, p. 374). Introjection expressed oral impulses to take objects
into the body. Klein (1940) developed this into a more ‘populated’
internal world (Spillius et al., p. 375). Phantasies represent relation-
ships between these objects. As Hinshelwood (1989, p. 467) puts it,
the unconscious is therefore ‘structured like a small society’. Heimann
(1942) made a useful distinction between introjected objects that are
identified with and become part of the ego, and those felt to be foreign
though inside the self. In early unconscious phantasy, Klein believed
these latter objects took a very literal form as ‘live people inside the
body’ (Klein, 1940, cited in Spillius et al., 2011, p. 378), or a multi-
tude of hostile and friendly beings ‘inside the body, particularly inside
the abdomen, a conception to which physiological processes and sensa-
tions of all kinds, past and present, have contributed’ (cited in Spillius
et al., 2011, p. 378). These were later translated into symbolic forms
as they become conscious in the adult, for example, the fantasy of a
tapeworm inside the body replacing the phantasy of a little man in the
stomach.
Young children, Klein (1958) says, introject their parents especially
‘in a phantastic way’. This usually involves introjecting them as ‘part-
objects’, such as the breast, in the first instance. For Isaacs this happens
in order to avert a sense of loss when the object is absent. The infant
feels ‘I want her inside me’. As Segal (1992, p. 35) puts it, introjec-
tive phantasies are those ‘in which parts of others are taken into the
self’. These internal objects and part-objects then have a life within
unconscious phantasy, and the experience of them can be good or bad.
‘The satisfied infant feels he has taken the good breast inside, while if
hunger rages unabated, he feels he has a bad attacking breast inside and
wants to get rid of it’ (Hayman, 1989, p. 107).
Hayman (1989) draws out from the Controversial Discussions an even
deeper argument about the centrality of phantasy to the Kleinian model
of the unconscious. This is that for Kleinians phantasy is the ‘primary
motor’ (to use the term employed by Foulks in the Discussions) of the
psyche. Hence, phantasy was not seen as the result of introjection or
the defence mechanisms, but as their driver. Again, the ontogenetic
primacy of phantasy underpins this assumption. Everything else that
happens in the psyche is derived from the existence of instinctual
phantasies. Seen this way the very structure of the psyche emerges from
phantasy relations. Isaacs’s point here is that phantasy is a means by
which an id impulse is transmuted into the ego mechanism, such as
introjection (1952, p. 104). The mechanism is ‘always experienced as
phantasy’ (p. 106). Hence repression takes the form of a phantasy of
putting an object in a can with a lid, for example (Segal, 1992).
Phantasy, motivation and action
In Chapter 1 I argued that Freud was unclear or inconsistent about the

relationship between phantasy and action. It is much harder to level
this charge at Klein, especially given the interpretations of her followers.
Here phantasy necessarily appears as the medium through which human
motivation takes place. As Julia Segal argues, ‘phantasy always contains
a wish to act; we all want to fulfil our dreams’ (1992, p. 205). For her,
even our most primitive actions are born out of phantasy, as the baby’s
phantasy ‘corresponding to nipple-in-the-mouth seeks something in the
outside world to match it’ (2000, p. 36).
But it would be a mistake to suggest that for Klein action is directly
driven by unconscious phantasy without conscious intervention. For
whilst Isaacs asserted that the Kleinian view separated phantasy and
thinking, according to Hayman (1989, p. 111) ‘she not only believed
that reality-thinking could not operate without unconscious phantasy;
she also believed that thinking derived from unconscious phantasy’.
This comes from a particular reading of Freud’s (1925b) arguments
about judgement, ‘reality-testing’ and thinking being derived from
‘the interplay of instinctual forces’. Isaacs’s argument is that whilst
phantasy-thinking and reality-thinking have their own forms, ‘reality-
thinking cannot operate without concurrent and supporting uncon-
scious phantasies’ (1952, p. 109):
An instinct is conceived as a border-line psycho-somatic process.

It has a bodily aim, directed to concrete external objects. It has a rep-
resentative in the mind which we call a ‘phantasy’. Human activities
derive from instinctual urges; it is only through the phantasy of what
would fulfil our instinctual needs that we are enabled to attempt to
realize them in external reality.
(1952, p. 99)
Isaacs asserts that the external world intrudes on the infant from the
very beginning, within the first 24 hours of birth, and that therefore
‘reality-testing’ is there from the beginning. Here she seems to equate
‘reality-testing’ with exposure to material conditions, which does not
capture the proclivity to ‘reality-testing’ that seems to me crucial. But
it is from this that she develops her remarks about the continued
importance of phantasy to ‘reality-testing’ itself:
the postponement of satisfaction and the suspense involved in the

complicated learning and thinking about external reality which the
child presently accomplishes – and for increasingly remote ends – can
only be endured and sustained when it also satisfies instinctual urges,
represented in phantasies, as well.
(Isaacs, 1952, p. 108)
There is therefore a sense that enjoyment, akin to the enjoyment of

hallucinatory satisfaction, if not identical with it, is continually pro-
vided through the activity of thought. Isaacs goes on to talk about this
in relation to learning, but it can equally be applied to activism.
For Isaacs, as for most object-relations theorists, play is important
here. Based on her own work, she suggests that the child re-creates the
past through play, adapting the details to the present, and that this is
tied in with its ability to think about the future, or ‘if’ thinking. This
recalls Freud’s point about fantasy itself, and its use of the present to
combine past and future, a point also made by theorists of utopia.
Phantasy and perception
The task of seeking in the ‘real world’ something corresponding to

unconscious phantasy is not, however, a straightforward one. Klein says
we must remember that ‘the young child’s perception of external real-
ity and external objects is perpetually influenced and coloured by his
phantasies, and that this in some measure continues throughout life’
(1946, p. 40). Julia Segal has emphasized the importance of this aspect
of Klein’s theory:
Children relate to the whole world through their unconscious fan-

tasies. Nothing is seen simply as it is: some kind of unconscious
fantasy is attached to every perception: structuring, colouring and
adding significance to it.
(1992, p. 29)
Phantasies are described as ‘tools’ or ‘basic assumptions we use to live

by’ (1992, p. 31). As Segal explains, such a view emerged from Klein’s
experiences with her own children:
Listening to her son Erich at the ages of 4 and 5, with the insights
of Freud’s work on dreams, Klein found that he saw his mother
and the other people around him through ‘phantasies’ which were
constructed from external reality modified by his own feelings and
existing beliefs and knowledge. His perception of his mother was
clearly influenced by his own emotional state. When he was angry
with her, he saw her as a witch threatening to poison him. When he
was happy and loving towards her, he saw her as a princess he wanted
to marry.
(1992, p. 28, emphasis added)
It is clear that for Kleinians phantasy is involved in the act of percep-

tion as though it were a kind of lens. But Klein implies that these lenses
can be more or less opaque. Klein’s work is founded on the possibility
of seeing reality uncoloured by phantasy, even if this is a rarity. Alterna-
tively, we can relate to the outside world almost solely as a projection of
phantasy. But again, this is a rarity, and a sign of disturbance. Most of
the time we remain receptive to something of the thing itself. We do not
choose the objects onto which we project aspects of ourselves without
regard for the reality of those objects (Klein, 1955). As Klein says:
This inner world, which can be described in terms of internal rela-

tions and happenings, is the product of the infant’s own impulses,
emotions and phantasies. It is of course profoundly influenced by his
good and bad experiences from external sources. But at the same time
the inner world influences his perception of the external world in a
way that is no less decisive for his development.
(1955, pp. 141–2)
Taking things one step further, Segal outlines the relationship between
the role of phantasy in both perception and motivation, arguing that
phantasy actually steers us towards particular things in the external
world: ‘Seeking confirmation of our goodness or badness, we find peo-
ple and situations which tell us we are good or bad’ (2000, p. 31).
Phantasy can therefore become a self-fulfilling prophecy, but through
symbolization in which we search for representatives in the external
world of objects in the internal one (Segal, 2000, p. 54). Our interest
in the outside world exists by virtue of symbol-formation and subli-
mation. We are interested in objects in so much as they represent the
objects of unconscious phantasy. It is important to recognize here that
Klein is a profoundly dialectical thinker. There is a dialectic at work
between the external world and the internal world of phantasy. But
the two are not conflated. Isaacs argues that, whilst the ontological sta-
tus of unconscious phantasy must be accorded as much importance as
external reality, one issue for psychoanalysis is to identify when and
under what conditions the two are in harmony. Kleinians adhere to the
project of trying to disentangle what in a person’s perception comes
from their inner world, and what from reality. What is crucial though
is that phantasy is not to be considered something set aside from either
perception or action in the external world, but as something guiding it.
The phantastic nature of perception links closely to another concept
Klein takes from Freud and extends in significance, and that is ‘pro-
jection’. Again, this is used in various ways (see Spillius et al., 2011).
In general terms it refers to the attribution of something internal to an
object in the external world, or perhaps more properly to a phantasy of
having expelled something bad into the external world. Abraham made
the link between projection and anal expulsion (Spillius et al., 2011).
The thing projected could be a bad internal object phantasied as the
cause of somatic pain such as hunger, or a part of the ego. Segal says
that through projection ‘perception is distorted so that, for example, if
someone or something is defined as bad, any goodness in them is simply
not seen’ (1992, p. 34).
However, our actions in the real world, and therefore the interven-
tions we make in it, always push back into our internal world, even
if these are prone to a phantastic reworking in themselves. A dialectic
is established between introjection and projection. But it is important
to remember that this is a dialectic that could not exist were it not
for the part played by the external world from the ‘outside’. If there
is a bar to this, it arguably exists only in the form of projective iden-
tification. This is a controversial term in Kleinian theory. Spillius, on
the one hand, argues that in current usage by British analysts, there is
no distinction between projection and projective identification, as all
projection involves identification with the projected attribute (see, for
example, Spillius et al., 2011). Segal (1992, p. 36), however, distinguishes
projective identification from projection as follows:
Projection can be thought of as perceiving someone else as having

one’s own characteristics: projective identification involves a more
active getting rid of something belonging to the self into someone
else . . . . In more normal forms of projection the other person may be
perceived as having his or her own characteristics too: projection is
less damaging in phantasy.
One of the major differences is that what is projected into the other is
deeply denied in the self. There is therefore more of a sense that this part
of the self exists in the other person, and at the same time a decreased
ability to see the other person for what they really are (see also Bion,
1959, as cited in Spillius et al., 2011).
For Klein (1952, p. 202), hallucinatory satisfaction is denial and arises
because of frustration in the external world. Isaacs’s (1952) discussion
of hallucinatory satisfaction draws heavily on, and does not contradict,
Freud’s own discussion of the subject. Isaacs suggest that in the very
young infant phantasy has an omnipotent character. It is expressed not
as ‘I want to’, but as ‘I am’. ‘The wish and the impulse, whether it be
love or hate, libidinal or destructive, tends to be felt as actually fulfilling
itself, whether with an external or internal object’ (p. 85). Rudimen-
tary phantasies are characterized by primary process thought only. This
she relates directly to Freud’s hallucinatory gratification. Isaacs adds that
when hallucination inevitably breaks down, just as it does in Freud’s
account, loving phantasies turn to aggressive ones, which Isaacs then
links to what she sees as Freud’s (1911) discussion on projection in the
same paper. But projection of the bad object does not abate pain either.
She goes on to echo Freud by saying, ‘it is only slowly that he learns to
distinguish between the wish and the deed, between external facts and
his feelings about them’ (Isaacs, 1952, p. 85). This process can also be
prolonged through auto-eroticism and masturbation, which attempt to
deny loss.
Isaacs explains that with the development of perception, vision is
no longer related to the somatic (in other words, we do not see what
we feel). The bodily elements in perceiving and phantasy are thus
repressed, and vision is de-emotionalized. ‘It is “realised” that the
objects are outside the mind, but their images are “in the mind” ’ (1952,
p. 105). However, crucially, these perceptions do not lose contact with
phantasy completely. Perceptions influence the mind ‘from their repressed
unconscious somatic associates in the unconscious world of desire and
emotions, which form the link with the id; and which do mean, in uncon-
scious phantasy, that the objects to which they refer are believed to be
inside the body, to be incorporated’ (1952, pp. 105/6). Again, uncon-
scious phantasy serves as a model that shapes perception. Segal (1922,
p. 43) gives the example of when a child calls their teacher ‘mum’. This
shows that the ‘internal good mother-phantasy is used to relate to and
understand other women as well as the mother’.
Many phantasies seem totally real: others have attached to them an

awareness that things are not really like this. Klein’s son Erich said
‘I know it isn’t really like that, but I see it like that’; at other times
he did not know it ‘wasn’t really like that’, either because he was
too young to know (that he could not make babies out of ‘poo’, for
example) or because he did not want to know (that he had been so
angry with his mother while she was away that he had wished she
was dead, for example).
(Segal, 1922, p. 31)
This points to two modes of phantasying. When Erich says, ‘I know it

isn’t really like that, but I see it like that’, he is separating phantasy
from reality. This is the kind of post ‘reality-testing’ phantasy that Freud
distinguished from hallucinatory satisfaction.
In the case where Erich ‘did not know “it wasn’t really like that” ’, it is
not, however, clear when, and to what extent, what is happening ceases
to be unconscious phantasy. This can only be resolved by returning to
Freud’s comments about thinking in images being more closely related
to the unconscious than thinking in words. Isaacs is very clear that she
considers phantasies to be older than ‘words and conscious relational
thinking’, both ‘racially’ (in other words, in the development of human
beings) and developmentally within the infant. They are determined by
a ‘logic of emotion’, rather than a conscious logic (1952, p. 89). Rather
dubiously, she refers to the existence of meaning as pre-dating language.
In the Controversial Discussions Isaacs attempted to clarify the Kleinian
point that early phantasy was sensorial rather than verbalizable, and
that therefore any attempt to put it into words necessarily made it
sound more sophisticated than it was (Hayman, 1989, p. 107). Hayman
also makes the point that earlier phantasies are ‘edited’ or subject to
retrospective sophistication when elicited from older children. Much of

Klein’s evidence for this comes from what is known about non-verbal
communication. In clear contrast to the dominant view subsequent to
the linguistic turn, Isaacs says:
Words are a means of referring to experience, actual or phantasised,

but are not identical with it, not a substitute for it. Words may evoke
feelings and images and actions, and point to substitutions; they do
so by virtue of being signs of experience, not of being themselves the
main material of experience.
(1952, p. 89)
Believing she is following Freud, she argues that words exist in the con-
scious mind only, and as the unconscious mind pre-dates the conscious
one, so phantasies must pre-date words. A much-discussed example is
that of the flapping shoe. A pre-verbal infant had screamed at the sight
of a flapping sole on her mother’s shoe. Only later did she ask where the
shoe had gone, and express verbally her fear that it might have eaten
her up.
Some methodological points should be made here. Isaacs is clear that
the existence of unconscious phantasy can only ever be inferred. But, as
she says, psychoanalysis is based on inference in any case. Isaacs identi-
fies a number of ways in which the existence of unconscious phantasy
can be inferred by the analyst, including observation of: emotions of
which the patient is unaware, what is not being said, inappropriate
emphasis, repetition, inconsistency, idiosyncrasies of speech, how the
patient selects relevant facts, denials, changes of affect, posture and
gait, handwriting, bodily accidents, as well as the more familiar analytic
tools – dreams, associations and the transference. Children’s play is also
seen as revealing phantasy in the same way as adult dreams and symp-
toms; it represents adaptation to reality as well as expressing phantasy.
Furthermore, Isaacs goes as far as to say that our adult character, per-
sonality and attitudes are also manifestations of unconscious phantasy.
Drawing on Freud, ‘as if’ behaviour or reactions are also indications of
unconscious phantasy (if the patient is acting as if they believed their
mother was dead, for example). For Isaacs, part of analysis consists in
revealing to the patient the unconscious phantasies that underpin these
observable manifestations.
Isaacs’s one omission, surprising considering she refers to day-
dreaming in setting up her definition of unconscious phantasy, is the
patient’s conscious fantasies. This could, of course, be taken as an
indication that for Isaacs/Klein conscious fantasies more often than

not evade unconscious phantasy rather than betray it. But then Isaacs
does use examples when conscious fantasies are (perhaps too trans-
parently) read as indicators of a corresponding unconscious phantasy,
for example an older infant pointing to his mother’s nipple and say-
ing ‘that’s what you bit me with’. If putting phantasies into language
introduces a foreign element belonging to later development and the
pre-conscious mind, then such a practice seems dubious. One way
through this impasse is to suggest that conscious fantasy reveals some-
thing about the unconscious phantasy on which it is based only when
read through the kinds of analytic sensitivities outlined previously. That
is to say, that we posit some connection when, for example, the patient
places ‘undue’ emphasis on the fantasy, or perhaps the association to the
fantasy is blocked so that it is the one aspect of subjectivity that cannot
be explained. This difficult task is aided, if Isaacs is right, because there
is a genetic continuity of phantasy over time, even whilst it is prone to
‘kaleidoscopic’ changes over time.
The normalcy of phantasy
Isaacs (1952, p. 82) argues that ‘unconscious phantasy is fully active in

the normal, no less than the neurotic mind’. To phantasy is normal,
and indeed entirely necessary as the instincts cannot operate without
phantasy. Indeed, Klein (1961) argues that not being able to phantasize,
that is to add emotional significance to perception, is a sign of distur-
bance. Lemlij (1995, p. 166) says of an imaginary car made of chairs that
it would be pathological to think it was a car but also to be unable to
imagine it as a car.
Isaacs then makes a crucial point:
The difference between normal and abnormal lies in the way in

which the unconscious phantasies are dealt with, the particular men-
tal processes by means of which they are worked over and modified;
and the degree of direct or indirect gratification in the real world and
adaptation to it, which these favoured mechanisms allow.
(1952, p. 82)
Here the point is again about the mode by which we relate to phantasy.
If a person lives life through phantasies that colour their perceptions,
then we might talk of abnormal development, and expect signs of dis-
turbance. If, however, we relate to our phantasies in ways that allow
contact with the real world, then normal and healthy development is
possible.
This might bring to mind Freud’s distinction between primary and
secondary process thinking. However, the distinction Klein is making is
not necessarily simply between hallucinatory satisfaction and healthy
adjustment. She allows, much more than Freud, that we are capable of
living life through phantasy without adjusting ourselves to external real-
ity (though perhaps not indefinitely). Maturely, a person will engage in
‘reality-testing’, which ‘involves examining the results of such phantasy
operations on others as well as discovering the limits of the effectiveness
of such phantasies’ (Segal, 1992, p. 31). The child’s ability to mate pre-
conceptions (phantasies) with reality depends on their ability to tolerate
frustration in the external environment (Infante, 1995). If it cannot tol-
erate disillusionment, then it may resort to omnipotent phantasy, then
projective identification and then psychosis.
Anxiety and phantasy
There is another key feature of Klein’s theory of phantasy that separates

it from Freud’s, and this concerns the nature of phantasy as wish-
fulfilment. Klein accepts that our anxieties are phantasmatic, including
those anxieties we subsequently counter with satisfying phantasies.
In fact, there is everything to suggest that for Klein anxious phantasies
(of a persecutory kind) precede those more positive ones in psychic
development. She says that ‘the child’s earliest reality is wholly phantas-
tic, he is surrounded by objects of anxiety’ (1921, p. 221). Klein under-
stands these phantasies through the importance she places on the death
instinct, a relatively late development in Freud’s own work. Indeed it
is often argued that Klein overemphasized aggressive phantasies at the
expense of libidinal ones (see Britton, 1995). For Klein, the life instinct
diverts the death instinct outwards, away from life itself, and onto
objects in the external world. Projection ‘originates from the deflection
of the death instinct outwards and in my view helps the ego to over-
come anxiety by ridding it of danger and badness’ (1946, p. 6, cited in
Spillius et al., 2011).
We phantasize about our persecution by our parents because we have
attacked them in phantasy. Oral attacks involve sucking dry or biting
the breast, emptying out the good in the mother, whilst anal attacks
involve filling up the mother with excrement or dangerous substances
(see Segal, 1992). We have a fear that the harm done to these objects or
part-objects in phantasy is real. The real failures of the external parents
are then seen as signs of malicious intent or revenge on their part. The
infant projects their own anger onto the parent, and what might be
benign neglect is reworked through phantasy into deliberate attack.
Klein can therefore be taken, following the lines of the original
Freudian controversy, as emphasizing the child’s own phantasies in the
genesis of childhood anxiety, rather than real parental behaviour. Segal
(1992, p. 29) puts it as follows: ‘Klein thought that the importance of
parents’ actual behaviour lay in the way it was taken by the child as con-
firmation or disproof of existing phantasies’, and ‘however well or badly
parents behaved reality was less monstrous than the child’s phantasies’.
It is the anxiety associated with such phantasies that is counterposed by
phantasies of a positive nature.
Later, she says:
In hallucinatory gratification, therefore, two interrelated processes

take place: the omnipotent conjuring up of the ideal object and
situation, and the equally omnipotent annihilation of the bad per-
secutory object and the painful situation. These processes are based
on splitting both the object and the ego.
(Klein, 1946, p. 7)
Here it is clear how both kinds of phantasies are involved in what she
calls the ‘splitting’ of parental introjects. Initially this splitting occurs in
relation to part-objects so that both a good and bad breast are phanta-
sized. Later, the parent might be integrated, but still introjected as two
contrasting imagos of the same parent; as both frightening and highly
idealized (Klein, 1958, p. 241). Segal illustrates this with an analysis of
Cinderella’s fairy godmother and wicked stepmother (1992, pp. 29–32).
But Klein believes that making splits between different people persists even
longer (Klein, 1948). She argues that the contrast between persecutory
and idealized objects is ‘the basis of phantasy life’. One implication
of this is that the imago that provides pleasure and the imago that
withholds pleasure can each be constructed only in relation to the
other (a point loosely shared by Lacanian theory; see, for example, the
reference to Klein’s theory of splitting in Stavrakakis, 2010).
Such a concept of the function of phantasy brings us to Isaacs’s com-
ments about the relationship between phantasy and wish-fulfilment:
The relationship between phantasy and wish-fulfilment has always

been emphasized; but our experience has shown, too, that most
phantasies (like symptoms) also serve various other purposes as
well as wish-fulfilment; e.g. denial, reassurance, omnipotent control,

reparation, etc. It is, of course, true that, in a wider sense, all
these mental processes which aim at diminishing instinctual tension,
anxiety and guilt, also serve the aim of wish-fulfilment.
(1952, p. 83)
Isaacs then suggests that the content of various urges is all represented
through phantasy; not just wishes, but also anxieties, triumphs, love or
sorrow.
In the quote previously mentioned Klein also draws attention to the
ego being split along with the object. The ego develops in relation
to both good and bad imagos and these parts are also kept separate.
Though necessary initially, in the longer term this is liable to cause ‘deep
splits in children’s perception of themselves’ (Segal, 1992, pp. 49–50).
Klein says:
The processes I have described are, of course, bound up with the

infant’s phantasy-life; and the anxieties which stimulate the mech-
anism of splitting are also of a phantastic nature. It is in phantasy
that the infant splits the object and the self, but the effect of this
phantasy is a very real one, because it leads to feelings and rela-
tions (and later on, thought-processes) being in fact cut off from one
another.
(1946, p. 6)
In order to take this discussion any further it is necessary to contex-

tualize splitting within Klein’s general theory of psychic development,
specifically the distinction between paranoid-schizoid and depressive
modes of functioning.
Klein’s two positions
Klein’s theory of paranoid-schizoid splitting (e.g. Klein, 1935) emerged

from her discovery of the infant’s aggressive and violent phantasies
towards internal representations of the breast/mother. Splitting protects
the mother imago from these destructive phantasies by dividing her
as an internal object into two representations: a good mother towards
whom the loving child directs libidinal affection, and a bad mother
towards whom the hateful child directs anger and death-wishes (Klein,
1937). Introjecting objects as idealized imagos serves as a defence against
persecutory anxiety. As Segal (1992, p. 32) puts it,
a phantasy of a nipple which is loving, feeding, creative and good at

first needs to be kept quite distinct from phantasies of a nipple which
is biting, hurtful and terrifying. Without this splitting the baby may
not be able to distinguish fully between love and cruelty and to feed
trustingly.
In normal development, the mother provides experiences to fuel both

of these constructions. She provides nourishment and care, and nec-
essarily leaves the infant frustrated on occasion. It is the existence of a
loved good mother that ‘safeguards against one’s own hate’ (Klein, 1935,
pp. 288, 265–6) and gives the infant confidence that the mother can sur-
vive the child’s phantasmic attacks. This is therefore part of normal and
healthy development. The preservation of good object is the basis for
establishing a good object and a good self, and enables ‘inner wealth
[to be] given out and re-introjected’ (1957, p. 189). Paranoid-schizoid
functioning is not, however, desirable in the long term. It is an aggres-
sive and arrogant, but nonetheless shaky way of relating to the world,
and involves a ‘my life or yours’ paranoia with an attendant inability
to share or provide care for others (Segal, 1992). The paranoid-schizoid
position is associated with ‘projective identification’.
As Segal (1992) explains, a shift from the paranoid-schizoid to the
depressive position takes place from the age of about three months. Here
the infant starts to be able to integrate experience rather than split it.
It therefore becomes aware of the wholeness of objects, and the whole-
ness of itself. The breast is now seen as a part of the mother. It is through
the development of thought that the infant is able to hold on to a rep-
resentation of the absent mother. This means that her absence is not
experienced simply as the presence of a bad attacking mother (and nor
is the good mother simply hallucinated). This mother is more resilient.
The infant no longer fears that its own anger is capable of destroying
the mother. The same mother can therefore be loved and hated simulta-
neously. It is at the same time that it can hold the mother in mind that
the infant can come to conceive of the mother as holding the infant
in mind.
The depressive position is characterized by ‘waves’ of negative emo-
tion. It brings with it a sense of loss of the good object (i.e. the devoted
mother and endlessly giving breast) and a mourning for it. It also brings
a sense of guilt too for the infant’s phantasized attacks on what is now
understood to be one and the same loved mother. Phantasies ‘soon
involve guilty feelings and remorse over destructive phantasy – impulses
felt towards what is becoming recognised as the enormously loved
mother’ (Hayman, 1989, p. 107). Isaacs says it is probable that by the

second half-year the baby is ‘becoming alive to his own conflict of feel-
ings of love and hate, dependence, desire and fear’ (1952, p. 108). This
contradicted the position taken by Anna Freud who believed the infant
only becomes aware of this conflict during the Oedipus complex when
external prohibitions are internalized.
In Klein’s view, persecutory anxiety gives way to depressive anxi-
ety rooted in concern for the mother. It also brings jealousy, as the
infant realizes it is not the centre of the mother’s world and that she
turns to other objects. But this too is a form of maturity inasmuch as
it acknowledges that good persists in the mother even when not pro-
vided to the infant. This is therefore a move beyond envy in which
the withheld goodness is destroyed in phantasy. It necessitates a sep-
aration between infant and mother, and the infant’s turn to other
objects.
The depressive position initiates a new form of phantasy. The infant
phantasizes about repairing the damage done to the mother. It may
not be able to effect any reparation in reality, but it sees itself as act-
ing to repair the mother. The father plays an important role here. He
initially breaks the ‘illusion of mother-child unity and completeness’
(Segal, 1992, p. 47), but can also be phantasized as an ally in repairing
the mother. Kleinians have tended to see creative work, especially art,
as manifestation of reparative phantasy. Klein (1948, p. 36) associates
reparation with mania.
It is within the depressive position that we are able to show care for
others; care for them as people in their own right, and not simply on
the basis of what they are to the self. Such is normal development, but
problems arise when parents do not provide the material to enable the
child to develop positive object relations in the first instance:
Destructive impulses and phantasies, fears and distrust, which are

always to some extent active in the small child even in the most
favourable circumstances, are necessarily very much increased by
unfavourable conditions and unpleasant experiences. Moreover –
and this is also very important – if the child is not afforded enough
happiness in his early life, his capacity for developing a hopeful
attitude as well as love and trust in people will be disturbed.
(Klein, 1937, pp. 338–9)
Potential problems also arise from how parents deal with the child’s
phantasy:
the way in which the omnipotence-feeling is strengthened or

destroyed by the child’s first serious affection determines his devel-
opment as an optimist or pessimist, and also the alertness and
enterprise, or the unduly hampering scepticism of his mentality.
For the result of development not to be boundless utopianism and
phantasy but optimism, a timely corrective must be administered by
thought.
(Klein, 1921, p. 21)
Here Klein appears to be repeating Freud’s distinction between the types

of mental functioning. ‘Thought’, or secondary process thought specif-
ically, appears as a necessary intervention in phantasy. It is through
this that the infant reconciles itself to reality. Working through the
depressive position means moving from imagination to perception. It is
important to note that the relationship between parenting and the
psychic development of the infant is by no means straightforward, how-
ever. Klein (1937, p. 319) contended that narcissistic symptoms, such as
an inability to make sacrifices or develop consideration for others, can
result from either parental overindulgence or harshness.
Finally, but importantly, it should be noted that for Klein, paranoid-
schizoid mechanisms are not confined to a childhood stage, but they
can be employed again in times of adult stress and guilt (Segal, 1992,
p. 33). And once objects are integrated they can then be chopped up in
phantasy. Protecting a good object can be a defensive reaction against
the guilt suffered by depressive adults. The notion of switches between
paranoid-schizoid and depressive mechanisms (also important to Bion)
has been central to the appropriation of Klein by social theory, including
some of my own work on activism (Ormrod, 2012).
Klein, phantasy and social theory
It is often noted that, unlike Freud, Klein avoided extending psycho-

analysis to address social issues (Alford, 1989). This is perhaps ironic
given that she took her lead from Freud’s later work in which the social
nature of the individual was a key theme (Alford, 1989). But, whilst
a relatively marginal group compared with those who have drawn on
Freudian psychoanalysis, there are those who have sought to explore
the usefulness of Kleinian theory in the development of social theory.
Early contributions in various fields were made by Hanna Segal (on art
and war, for example). A major systematic contribution was then made
in the US by C. Fred Alford, but the mantle is now being carried by an
important group of British social theorists. Michael Rustin and Anthony

Elliott are arguably the most significant interventions in relation to the
subject matter of this book, but contributions have also been made by
Stephen Frosh, Ian Craib, Wendy Hollway and a number of others.
Rustin on Klein and socialism

In a 1989 essay, Rustin considers the relationship between Kleinian psy-
choanalysis and socialism. In doing so he sets out both (caricatured)
objections to such a coupling and what he sees as the points of con-
vergence. In the process he touches on some themes of this book. His
outline of possible disconnections between the two is worth quoting at
length:
The stress in analytic work on the processes of one’s own mind and
feelings, and the insistence in Kleinian work on the individual’s tak-
ing responsibility for his or her emotions, undermines certain forms
of political commitment and action. This tends of its very nature
to attribute agency and responsibility in a collective way, and to
generate, as its normal response to perceived wrongs, activity that
is external in its objectives, if open to other interpretations as to
its inner motivation. Such externalisation of feelings can become
frenetic, and one’s experience can be deeply structured by a split
between the idealisation of the project of change and denunciation
of the many evils of the present. Such powerful preconceptions are
not infallible guides to realistic understanding and action. This is a
frame of mind in which the events described by the morning news-
papers can produce almost daily indignation and the impulse to
take place in activities – meetings, demonstrations, magazines – that
respond to these. The patient work of mastering the detail of a field of
understanding, or even the apparently less demanding task of main-
taining an organisational form which can achieve such ends, can be
casualties of such an impassioned activism.
(pp. 9–10)
He suggests this is often seen as a developmental passage between a

‘youthful radical politics’ and later commitments to family and profes-
sional life (relating to this himself). The implication is that the latter
represents a more mature development. And he continues:
There is a more general psychoanalytic perception of political activity

as such, as inevitably representing displacements and projections of
inner feelings. Idealised political commitments are seen in this view

as irrational, to a greater or lesser degree, and as diverting attention
away from the more fundamental problem of individual maturity.
(1989, p. 10)
It is clear that according to this view, political activism is associated with

paranoid-schizoid functioning. It involves a process of splitting, with
the positive being projected into an idealized future, whilst the present
is seen only in negative terms. Here then is a return to the Marx–Engels
critique of utopian socialism, but in even more irreconcilable terms. The
bridge between present and past becomes impossible to establish not
only because the utopian’s energies are misdirected, but because each
takes the form it does precisely because that which would threaten to
contaminate it is consigned to the other. Rustin also implies the lack
of ‘reality-testing’ involved here. A depth of understanding of the com-
plexities of the real situation is impossible. The activist is also seen as
vulnerable to manipulation by agitators; in this case through the media
(agitator theories are discussed in depth in Part II). Nor is secondary
process thinking possible. The activist cannot plan campaigns or secure
organizational structure capable of ensuring the continuity to realize the
phantasized future.
As part of his argument, Rustin makes a very strong case that Freud’s
psychoanalysis was underpinned by liberal-individualist assumptions
(both methodologically and politically). This he sees in Freud’s funda-
mental understanding of the conflict between the libido of the individ-
ual and social forces of repression, and what for Rustin is Freud’s project
of individual emancipation (Rustin surely goes too far in describing this
as a ‘hedonistic’ project of ‘libidinal self-gratification’). As he says, in the
context in which the Frankfurt School and Reich were writing, it was
possible to paper over the differences between this liberal-individualist
psychoanalysis and the socialist critique of social repression, especially
through their analysis of fascism. But for Rustin, the differences showed
through in the wake of May 1968: ‘the reality was more individualist
than the rhetoric, since gaining freedom from restraints, both internal
and external, doesn’t and didn’t produce spontaneous social harmony’
(1989, p. 25).
For Rustin, the Kleinian position resolves some of this contradic-
tion between psychoanalysis and socialism. His central argument is
that Klein, unlike Freud, assumes that humans have a fundamentally
moral nature (1989, p. 19). We are ‘constituted as social beings in a pri-
mary and continuing interdependency with others’ (p. 20). This is a
contentious distinction. It is important to understand what Rustin bases

it on. He sees Freud’s psychoanalysis as aimed primarily at relieving the
individual from guilt originating in the superego. For Klein, on the other
hand, guilt is seen as an important and necessary emotion in healthy
development. ‘Klein’s “depressive position” arises from the recognition
of the pain suffered by or inflicted on others, and as an essential part
of relatedness’ (1989, p. 20). Rustin goes on to say that ‘whilst commit-
ted to the development of individuality, object-relations theory starts
from the assumption that social relationships are always primary’ (1989,
p. 20). This is potentially highly misleading, and to an extent contra-
dicts the previous point. For the infant begins life with object-relations,
but these initially bear no relation at all to the reality of its social rela-
tions. Attention to external objects as subjects in their own right begins
only with the guilt of the depressive position. Thus, we are not origi-
nally social but become social, even if this might take place earlier and
more gradually than in Freud’s account. Finally, Rustin suggests that
Klein is more positive about the possibility of healthy social relations
than Freud. Specifically, he suggests her concept of reparation is more
optimistic than Freud’s notion of sublimation. Reparation involves an
active desire to mend and care for others, whilst sublimation can be seen
as a form of repression. Again, this perhaps overlooks the more positive
things Freud has to say about the basis of the social bond in love. But
Rustin concludes that whilst Klein might be criticized for her relative
overemphasis on ‘hate, envy, greed, etc’, her prognosis is better than
Freud’s. The suggestion seems to be that insofar as these emotions are
attached to objects according to Klein, they can be contained, whereas
Freud’s understanding is rooted in instinct.
At the same time, Rustin is clear that this positive outlook is not the
same as a utopian vision of a reconciled future, or even as a hopeful
radicalism. He says that ‘there will be competition and conflict in any
conceivable social arrangement’ (1989, p. 37). And he clearly does not
hold any faith in the notion of an undifferentiated society. He sees
specialization as necessary, and appears to support the Kleinian ten-
dency ‘to view hostility to differentiation as mainly a defence against
the pains of separation, jealousy and envy’ (1989, p. 38). But he does
see utopian content in the objects-relations view of humankind and for-
wards this as its contribution to socialism. His view is best thought of as
a qualified utopianism. He argues that Klein provides ‘a fully articulated
basis for a social, altruistic and moral view of humankind, with all the
heavily realist and anti-utopian qualifications one must make of this’
(1989, p. 31).
There is certainly much of value in Rustin’s juxtaposition of these

two contrasting takes on Klein’s compatibility with socialism (which, it
should be said, is conceived of very loosely indeed). But it also serves
to reinforce the existing pathologizing of activism as an immature
(paranoid-schizoid) way of relating to the world, whilst mature social
relations are associated with the depressive position, and a set of softer,
caring and less aggressive emotions. Although Rustin avoids saying this
directly, Klein’s theory of the psyche is not in itself especially compatible
with ‘socialism’, but her appreciation of the depressive position might
be compatible with a certain kind of socialism. In fairness to Rustin, he
does at least make his social-democratic politics clear. And he is reflexive
about the fact that Kleinian theory dovetails with the social democratic
emphasis on the family, and with a valorization of ‘mothering’ (at the
expense of a critique of the equation of mothering with women). So if
Rustin is a socialist, he is not one to see value in radical activism; quite
the opposite.
Alford, cavitas and reparative reason

Fred Alford’s work represents another attempt to outline a Klein-inspired
social theory (drawing on existing work by R. E. Money-Kyrle, Elliott
Jacques and Dorothy Dinnerstein in particular). His main focus has
been on developing a Kleinian version of the Frankfurt School project,
especially a reworking of Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. But his work
does outline some important issues in using Kleinian psychoanalysis in
social theory. His programme addressed four concerns shared with the
Frankfurt School: (1) reparation for past suffering; (2) remembering past
suffering; (3) reforming reason; (4) reconciliation with nature (Alford,
1989, p. 8). This he presents as, by nature, a project of reparation and
guilt. But Alford takes issue with Marcuse for presenting Freud’s Eros as
‘a source of opposition to and transcendence of the prevailing order, a
bulwark of the “Great Refusal” ’ (1989, p. 9). The problem stems from
the nature of Freud’s own understanding of Eros, referencing Plato as he
does, because Eros is greedy and never satisfied, and treats others merely
as objects towards self-realization. This is not then good grounds on
which to build a reparative project. Alford prefers the Kleinian tradition
of thinking about ‘love’ (his own term is ‘cavitas’). I am not inclined
to agree, but for Alford, the detail of Kleinian thinking can be disre-
garded, because the truth of her theory lies in ‘her thesis that we make
the world by projecting our love and hate into it’ (1989, p. 7; see also
Segal, 1992, p. 40). Nonetheless, Alford is clear what the Kleinian ver-
sion of love means, and how it differs from Freudian Eros. ‘Love, in
the Kleinian tradition, is less oppositional than Eros (though it is also

less liable to corruption, what Marcuse called “repressive desublima-
tion”) and more inclined to come to terms with imperfect people and
an imperfect world’ (Alford, 1989, p. 10). He thus makes even clearer
than Rustin that Kleinian concepts of mature love do not make for rad-
ical political action. He believes Klein valued ‘harsh truths over utopian
ideals of harmonious integration of individual and society, but she also
constructs a theory whose implications are essentially tragic, especially
for the group’ (1989, p. 10; I am also reminded of Craib’s The Impor-
tance of Disappointment (1994)). It is tragic in the sense that pity and
fear motivate most human behaviour, that there is a greater discrepancy
between individual and group morality, and that even in mature adults
the balance of love and hate can switch easily. There is, for Alford, no
hope of a fully reconciled society, and he criticizes Nancy Chodorow
and Jessica Benjamin for their visions of a future beyond the need for
psychoanalysis (a criticism that could arguably also be levelled at Freud
himself).
Despite similarities, Alford diverges from Rustin (an early paper of
whose he cites) on a few grounds. One is that he acknowledges, where
Rustin perhaps does not, that Kleinian theory is not inherently politi-
cal. That is to say, that whilst we can demonstrate that humans have
the capacity to act in caring ways, there is nothing internal to the the-
ory that suggests they should do so. The other is that whilst Rustin aligns
his reading of Klein to socialist politics, Alford insists that what he calls
‘reparative reason’, the Kleinian political project (which ‘does not deny
aggression but rather seeks to integrate it, recognizing that humanity
must impose its categories on nature in order to survive and prosper’,
whilst remaining concerned with the welfare of the object, 1989, p. 22),
does not fit anywhere on the spectrum between liberal individualism
and socialist communitarianism. Alford’s issue with the latter is that
others are loved only to the extent to which they come to be seen as a
part of the extended self. Alford’s hope is for a love that does not deny
difference. It is based not on an identification with others, but with the
internal good object: a security that allows difference to be accepted and
valued.
Part of the problem, however, is that Alford sees this as achieved
largely only in the private sphere. In large groups he believes split-
ting phantasies take place in which hate and aggression are projected
onto the other. The group defends against anxiety in this way, but will
‘forestall the emotional conflicts that lead to moral learning’ (1989,
p. 21). He makes observations about the group that recall early theories
of crowd psychology (see Chapter 5): ‘large groups often behave in

ways that would shock the consciences of individual members were the
same acts undertaken by individuals qua individuals, not group mem-
bers’ (1989, p. 20). The group is seen as reinforcing paranoid-schizoid
splitting by naming persecutors as an external evil and identifying righ-
teous friends. This eases anxiety ‘at least for a while, possibly for life’,
but prevents members entering the depressive position (1989, p. 44,
as parody). Alford therefore adds to Rustin’s concerns about paranoid-
schizoid phantasy a concern with the group’s role in amplifying such
phantasies.
Elliott and a Kleinian notion of reflexivity

Anthony Elliott, though not addressing social movements particu-
larly, draws different conclusions about the relationship between social
change and phantasy, also from within a Kleinian framework (although
he pays intellectual debts to a confusingly wide range of theorists).
Equating fantasy with a concept ‘of the representational expression of
desires and passions’, he makes the point encountered in many other
writers mentioned in this book when he says that ‘fantasy – as a realm
of psychic conflict and division – frames our contemporary social and
political worlds from the start, and it is therefore essential for an under-
standing of the trajectories of both personal and cultural life’ (1996,
p. 2). In Subject to Ourselves the central focus is on how we relate to this
fantasy frame in modern and postmodern life respectively. He outlines
the project of the book as follows, employing the concept of ‘modes of
fantasy’:
I shall develop a theorization of two essentially contrasting object-

relational configurations, one that is linked to modernity and
the other to postmodernity. The object-relational configuration of
modernity suggests a mode of fantasy in which security and enjoy-
ment are derived by attempting to control, order and regulate the self,
others and the socio-political world. The object-relational configura-
tion of postmodernity suggests a mode of fantasy in which reflective
space is more central to identity and politics, the creation of open
spaces to embrace plurality, ambiguity, ambivalence, contingency
and uncertainty. A central argument of the book is that contempo-
rary society, not without certain tensions and contradictions, deploys
modern and postmodern reveries simultaneously.
(Elliott, 1996, p. 4)
In situating his understanding of late/postmodernity, important tar-

gets of Elliott’s are the reflexive modernization theories of Beck and
Giddens. Drawing approvingly on Lash & Urry’s criticism, Elliott sees
this perspective as overemphasizing the cognitive aspects of subjectivity
in late modernity. Of Beck, he says, ‘there is little room accorded to the
transformative power of subjectivity – of fantasy, drive and affect – in the
signifying stakes of reflexive modernization’ (1996, p. 72). Beck’s under-
standing of activism is a particular casualty of this (see Ormrod, 2013).
Elliott acknowledges that Giddens’s concept of the agent is more com-
plex. His point of attack is that Giddens’s theory of reflexivity rests on
the attainment of ontological security. In understanding this, as Elliott
says, he reworks Erik Erikson’s and Donald Winnicott’s ideas, especially
the latter’s theory of ‘transitional objects’.
Later on I have reason to draw on Winnicott’s (1971) distinction
between dissociative fantasying and other forms of imaginative activ-
ity. Here I confine myself to a few comments about transitional objects
and the part they play in negotiating between fantasy and the external
world in normal development. Winnicott, like Freud and Klein, under-
stood the intrusion of the external world through the reality principle as
potentially painful. The emergence of a transitional object is one coping
mechanism able to help the infant ‘bridge the gap between fantasy and
reality’ (Davis & Wallbridge, 1981, p. 57). The transitional object, often
a bundle of wool or corner of a blanket in Winnicott’s time, provides
defence against anxiety. Its peculiar quality is that it is experienced as
neither fully external to the infant but nor is it hallucinated, that is to
say it does not exist purely in fantasy as an object of the internal world
of the infant. In facilitating the transition from the infant’s experience
of the whole universe as an undifferentiated part of the infant to a real-
ization of a ‘not me’ external object, the transitional object is neither
‘me’ nor ‘not-me’. In this way the infant slowly surrenders its narcissism
and omnipotence. It is the physical qualities of the blanket that allow
the infant to experience something of the reality of the external world.
And it is the permanence and ability of the object to withstand attack in
fantasy that gives the infant a basic sense of trust in the external world.
There is for Winnicott (1971, p. 51) a ‘direct development from transi-
tional phenomena to playing, and from playing to shared playing, and
from this to cultural experiences’. Playing involves the manipulation of
external objects in accordance with dream (or fantasy) so as to provide
pleasure. The ‘potential space’ in which play takes place is also the space
in which mature adults can play together and develop shared meaning
through ‘mutuality in experience’. I will return to some of these ideas at

points in what follows.
What Elliott dislikes is that Giddens associates transitional objects
with routine and emphasizes the importance of this in screening out
anxiety. Elliott’s point is that anxiety cannot be done away with so
easily. I am not sure Elliott is quite fair to Giddens. Giddens does not
assume the ontological security of the agent; rather he is interested in
how it is that the agent (re)negotiates ontological security. In many
senses, Giddens’s version of the late modern agent is of a highly anxious
social actor. Indeed, I have criticized him precisely for underestimating
the extent to which fantasy can shore up a (political) identity (Ormrod,
2009).
Elliott then puts forward his own alternative conceptualization of
reflexivity, seen as an imaginative, critical activity, rather than calculat-
ing self-monitoring (1996, p. 92). Stated in Kleinian terms: ‘reflexivity is
conceived of as the outcome of a dialectical interplay between paranoid-
schizoid and depressive modes of subjectivity and intersubjectivity, an
interplay that underlies attendant transformations of social, cultural and
political life’ (1996 p. 75). Both modes of subjectivity are therefore con-
sidered necessary, in the right balance, for progressive social action. His
account of the importance of the depressive position echoes much of
what was encountered in Rustin mentioned previously:
the depressive mode is the principle medium through which reflec-

tive subjectivity is attained and the richness of reflexive rationality is
generated. The depressive mode of subjectivity is the world of whole
object relations: experience of self and other develops in relation
to loving and hating feeling-states, an ambivalence of emotion that
forms the basis for a creative engagement with the outside world.
This reflexive awareness of emotional ambivalence brings with it the
capacity to feel concern and guilt about the fate of other persons.
(Elliott, 1996, p. 76)
Clearly influenced by post-Kleinian thought, Elliott goes on to describe

the depressive mode as holding ‘a psychological space between reality
and fantasy, the capacity to generate and recognize transitional space’
(1996, p. 77). Elliott expresses the emergence of the depressive posi-
tion in a distinctive way, combining Kleinian and (implicitly) Lacanian
vocabularies, as the ‘eruption of an otherness at the heart of the self and
of its internal objects’. In other words, if paranoid-schizoid subjectivity
operates through an attempt to maintain a stable self-other (good-bad)

boundary, then the depressive position emerges from the discovery that
the inside is contaminated with the outside.
Like Rustin, Elliott’s description of paranoid-schizoid functioning,
taken alone, is far less positively framed. ‘In the paranoid-schizoid
mode, personal and interpersonal experience is generated through
the defensive use of omnipotent thinking, idealization, denial and,
crucially, projective identification’ (Elliott, 1996, p. 77). One man-
ifestation of paranoid-schizoid splitting that Elliott associated with
modernity is the imagined ‘control of the other’ referring to mas-
tery, control, omnipotence, and translation into action as ‘modes of
paranoid-schizoid processing’ (1996, p. 91). This is represented in sci-
ence, technology and bureaucracy (referencing Castoriadis’s critique
of the illusion of mastery in technoscience). Touching on activism,
he later says, ‘the danger is that a manic attachment to an idealized
object will degenerate into an ideological commitment to absolute truth
and knowledge. In this context, the absolute (State, God or Cause) fil-
ters out awareness of ambivalence in human relationships and cultural
association’ (1996, p. 84, emphasis added).
But the important argument is that paranoid-schizoid subjectivity is
nonetheless a vital part of progressive social life. ‘This realm of tyran-
nizing paranoid-schizoid experience is not sealed off from processes
of reflexivity. On the contrary, here lies a central domain of genera-
tive cultural experience, and a key defensive component in the social
reproduction of knowledge and of reflexivity’ (1996, p. 77). The ‘gen-
erative’ role of paranoid-schizoid subjectivity emerges in Elliott’s work
because of an association between paranoid-schizoid subjectivity and
action. Discussing what Ellul calls technology’s ‘push from behind’ (as
opposed to being motivated by any future-directed purpose), Elliott says:
That ‘something’ which must be done, and which is experienced

culturally as a kind of drive to action, serves to wipe out anxiety –
of ambivalence, of alternative social possibilities, of the fragility of
knowledge. In Freudian terms, such a translation into action occurs
as a traumatic injunction, indifferent to personal and social fears,
anxieties and tensions. The domain of the superego, we have entered
the Law of modernity.
(1996, p. 80)
Again the choice of language suggests an uneasy blending of Kleinian,

Freudian and Lacanian ideas. The outcome is perhaps clearer than the
theoretical framework. Modern paranoid-schizoid functioning drives us

(Elliott loses sight of the individual actor momentarily here) towards
action that safeguards fantasized boundaries. These fantasies are thus
realized in material actions. At the same time, the Lacanian-infused
vocabulary hints that it is precisely these boundaries that enable enjoy-
ment to be had in their transgression, such as the punishment of a guilt
projected onto the other.
What matters is the monitoring of action associated with paranoid-
schizoid and depressive functioning respectively. For action driven by
paranoid-schizoid subjectivity might have material effects, but it is
action towards a psychic, rather than a material reality. That is to say,
it is divorced from any kind of ‘reality-testing’. It attempts, not to test
fantasy against reality, but to safeguard fantasy through the creation of
a world structured in its image. The paranoid-schizoid mode of func-
tioning acts, and this pre-empts some of the discussion of Chapter 3, to
sustain fantasy.
In a case study of UN intervention in Bosnia, Elliott then refers to the
translation of fantasy into action as an ‘escape into action’. The phrase is
a particularly interesting one, given that many common-sense notions
of fantasy see it as itself an escape from action. Elliott describes how
such changes from depressive to paranoid-schizoid modes of generat-

ing experience, and also from paranoid-schizoid to depressive states,
are vital to creative living in the personal and social domains . . . . The
paranoid-schizoid mode and the depressive mode fuse to produce a
dialectic of experience: paranoid-schizoid turbulence breaks up the
closures of thought and affect reached in the depressive mode, just
as depression serves to negate the psychic dislocations of pure loving
and pure hating.
(1996, p. 77)
‘Creative living’ necessarily involves an ability to see things both as they

are and also as other than they are:
In post-Kleinian terms, such taking in and holding of such con-

tradictions and antagonisms can be characterized as the dialectical
interplay of paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, an interac-
tive psychical process which is essential for the symbolization of
things other than that which are. For no creation occurs where
imagination is inhibited or repressed.
(Elliott, 1996, pp. 93–4).
Elliott’s call is for knowledge to be ‘turned back on itself to examine its

presuppositions’ (1996, p. 93). His focus on institutions of modernity,
especially on the UN role in his Bosnian case study, means he places
emphasis on the relationship between unconscious phantasy and the
discourses consciously employed by the UN to understand the conflict.
But there is a layer of analysis he only skirts over, though what he
says is very important. He begins the case study with the role played
by media images of Muslim suffering in galvanizing Western interven-
tion. These images, he says, helped construct the fantasy that what was
taking place was a genocide, tapping into the history of genocide fan-
tasies. This subsequently enabled the framing of the war as a tragic
civil war requiring attention to practical consequences rather than to
political causes. In determining the public reaction (including mobiliza-
tion), these images were crucial. Ironically, it is precisely this imaginative
level that recedes from Elliott’s analysis. His focus becomes more on the
underpinning of UN discourse by unconscious mechanisms, and less on
images of the conflict, which mediated this relationship. I think these
images, as a way of ‘seeing’ the war on a part-conscious level, are the
most important thing to understand.
Finally, in his discussion of the Bosnian war, Elliott refers to the
Vance–Owen plan for the division of Bosnia as ‘the carving up of global
political space itself, operationalized through a mechanical splitting of
identity and difference, of the inside and the outside’ (1996, p. 88). This
splitting of geographical space has been important historically in a num-
ber of utopian projects organized around space, and the strengths and
limitations of such a mode have been well understood by David Harvey
(2000), whose work I have drawn on in conjunction with Elliott’s in
understanding the outer space protection movement (Ormrod, 2012).
Summary
Klein’s work problematizes many of the distinctions that Freud, and

those who have based their social theory on his work, saw in more
straightforward ways. But in doing so, it illuminates more about the
issues involved in relating to the world through phantasy. Whilst retain-
ing an ontological distinction between phantasy and reality, Klein
points to the difficulties we have in making such distinctions episte-
mologically. She shows that our perception is necessarily modelled on
unconscious phantasy. Unpicking the unconscious phantasy from its
conscious manifestations is a difficult analytic task but, with her follow-
ers, she provides guidelines for how the unconscious phantasy can be
inferred from what is manifest on the surface. Whilst hers is an inher-

ently social model of the individual, Klein has less to say about how
these phantasies form the basis for the structures that govern social
life and how these may be changed. It is here that the interventions
of psychosocial theorists are important. These theorists pick up the
Freudian premise that social life is based on imaginary identifications
and explore how different modes of relating to phantasy are implicated
in them and in political action.
Rustin valorizes the depressive position and the possibilities it holds
for caring social relations more in tune with the integrated reali-
ties of social life, but links this only to a reformist social democratic
project whilst (perhaps unintentionally) pathologizing radical action.
This is associated with paranoid-schizoid functioning in which uncon-
scious phantasies play too great a role in our understanding of the
world. Alford is in agreement with much of this, though less opti-
mistic still about any progressive collective project. His major contri-
bution is in outlining the ways in which the collective itself ampli-
fies paranoid-schizoid splitting. Elliott’s position differs insomuch as
paranoid-schizoid splitting is seen as having a role to play, in bal-
ance with depressive functioning, in creative projects. Paranoid-schizoid
phantasy is especially associated with action, but action that serves to
materialize the unconscious phantasies on which it is based. Depressive
functioning allows recognition of the complexities of social reality.
3
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory
Whilst Freud’s theory was itself inherently social (Craib, 1994), Lacan
is often credited with the most radical development of psychoanalysis
in respect to our understanding of society and politics (e.g. Stavrakakis,
1999). His influence on contemporary social and cultural theory means
he cannot reasonably be ignored (Homer, 2005, p. 1). This is particu-
larly true in this book, as it is within Lacanian political theory that the
relationship between fantasy and social movements has most directly
been addressed. For Lacan and Lacanian theory, fantasy lies at the very
heart of subjectivity. The only true alternative to fantasy is psychosis.
For Lacan’s disciples, his revision of Freud in respect to fantasy means
that the latter’s ‘view of fantasy cannot be maintained in psychoanalytic
theory’ (Evans, 1996, p. 60, emphasis added). In particular, those who
work with the classical dualism between fantasy and reality are likely to
be branded as guilty of ‘naïve realism’ (Žižek, 1989, p. 47). Glynos (2011,
p. 83) refers to earlier theories as reflecting ‘staid “false consciousness”
conceptualizations of fantasy’.
Those who use Lacan’s philosophical topologies as the basis for social
and political theorizing have quite reasonably introduced him as a
philosopher first and foremost (Žižek belongs in this camp). On the
other hand, there are those who remind us, usefully, that his work
emerged from a psychiatric clinical background. The abstraction of
his clinical model of subjectivity in order to serve social and political
thought is tackled later in this chapter. I begin with Lacanian theory
itself, attempting to trace the ontological constellation of fantasy, col-
lectivity, the unconscious, reality and action in Lacan’s own peculiar
lexicon.
As is often bemoaned, Lacan came to express the relationship between
the numerous terms he redefined and invented through algebraic
98
Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 99
formula or mathemes. Lacan’s matheme describing fantasy (or at least

the neurotic fantasy) is:
S/ ♦ a
This denotes the impossible but necessary relationship between the

‘barred’ or ‘castrated’ Subject (S/) and the imaginary object of the other
or l’objet petit autre (a). As Fink (1995, p. 174) writes, the ‘diamond or
lozenge (poincon) designates the following relations: “envelopment-
development-conjunction-disjunction” (Ecrits, p. 280), alienation (∨)
and separation (∧), greater than (>), less than (<), and so on’. Put
more simply, it points to the contrary relationship between the two
sides (Leader, 1997, p. 95). The object a is perhaps the single key
term in Lacanian theory to which it always returns. As the ‘object
cause of desire’, it is inherent to Lacan’s understanding of the nature
of desire.
In what follows, I try to unpack the premises on which this math-
eme is based. Because of the centrality of fantasy to Lacan’s theory
this necessitates a grand tour around the contours of his whole theo-
retical apparatus. The now standard complaints/disclaimers made about
Lacan’s work in secondary texts all apply here. In brief: the vast majority
of Lacan’s work was delivered through seminars, recorded in note form
by his students, and he did not publish a book in his lifetime. Most of
the notes on Lacan’s seminars have yet to be published, let alone trans-
lated into English. Lacan’s terminology does not map onto Freud’s in
any straightforward way; he used existing terms in new ways, and intro-
duced a massive array of neologisms, shifting the meaning of the whole
psychoanalytic vocabulary as he did so. Furthermore, he altered the
meaning of these terms during the course of his life. And as with Klein
and so many others, he claimed to be discovering the true meaning of
Freud’s work whilst at the same time quite blatantly taking from it some-
thing very different to what Freud intended. Finally, in keeping with his
rejection of ‘understanding’ as an analytic goal, Lacan’s work did not
aim to assist the audience in conceiving of themselves as understanding
him, but to continually jolt their thinking. This has meant that Lacan’s
influence on social theory has emerged as much through engagement
with various secondary interpretations of his work as with the original,
and this chapter is no exception. The task of ordering discussion repre-
sents a challenge here even more than in previous chapters, and there
are numerous points at which full explanation must be suspended for
later; a point that never ultimately arrives.
Earliest infancy and the pre-symbolic Real
Lacan’s entire model of the Subject begins with a hypothesis about the
experience of the newborn infant that is remarkably orthodox. The
infant does not make a distinction between itself and the outside world.
In particular the mother is not experienced as separate from the infant
as she is continually close and attentive.
The foundation of Lacan’s theory lies in the belief that the existence
of such a state can only ever exist as a retrospective hypothesis. Cru-
cially, it is a state that can never be adequately imagined or captured in
language. The nature of this state is precisely that it exists before imag-
ination (which is based on relations of similarity and difference) and
before language. It is broken by these very things, and therefore can-
not be recovered through them. As Fink (1995, p. 24) puts it in one of
the most highly acclaimed accounts of Lacan’s theory of subjectivity:
‘Thinking always begins from our position within the symbolic order;
in other words, we cannot but consider the supposed “time before the
word” from within our symbolic order, using the categories and filters
it provides.’ We are therefore necessarily only ever aware of this undif-
ferentiated nirvana as something we have emerged from, but which we
could never know. It is, inasmuch as birth itself involves the ultimate
perception of difference and the first spur to consciousness, that an
argument can be made that this state only truly exists in the womb.
It is in not being amenable to symbolization that marks this state
as belonging to the ‘register’ or ‘order’ of ‘the Real’. The Real, for Lacan,
exists in opposition to, whilst also being necessary for, the other registers
of ‘the Imaginary’ and ‘the Symbolic’. Four points of clarification are
important here.
First, the Lacanian Real (which is often capitalized to underscore pre-
cisely this point) is not the same as ‘reality’ as it is used in everyday
language. Reality as we usually speak of it is precisely the world we can
comprehend and articulate. It is socially constructed through language.
For Lacan, reality is Symbolic. Every concept used by social science is
necessarily Symbolic (including, for Butler, ‘the Real’ itself!). The Real,
by contrast, is that which stands outside of, or resists, symbolization. For
reasons discussed later, the Real can never be integrated into language.
That is to say that language will never provide the words to capture
every aspect of the universe. Even if it is possible to talk of a ‘progres-
sive symbolization of the Real’ (Fink, 1995), as more and more words are
invented to try to capture new dimensions of difference, the Real will
still always be there.
Secondly, in the previous paragraphs I have already begun to talk

about the Real as encountered after Symbolization (it is encountered
through traumatic eruptions that disturb the Symbolic order; the order
of what can be said). This Real, which relies on the failure of the
Symbolic order in order to define its contours (Real2 ), is conceptually
distinguishable from the pre-Symbolic Real (Real1 ) just hypothesized,
which exists before language cuts into it.
Thirdly, as Sean Homer (2005, p. 82) points out, especially in Lacan’s
early work, the Real included ‘brute materiality’. Hence Lacan’s theory
argues against the reduction of social and political life to language, as
ignorant critics might suggest, and most definitely holds a place for the
material world within his ontology. It is only that ‘the natural world’
as we know it, for example, is a discursive construct. Brute material-
ity, in those aspects of it we cannot articulate within current discursive
frameworks, continually erupts traumatically into our notions of ‘the
natural world’. Stavrakakis (1999, p. 70) cites Evernden’s (1992, p. xi)
poetic characterization of nature as merely ‘the amorphous mass of oth-
erness that encloaks the planet’. It is mistaken, therefore, to suggest
that Lacanian theory is anti-realist in the sense of denying any ‘real-
ity outside of language’. The point is that language does not ‘refer to’
this Reality – quite the opposite. Stavrakakis (1999) refers to Lacan as
‘real-ist’ rather than realist. Jessop (1990) refers to an ‘empty realism’.
Fourthly, the Real, albeit that which is inarticulable, is not unconscious.
That is to say that it is not repressed. What cannot be known cannot,
after all, be repressed. And for Lacan the unconscious is constituted
by language (as is so often noted in any summary of his work). The
unconscious emerges only with entry into language (a point of depar-
ture for many noteworthy critics, including Ricoeur, Lyotard, Kristeva
and Laplanche, according to Elliott, 2009, p. 108).
It is worth taking a minor detour at this stage to discuss Lacan’s notion
of the drives (sex, self-preservation and death – all ultimately being
reducible to the latter for Lacan). A good argument can be made that
the drives belong to the Real (see Bailly, 2009, p. 102), being unrep-
resentable and undifferentiated/unlimited (though, again, not repressed
or unconscious). In some interpretations of Lacan’s work, the drives are
the kernel of the Subject (Homer, 2005, p. 74). A point of clarification
again needs to be made here. The drives are not the same as instincts.
‘Instincts’ impel an organism towards predetermined behaviour in rela-
tion to objects in our environment that are capable of satisfying a
biological need (I tend to think of a beaver building a dam). Whilst ani-
mals are born with such behaviours and objects predetermined (though
ethnologists are challenging this to an extent, see Fink, 1995), humans

are not (see Evans, 1996, p. 85). Instincts kick in due to biological need.
Drives are not merely activated by biological need nor can they ever be
satiated. That is to say that they do not operate on the basis of Freud’s
pleasure principle (as Lacan interprets it); they do not seek the most
efficient way to relieve displeasure. They are a constant force capable of
directing us towards pure and excessive enjoyment; enjoyment for the
sake of enjoyment which can become indistinguishable from pain. This
is what Lacan calls jouissance. Neither the objects towards which our
drives are directed, nor even the erogenous zones through which the
relationship with the object is manifest, are instinctually determined.
Lacan argued that the erogenous zones are produced through the social
organization of the body; anal pleasure being made possible through the
existence of social prohibitions on excretion, for example. ‘The “living
being” (le vivrant) – our animal nature – dies, language coming to life in
its place and living us’ (Lacan cited in Fink, 1995, p. 12).
From proto-concepts to the mirror stage:

Entering the imaginary
Until it is 6–18 months old (corresponding to Freud’s primary narcis-

sism), the infant has no sense of itself as a bounded entity. The various
sensations that belong to it – hunger, thirst, the movement of legs and
arms – seem as disconnected with each other as with the external world
(especially when it comes to the mother, who may be easier to control
that the infant’s own body). Accordingly, it has no concept of oth-
ers either. Up until this point, the perception of differences is limited
to ‘proto-concepts’: comfort – discomfort, and presence – absence (see
Bailly’s, 2009, emphasis on this). These retrospectively provide the mate-
rial for concepts proper. The mother’s sustained gaze also provides the
foundations for the subsequent development of an image of the self
(Bailly, 2009).
It is as the 6–18-month-old enters the ‘Mirror Stage’ that Lacan’s devel-
opmental theory begins to take shape. For mature development, the
infant must pass through two processes. The Mirror Stage marks their
entry into the Imaginary order, the Oedipus Complex their entry into
the Symbolic order. Whether these are conceived of as two discrete pro-
cesses/stages or not will depend on whether the focus is on Lacan’s
earlier or later work. In early work, imaginary identification takes place
before the subject’s symbolic social determination (see, for example,
Lacan, 1966, p. 2). There are certainly those Lacanians who emphasize
that the independence of the Imaginary is conceivable, a possibility that

might facilitate the narrowing of one gap between Lacan and Klein. Fink
(referring to Saussure, whom I discuss later in the chapter) makes this
ontological point in relation to animals (it should be noted here that for
Lacan animals do not communicate through language proper, but rather
by code in which sounds have fixed meanings, see Evans, 1996, p. 25):
while Saussure teaches us that language is essentially structured

by difference, we cannot assume that all difference is perceived
by virtue of language alone. The animal kingdom – in which the
imaginary predominates, the symbolic generally playing little or no
part – proves that difference is already operative at the level of the
imaginary.
(Fink, 1995, p. 189)
In Lacan’s later work there is little room for entry into the Imaginary
without the operation of the Symbolic, and it has been noted that the
Mirror Stage takes place at the same time the infant begins to grasp
language (though before it can speak itself). Lacan’s criticism of Klein
focuses on her giving too much independence to the Imaginary (Evans,
1996).
Leader’s (1997) critique of Isaacs hinges around her assumption that
meanings come before words; ‘her notion of phantasy rested on the
supposition of meaningful but nonverbal experiences’ (p. 86). Isaacs
uses the example of the flapping/biting sole to show that phantasy
existed before language. But Leader says it shows the opposite; the sole
functions as a signifier. Lacan rebukes Klein for ignoring the signifier
and confusing phantasy with imagination (see also Evans, 1996, p. 61).
In the Lacanian view, fantasy is an ‘image set to work in a signifying
structure’. Whilst fantasy may not be in the form of words, it takes on
significance only through what is not captured/understood in words:
‘words really are the scaffolding of phantasy, even if, into this scaf-
folding, a non-linguistic object is inserted’ (Leader, 1997, p. 91). The
idea that the imaginary can exist without such scaffolding remains a
contentious issue.
The leap into the Imaginary occurs when the infant is first able to
recognize itself in the mirror (or other reflection). Such a recognition
is encouraged by parents who hold the infant in front of the mir-
ror, and support it verbally by naming the reflection in the mirror as
the child (and this is one sense in which the Symbolic is already at
work). The infant’s ‘narcissistic’ fascination with its mirror image is as
something that simultaneously both is and is not itself. It corresponds

to the infant, but is not literally the infant, only a reflection of it seen
from the outside. From this point on, the infant identifies itself with its
reflected image – a move that allows it to begin thinking about the self
as a conceptual whole (the I or ego). It can begin to understand others’
actions as oriented towards the ‘me’ in the mirror. Lacan emphasizes
this is always a mis-recognition. The ‘I’ that emerges is not Descartes’
cogito or the ego of ego psychology. The Subject can now conceptual-
ize itself, but it cannot know the agency that does the conceptualizing.
Sartre’s insistence that ‘the ego was an object in the world perceived by
the subject’ was a central influence on Lacan in this respect (see Homer,
2005, p. 20). The Subject is therefore founded on a fundamental split
or division. Narcissistic concern with holding on to a coherent view of
the self, an Ideal-I, is wholly necessary, however, in order to hold the
Subject together. The identification with an image that is not the sub-
ject is often referred to as alienating. This can, however, be a misleading
term. Alienation can be taken to infer a pre-existing authentic self from
which one is alienated. But as Homer (2005, p. 26) shows in his rebuttal
of Elliott’s (1998) criticism of Lacan, this is a misunderstanding of the
radical nature of Lacan’s version of alienation. In Lacan’s account it is
the act of identification that, through what it cannot capture, creates the
Subject from which one is alienated.
The phallus and the pre-Oedipal phase
The idea of le petit autre (the other in the mirror) emerges in relation to
other people who are also seen as ‘little others’, imagined to be more
or less similar to the self, and the objects of projection and identifica-
tion. It is at this point that the mother’s presence or absence is properly
perceived as the presence or absence of an object. As other psychoanalysts
would agree, the mother’s ‘failure’ as an object, whether necessary for
the infant’s longer-term happiness (for example, the need to work to
provide food) or because of other things that pull her away from the
child (such as siblings, or the father), is deeply disturbing. The issue goes
beyond the experience of displeasure to indignation at why the mother
is failing the child at all. It is the existence of the drives, as distinct from
biological needs, that means we want more from the mother than the
removal of discomfort. Our want is for the mother who existed only
for our pleasure, and not as a separate object. Meeting our needs in a
perfunctory way is not enough.
It is the mother’s apparent failure to love in this sense that must
be explained and it is from this that the imaginary phallus originates.
As a way out of its uncomfortable position, the child imagines that its
mother herself is incomplete and needs or lacks something; something
she sometimes finds in the child but other times elsewhere. Here the
term phallus does not refer to the biological penis; it is a category term in
Lacanian theory named after something that generally fulfils this posi-
tion in patriarchal society. The phallus exists in a pre-Oedipal triangle
between the Subject and Mother all the time the infant can imagine it
has or can be the phallus. It is in this sense that Lacanians hold that
desire is always the desire of the Other (the desire to have what the
other desires in order to be desired oneself). Lacanian theory emphasizes
the importance of the ‘che vuoi’ question; the infant is obsessed with
the question of what it is the mother wants (from them), and which
they therefore want to possess. A clear distinction is sometimes made
between this pre-Oedipal phase, which Lacan refers to at one point as
the ‘first time of the Oedipus complex’ (Evans, 1996, p. 150), and the
Oedipus complex itself, and this in some interpretations involves the
castration of the Imaginary phallus with the arrival of the Symbolic
Phallus (see Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 51).
In later work, Lacan suggests that the Symbolic Phallus is a signifier:
‘the signifier of the desire of the Other’ (1986, p. 290, cited in Evans,
1996, p. 142). But it is a signifier for the mother’s desire; a desire that
cannot be conceptualized in positive terms. The object of the mother’s
desire could not be imagined prior to the arrival of the Symbolic Phallus.
It is therefore also a signifier for a lack of a signifier in the Other
(in Evans, 1996, p. 143), and therefore a signifier without a signified
(Leader, 1997). In any case, imagining one has the phallus is not suffi-
cient for healthy social adjustment, and is associated with fantasies of
omnipotence, narcissism and psychosis. Normal development requires
the entry of the child into the Symbolic register through Lacan’s version
of the Oedipus complex proper.
Born into language
To understand what Lacan believes language does to the Subject, it is

first necessary to appreciate his theory of language itself. Lacan begins
with Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics (via Levi-Strauss’s
structural anthropology) and the idea that linguistic signs are composed
of two components – signifier (the sound-image) and signified (the con-
cept). Homer (2005, p. 40) suggests there are three fundamental lessons
to be drawn from Saussure for Lacanian theory. The first is that ‘language
precedes consciousness; as speaking subjects we are born into language’.
The second is that ‘language does not reflect reality but rather produces
one’s experience within the constraints of the given language system

and that language system, to some extent, conditions the nature of one’s
experience’. Third, ‘language is not an absolute and fixed system within
which a singular meaning can be located, but it is rather a set of differen-
tial relations’. Whilst the first two points emphasize the role of language
in determining social life, the third asserts that individual words or acts
can only be understood in the context of the whole ‘language’ of which
they are a part. Lacan agreed with Saussure that signifiers were them-
selves arbitrary and made sense only in relation to other signifiers. The
red light on a set of traffic lights, to give the standard example, makes
sense only in relation to the other lights. It could not mean ‘stop’ if the
light was always red. Indeed, an omnipresent signifier is an impossibil-
ity as it could have no meaning. And yet it could equally well be that
the red light meant ‘go’ and the green meant ‘stop’ (this needing to be
qualified slightly as the signifier red has a history that must be taken
into account).
But Lacan radicalized Saussure against himself. Despite insisting that
signifiers functioned only through difference, Saussure remained wed-
ded to the idea that the universe of signifiers and the universe of
signifieds aligned themselves in such a way that a one-to-one correspon-
dence existed between them (that language itself had the structure of
a nomenclature, as Laclau, 2005, p. 25, puts it), leading to Saussure’s
theory being labelled by some as logocentric. The signifiers were arbi-
trary, and different signifiers could have been used, but they would
always be mapped onto the universe of signifieds. For Lacan, no such
correspondence could exist whereby signifiers were tied to their signi-
fieds. That is to say no signifier is the expression of its signified. Lacan
(1966, p. 150, emphasis added) refers to the ‘illusion that the signifier
answers to the function of representing the signified, or better, that
the signifier has to answer for its existence in the name of any signi-
fication whatever’. There is no signifier in language that refers to its
signified. Meaning is always ‘deferred’, as the ‘meaning’ of the signifier
is ascertained only through its relation to other signifiers, the mean-
ing of which in turn only comes from other signifiers. In this sense no
distinction between signifiers and signifieds can be maintained; every
signified is also a signifier. A dictionary provides the standard example.
Looking up the ‘meaning’ of any one signifier, we are always directed
towards other signifiers, and onwards again eternally. There is no way
out of a dictionary back to the world beyond. The universe of signi-
fiers exists on its own plane, and its relationship to meaning is barred.
There is no entry that points to anything else but other words. Even one
such entry would anchor the whole of the rest of language, but no such
‘transcendental signifier’ (to use a term central to Derrida’s thought)
exists.
A paradox emerges from this; the word that names that beyond
words (for another formulation see Fink’s, 1995, discussion of Bertrand
Russell’s paradox of the ‘catalogue of all catalogues that exclude them-
selves as entries’). Of course this place is never occupied by the Symbolic,
only by the Real. The Real, Fink thus suggests, therefore always chinks
through as a paradox in the symbolic order.
There is a further implication of this. In any pair of oppositional terms
(such as heterosexual/homosexual), each term relies on the other to give
it meaning and they therefore have something in common; it is together
that they make sense. For any oppositional terms, it is necessary to ask,
‘what is the name of the totality of which these two opposing terms are
the component parts?’ This question points to the necessity of another
signifier; a signifier for the totality itself. However, as Saussure identi-
fied, this signifier must rely on its own oppositional term in order to be
meaningful. And so we are forced to admit to an ‘outside’ to this fun-
damental antagonism (this can be seen in the expansion over time of
the acronym LGBTI, which ‘Q’ aims at halting). Any language used to
describe the totality of social relations is therefore flawed and incom-
plete, or in Lacanian terms irretrievably lacking the signifier that would
complete it. One consequence of this in post-structuralist analysis is that
it is the construction of the oppositional terms themselves that is much
more interesting than which of the two terms is chosen (the deconstruc-
tive trick is to reveal the third, hidden, choice on which an apparent
choice is founded).
This means that the alienated or lacking subject can never find
him/herself in language (can never find the signifier that captures their
identity). Instead, their lack is reproduced in a linguistic system that is
itself lacking (Stavrakakis, 1999). No symbolic identification can there-
fore ever be a positive one; it can never refer directly to the essence
of the subject (or its ‘singularity’, Stavrakakis, 2010). It merely locates
the subject’s symbolic identity within the universe of signifiers (in other
words, within society). A realist objection at this point might be rightly
derided as naive. There will always be a bar between the subject and
their ‘identity’. But of course any attempt to name this gap in lan-
guage merely shifts this problem around. It is precisely this slippage
that language allows that opens up the possibility for metaphorical
and metonymical operations, which, as we will see, are crucial for the
infant’s development.
The Oedipus and separation: Entering the symbolic
To become social subjects, children must enter into language, that is to

say they must constitute themselves in terms belonging to the language
into which they are born. As Sean Homer says, ‘what is crucial here
is that the subject assumes its position within the symbolic order and
is thus able to act’ (2005, p. 74, emphasis changed). This is crucial; if
humans are not driven by instinct then their action in the world can
only be guided by deliberate orientation to symbolic objects.
Entry into language occurs in the first instance through the accep-
tance of the ‘paternal metaphor’. This enters into the imaginary triangle
as a substitute for the phallus. To explain her failings, the mother
invokes what Lacan referred to as ‘the Name-of-the-Father’. This does
not necessarily have to literally be the father’s name. Again, it is a cate-
gory term named after its common manifestation in patriarchal cultures.
As Bailly (2009, p. 77) says, the father’s name is something concrete
and easy to communicate (for example, ‘Mummy and Daddy must have
their dinner now’). But it might equally well be ‘I have to go, Mummy
must go to work’. In accepting the paternal metaphor the child not only
submits to the father’s intrusion into its imaginary relationship with
its mother, but also accepts the metaphoric nature of that interruption.
The Name-of-the-Father does not express the phallus but metaphorically
substitutes for it. It means that for the child the phallus is replaced by
a signifier. What keeps its mother from it is not the phallus, but a pro-
hibition. This is the first act of repression wherein the mother’s desire
becomes ‘the lost “signified” ’ (Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 45). The Name-of-
the-Father, also presented by Lacan as the ‘no’ of the father, represents
for the boy a point of Symbolic recognition. The object of the mother’s
desire (our desire) is repressed in favour of the Name-of-the-Father. This
is the first acceptance by the infant of acceptable/unacceptable relations;
their first encounter with the Law.
Crucial to understanding Lacan’s notion of the Law and prohibition is
its foundation in a Hegelian concept of dialectic (influenced by Kojeve’s
seminar). In this case, the Law is established in a dialectic relationship
with the desire to transgress the Law (Freud, 1930, had spoken of the
‘attraction of whatever is forbidden’, p. 20). The Law should not be
understood as an institution designed to curb any ‘real’ desires, but
as the prohibition of an absent desire (l’objet petit a) that brings into
being the desire it forbids. It creates the illusion of possible jouissance
‘if only it wasn’t there’. The desire to break the Law is why the Law
exists in the first place. In other words, we want to desire something,
and the Law teaches us what to desire by forbidding it. It is therefore,

wholly perversely, through this that enjoyment or jouissance (jouissance2 )
is made possible outside of the Law. Lacan’s superego is distinct from
the Law, and consists of the moral imperative to enjoy, but enjoyment
beyond the Law (Evans, 1996, pp. 200–1). It does not accept reality as
an explanation for failure (Lacan cited in Dean, 2013).
This is the moment of our castration or the ‘barring’ of the Subject
(hence the symbol S/). This is Lacan’s version of Freud’s castration. It is
not about the boy’s fear of literal castration, but the moment in which
he (or she) accepts they do not have the Symbolic Phallus. The subject
has lost the phallus, but not in a material sense, only through accep-
tance of language. What is supposedly ‘lost’ comes into being at the
very moment it is accepted as lost. Hence, Lacan writes, ‘the object is by
nature a refound object. That it was lost is a consequence of that – but
after the fact. It is thus refound without our knowing, except through
refinding, that it was ever lost’ (Lacan, Seminar VII, p. 118, cited in
Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 43). From this point onwards, once the nature of
language has been accepted, we are able to substitute an inexhaustible
number of signifiers to represent desire.
It is worth clarifying the relationship between the phallus and the
object a. Stavrakakis (1999, pp. 50–1), drawing on Soler’s work (1995,
p. 267), provides a plausible interpretation. He suggests that the phallus
and the object a might ‘correspond to the same field but viewed from
different angles’. To summarize crudely, the phallus is the object missing
in the subject due to castration, whilst the object a is what is missing
from the symbolic.
The unconscious
It is important to remember that for Lacan the unconscious consists

not of biological instincts but signifiers (Lacan, 1986, p. 170; see Evans,
1996, p. 218). Hence the Lacanian dictum that ‘the unconscious is lan-
guage’, which Fink clarifies as literally meaning ‘that language is that
which makes up the unconscious’ (1995, p. 8). Fink argues that it is
mistaken to think Freud believed feelings could be unconscious. Freud
referred to ‘ideational representatives’, which Lacan translates as signi-
fiers (Fink 1995, p. 8). And as Leader (1997, p. 89) says, ‘where Isaacs
had put phantasy, Lacan put language’. Lacan (1966, p. 35) does not
mention Klein, only the emergence of a psychoanalytic concern with
the function of the imaginary (which emerged from the analysis of chil-
dren), but he raises the issue of ‘what symbolic status is to be given to
phantasies in their interpretation’. Phantasies could be understood as

signifers in their own right. As Evans (1996, p. 218) notes, this linguistic
version of the unconscious has been refuted on the grounds that Freud
excluded word-presentations from the unconscious.
It is the acceptance of the paternal metaphor and the primal repres-
sion it entails that instigates the formation of the unconscious, which
develops alongside ego formation. As Fink (1995) explains it, there are
two types of talk. ‘Ego talk’ consists of conscious, intended speech. It is
speech that we recognize as our own. The ‘other kind of talk’ is uncon-
scious, unintentional. Fink suggests we think of this as talk that happens
to the Subject. Fink reiterates the Saussurean argument that we are born
into language, and that we are therefore forced to articulate ourselves
using alien and incomplete terms that are not of our choosing: ‘The
unconscious is the Other’s discourse’ (Lacan cited in Fink, 1995, p. 4).
Lacan also says the unconscious is ‘the effect of a trans-historical sym-
bolic order upon the subject’. These words are not anchored in any
signified in the subject, but are the means by which the subject under-
stands itself. Whilst the signifiers the subject attaches to themselves
have an intended meaning through their deliberate relation to a sig-
nified, words always point to the existence of something more. Every
word the subject uses therefore means something else besides what it
supposedly means. ‘The unconscious comes into being in the symbolic
order in the gap between signifier and signified’ (cited in Homer, 2005,
p. 69). As we move through the discursive spaces we inhabit, certain
signifiers are left behind, but remain unconscious. Another way of look-
ing at the unconscious is as the memory of having been produced by
language (see Lacan, 1986, p. 52, in Evans, 1996, p. 219).
Lacan makes it clear that the unconscious is external to the Subject
(Lacan, 1986, p. 469, cited in Evans, 1996, p. 218), even though we
imagine it to come from deep inside. It is merely a stock of signifiers
that remain out there in the world but which at certain moments will
be inaccessible to the Subject, such as when external events exacerbate
the need for repression (hence ‘the unconscious opening and closing
in a temporal pulsation’, Evans, 1996, p. 218). The unconscious nev-
ertheless reveals itself in slips of the tongue, dreams, symptoms and
self-defeating acts. In the unconscious, signifiers slide around, forming
themselves into new metaphorical and metonymical (and synecdochal)
relationships with other repressed elements, rather than with their origi-
nal signifieds (Fink, 1995, p. 8). Conscious use of language maintains the
order of a chain, whereas in the unconscious the metaphorical nature
of language means all signifiers can be recombined without respect
to order. Hence ‘the unconscious is structured like a language’. Words

combine according to the rules of this unconscious language and not
through intended relations of meaning. Lacan (1986) encourages ana-
lysts to do crosswords. The combination of words in the unconscious (its
language) pays no respect to their conscious relationship for the subject.
And so (inspired by Jakobson’s understanding of language) Lacan
arrives at the point of Freud’s analysis of condensation and displace-
ment in dreams by a different route. The ‘meaning’ of dreams cannot be
understood by a therapist ‘reading off’ a standard interpretation based
on some real similarity between manifest and latent objects. Critics of
Freudian–Kleinian interpretation often attack the tendency of Freudian
analysts to see a penis in every convex object, and Kleinians a breast (see,
for example, the Jungian theorist Adams, 2004). This was not always
Freud’s method, but it was certainly not Lacan’s.
Need, demand and desire
Having discussed the subject’s constitution across the three Lacanian

registers, it is now useful to clarify a central set of concepts – need,
demand and desire – which are very clearly differentiated in Lacan’s
work when they are not elsewhere. As we have already seen, need is bio-
logical. Demands are Symbolic requests; the wants we articulate. Desire
‘is neither the appetite for satisfaction, nor the demand for love, but the
difference that results from the subtraction of the first from the second’
(Lacan, 1966, p. 287). Desire refers to the possibility of an excessive love
that provides more than what is demanded. If in Freud drive turns need
into desire, Lacan makes no such connection (see Homer, 2005).
Desire is central to giving coherence to the subject’s identity (its com-
pleteness), completing it through an object that will supposedly restore
the subject’s lost jouissance. But one of the central tenets of Lacanian
psychoanalysis is that the subject is insatiable. As Homer says:
as we seek to realise our desires we will inevitably be disappointed –

the satisfaction we achieve is never enough . . . . We constantly have
the sense that there is something more; we do not know what it is,
but we have the sense it is there, and we want it.
(2005, p. 104)
We thus displace desire from object to object as the jouissance experi-

enced is never quite ‘it’ (Stavrakakis, 1999). The reason for this is that
we are forced to articulate desire through language (even if this goes
unspoken), but this is never truly the object we are felt to have lost. This
explains how ‘we can both want and not want one and the same thing,
never be satisfied when we get what we thought we wanted and so on’
(Fink, 1995, p. 7). In fact, in different ways the hysteric and the obses-
sional both prevent attainment of the object of desire precisely so as
to maintain it. For the subject desires desire itself more than the object
that temporarily sustains desire. The hysteric keeps the desire unsatisfied
(and often denies satisfaction to others), whilst the obsessional ensures
the desire is impossible to realize (see Leader, 1997).
Another way to think about this is that desire manifests the wish
that the demand did not have to be made in the first place. The infant
who has been through the painful process of separation might make
demands of its parents, which may indeed be met, but its wish is always
that it did not have to demand in the first place. That is to say it is
a wish that harks back to the hypothesized state in which its mother
was so intently focused on it that demand was unnecessary. To make a
demand is to accept that the authority to which we make the demand is
indeed separate from us. Even its compliance with our demands cannot
erase this.
Fantasy stages desire: The seven veils of fantasy
So what of the relationship between desire and fantasy? The simple

answer from Lacan is that fantasy stages desire – it is the setting of desire
(see Laplanche & Pontalis, 1968, as cited in Homer, 2005). Fantasy is a
scenario embodying a mode of jouissance, an imaginary scene to which
words cannot do justice, and always a ‘forbidden’ scenario. Fink (1995,
p. xiii) argues that ‘fantasy stages the position in which the child would
like to see itself with respect to the object that causes, elicits and incites
its desire’. It is ‘the mise-en-scène of desire’, ‘the arrangement of every-
thing in the frame’ (Homer, 2005, p. 126). ‘Imagining’, says Cornelius
Castoriadis (1997), involves both bringing different elements into rela-
tion (the ‘noetic’ or ‘logical’ dimension) and a setting into images – the
staging of the drama (the ‘aesthetic’ or ‘sensorial’ dimension). It is not,
however, reducible to the symbolic elements that structure the fantasy.
It is an imaginary promise of full realization, not a symbolic one, says
Stavrakakis (1999) as he describes the ‘quasi-imaginary object petit a’.
The fantasy is the setting in which the object a can be positioned. This
is not the ‘object of desire’, but something within the object that is
unsymbolizable. Fantasy stages this relationship with the object a in
the context of a particular scene. I have already suggested that for Klein
phantasy cannot be captured in language, but here the more radical

argument is that only through conscious thought can the unthought
element emerge.
Supposedly ‘following Freud’, Glynos (2011, p. 70) argues that fan-
tasy is a ‘framing device that subjects use to “protect” themselves from
the anxiety associated with the idea that there is no ultimate guaran-
tee or law underlying and guiding our social existence’. As Stavrakakis
puts it, fantasy ‘only gives us a “constructed” solution as to what we
should desire and what prohibits the full realisation of this desire (this is
preferable to recognising the impossibility of such a realisation)’ (1999,
p. 151). In other words, it is not only the promised fulfilment that is
fantastic, but also the horror, loss, pain, danger and so on that this fulfil-
ment resolves. But it should be noted that the idea that ‘there is always a
good and a bad side to fantasy’ is central to psychoanalysis itself (Homer,
2005, p. 61), and as I argued in Chapter 2, Klein also accepts that what
is feared is a fantastic construction and not some ‘real’ horror.
Lacan asserted that there was one ‘fundamental fantasy’ that struc-
tures the subject’s desire (see Seminar VIII, p. 127, cited in Evans, 1996,
p. 60). It emerges in the encounter with the mother’s desire and is linked
to it (Leader, 1997). This is what remains unconscious, despite holding
the subject in thrall, and which acts as a block to free association. Leader
argues that this notion is kept constant in Lacan’s evolving work on
fantasy. He traces its origin to Lacan’s early discussion of ‘ “permanent
modes” through which the subject constitutes its objects’ (Leader, 1997,
p. 83). This points to the ‘persistent’ and ‘rhythmic’ quality of the model
provided by this image; a mould into which subsequent relations are
forced. Furthermore, ‘certain memories have been given a special value
because of their link to the fantasy’ (Leader, 1997, p. 92). Substitutions
of the terms of the fantasy can be made (different sexual partners, for
example), but its form remains. But as Homer (2005, p. 85) notes, ‘fan-
tasy is never purely a private affair; fantasies circulate in the public
domain through such media as film, literature and television’. Inasmuch
as this material is moulded in accordance with the subject’s fundamen-
tal fantasy, he suggests fantasy involves combinations of conscious and
unconscious elements (2005, p. 85).
In an essay reworked and republished in a number of places (1997,
1998, 1999), one of Lacan’s foremost interpreters, Slavoj Žižek, sug-
gests that the Lacanian theory of fantasy has seven postulates. The first
two ‘veils of fantasy’ cover notions already discussed. The first refers to
the idea that rather than representing the fulfilment of a pre-existing
authentic desire, fantasy sets desire in motion. The second relates to the
intersubjective nature of desire (illustrated with the example of Freud’s

daughter fantasizing about strawberry cake because her parents had
enjoyed her enjoying strawberry cake in the past).
The third feature is the narrative occlusion of antagonism. Here Žižek
picks up on the narrative nature of fantasy, indeed arguing that ‘fan-
tasy is the primordial form of narrative’ (1997, p. 11). By ‘narrative’,
Žižek here means simply that fantasy involves a hypothesized temporal
movement from one state of affairs to another. His argument is that this
temporalization as narrative merely involves taking the two terms of a
structural antagonism and projecting one into the past or future. ‘Narra-
tive as such emerges in order to resolve some fundamental antagonism
by rearranging its terms into a temporal succession’ (1997, p. 11). The
key point is that, as in any structural antagonism, the ‘before’ and ‘after’
are each necessary for the other to make sense. Any characterization of
a present state of affairs relies on a corresponding creation of an antag-
onistic past or future. One consequence of this is that in narratives of
loss (castration), ‘the lost quality emerged only in this very moment of
its alleged loss’ (1997, pp. 14–15).
The fourth feature is that fantasy stages the moment of castration by
the Law (or, in terms of social history, it constitutes ‘the fall’). The inven-
tion of Law is, however, necessary for the emergence of desire. That is to
say that it is only a forbidden object that can be desired. And therefore
inasmuch as we gain pleasure from desiring, we all ‘desire’ the Law in
order that we may gain enjoyment.
The fifth point is that fantasy always involves an impossible gaze.
Žižek introduces this point as follows: ‘on account of its temporal loop,
the phantasmatic narrative always involves an impossible gaze, the gaze
by means of which the subject is already present at the act of his/her
own conception’ (1997, p. 21). Crucial here is Lacan’s argument that
‘the subject’ comes into being (their conception) only at the moment
of their castration, that is to say at the moment of their entry into lan-
guage. Thus the talking Subject, in order to fantasy about his/her object,
has to be able to extract him/herself from their own history so that they
are able to see themselves before and after the moment of castration.
This is impossible inasmuch as the fantasy can only really exist from
the perspective of a particular Subject position.
The sixth point is that fantasy represents the ‘inherent transgression’
in the Symbolic. That is to say that fantasy stages something beyond the
symbolic that is necessary to the functioning of the Symbolic in the first
instance. To do this, ‘fantasy has to remain “implicit”, it has to maintain
a distance towards the explicit Symbolic texture sustained by it’ (Žižek,
1997, p. 24). If there is (as there necessarily always is) a gap in the Sym-
bolic order, then fantasy fulfils the function of giving form to that gap so
as to support the Symbolic. One of Žižek’s points is that should fantasy
stray too close to the Symbolic (too close to the articulable) then it can
no longer fulfil such a function. The incomplete, and therefore contin-
gent, nature of the Symbolic structure would be revealed. In a footnote
(1997, p. 34), Žižek refers to historical moments when fantasies become
speakable as ‘ideologico-political “regression” ’. Translating this into the
language of ideology (defined ‘in the popular sense [as] the politically
instrumentalized legitimization of power relations’), he goes on to argue
that ‘an ideological identification exerts a true hold on us precisely when
we maintain an awareness that we are not fully identical with it’ (1997,
p. 27). The provocative conclusion he draws from this is that it is the
idea of a ‘rich human person’ beneath ideology that is the very form of
ideology itself. All ideology needs reference to some ‘trans-ideological
kernel’. Without this, no ideology could have more grip on us than any
other.
The seventh feature concerns the relationship between fantasy and
empty gestures. We are forced by virtue of being born into language to
accept the terms of the choices it offers us, and yet these choices are
never exhaustive (there is always ‘that other choice’). Because of this,
when presented with choice, one has to be ruled out by some means
so as to bracket the actual options available and to stop them expand-
ing indefinitely. Fantasy ‘closes the actual span of choices’ whilst it also
‘maintains the false opening’; the idea that the choice was open. ‘Fan-
tasy designates precisely this unwritten framework which tells us how
we are to understand the letter of the Law’ (1997, p. 38). Žižek illus-
trates the ‘empty gesture’ with social situations in which we are offered
a choice, but where one option is an empty gesture that cannot actually
be taken. One of Žižek’s political arguments is that the most subversive
thing one can do is not necessarily to critique the choices available and
attempt to add others, but to take the existing rules too seriously and
accept the empty gesture. This can prove truly traumatic to the Symbolic
order.
Fantasy for Lacan can never be fulfilled or removed without obliter-
ating the subject. Having said that, the grip of fantasy can be loosened;
a technique Lacan referred to as ‘traversing the fantasy’. As Fink (1995,
p. 25) says:
While certain psychoanalysts have taken it upon themselves to

‘straighten their patients out’ regarding reality – attempting to
influence or change their beliefs about a wide range of subjects –

Lacan insists again and again that it is an analyst’s job to intervene
in the patient’s real, not in the patient’s view of reality.
Hence Lacan placed a great deal of emphasis on the capacity of analy-

sis to disturb the subject, without offering an alternative understanding
based on bringing unconscious truths to the surface (see Evans, 1996,
p. 218). Žižek explains traversing the fantasy as accepting ‘there is no
secret treasure in me’. Fink’s interpretation of traversing the fantasy
hinges on subjectivizing the external cause of desire. This implies a
move from imagining the object of desire as the lost object that will
complete the subject, to an understanding that the subject emerged with
this fantasy. Fink suggests it involves making the leap from ‘it happened
to me’ to ‘I saw’, ‘I heard’, ‘I acted’.
Historicizing Lacan
One line of criticism of Lacan, made forcefully by Kathryn Dean (2000)

is that Lacan’s description of the universal and necessary character of the
human Subject sounds much like the historically specific form of subjec-
tivity that so many sociologists identify as characterizing late modern
social life (Frosh, 1991, p. 82, asks a similar question). This begins at
the most fundamental level of Lacan’s philosophy, with his account of
the inherently fragmented and decentred nature of both the psyche and
social life, and extends to our fascination with our image in the mir-
ror, our dissatisfaction with labels for our social identity, our insatiable
desires for new objects, our obsession with what we are to others and so
on. Sociologists, on the other hand, have charted the fragmentation of
social structures over the course of the late twentieth century (Giddens,
1991, and Beck, 1992, for example), with the resulting destabilization of
cohesive identities. Despite major philosophical differences, Lacanian
theory has tentatively embraced the trends these theorists describe as
though they represented some reconciliation with the inherent nature
of subjectivity (see Stavrakakis, 1999, on Beck for example).
The Lacanian notion of the Subject inevitably characterized by lack
thus stands in sharp contrast to how Freudian–Kleinian social history
has understood the production of lack. Dean (2000, p. 41) argues that
‘it is necessary to develop a more clearly specified and historically
informed account of the conditions which constitute decentredness so
as to show that this condition is not somehow the “real” or “essential”
condition of humanity’, and to this end identifies four determinants
of narcissism rooted in ‘neoliberal disorganised capitalism’: alienation,

the interpellation of workers as ‘flexible’ workers, the rise of electronic
communication, and the commodification of meaning. For Frosh it is
directly related to consumerism: ‘Reality becomes dream-like in its con-
stant, commodity-based promise of the fulfilment of desire; but this
promise is eternally offered and removed, as the objects of desire are
achieved and then found to be empty’ (Frosh, 1991, p. 125). Take also
the following from Christopher Lasch’s account of the changing role of
advertising:
In a simpler time, advertising merely called attention to the prod-

uct and extolled its advantages. Now it manufactures a product of
its own: the consumer, perpetually unsatisfied, restless, anxious and
bored. Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to pro-
mote consumption as a way of life. It ‘educates’ the masses into an
unappeasable appetite not only for goods but for new experiences
and personal fulfilment. It upholds consumption as the answer to
the age-old discontents of loneliness, sickness, weariness, lack of sex-
ual satisfaction; at the same time it creates new forms of discontent
peculiar to the modern age. It plays seductively on the malaise of
modern civilization.
(1979, p. 72)
Hence, ‘the consumer lives surrounded not so much by things as by

fantasies’ (Lasch, 1984, p. 30). Lasch makes a distinction here between
what might be seen as ‘age-old needs’ and a socially created insatiabil-
ity. Were it not for the new advertising industry creating a lack in the
consumer, he or she might not experience the same kind of perpetu-
ally unsatisfied desire. This kind of self is produced by the historical
failure of social structures to provide the Subject with a secure internal-
ized system of norms and values on the basis of which the individual
can be self-sufficient in evaluating their achievements. Now, the indi-
vidual is dependent on the reflections of others for a competitive form
of self-validation that is always shifting.
Žižek (1992) reworks Lasch’s thesis. He follows Lasch’s central argu-
ment that in late modernity the ego ideal has disappeared and the
subject no longer finds positions with which to identify. The absence
of ‘paternal authority’ (the absent Name-of-the-Father) is filled by an
‘ “irrational” maternal superego, arbitrary, wicked, blocking “normal”
sexual relationship’ (p. 99). This harsh maternal superego does not pro-
hibit enjoyment, but punishes the subject for social failure, leading to a
self-destructive anxiety. But where Lasch believes that at some point in

the past functioning structures of this kind existed in order to provide
identity, Žižek’s implication is that what was provided was not so much
identity as a means by which the subject could enter the Symbolic as a
stable desiring subject.
Another mode of fantasy
As Elliott (2009, p. 93) argues, Lacan’s work struck a chord at the time
because of ‘growing experiences of dislocation and fracture’. It is not
hard to see why Lacan might have viewed this form of subjectivity as
universal. This can be attributed to his immersion in the cultural avant-
garde of Paris’s left bank where he kept company with Andre Breton,
Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso amongst others, and by his professional
work in psychiatry. It has often been the case that psychologists have
been accused of universalizing a psychology peculiar to their times (see,
for example, Cushman, 1995). But to point to the social conditions
under which knowledge was produced does not necessarily invalidate
them. It is not enough, therefore, to dismiss Lacan as having constructed
a theory of the Subject that reflects the social conditions in which he
was writing. What must be done is to show where it is in Lacan’s theory
that he might have overlooked a possible way in which things might,
in other circumstances, play out differently, and in doing so to create a
framework capable of explaining alternative forms of subjectivity.
Central to Lacan’s theory of the Subject is the idea that the mother
necessarily fails the child, instigating the child’s imaginary construction
of the objet petit a and their entry into language. From this point on,
the desperation with which the child clings to the idea of an object that
explains the mother’s failure is lodged in the core of the subject (as an
absence). In Kleinian terms this represents a paranoid-schizoid solution
to the problem posed by the mother’s failure. In order to preserve the
idea of a good mother (the mother dedicated to the child’s enjoyment),
a fantasy is conjured up to explain her failure. In accepting the paternal
metaphor, the child gives up on being the phallus for the mother, but
not on the idea of the mother never failing the child. This is due to
Lacan’s assumption about the drives, and their inability to accept limits
to jouissance.
For Klein, however, the healthy personality develops a non-schizoid,
depressive functioning in which the child accepts the mother will
inevitably fail the child some of the time. In coming to terms with this,
the child comes to see the mother as a single flawed whole, rather than
keeping two fantasy mothers separate from one another. Any attempt at
explanation for why the mother is absent is an attempt to preserve the
good ‘if only’ mother. Such an acceptance does not seem possible for
Lacan because of his understanding of the nature of the drives. Freud’s
and Klein’s understanding of developmental possibilities is more open
from the start because they conceive of drive differently.
I believe Lacan provides us with a useful account of a narcissistic mode
of relating to fantasy, but that this is not the only mode. The depres-
sive, of course, still fantasizes, but retains a distance between herself
and her fantasy. There is not the same sense that the object will com-
plete the subject, and an awareness that the object exists only in fantasy.
This enables a different form of engagement with the world, and brings
us close to the Lacanian notion of traversing the fantasy. But one dif-
ference is that for Lacanian theory this traversing never concedes the
importance of the object to identity, whereas the Kleinian version allows
for the excessive object to be discarded in favor of an object providing
real security, and enabling attention to the well-being of others (made
possible through the good enough environment).
Lacan and social theory
Over the past few decades a movement has emerged in political science
using Lacan’s ontology as a way of understanding political antagonism
and social structure, and it is from this group that the most devel-
oped accounts of the role of fantasy in social movements have emerged.
Stavrakakis (2007) identifies Žižek, Laclau, Badiou and Castoriadis as the
key thinkers in this ‘Lacanian Left’, to which we might reasonably add
Stavrakakis himself, Jason Glynos and a number of others.
Stavrakakis (1999) provides the clearest statement of how Lacan’s
work might be used as a framework for understanding political iden-
tities, including those emerging in social movements. His bold claim
is as follows: ‘Since the objects of identification in adult life include
political ideologies and other socially constructed objects, the process
of identification is revealed as constitutive of socio-political life’ (p. 30).
Contrary to how most people understand the political, for Stavrakakis
then, politics is all about the process of making identifications (see also
Laclau, 1994). As he makes clear, this politics of identification is not,
however, the same as identity politics. This is because none of the polit-
ical identities on offer is ever complete and can ever express the essence
of the subject. Thus identification is understood as a continual politi-
cal activity. As he says, ‘if I need to identify with something it is only
because I don’t have a full identity in the first place, but also because
all my attempts to acquire it by identifying with a supposed full Other
are failing’ (Stavrakakis, 1999, p. 41). The impossibility of this full iden-
tity is what fantasy exists to resolve. It is the promise of ‘the imaginary
elimination of [symbolic] lack by recapturing the lost real’ (p. 45).
Ernesto Laclau and the logic of the objet petit a

Laclau’s work is identified with the Discourse Theoretical approach
within political science. As the term suggests, this approach grants
discourse (in the Lacanian sense and not limited to language) the deter-
minate role in the constitution of the political. For Laclau it is the
naming of a movement, or rather the naming of its political demands,
that constitutes its unity. No distinction can be drawn between a move-
ment and its ideology (Laclau, 2005, p. 13, as part of his critique
of Minogue). For Laclau, political conflicts determine what count as
interests in the first place; these cannot be determined except through
ideology (2005, p. 246). Furthermore, it is impossible to speak of the sub-
ject ‘choosing’ their point of symbolic identification, because it is only
on the basis of accepting an identification that judgements of value can
be made in the first place. Symbolic identification ‘cannot have a source
of justification external to itself, since the order with which we identify
is accepted, not because it is considered as valuable in terms of the cri-
teria of goodness or rationality which operates at its bases, but because
it brings about the possibility of an order’ (Laclau, 1994, p. 3).
In a paper, ‘The death and resurrection of the theory of ideology’
(1996), subsequent to his well-known Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
(Laclau & Mouffe, 1985), Laclau makes the point that classical Marxist
critique distinguished ideology, as a form of false consciousness, from
the real social structures covered over by it. Such a concept of ideology
cannot be sustained, says Laclau. For the version of ‘reality’ to replace
the false ideology is constituted through the same operations, and is sub-
ject to the same necessary flaws as the ideology it replaces. Laclau makes
no distinction between false ideology and real social structure. The new
work of ideology critique (often called ‘post-Marxist’) is to uncover the
ways in which ideologies are constructed, and to chart the historical
struggle for hegemonic dominance.
The ‘isolated social demand’ is the minimal unit of Laclau’s think-
ing. An isolated demand (which he sometimes refers to as a democratic
demand; a potentially misleading term he is forced to clarify) is a sin-
gle demand emerging from a particular social group. This minimal unit
is more heuristic than anything, for every isolated demand can also be
seen as an emergent achievement rather than an a priori. Laclau’s inter-

est is in how isolated demands come to be seen as equivalential and the
basis for a popular demand (a movement demand). A few points can be
made here. First, Laclau denies the possibility that this homogeneous
quality in any way exists ‘naturally’ within the demands that are made
equivalent – it must be articulated. Secondly, a demand is always politi-
cal. That is to say it is always addressed to somebody, though the unity
of ‘the system’ is no a priori for Laclau either. Its unity is also a construct,
and a vital one for demands to be articulated in the first instance.
Two mutually implicated concepts are key in Laclau’s account of how
this all takes place: the antagonistic frontier and the equivalential artic-
ulation of demands. The antagonistic frontier separates the movement
from its opposing camp (the holders of power in the case of populism).
A movement acquires its identity only in relation to its opponent. What
the movement has in common is not some authentic shared element
but its common opposition to the antagonistic camp. In the naming of
popular demands addressed to the antagonistic camp, the equivalence
of individual demands is made possible.
The equivalential chain of demands is opposed not only to the antag-
onistic camp, however, but ‘also to something which does not have
access to a general space of representation’ (Laclau, 2005, p. 139). This is
the radical heterogeneity of social life; the aspects of difference that have
no place within either the movement or the antagonistic camp. Such a
‘left aside’ element – Hegel’s ‘peoples without history’ or Lacan’s ‘caput
mortuum’ – can never be dissolved. The naming of an antagonism is
an attempt to constitute a totality, and yet this totality must have an
outside. Inasmuch as the two antagonistic identities need each other in
order to constitute themselves they are united in the face of this left
aside element. As Laclau puts it:
this, to some extent, corresponds to the well-known fact that forces

which have constructed their antagonism on a certain terrain show
their secret solidarity when it is that very terrain which is put into
question. It is like the reaction of two chess players to somebody who
kicks the board.
(2005, pp. 140–1)
This outside is not incidental. Were it not for this, then the antagonis-
tic camps would simply be the negation of each other (A would mean
‘not B’, and vice versa), and there could be no dialectic solution to their
contradiction. The possibility of truly heterogeneous elements (‘truly’
in the sense that this is radical difference; difference without a place in

the social order) upsetting the social order is a traumatic one. Laclau
associates this heterogeneity with the Lacanian Real, which the field of
representation ‘cannot symbolically master’ (2005, p. 141).
For Laclau, the naming of popular demands can only occur through
the synecdochal operation in which one demand is made equal to all
isolated demands whilst also representing all of them. Such an ele-
ment thereby comes to express more than itself (it is over-determined).
This element is an empty signifier inasmuch as it does not express any
real common quality amongst demands. But as Laclau makes clear (cri-
tiquing Žižek on this point), this does not mean it is a signifier without
a signified (this would just be a noise). The signifier is full of meaning,
even if it only comes into being in the naming of an antagonistic iden-
tity. The empty signifier constitutes the equivalential chain whilst also
representing it. Hence ‘naming retrospectively constitutes its referent’.
Laclau says that ‘the logic of the objet petit a and the hegemonic logic
are not just similar: they are simply identical’ (2005, p. 116). That is
to say that both involve an over-determination; there is something in
both the object and the demand that is in excess of them. It is here that
affect, often overlooked as a component of Laclau’s theory by his critics,
emerges, and this is the only thing capable of explaining the subject’s
over-investment in the demand. This arises because the empty signifier
represents more than itself; it is a demand for more than the thing it
names. This demand stands for the very possibility of fullness of iden-
tity. In both cases, the possibility of fullness of identity is brought into
imaginary existence through identifying that which is lacking, and so a
desiring subject is brought into being through radical over-investment
in the object.
Stavrakakis and utopia as the political equivalent of fantasy

Stavrakakis, for his part, makes exactly the same parallel between the
logic of fantasy and the logic of ideology, but where Laclau looks at
political antagonisms, Stavrakakis looks at the temporal arrangement
of antagonism in the form of utopia. He argues that ‘every political
promise is supported by a reference to a lost state of harmony, unity and
fullness, a reference to a pre-symbolic real which most political projects
aspire to bring back’ (1999, p. 52). Utopian visions arise during peri-
odic crises during which the fundamental antagonisms and dislocations
of the social order come to the surface. The utopia is a social order in
which antagonism, and perhaps even difference itself, is absent. But
the constitution of this imaginary utopia requires, at the same time,
the imaginary construction of some force preventing the realization of

this utopia. As Stavrakakis writes, ‘every utopian fantasy construction
needs a “scapegoat” in order to constitute itself’ (1999, p. 100). He pro-
vides numerous historical examples, all of which are contingent but
also dependent on ‘availability’, but a favourite, shared with Žižek, is
the Nazi anti-figure of the Jew (which Freud, 1930, also discusses as
enabling the unity of the societies in which they have lived, just as
the Soviets needed the bourgeoisie). Whilst it might give rise to a mode
of enjoyment, the eradication of this figure cannot, of course, lead to
the realization of the utopia. This ‘structural triangle’, as Stavrakakis
refers to it, of negativity, utopian future society and arch-enemy is the
same triangle that exists in respect to identity and fantasy, wherein
the fundamental lack at the centre of the Lacanian subject requires the
instantiation of some imagined object that will complete the subject’s
identity, but at the same time also requires the fantasy of some obsta-
cle to the realization of that fantasy. For Žižek, this obstacle in the form
of some Other such as the Jew is always imagined to have access to a
jouissance we do not have, and is therefore imagined to have stolen it.
It is through this shared hatred that communities (and movements) are
bound together, argues Žižek, rather than through identification with
the utopian project.
The Lacanian Left has obvious and understandable concerns with
the violence and futility of the totalizing utopia. It seeks to traverse
utopia much as Lacanians advocate a traversing of the fantasy; resign-
ing ourselves to rejecting the utopian whilst not distancing ourselves
too much from any given utopia so as to walk into a new one. Given
this, Stavrakakis’s statement that ‘the current crisis of utopia is not the
cause for concern but for celebration’ (1999, p. 110) is understandable.
For him, political aporia exists, inasmuch as it does exist, because we
still yearn for some fantastic harmonious ideal. Stavrakakis’s wish is that
we might learn to accept the impossibility of utopia. Hope is a cen-
tral idea here, and Stavrakakis believes in the possibility of a ‘politics of
hope’ without a politics of utopia. The solution, as he sees it, is democ-
ratization, for ‘democratic discourse is not (or should not be) based on
the vision of a utopian harmonious society’. Instead, continued and
irresolvable conflict is legitimized. Drawing on Chantal Mouffe (1996,
pp. 5–8), he argues that:
The emergence and maintenance of democratic forms of iden-

tity is a matter of identification with this democratic ethos, an
ethos associated with the mobilisation of passions and sentiments,
the multiplication of practices, institutions and language games

providing the conditions of possibility for the radicalisation of
democracy.
(1999, p. 112)
It is easy to see how, on the basis of this, the Lacanian Left might
come to see in Duncombe’s observations and directions, hopeful polit-
ical praxis. Stavrakakis anticipates (if not necessarily neutralizes) the
criticism that this leaves the Lacanian Left politically impotent in its
critique of the existing order, whilst also leaving the terrain open
for undesirable utopian programmes (citing critiques by Rustin, 1995;
Homer, 1996; Collier, 1998). Stavrakakis argues that these criticisms
all reduce the political to utopianism, when political action can be
achieved through pursuit of an anti-essentialist democracy. An alterna-
tive political conclusion is provided by Žižek, as discussed later in this
chapter.
Laclau would doubtless agree with Stavrakakis’s argument that ‘it is
the same subject as lack that introduces division into human collectiv-
ity’ (p. 40). But one lacuna in their work is the failure to discuss the
history of the subject prior to the formation of demands. Laclau notes
that for Freud overdetermination depended on personal history (2005,
p. 236) but he does not pursue this. Whilst he appears to accept that the
isolated demand is not indivisible as a unit of analysis, very little is said
about how isolated demands come into being. Even if Laclau is right that
the hegemonic logic follows the same logic as the logic of the object a,
it is important to recall there nonetheless exist two ‘angles’ on the prob-
lem, one psychoanalytic, the other political. He is concerned with how
demands are articulated together and less with the initial emergence of
demand.
Žižek and the ideological fantasy

A not dissimilar issue is addressed in Ian Parker’s discussion of Žižek’s
break from Althusser:
Althusser’s description of the way ideology ‘interpellates’ an

individual – hooks a subject into position so that they recognise
themselves in the categories of subjectivity structured into the ide-
ological system – begs a question: What is there already as subject
enough to be hooked? Žižek’s answer is to say that before the sub-
ject is interpellated it has already been constituted in its very process
of formation as a divided subject in relation to the objet petit a,
and this object cause of desire – which becomes the sublime object
of ideology – holds the subject in place in fantasy . . . . The symbolic
coordinates of fantasy are therefore at work well before we assume
a position in ideology through interpellation, and those symbolic
coordinates explain why the interpellation succeeds.
(Parker, 2004, p. 86)
What is being suggested here is that the subject is ‘primed’ (for want
of a better word) for a particular symbolic identity by virtue of the way
they have been constituted through fantasy. This seems to imply a ‘fit’
between fantasy and ideology.
This arguably follows Lacan’s notion of fantasy as ‘set to work in a
signifying structure’. Fantasy fills in where ideology leaves off, but it
fills in in such a way as to support the ideological. Stavrakakis states
very clearly that fantasy is imaginary, but with a signifying function.
The object a ‘performs a symbolic function (supporting the lacking
fullness of the symbolic) by promising an imaginary mastery of the
impossible real’ (1999, p. 47). But I think a question hangs over the
extent to which fantasy’s arrival within a particular political framework
is predetermined.
One of the reasons for this apparent fit is that Žižek, as a social the-
orist, tends to view fantasy from the perspective of ideology. A good
example is his (1997) analysis of the Ku Klux Klan (bearing in mind this
is presented as a ‘historic’ example of the relationship between fantasy
and ideology, contrasted to the relationship between pleasure and ide-
ology in contemporary capitalism). The fantasy Žižek identifies behind
the ‘official’ KKK ideology is that of raping and lynching black men and
women. The grip of KKK ideology relies on the promise of jouissance
staged in these fantasies. Were the official KKK discourse about good
Christian patriotism all there was to the KKK then it would have no pur-
chase. In Lacan’s view fantasy belongs to the imaginary, and in Žižek’s
view the fantasy cannot become too articulable within an ideology or
it loses its ability to support that ideology from the outside. Likewise,
in conservative populism, he argues that the sexist and racist message
is ‘between the lines’; it cannot be articulated or reality will cease to
function.
Žižek emphasizes elsewhere that this ‘other’ reason is not secret at
all; it is the foundation on which the ideology is based. Identifying the
fantasy is not therefore to be understood as uncovering the truth of
the subject’s desire masked by ideology, but as uncovering the truth of
the ideology itself, as inscribed in the subject’s desire. But one issue as
I see it is that the lynching fantasy retains a distance from the sym-
bolic only in relation to official public discourse. In other spheres, it is
of course clearly speakable (and Adorno’s discussion of the layers of ide-
ology is useful here). The same issue comes up when Rose (2005, p. 54,
in Glynos, 2011, p. 81) argues that ‘Messianism, as unconscious inspi-
ration, is in the air and soil of Israel’. Again, Messianism is perfectly
speakable at other times, perhaps just not in official discourses of Israeli
nationhood. The organization of gang rapes and lynchings can, or even
must, take place at the symbolic level.
Žižek talks about the ‘dark underground of unconscious fan-
tasies . . . revealed in myths, dreams, slips of the tongue, symptoms and
its direct perverse realization’ (2008, p. xiii). Žižek often directs us to
the world of material social practice; a world where the ideological is
apparently suspended in favour of the supposedly utilitarian, but is
actually given over to the materialization of an ideologically laden imag-
inary. The material world thus ‘reveals inherent antagonisms which the
explicit formulation of ideology cannot afford to acknowledge’. Archi-
tecture is a favourite example, from Soviet architecture to Ceauşescu’s
polluted river beneath the clean one on the surface, to the organization
of the Fritzl house.
The choice of the term ‘dark underground’ seems dubious here.
As Parker says, Lacan himself ‘refuses notions of “depth” to charac-
terise what is happening beneath the symbolic, and instead describes
the mutually implicative registers of the symbolic, the imaginary . . . and
the real’ (2004, p. 64). It is a mistake to think of any fantasy as ‘belong-
ing’ to the unconscious. It is only in relation to other signifiers that it
has a life in the unconscious. Glynos avoids the analogy of depth but
in referring to fantasy as providing ‘a schema that mediates between
publically affirmed ideals on the one hand, and the darker side of those
aspirations and aims on the other hand – a side that subjects would
rather not consciously or officially affirm’ (2011, p. 71), he elides the
difference between ‘consciously’ and ‘officially’ affirming. An activist,
for example, can very well articulate how they have altered what they
‘really think’ for the sake of political expediency, but this expediency
makes sense based on their already having established a subject position.
The politically expedient ideology is therefore in one sense ‘chosen’ by
the subject. Here the lines between unconscious and conscious links get
blurred. For fantasy to operate in its purest form it cannot be rational-
ized in the terms of the ideology it supports. From the perspective of
the subject the fantasy is thus elevated to part of the equivalential chain
rather than retaining its distance from it. As Rose makes clear, fantasy
represents the intrusion of an irrational element, but ‘not as in unrea-

sonable, but as in relying on a power no reason can fully account for’
(1996, p. 9).
My interest is in tracing back the successive layers of metaphor to the
subject’s fundamental fantasy. This is a point at which the subject is
supported by a fantasy they are not simply unwilling to disclose in par-
ticular contexts, but one they are unable to access. This is the level at
which the terms of the unconscious fantasy were first replaced by a con-
scious structuring fantasy. But the terms of this fantasy were not chosen
by the fantasizer, but rather ‘imposed’ on them (in the sense that desire
is the desire of the Other). The subject emerges with this fantasy, rather
than being the agency that chose this fantasy. As Lacan says, the subject
is caused by the objet petit a (Lacan, 1982, p. 165, cited in Stavrakakis,
1999, p. 47). Even if the subject recognizes him/herself in the fantasy, it
is always experienced as in some way a foreign element.
The issue is to some degree mitigated when Žižek shifts the context of
his discussions to fantasy within consumer capitalism. Parker notes that
Much of Žižek’s description of the tightly-structured ideological appa-

ratus that operates as a kind of machinery for the formation of subject
positions before any particular individual comes to recognise them-
selves in it seems to apply better to Eastern Europe than to life under
Western European and US capitalism, for which he has since had to
augment his account.
(Parker, 2004, p. 86)
As Parker says, Žižek’s formulation may approach reality closer where

subjects are socialized from the start into highly politicized subject posi-
tions (as in the former Soviet bloc). But more often in late capitalist
societies the subject’s fundamental fantasy has been cemented long
before a political identity is wrapped around it. This brings me back
to Žižek’s argument encountered in the Introduction that we are now
interpellated first and foremost as the subjects of pleasures.
This basic narrative to which Žižek contributes is the subject of consid-
ered reflection by Stavrakakis (2010). Engaging with McGowan’s (2004)
argument in particular, he examines claims that a shift has taken place
from a society based on the logic of prohibition to a society based
on the logic of commanded enjoyment. If by nothing else, this shift
is recognizable by the result that de-legitimizing commanded enjoy-
ment is a far harder task than de-legitimizing prohibitions. And yet he
engages in a diachronic and synchronic critique of McGowan. In the
former he shows that the command to enjoy actually channels con-

sumers towards particular practices (‘Enjoy Coca Cola’ is one example),
is bound up with power and duty, is therefore far from liberating, and
does not actually produce the promised enjoyment in the consumer.
Such an idea has been present in critical theory since at least Marcuse’s
notion of ‘repressive satisfaction’, though Stavrakakis’s argument hinges
on the Lacanian notion that it is the commandment (Law) that pro-
duces a form of jouissance in the transgression of the Law; transgressions
that the symbolic order struggles to contain whilst remaining reliant
on the transgressions it enables for the affective investment of subjects.
Stavrakakis’s diachronic critique aims to show, following authors from
Elias to Colin Campbell, that the demand to consume/enjoy has a his-
tory much longer than the late capitalist period to which McGowan
confines it. He convincingly demonstrates the burden of overconsump-
tion placed on both courtly and bourgeois society. What Stavrakakis’s
discussion does not always manage to keep in focus is that the demand
to consume is (as indeed is his main argument) not the same as permis-
sion to enjoy. It merely appears that way in late capitalism because of its
juxtaposition with ascetic demands more dominant in previous eras.
In a society in which the overriding command is to consume, there
is subversive enjoyment to be had from asceticism (the recent culture
of austerity plays on some of these tensions, see Bramall, 2013, for a
discussion).
But, importantly, the relationship between ‘ideology’ and ‘fantasy’ is
reversed, not only historically, but dependent on the angle from which
we approach the problem. Approaching from the political angle gives
us one view, where approaching from the psychoanalytic angle, which
I maintain begins at the more fundamental level, we have another view.
Parker (2004) identifies Žižek’s move away from Althusser on the
grounds that he is able to see what kind of subjectivity exists prior
to symbolic interpellation. But Elliott (2009, p. 105), relating the issue
to Žižek’s engagement with Althusser in the first place, takes issue as
follows:
Zižek sees ideology in terms of a fantasy scenario, the sole purpose of

which is to fill in or cover over painful elements of lack. Yet there is a
problem with this view insofar as it tends to flatten out the complex,
variable reception of ideological forms by individuals and groups.
Elsewhere Elliott says of Lacan that ‘in presenting desire as entirely and
linguistically pre-structured, Lacan effectively strips the subject of any
capacity for autonomous self-transformation’ (2005, p. 183). I think it is

mistaken to use this space to reintroduce agency, but I do think Elliott
identifies an important issue. What Žižek misses entirely is the role of
biography in determining the way in which ideologies stick to or slide
off individuals. In this, one thing that is ignored is the precedence of
fantasy over the political identity. And whilst this is perhaps less true
when he talks about contemporary capitalist subjects, he makes similar
mistakes here too. As Parker says, the object a in a cultural artefact is not
the same for everyone. The problem in Žižek’s analysis of culture is that
it ‘presumes that each of our own particular positions coincides so that
tell-tale smears and enigmatic objects function for all of us in the same
way’ (Parker, 2004, p. 59). What is needed is attention to how individual
fantasies are connected with ideological frames.
Scott’s fantasy echo

This is not to deny that the ‘individual’ fantasy is social in the first place
(Stavrakakis makes this clear, 1999, p. 51). The object of desire is not
innately determined. But to think of fantasy as though it is brought into
being within any particular discursive structure is also highly mislead-
ing. Most importantly, fantasies structure our subjectivity way before we
have access to the symbolic terrain in which they were inculcated. Now,
of course, these fantasies have a tendency to return to the discourses
that produced them. But this does not have to be the case. Fantasy and
the symbolic hold each other in place, but each has a necessarily contin-
gent relationship with the other. Hence this relationship can be subject
to (sometimes radical) reconstitution over time, even if a change in one
must be anchored in the other. But such reconstitution necessitates that
the subject is able to disinvest in their fantasy to some extent.
Writing on feminist history, Scott’s (2001) engagement with Žižek
adds something useful to his analytic framework. She begins by noting
that women’s historians have taken for granted the continuity of the
referent ‘women’ itself (often, of course, assumed to be rooted in biolog-
ical difference, as she notes). If, for example, the historian addresses a
question about ‘how changes in the legal, social, economic, and medical
status of women affected their possibilities for emancipation’, the one
term that must remain constant is what is meant by ‘women’. ‘Women’
is therefore a fantasy identification, and ‘commonality amongst women
does not pre-exist its invocation but rather is secured by fantasies that
enable them to transcend history and difference’ (Scott, 2001, p. 288).
To put this another way, in every political discourse some thing must be
assumed to be stable, not up for negotiation, obvious, taken for granted.
This is the grounds or givens for the discourse. This ‘apolitical’ element
is fantasy.
The question then is how the category of women continues to func-
tion as the basis for a political identity when its meaning is the one thing
that cannot be established within historical or political discourse. It is
here that Scott introduces the term ‘fantasy echo’. An imaginary iden-
tification between women (she identifies two versions of this fantasy in
feminist history: as orators and as mothers) becomes the basis for saying
something about ‘women’, but the category itself is ‘retrospectively sta-
bilised’ through this very talk (2001, p. 290), recalling Laclau’s argument
about the signifier retrospectively constituting its referent. Because we
hear the voices echoing we assume there are subjects doing the echoing.
Scott’s important contribution is to question whether this echo merely
reproduces sound (in which case we are left with the problem of origins
and futures), or whether a distortion occurs between the original sound
and its resonances, in which case we must consider ‘the role of time in
the distortions heard’ (2001, p. 292). There is, I would argue, a fantasy
space suspended biographically between reproductions of the symbolic.
A notion similar to the fantasy echo can be seen in Dean’s portrayal
of Alain Badiou’s notion of the eternal nature of communism underpin-
ning various ‘communist invariants’ and consisting in ‘the egalitarian
passion, the Idea of justice, the will to end the compromises with the
service of goods, the eradication of egoism, the intolerance towards
oppression, the desire for the cessation of the state’ (Dean, 2013, p. 90,
citing Badiou, 2011, pp. 277–8). Dean criticizes Badiou, however, for
emphasizing the individual’s decision to incorporate themselves into
the communist ‘body of truth’. For Dean, the communist desire is
marked by its collective nature in the first instance; those who ‘relin-
quish their attachment to an imaginary individuality’. It also recognizes
a gap, but both collective and gap are left open, hence the strength of
Occupy Wall Street’s ‘we are the 99 per cent’.
In concluding, Scott argues that ‘fantasy echo has much wider appli-
cability, and not only to movements built on collective identities’ (2001,
p. 304). My own analysis in Part III will hopefully demonstrate the
validity of such a statement.
Glynos on loosening the grip of fantasy

Jason Glynos has probably done more than anyone to put fantasy pride
of place in political theory. As the quote encountered at the begin-
ning of the book suggests, he sees fantasy as ‘ineliminable and essential
to action’ (Glynos, 2011), a conclusion emerging from his reading of
Lacan. What is particularly pertinent in Glynos’s work is his commit-

ment to theorizing how ideological fantasies might be traversed or
crossed. If fantasy cannot be dispensed with, it cannot remain unchal-
lenged either else it remains a foundational element of a regime that
supports it without being amenable to discussion. The key for Glynos is
how the loosening of the logic of fantasy might be achieved as a way
of enabling movement. He describes this as being less ‘in thrall’ to the
fantasy object. Two distinctions help him set out this position.
First, he distinguishes between the mode and the content of fantasy.
This is, I believe, a crucial distinction, though more could be made of it
still. The latter is obvious enough and consists of the contingent objects
of fantasy that at any point in time might be the object of normative
critique. By ‘mode of fantasy’ he seems to be referring to the positioning
of the subject in relation to their fantasy. This can take a more ‘closed’
or ‘open’ form – this being his second distinction. Closure (or ‘the ide-
ological mode of being’) is characterized by libidinal overinvestment in
the fantasy object, and resulting guilt and ressentiment when our fan-
tasies are not realized. In this mode, everything we encounter is fitted
to a mould that preserves our mode of attachment to fantasy (Glynos,
2011, p. 78). It is overinvestment in fantasy that means ‘political options
appear stark and dichotomic’ (2011, p. 82). Openness is characterized
as the ‘ethical mode of being’. This does not mean abandoning the
fantasy, but being less attached to the guarantees it provides, so as to
permit ‘a more expansive, “open” creative potential in the uncertainties
and ambiguities that become visible – including potential for political
mobilization’. This is important, he says, for those interested ‘in the pos-
sibilities of social transformation and of those espousing the value of a
deep pluralism’. The latter, of course, reflects Glynos’s commitment to
the same radical democratic project as Laclau and Stavrakakis.
It is hopefully apparent that in this distinction between modes,
Glynos has come closer to my own distinction between the narcissistic
and depressive fantasy. This is underscored yet further by Glynos’s use
of Butler’s (2004b) work on mourning. Mourning, he suggests, might
represent a way of crossing the fantasy. It involves a ‘mindfulness of
vulnerability’ that can deliver the subject beyond ressentiment for loss.
In accepting the fantasmatic nature of loss, mourning can affirm an
ethos of becoming (rather than a fixed notion of identity). It means
accepting that the loss is not loss of the object, nor loss of some part of
the self, but the loss of the tie that bound the two. It is easy to see in
this emphasis on mourning the link to Klein’s depressive position. How-
ever, it should be recognized that for Klein, this move does not involve
simply a dissolution of this tie, but the way forwards in establishing a

more truly intersubjective relationship.
Summary
In this chapter I have outlined the sweeping challenges Lacanian theory

makes to the Freudian conceptualization of the constellation of fantasy,
the unconscious, reality, the collective and action. First, whilst fantasy
is still contrasted first and foremost with ‘reality’, the latter is no longer
seen as the material structure of social relations but as the symbolic
structuring of ‘reality’. It is also contrasted with the Real, but there is
no hope of exposing the falsity of fantasy in relation to the Real. Sec-
ondly, fantasy, in belonging to the realm of the imaginary, cannot be
considered as buried deep in the unconscious of the individual sub-
ject. It is unconscious only viewed from the perspective of the symbolic
structure it supports. Thirdly, it entails a notion of fantasy as radically
intersubjective. It emerges not as a representative of past experiences
of satisfaction nor of innate biological instincts, but as an answer to
the question of what the (m)other values in the subject. In order to
be consciously thought, this object of fantasy must be identified with
a symbolic signifier. But this object is never really the object of desire.
Fourthly, this fantasy is nonetheless essential if the subject is to act in
the world because it tells the subject what objects it wants. The main
issue I took with such a perspective is that it only identifies one (neu-
rotic) mode of relating to fantasy; a mode that ultimately sustains the
illusion of the good mother associated with jouissance. I suggested that
an alternative depressive mode of fantasy is possible. And whilst this
can be related to the Lacanian notion of traversing the fantasy, it is not
identical with it. It does not necessarily involve a utopian stage beyond
the neurotic attachment to fantasy, but is one of a number of modes of
fantasy between which subjects can move.
The ontology of Lacanian psychoanalysis has been picked up in
political theory in a number of illuminating ways. However, the focus
of Lacanian political science has been shaped by its post-structuralist
engagement with structuralism, perhaps especially the Foucaultian tra-
dition. Hence its analytic strategy has been to take an ideology and
reveal that this is inherently lacking and is sustained only through fan-
tasy operating at the level of the imaginary. I have argued that it is
weaker in tracing the biography of the subject back to its original con-
stitution through fantasy. What this has left relatively undertheorized is
how subjects arrive at these fantastic points of identification from their
position within multiple discursive matrices, and how these fantasies

later do or do not connect with the same symbolic frameworks giving
rise to them in the first place. In order to account for these ‘contin-
gencies’ it is necessary to consider the possibility of loosening the grip
of fantasy; in other words to accept that subjects can retain a critical
distance from fantasy.
4
Modes of Fantasy
One of the problems with theorizing fantasy is that it is necessarily

defined against reality, the unconscious, action and the collective, even
where it is dialectically related to these things. These distinctions are
necessary to hold onto. I think it would be a mistake to conflate fan-
tasy with any of these things, but equally it would be a mistake to see
any of them as separate entities impervious to one another. My argu-
ment is that fantasy can exist in different kinds of relationship with
these other realms. Our perception is modelled on fantasy, but we also
have fantasies that we distinguish from perceptions. Fantasies exist in
unconscious (phantasy), part-conscious (thought in images), and fully
conscious (thought in words) forms. Fantasies can suspend action, but
they also form the basis of our motivation. Fantasies emerge from
our social relationships, and feed back into them, whilst also retain-
ing idiosyncratic elements. Furthermore, I would argue that fantasy can
channel us into practices that reinforce existing social structures, but
can also enable us to envisage, and act to bring about, radically different
futures.
Modes of relating to fantasy
During this part of the book I have repeatedly returned to the notion
of ‘modes of fantasy’. This signals that fantasy does not always play the
same role within the psyche. I think Glynos’s call to pay more attention
to modes of relating to fantasy (such as the distinction between ‘closed’
and ‘open’ modes) is worth heeding. In the preceding chapters a num-
ber of distinctions between modes of fantasy were implied. These have
become the basis for making more general distinctions about psycho-
logical positions (such as Klein’s distinction between ‘paranoid-schizoid’
and ‘depressive’ positions). There have been some typologies that have
134
Modes of Fantasy 135
NARCISSISTIC
Fatalistic Interventionist
HALLUCINATORY Dissociative DEPRESSIVE
Figure 4.1 Modes of fantasy
identified more than two modes (such as Coleridge’s ‘primary imagina-

tion’, ‘secondary imagination’ and ‘the fancy’, for example). Typologies
have also been implicated in different syndromes (see Adorno et al.,
1950, p. 753, for example). Figure 4.1 represents my own schematic way
of thinking about modes of relating to fantasy. I put these forward only
as Weberian ‘ideal types’ and am not suggesting that they ever exist as
pure forms.
The points at the apexes of the triangle represent what I see as three
fundamental modes of fantasy, all of which have been encountered in
earlier chapters.
The hallucinatory mode

I associate this with the mode identified in Freud’s early work on fantasy
in which whatever is desired is presented to the senses. It represents the
purest form of what Freud called ‘fantasy thinking’, in which any reality
outside of fantasy is denied. No distinction is made between fantasy
and reality. Action, in the sense of intervention in the external world,
is precluded because the wish is already imagined to be fulfilled. The
fantasy is likely to be experienced on an unconscious or part-conscious
level, in a form ‘before the word’. Putting a fantasy into words implies
some kind of substitution of terms and thus a recognition of castration.
As Bleandonu (1994) argues, verbal thought is the path to depression.
The hallucinatory mode can never form the basis of social identification,
and can only be sustained by others to the extent that they operate as a
pure screen for fantasy.
The narcissistic mode

It should be noted that many followers of Freud associate narcissistic
fantasy with the attachment of libido to the ego. As such they consider
narcissistic fantasy as a form of withdrawal (Anna Freud for example).

This is not the sense in which I use the term ‘narcissistic mode of fan-
tasy’, and I associate this more with what I have called the hallucinatory
mode. Freud (1914) identifies other narcissistic object choices besides
the ego; these consist in objects in the external world. As the Lacanian
understanding of neurotic fantasy, and the Kleinian notion of paranoid-
schizoid fantasy, tell us, where the object of fantasy is identified in the
external world, fantasy directs us towards these objects. I therefore think
of the narcissistic mode similarly to the mode in which the subject is ‘in
thrall’ (to use Glynos’s term) to an object that it is imagined will com-
plete the subject, and restore them to a state like that experienced in
early infancy. It can be associated with Klein’s paranoid-schizoid object
relations, and is the mode most closely associated with Lacan’s formula
S/ ♦ a. This mode implies a degree of ‘reality-testing’ in so much as the
source of satisfaction is identified as outside of the subject. In identify-
ing the object as belonging to the external world, the subject’s attention
turns to surveying that world. However, insofar as the subject relates to
the external world only on the basis of the fit between objects in this
external world and its fantasy, it tends to deny the external world its
own independent status and imbue it with an excess of meaning. The
fantasy is a conscious one, but one laden with unconscious significance.
The narcissistic mode implies action, in that the subject’s identity and
their relation to the world are shaped through this fantasy, and there-
fore every action is guided by fantasy as it provides the coordinates of
existence. However, as Lacan is clear, narcissistic fantasy has as its ulti-
mate aim the sustaining of desire, and so the subject will only ever act
in such a way as to circle around the object of fantasy, pushing it fur-
ther away if necessary. The fantasizer is likely to be unwilling to soften
their fantasy in order that others might acquiesce in it, and make subse-
quent substitutions in its terms, because this represents a disinvestment
in the fantasy. Others are seen only as instruments or obstacles to the
realization of fantasy.
The depressive mode

I consider this as the mode in which the subject is able to distance itself
from its fantasy. The depressive mode represents the fullest achievement
of the reality principle, in which fantasy is established against ‘real-
ity’. This does not mean objectively establishing the ‘unrealistic’ nature
of the fantasy, but indicates a process by which attempts are made
to interrogate fantasy against perception. The depressive mode implies
that the subject is capable of accepting that there is a gap between
the conscious fantasy and the unconscious elements it represents. The
Modes of Fantasy 137
depressive mode is not incompatible with action, but it is not single-

minded in pursuit of the object. Fantasy can then be worked over in
light of experience, rather than attempting to model external reality
on the fantasy. The depressive mode, as Klein argues, represents our
best chance of attending to the subjectivity of others. It allows that in
the world of our ‘reality’ we are beholden to others, and this is rad-
ically separated from our fantasy in which others are related to only
narcissistically in terms of their value to the subject.
In addition to these three modes, I have identified a further three modes

that exist in the tension between two of the apexes.
The fatalistic mode

I refer to the mode of fantasy that exists in tension between the narcissis-
tic and the hallucinatory as fatalistic because it involves the imagining
of a distant wholeness once reunited with the object, but this future
moment is experienced as simultaneously belonging to the here and
now, because it is a future ‘contained within’ the present.
The dissociative mode

I suggest that the mode in tension between the depressive and the
hallucinatory might be called dissociative because it involves identi-
fying oneself as outside of one’s fantasy (as in the depressive mode)
at the same time that a reality outside of fantasy is denied (as in the
hallucinatory mode). Winnicott (1971) provides grounds for making a
careful distinction between dissociative ‘fantasying’ and another imagi-
native activity. ‘Imagining’ is connected to both dream and reality, and
has the potential to enrich life insofar as it relates these things. In fan-
tasying, on the other hand, ‘what happens happens immediately except
that it does not happen at all’ (Winnicott, 1971, p. 37). There is no sym-
bolism in fantasying, Winnicott argues (in fantasying ‘a dress is just a
dress’). The fantasy is not, in other words, overdetermined with mean-
ing. The patient Winnicott is writing about says during one session,
‘I am up on those pink clouds where I can walk’ (p. 36). Winnicott
concedes that this might otherwise be seen as enriching imaginative
activity, but insofar as for the patient this activity is happening to her
as if viewed from the outside, the result is a sense that she might not
exist at all. She is both up on the cloud and looking at herself on
‘those’ clouds, with no whole person there to register the dissociation.
As such, fantasying is seen as a problematic dissociative activity that
interferes with both action and dreaming (see Colombi, 2010, for further
discussion).
The interventionist mode

I think of the interventionist mode as in tension between the narcissis-
tic and the depressive. It is the mode that Elliott associates with ‘creative
living’. Activist fantasy is at its most creative when its hold on what
is is balanced in relation to what can be. It involves a complex ten-
sion between fixation on the imaginary object and attention to the
self as it exists outside of fixation with the object and in relation to
other subjects. This also bears some relation to Winnicott’s notion of the
‘potential space’. This is especially true insofar as it allows a subject to
experience external objects as more than just an intrusion (or ‘insult’) to
the subject’s fantasy, but as potential co-creators of a shared imaginary.
This enables an understanding of what the subject is to others. I use the
term ‘interventionist’ because this allows the subject to make interven-
tions in the external world on the basis of fantasy, rather than simply
accommodating one to the other.
Summary
These six modes of fantasy have been suggested as ideal types towards
which individuals may tend. They each manifest the relationship
between fantasy, reality, the unconscious, action and the collective, in
different ways. It would, however, be dangerous to suggest that activists
could be ‘diagnosed’ according to such a model as exhibiting one par-
ticular mode of relating to fantasy. The argument that will be further
developed in Part II is that all of these modes can be present in social
movements, broadly conceived, but that the overall constitution of
movements in this respect leads to very different types of movement.
Part II
Fantasy and Social Movement
Theory
Although each of the chapters in Part I finished by looking briefly at

some of the social theorists who have drawn on that tradition of psy-
choanalysis in order to say something relevant to the study of social
movements, these theorists have (for reasons that will hopefully become
clear by the end of this part of the book) been marginalized in social
movement studies as a distinct field of contemporary social science.
This is true of both the rational choice-based resource mobilization
paradigm dominant in US social movement studies and (possibly to a
lesser extent) the New Social Movement paradigm dominant in Europe
(and in the few attempts to combine them). Where psychoanalytically
informed psychosocial theories have been discussed in the literature it
has by and large been as foils against which these perspectives have
defined their projects.
This part of the book revisits these relationships as they have evolved
over the course of the development of social movement theory, but in a
manner more sensitive and sympathetic to psychoanalysis. This is not to
say that social movement studies has nothing to offer, but to identify the
points at which psychoanalytic perspectives can contribute to improved
understanding.
5
Social Movement Theory and
Types of Action
This chapter maps the terrain of ‘social movement theory’ as a

recognized field of academic work, and considers the place of psy-
choanalysis within it. A common way of bringing order to the social
movements literature is to divide it geographically between US and
European literatures, and historically. In respect of the latter, ‘paradigm
shifts’ have been stimulated by changes in the nature of movements
themselves and the changing relationship of academics to them. Marx &
Wood (1975, p. 364), explain this succinctly:
At the turn of the century [the field of collective behaviour] was dom-
inated by higher status theorists threatened by social change. In the
1950s, its spokesmen were more or less detached researchers. These
have given way to an increasing number of more activist researchers,
who view the study of collective behaviour as a way to encourage
social change.
These spatial-temporal taxonomies have divided the literature into dif-

ferent schools of thought largely on the basis of the assumptions they
have made about the type of action that constitutes activism (see espe-
cially Goodwin & Jasper, 2003, pp. 5–6; also the introductions to Stryker
et al., 2000; Goodwin et al., 2001; Crossley, 2002). Each has tended to
suggest that all activism can be reduced to one particular form of action.
To give a particularly condensed account, the story normally runs
roughly as follows. Social movement theory in post-war America grew
out of crowd psychology and then ‘breakdown’ theories of collective
behaviour all of which stressed the emotionality and irrationality of
collective behaviour. At the same time in Europe, Marxist models still
dominated, and these assumed the workers movement was comprised
of rational and economically motivated class actors. The emergence of
civil rights and other movements in 1960s’ America then prompted
141
142 Fantasy and Social Movement Theory
economic and political turns in the literature. Activists were seen as

rational actors choosing to pursue individual goals through collective
means. In the late 1980s, the emergence of ‘new social movements’ that
did not seem to be motivated by the pursuit of personal interests led to
a cultural turn in theory, manifest in different ways on each side of the
Atlantic. It became difficult to see activists as acting either irrationally
or instrumentally in pursuit of interests. Activists were better thought of
as ‘arational’, and focus shifted towards how the frames within which
meaningful action could take place were being challenged. A more
recent affective turn has taken place within the last 15 years, as social
movement theorists have rediscovered emotion, identity and social psy-
chology, but this time resisting the equation of affect with irrationality.
Those at the forefront of this affective turn blame the sociologist
Max Weber for establishing the rigid division between emotional and
rational action they are attempting to demolish (Goodwin et al., 2001,
p. 2; Hetherington, 1998). Goodwin et al.’s issue is in particular with
Weber treating ‘affectually determined elements of behaviour as factors
of deviation from a conceptually pure type of rational action’ (Weber,
1922, cited in Goodwin et al., 2001, p. 2). They take issue with Weber’s
typology of action, even though they accept that this was merely an
attempt to establish ideal types. They object to Weber’s privileging
of rational action as the standard against which all action must be
judged. Weber does say this, but in a methodological and heuristic,
rather than a normative, sense. It should be noted that such a device
is common to Freudian psychoanalysis as well, though in Freud the
rational does acquire more normative overtones, despite his intention
being to shift attention towards the irrational component of behaviour
(an irony not lost on Freud). Goodwin et al. want to rescue affect from
its association with the irrational and dissociation from the rational,
and hence restore more dignity to emotion. But this rescue attempt
comes at the cost of repressing the unconscious component of activism
(ironic given the title of their paper on the history of emotions in social
movement theory: ‘The return of the repressed’, Goodwin et al., 2000).
I read Weber differently as accepting the interpenetration of irrational
affect and rationality in social action. It is therefore possible to avoid
dichotomization of emotion and rationality without abandoning the
unconscious.
Weber’s typology of action
Weber (1922, p. 328) distinguishes ‘social action’, which is action

oriented to the behaviour of others, and which he also calls ‘meaningful
Types of Action 143
action’, as sociology’s main object of study. This makes a number of

exclusions, including behaviour directed towards non-human objects
and private behaviour not oriented towards other people (Weber did
nonetheless recognize that non-human objects had social meanings).
Importantly, it also excludes some behaviour influenced by the pres-
ence of others but not meaningfully oriented towards others in itself,
as in the phenomena studied in mass psychology (more on this later).
He accepts, however, that meaningful action is not the sole con-
cern of sociology, not least because in practice this blurs into these
exclusions.
Weber understood the terms ‘meaning’ and ‘motive’ in very par-
ticular ways. From the perspective of the sociologist we understand
action ‘motivationally’ when we can explain why it has occurred
‘just now and in this context’. He refers to this as ‘rational under-
standing of motivation’ to the extent that ‘it acquires a contextual
meaning that we understand’ (1922, p. 316). Its occurrence can thus
be explained, but the motive of the act itself might nonetheless be
irrational (he gives the example of shooting someone as a way of exer-
cising desire for revenge) or rational (shooting at someone because
he is an enemy). This is, however, complicated by another concept,
‘intended meaning’. As Weber explains, even where emotional processes
are involved, ‘we shall call the subjective meaning of such episodes,
together with their context of meaning, their “intended” meaning
(“gemeinten” Sinn). This goes beyond common usage, where “inten-
tion” generally refers only to rational and instrumentally intentional
action’ (1922, p. 316). In other words, my understanding of why I car-
ried out the revenge shooting is its ‘intended’ meaning, even though
it was not directed towards a goal. Schutz’s later distinction between
‘in order to’ motives (where ‘every action is carried out according to
a project and is oriented to an act phantasised in the future perfect
tense as already executed’ (1972, p. 87)) and ‘because’ motives (where
‘a lived experience temporally prior to the project is the motivating
factor’ (p. 92)) is useful here. Sociology is primarily concerned with
actions that have an intended meaning, but is not limited to this
alone.
Weber goes on to identify four possible modes of the determination
of any given form of action. These will be elaborated later, but for now
it is worth citing his summary directly:
(a) instrumental rationality: through expectations of the behaviour

of external objects and other people, together with the employ-
ment of this expectation as a ‘condition’ or ‘means’ for the
realization of one’s own intended, premeditated aims and

purposes;
(b) value rationality: through conscious belief in the unconditional
and intrinsic value – whether this is understood as ethical, aes-
thetic, religious or anything else – of a specific form of personal
behaviour for itself, unrelated to its success;
(c) affect, especially emotion: through actual emotions and feelings;
(d) tradition: through ingrained habituation.
(1922, p. 329)
It is the latter two forms of behaviour that he describes as being at the

extremes of, or beyond, meaningful social action.
Crucially, though, Weber goes on to say:
Action is very rarely oriented solely to the one or the other type. Sim-
ilarly, these types of orientation are in no way exhaustive in respect
of types of action, but are instead created for sociological ends, con-
ceptually pure types to which real action more or less conforms, or,
more often, are compounded in reality. Their utility for us is judged
by results.
(1922, p. 331)
It might already be possible to see how the various schools identified

by the standardized account of the development of social movement
theory begin to map onto Weber’s model. In what follows I begin with
crowd psychology, and Le Bon in particular, who is also Weber’s start-
ing point in discussing behaviour that might lie outside of what is
socially meaningful but nonetheless shade into it (perhaps as border-
line affective or traditional behaviour). Within crowd psychology the
emphasis was on the irrationality of collective behaviour (Goodwin
et al., 2001, p. 4, make a dubious distinction between two different
‘irrationalist’ approaches, one emphasizing crowd effects, and the other,
Freud’s, emphasizing individual pathology). This emphasis is, to an
extent, carried forward into various schools of collective behaviour the-
ory proper, although these paid greater attention to the rationalization
of affectively motivated behaviour. Weber describes such behaviour as
‘on its way to “value-rationalization” or instrumental action’ (1922,
p. 330).
I then shift my attention to the rational choice (or rational actor)
tradition, which has sought to explain collective action as a form of
instrumentally rational behaviour. Theories of mass psychology and
Types of Action 145
collective behaviour had established a dichotomy between the ratio-

nal behaviour of isolated individuals and irrational collective behaviour,
whilst this tradition presented all social behaviour as instrumentally
rational. The view taken by classical Marxists did not discount the
possibility that actors might be instrumentally rational in their out-
look (though not ignoring the influence of affect and value-orientation
either), but did object to the way in which rational choice theory
conceptualized choice.
Thirdly, I consider the tradition of European New Social Movement
Theory and suggest its emphasis is by and large on the value-rationality
of activism.
Finally, I briefly discuss the counter-intuitive possibility that activism
could represent a traditional form of action. This can be associated, as
it is in Weber’s work, with mass psychology theories that emphasized
conditioned responses to social stimuli (for example through ritualized
protest such as the charivari). It is also represented in contemporary the-
ories that have emphasized an activist habitus, and the knowledges and
dispositions that mean activism comes more naturally to some social
groups.
Each of these schools has been forced to accept that their theory only
works in particular cases, and they have had to make concessions in
order to extend their explanatory scope. What this points to is that the
forms of action identified as universal by each school are only hori-
zons towards which action approaches. It is hard to maintain that all
activism is irrational, instrumentally rational, value-rational or tradi-
tional. But it should be accepted that activism can approach each of
these forms. In their most caricatured forms, each of these traditions of
theorizing must therefore be rejected. It is in light of this that revisiting
Weber’s arguments is useful. Weber acknowledged that his four forms of
action were capable of coexistence within any social formation, could
morph from one into another, and were rarely found in pure form. More
often, action was a combination of types, and existed in the grey areas
between them.
Affective activism
The meaning of affectual action
lies not in its success, but in the particular form taken by the action
itself. He who acts according to emotion seeks instant revenge,
instant enjoyment, instant dedication, instant contemplative bliss, or
seeks to satisfy through abreaction [the immediate release of emotion

energy] current emotions (no matter how great or sublime they
might be.
(Weber, 1922, p. 330)
Weber describes affective action as lying ‘at the boundary, and often
beyond, what is consciously “meaningfully” oriented; it can be unin-
hibited reaction to some external stimulus’ (1922, p. 330). It is therefore
possible to speak of affective behaviour to which no ‘intended’ mean-
ing is given. As we will see, this is where Weber pays a debt to the
tradition of crowd psychology. But there are also situations in which
we can understand the ‘subjectively intended meaning’ of action, but
it might nonetheless be ‘emotional, and therefore in this sense irra-
tional’ (1922, p. 316). The action is affective because it is determined
by these emotions, and not by a premeditated purpose, by adherence
to particular values or by habituation. However, Weber does also rec-
ognize that affective behaviour can be ‘sublimated when affectually
determined action involves the consciously controlled release of feel-
ing; in which case it usually, but not always, finds itself on its way to
“value-rationalization”, or to instrumental action’ (1922, p. 330).
Affective action therefore embraced a huge spectrum from behaviour
that occurs as an uninhibited emotional reaction to action determined
in the first instance by emotion, but about which the actor is reflex-
ive, and which he or she has consciously channelled towards a goal,
or in accordance with the values to which they adhere. In this section
I attempt to cover crowd behaviour, collective behaviour and social
movement theories that cover a similar range.
Crowd behaviour theory

The Frenchman Gustave Le Bon is by far the best known of the early
crowd behaviour theorists. The Crowd (1895) has been the starting point
for a number of landmark contributions to social movement theory,
from Freud’s (1921) Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, to
Laclau’s (2005) work on populism. So, whilst it is an easy target for attack
in the secondary literature, social movement theory has developed as an
ongoing dialogue with Le Bon’s work.
Le Bon was not, of course, completely alone. He echoed ideas in
Hypolyte Taine (as Moscovici emphasizes, see Laclau, 2005). And the
work of others around the same time, such as the Italian lawyer
Scipio Sighele and the French sociologist Gabriel Tarde, contained many
Types of Action 147
similar ideas (see Borch, 2006, p. 85). Despite their differences, such
theories are often grouped together under the heading not only of
‘crowd psychology’ or ‘mass psychology’, but as theories of ‘psycho-
logical expressivism’ because of their emphasis on the suspension of
rationality, ‘convergence theories’ (Turner & Killian, 1972) because of
their emphasis on how individual differences are dissolved in the crowd,
or ‘agitator theories’ (Barker et al., 2001) because of their emphasis on
manipulation by leaders.
The Crowd (1895) was marked by a deep concern about the growing
threat of the revolutionary crowd, and Le Bon historicizes his account in
the context of the rise of the distinctively modern crowd, which sought
a transformation of society rather than the redressing of grievances in
accordance with tradition (see Nye’s preface to Le Bon, 1995, p. 6). This
was no doubt the result of his own interest in maintaining the unstable
hierarchy of French society at the time of the 1871 Paris Commune. Le
Bon was 30 years old as he watched the crowds burn Paris whilst he
was chief of the ambulance service (Reicher, 1982). As Widener (1979,
p. 14) writes, Le Bon was a member of the old elite whose associates
were republican politicians attempting to secure the allegiance of the
new electorate against radical leaders.
Le Bon’s anti-socialism becomes even clearer in his subsequent work,
such as The Psychology of Socialism (1899). He later stated that
The really unhappy one is he who can be persuaded that his con-
dition is miserable. It is on this basis that leaders proceed to make
revolutions.
Mental contagion is the most powerful factor in the propagation of a
revolutionary movement.
In certain men, the revolutionary spirit is a mental condition inde-
pendent of the object on which it is exercised. No concession could
appease them.
Every popular revolution which succeeds is a momentary return to

barbarism. The revolution constitutes the triumph of instinct over
rationality, the rejection of social constraints that differentiate the
civilized individual from the barbarian.
Great social reforms are not the work of revolutions. These oper-
ate, as in geological upheavals, through a slow accumulation of little
causes.
The immediate result of a revolution is generally but a shift in

servitude.
(Le Bon, 1913, cited in Widener, 1979, p. 29)
A number of key arguments emerge here. The first is that discontent

is constructed by leaders, rather than an objective condition. Le Bon
believed that in groups, animals and men instinctively submit to lead-
ership. Leaders are men ‘especially recruited from the ranks of those
morbidly nervous, excitable, half-deranged persons who are bordering
on madness’ who have themselves been hypnotized by an idea and
who ‘wield a very despotic authority’ through the magnetic influence
of their prestige (1895, p. 126). Through the affirmation and repeti-
tion of a simple idea (through example, most effectively), he argued,
it is embedded ‘in those profound regions of our unconscious selves in
which the motives of our actions are forged’ (1895, p. 126). The sec-
ond argument is that the object at which the collective behaviour is
aimed is arbitrary. The third is that all revolution involves a moment
of violence, and does not result in greater freedom but merely a
shift in power relations (echoed in contemporary Lacanian theory
by Stavrakakis, 2010, p. 91, and elsewhere). The fourth argument is
that social change should happen slowly rather than through radical
historical breaks.
Le Bon’s argument was that once caught up in the crowd, otherwise
civilized individuals reverted to acting by instinct alone (Le Bon, 1895,
p. 52, passim; 1913). These instincts were rooted in a racial unconscious,
with secondary suggestions merely acting as ripples on their surface.
This can be reworked into the language of fantasy, with unconscious
phantasies being translated into conscious manifestations by leaders.
This raises debates about whether all crowds are ultimately reducible
to the same unconscious instincts (see Reicher, 1982, for a critique).
Although writing in advance of Freud, Le Bon works with a not dissimi-
lar understanding that underlying human behaviour is a set of biological
drives or instincts. Civilized society requires that the individual restrain
these instincts. In the midst of the revolutionary crowd, the rationality
that individuals usually possess is suspended. For Le Bon, in returning
to a state governed by instinct alone, the individual descended to the
level of what he saw as more primitive beings, either ontogenetically
(children) or racially (barbarians).
Le Bon goes on to argue that this removal of individual rational-
ity unites the crowd into one collective mind no matter how unalike
they normally are. They are governed by what he calls the law of the
Types of Action 149
mental unity of crowds (1895, p. 47), which means they can be treated
analytically as a single entity. He identifies three mechanisms through
which the crowd mind is created and, more importantly, controlled. All
have been subject to much debate. The first is the feeling of both power
and diffused responsibility experienced by members of the crowd, based
in part on anonymity. Reicher (1982) notes, however, that anonymity is
only experienced in respect to those outside the crowd, and the indi-
vidual remains identifiable within the crowd. Hence more attention
needs to be drawn to understandings and norms operating to control
behaviour within the crowd itself by virtue of social identity (see also
his critique of Zimbardo).
The second is that emotions and behaviour spread amongst the crowd
through contagion. Turner & Killian (1972) have attempted to pull apart
exactly what Le Bon means by ‘contagion’. As they note, it is a metaphor
borrowed from medicine, but Le Bon does not identify the mecha-
nism by which it takes place if not by bacteria or virus. Possibilities
are provided by Tarde’s law of imitation, Blumer’s concept of ‘circu-
lar interaction’, Wheeler’s ‘social facilitation’ of Sherif & Sherif’s work
on suggestion, to which tradition Turner & Killian’s own work belongs
(these problematic metaphors resurfaced in relation to the 2011 London
riots; copycat rioting, the viral spread of information through Blackberry
Messenger and so on).
Ultimately, for Le Bon contagion is an effect of the third mechanism:
suggestibility. As the individual will is weakened, the crowd member
becomes more easily swayed by suggestion, either by the ‘magnetic
influence given out by the crowd’ (1895, pp. 7–8) or from ‘hypnotic’
leaders. A common quotation from Le Bon is as follows:
By the mere fact that he forms part of an organised crowd, a man

descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may
be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian – that is,
a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the vio-
lence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive
beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which
he allows himself to be impressed by words and images – which
would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals
composing the crowd – and to be induced to commit acts contrary to
his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual
in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the
wind stirs up at will.
(1895, p. 52)
Le Bon makes it clear that in the crowd ‘reality-testing’ is suspended in

favour of illusion:
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from
evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error
seduced them.
(1895, p. 52)
Whilst emphasizing that the mental capacity of the crowd was always
less than that of its constituents, Le Bon also believed the crowd to be
a potentially powerful, if dangerous, force given the acts of heroism of
which it was capable. Moreover, this crowd could be manipulated in the
service of good as well as bad (1895, p. 53). Because of these insights
Le Bon was widely read, and by leaders as diverse as Theodor Roosevelt,
Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler (Widener, 1979).
As mentioned, Weber uses work on ‘mass psychology’ and Le Bon
specifically as illustration of action that might not be considered
meaningful. What he takes from this volume of work is as follows:
It is well known that the action of the individual is strongly influ-

enced by the mere fact of being part of a crowd in a confined
space . . . This is action determined by the mass. Even within a dispersed
mass it is possible for the individual to be subject to simultaneous
or successive influence, for example, through the press, where the
sensed behaviour of the many influences that of the individual. Par-
ticular forms of reaction are facilitated, or hindered, by the mere fact
that the individual feels himself part of the ‘mass’ . . . . In the major-
ity of cases none of this requires that a meaningful relationship exist
between the behaviour of the individual and the fact of his being part
of a mass.
(Weber, 1922, p. 328)
What Weber seems to be accepting is that the mechanisms of influ-

ence at work here operate without the actor involved identifying this
influence as part of the meaning of their action. Weber continues:
Simple ‘imitation’ of another’s action (the importance of this is

rightly emphasized by G. Tarde) should not be conceptualized as
specifically social action where it is purely reactive, lacking the ori-
entation of one’s own action to that of the other . . . . His action
Types of Action 151
is causally, but not meaningfully, determined by the behaviour of

others.
(1922, pp. 328–9)
Where imitation occurred for a reason, it might, however, be meaning-

ful. Weber acknowledges that cases of both ‘mass determination’ and
imitation are ‘borderline cases of social action’.
The reason for this instability is to do with the fact that orientation
to the behaviour of others and the meaning of one’s own action
cannot be established unambiguously, or is unconscious, and rarely
completely conscious. Mere ‘influence’ and meaningful ‘orientation’
are for this reason not always easily distinguishable.
(1922, p. 329)
What he meant is perhaps clearer in an earlier point:
Supposed ‘motives’, and ‘repressed factors’ such as unacknowledged

motives, often enough conceal from the actor himself the real con-
text forming his action, to such a degree that only limited value can
be attached to sincere personal expression of an actor’s motivation.
Sociology has here the task of identifying this context and establish-
ing its appropriate interpretation, although this context has not, or
usually has only incompletely, been fixed in consciousness as some-
thing which was definitely ‘intended’. This is a borderline instance of
the interpretation of meaning.
(1922, p. 317)
Importantly, Weber is not contrasting the intended meaning of the

action with the ‘real’ meaning of the action. He is relating the con-
scious meaning to the deeper meaning. Hence the deeper motivation
is described as ‘not fully part of the conscious behaviour’, rather than
simply ‘not part of the conscious behaviour’. What can be read into
this is that the intended meaning is developed from what the uncon-
scious motivation is impelling us to do. There is never a complete
disconnect between one and the other. I previously tried to capture this
when I described activism as ‘already both unconscious and conscious,
irrational and rationalized’ (Ormrod, 2009, p. 126).
I now turn my attention to subsequent developments to have
emerged from Le Bon’s work that accept to varying degrees the focus
on the determining role of affect in crowds and collective behaviour
more generally (including social movements), but which have moved

beyond some of Le Bon’s problematic assumptions.
Freud’s group psychology

Freud’s (1921) group psychology took crowd psychology in general,
and Le Bon in particular, as its starting point. Whilst Freud agreed
that individual behaviour was altered in a group, he did not agree
that new instincts emerged within it. Instead, he asserted that indi-
vidual psychology is always social in the first instance, and conversely
social psychology involved instincts already operating in the individ-
ual, even if repressed. Collective behaviour was rooted in individual
desires rather than group effects (Smelser, 1969, p. 55). But Freud was
nonetheless taken with Le Bon’s observations of the childish and primi-
tive crowd mentality (Smelser, 1969, p. 53). So whilst confirming many
of Le Bon’s observations about the crowd – the absence of ‘reality-
testing’, the acceptance of contradiction, the centrality of phantasy
and illusion – Freud raised objections to Le Bon’s explanations of these
phenomena. He agrees with Le Bon that individuals in the group are
hypnotized, but Le Bon does not account for who takes the role of hyp-
notist. The idea of leaders possessing ‘prestige’ is too mystical for Freud.
Likewise, ‘suggestion’, ‘imitation’, ‘the primitive induction of emotion’
(from McDougall, 1920) or ‘contagion’ may all be descriptively accurate,
but crowd psychology has not explained why this occurs in a group. It is
not, for Freud, an irreducible phenomena; it needs to be explained itself.
Freud thus sets out to explain the unity, intensification of emotion
and inhibition of intellect within the ‘primitive group’ (following his
analysis of McDougall, 1920, a relatively unorganized group).
Freud’s theory begins with the libido, which in these cases is inhibited
in its sexual aim and diverted into other forms of love. ‘Love relation-
ships . . . also constitute the essence of the group mind’ (1921, p. 40).
This, he believes, is what is concealed behind the concept of ‘sugges-
tion’. The group is, quite simply, held together by love. This hinges
entirely on the relationship between each member of the group and the
leader, although Freud points to the possibility that ‘an idea, an abstrac-
tion, may . . . be substituted for the leader’. The leader is ‘idealised’, or
overestimated. This love object takes the place of the ego ideal; ‘we love
it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our
own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout
way as a means of satisfying our narcissism’ (Freud, 1921, pp. 112–13).
From here on, ‘functions allotted to the ego ideal entirely cease to
operate. The criticism exercised by that faculty is silent; everything that
Types of Action 153
the object does and asks for is right and blameless’ (Freud, 1921, p. 113).
In this condition, in principle the same as hypnosis or being in love,
there is an absence of criticism of the object. Hence Freud arrives at his
definition of the primary group that was of interest to crowd psychol-
ogy: ‘a number of individuals who have substituted one and the same
object for their ego ideal and have consequently identified themselves
with one another in their ego’ (1921, p. 116). This identification takes
place on the basis of what they have in common, that is their tie with
the leader. Each member of the group is forced to renounce their exclu-
sive demands on the leader. Freud suggests that in so much as there is
a ‘herd instinct’ (Trotter, 1915) it is to be understood as the necessary
limitation of rivalry by the demand for equality in respect to the leader.
Freud’s parting shot is to demand the move from ‘herd’ to ‘horde’ as
he reintroduces the hypothesis of the primal horde as a possible expla-
nation for the group’s thirst for obedience, but this is by no means a
necessary component of his theory.
The Chicago School tradition of collective behaviour

I now turn my attention to the first of two sociological schools of col-
lective behaviour theory that engaged with Le Bon’s crowd psychology.
The first strand is the Chicago School of collective behaviour theory,
especially the work of Robert E. Park and Herbert Blumer. Whilst com-
ing from very different theoretical backgrounds, these traditions both
share an assumption that collective behaviour emerges from conditions
of social breakdown or fragmentation and that collective behaviour
represents an attempt at restoring or rebuilding order. Because of this
emphasis on the breakdown of normal order and the emotions this
engenders, there is a necessary implication that collective behaviour
is at root affective. However, there is in both traditions a recogni-
tion that mechanisms occur within collective behaviour that involve
transformations of emotion.
In The Crowd and the Public (1904), Robert Park, whose work shaped
the early Chicago School of sociology, retained Le Bon’s focus on inter-
nal dynamics in his work on collective behaviour, though he also
instigated two developments that were crucial in building a more soci-
ological theory. First, he recognized that the crowd occurred in times of
social instability; the crowd ‘seldom arises where there is social stability
and where customs have deep roots’ (p. 47). Le Bon is often criticized
for ignoring the social context in which crowds formed (see Reicher
et al., 2001, who point out that what he was witnessing in Paris was
class conflict).
Secondly, in dismissing Le Bon’s concept of ‘emotional contagion’,

Park developed a theory of ‘part-conscious’ imitation, taken initially
from Tarde, and affective mirroring or ‘psychic reciprocity’ (1904, p. 22).
As Borch says, Park’s perspective on crowds ‘plays down the signif-
icance of irrationality and focuses instead on the constructive and
transformative potentials of crowds’ (2006, p. 89). Indeed, viewed from
the perspective of social evolution, the crowd was not irrational, even if it
was impulsive (2006, p. 90). Furthermore, Park distinguished the mech-
anisms of change operating within the crowd – which were nonetheless
acknowledged to be irrational and through which differences were sup-
pressed – and those operating within the public – which were rational
and reasoned, and through which differences were debated and dis-
cussed. Both, however, involved the generation of new ties, traditions
and customs contrasted with the ‘mores’ of society. Both meant a
reorganization of society. As Elsner writes:
Despite his acceptance of the Le Bon-Sighele portrayal of crowd

behaviour, however, Park’s inclusion of the public within the cate-
gory of change-inducing groups radically altered the thrust of their
tradition, for an irrational mechanism of change is now balanced by
a mechanism that is rational and reasonable, even if the conditions
giving rise to one or the other are not made clear.
(Preface to Park, 1972, p. xv)
The combination of mechanisms operating within the crowd and

those within the public was responsible for what Park termed ‘social
movements’.
Herbert Blumer (1951a) developed Park’s argument. He accepted that
the crowd could be ‘fickle, suggestible, and irresponsible’, but believed
social movements gave rise to new ‘societies in miniature’. Blumer dis-
tinguished between general and specific social movements. His account
of general movements begins with a ‘cultural drift’ in values, which
causes people to reconceptualize their concepts of rights and privileges
and to re-evaluate their own lives on the basis of them (1951b, p. 100).
They may, he says, develop new desires and hopes as they come to see
their current position in life as unsatisfactory. The result is uncoordi-
nated movements towards change, which pervade both literature, in
the form of a vague utopianism, and everyday conversation. He offers
the labour movement and the women’s movement as examples.
Such general movements do not involve the organization of groups
for action, but they form the basis for ‘specific movements’ within
Types of Action 155
which ‘the motivation of dissatisfaction, hope, and desire awakened

by the general movement’ is crystallized through a focus on a par-
ticular objective. Blumer believes that the specific movement begins
in a disorganized form, characterized by agitation, restlessness, impul-
sive behaviour and collective excitement (1951b, p. 102). Only over
time does organization develop within the movement as a new form
of life begins to emerge to replace the old (citing Dawson & Gettys’s,
1935, four-stage model to describe this process: social unrest, popu-
lar excitement, formalization and institutionalization). Blumer himself
prefers to focus on the mechanisms at work rather than distinct tempo-
ral stages. ‘Agitation’ refers to the process by which potential members
are made to feel dissatisfied, and are ‘jarred loose from their custom-
ary ways of thinking and believing’ (1951b, p. 106). ‘The development
of esprit de corps’ involves the development of feelings of intimacy
and belonging. This spirit of comradeship is fostered through singing,
dancing, picnics, joking and having fun, and involves individuals shar-
ing experience and in the process assimilating each other’s gestures,
attitudes, values and philosophy. ‘The development of morale’ is the
mechanism through which determination to succeed is instilled. For
Blumer this relies heavily on developing the idea that the movement
is ‘divinely favoured’ and ‘charged with a sacred mission’. Saintly
leaders, sacred literature and mythology are important devices here.
‘The development of group ideology’ helps sustain the movement in
the face of challenges from outside. The ideology, in both intellec-
tual and popular forms, provides the movement with its philosophy,
and also its psychology. It provides direction, justification, weapons of
attack, weapons of defence, inspiration and hope. ‘Tactics’ must also
be developed in order to gain and hold adherents and reach objec-
tives, though these must be tailored to the particular situation of the
movement.
Approaches in social psychology

A number of distinctive approaches to social psychology have also grap-
pled with the issues raised in classical crowd psychology from the later
part of the twentieth century onwards.
In their attention to the emergence of new social norms from the
midst of collective behaviour, Turner & Killian (1987, p. 243) retained a
key element of Blumer’s collective behaviour theory:
The emergent norm – the revised sense of justice – matures and

crystalizes with the development of the movement. It is implemented
through the strategy of the movement and diffused through the

public that is concerned about the movement. The ultimate and most
enduring product of a movement is either the repudiation of the
revised conception of justice or its acceptance in the society.
However, in contrast to Blumer they argued that crowds actually have

diverse motives and understandings, and they criticize what they call
‘convergence’ theories. Crowds merely give the illusion of unanim-
ity because the group appears to adhere to an emergent norm. This
occurs not because of contagion but because of group influence. Their
grounding lies in Asch’s group influence experiments.
Another departure from the Sighele-Le Bon thesis came in the form
of Reicher’s work on crowds from the Social Identity Theory perspective
of Tajfel and Turner, interested in ‘what it is to be in a group for the
members of that group’ (1982, p. 42). One of the key arguments of this
tradition is that social identifications precede membership of a crowd
as well as emerging from it; the two exist as a dialectic. Hence they
are able to answer Milgram & Toch’s (1969) question about why riot
police called in to control a crowd do not end up getting drawn into it.
Reicher accepts that in crowd situations social identity might become
so salient that it overrides the influence of personal identity. He argues
that ideas, and even emotions, are likely to be accepted by the individual
dependent, on the one hand, on how well they accord with the social
identity on which the group is based, and on the other, whether the idea
comes from someone within the group.
For the individual qua individual confidence in a communication

is a matter of trying to ascertain the correspondence between that
communication and ‘objective reality’ as he sees it. For the individ-
ual qua crowd member, this question of correspondence is shifted
to that between the communication and the social identity of the
crowd. The crowd’s identity represents the common reconstruction
of a confused social reality on the part of the individuals who iden-
tify with the crowd. For an individual acting as such, confidence
must be based on probabilistic factors such as the personal charac-
ter of the communicator, etc. The confidence of crowd members in
a piece of information is not probabilistic; it is all-or-none. Those
communications that do not accord with social identity will be unre-
servedly rejected and those that do will be received with complete
confidence.
(Reicher, 1982, p. 75)
Types of Action 157
The conversion of such ideas and emotions into action is likely to take
place because of their perceived legitimacy due to their group origin
(coupled with greater feeling of power). Whilst Reicher’s theory helps to
establish limits to contagious suggestion based on identification (some-
thing he also praises Freud for), his account of the mechanisms involved
in crowd psychology does not necessarily progress our understanding.
However, Reicher does at least raise one important point. He takes
from Tajfel that there is no ultimate standard of ‘rational’ behaviour
against which the irrationality of crowd behaviour can be judged. He
is completely right when he suggests that when outside observers have
reached conclusions about the irrationality of crowd behaviour, this has
often been based on a narrow understanding of their economic inter-
ests (as in Le Bon’s comment about acting against their own interests).
Tajfel emphasizes instead that the contrast should be between irrational
and social-cognitive behaviour. When we understand the way in which
identifying with a crowd can change an individual’s ideas, we can under-
stand why behaviour in a crowd might contradict behaviour elsewhere.
The conflation of pursuit of material interests with rational action has
been a sticking point for social movement theory.
Borch (2006) sees in much of the work subsequent to Blumer’s a more
radical retreat from the semantics associated with studying ‘the crowd’.
This, he believes, involved a move away from the ‘double discomfort’
engendered by talk of crowds: first, an association with ‘suggestibility,
femininity, immaturity, in short, irrationality’, and second an incom-
patibility with methodological individualism. Borch’s argument is that
much is lost when the distinctiveness of crowds disappears as they are
reduced to rational phenomena. Marx & Wood (1975) are surely right
when they say that this distinctiveness must be acknowledged, so long
as it can be explained from within the same overarching framework as
other, more routine, forms of social behaviour. Borch’s own inclination
is towards the ‘new vitalist’ perspective that has drawn renewed inspi-
ration from Tarde in particular due to its emphasis on indeterminancy
and emergence.
Functionalist collective behaviour theory

If the Chicago School instigated a divide between American sociol-
ogy and Freudian psychoanalysis on the issue of the mechanisms at
work within the crowd, then a second tradition, also claiming the
label of ‘collective behaviour theory’, brought the two closer together.
As mentioned previously, whilst Le Bon had argued that society was
about to enter the ‘era of crowds’ he had not accounted for the role
of structural conditions in generating crowds. Park had attempted to

redress this but symbolic interactionist social movement theory is often
also criticized for its continued ignorance of structural context (e.g.
Crossley, 2002). The importance of McDougall’s (1920) arguments in
this respect was also lost (Smelser, 1969). A number of functionalist col-
lective behaviour theorists writing from the 1950s onwards combined
Freudian psychoanalytic insights with analysis at the structural level in
order to redress this. However, this move brought with it charges that
although they paid attention to the psychological conditions underly-
ing collective action, their account of agency was deficient (again, see
Crossley, 2002).
As Scott (1995, p. 2) explains, functionalist sociology was forced to
treat the mass movements that had occurred during the middle part
of the twentieth century as disruptions to the smooth running of soci-
ety and therefore as indicative of strains within the social structure.
Yet rather than see activists’ claims as legitimate responses to structural
inequalities, they were seen as pathological expressions of the system’s
failure to maintain cohesion. In the popular writer Eric Hoffer’s words:
‘It is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against but its
weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together
into one solid, mighty whole’ (1951, p. 94). Hoffer identified frustration
across social strata as being the primary driver of mass movements. ‘It is
not actual suffering but the taste of better things which excites people
to revolt . . . . Our frustration is greater when we have much and want
more than when we have nothing and want some’ (p. 29). Frustration
for Hoffer was the historical result of rising individualism and the social
isolation that resulted from it. He argued that, ‘[a] rising mass move-
ment attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises
but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and mean-
inglessness of an individual existence’ (1951, p. 41). Movements offer
‘freedom from freedom’; as escape from a highly individualized and
unregulated society (see Fromm, 1994, on this). Hoffer describes partici-
pants in mass movements as incomplete and insecure and as expressing
‘infantile needs’. Movements offer the ‘blemished’ individual a new
life and the opportunity to lose an unwanted self in the group. The
idea that the social movement is a response to a ‘spoiled’ identity has
recently been reworked in line with the concept of individualization
(Kaplan & Liu, 2000). Hoffer’s list of those most likely to fall into this
category reads: the poor, misfits, outcasts, minorities, adolescent youth,
the ambitious, those in the grip of vice or obsession, the impotent
(in body or mind), the bored and sinners. For these individuals, a sense
Types of Action 159
of omnipotence is gained by joining a mass movement that promises ‘a

source of irresistible power’ (1951, p. 11).
For Hoffer (1951), unlike Blumer for example, the beliefs of collec-
tive actors were not important. No proselytizing prompting was needed
given the instincts of the frustrated mind (p. xii). Indeed, though he
takes great pains to document the role of ‘men of words’ in out-
lining new possibilities, he does not hold much esteem for actors’
abilities to assess the doctrines they may preach. Given the irrational
nature of mass actors, he even suggests doctrines are best not based
on rational observation, but rather should be ‘unintelligible, vague or
unverifiable’ (1951, p. 79). Leading on from this, Hoffer asserts that the
frustrated may be drawn equally to socialist or fascist movements, sug-
gesting that which movement a person joins is arbitrary. ‘When people
are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective
movement.’
In similar vein, Kornhauser (1959) believed that the force behind
mass movements was ‘atomization’, resulting from rapid discontinuities
of community. This worked on three levels: (i) the isolation of fami-
lies, (ii) a weak structure of intermediate organizations like voluntary
groups, unions and local government, and (iii) an overly centralized
state. In mass societies, there is no protection for the elite from the
masses, or protection for the masses from the manipulation of the elite,
which leaves the ground prepared for mass movements. Kornhauser saw
this as dangerous for democracy. The individuals involved are likely to
be self-estranged and alienated from society, lacking in self-confidence,
easily suggestible and reliant on the powers of others (citing Fromm,
1955, p. 124). The collective offers a relief from personal impotence.
Again, only minimal importance is attached to social class, although
he realizes classes were differently represented in the communist and
Nazi movements. Instead Kornhauser argues that it is the marginalized
and isolated within each class that are likely to be drawn to mass move-
ments. Klapp’s (1969, pp. 11–14) outline of the ‘symptoms of identity
trouble’ associated with the search for collective identity echoes much of
this, and is summarized by Goodwin et al. (2001, p. 3): ‘a feeling of being
blemished, self-hatred, oversensitivity, excessive self-concern (including
narcissism), alienation, a feeling that “nobody appreciates me”, a desire
to be someone else, a feeling of fraudulent self-presentation, Riesman’s
“other-directedness”, and an identity crisis’.
Neil Smelser’s position, which also belongs to this ‘breakdown’ tradi-
tion of thinking about collective behaviour, is covered in Chapter 6, and
represents the most sophisticated version of this perspective.
Laclau’s homogenizing logics

Laclau (2005), as so many others before him, takes Le Bon as a start-
ing point in his discussion of mass behaviour, accepting the descriptive
validity of Le Bon’s observations but not his normative arguments.
In fact, Laclau’s central argument is that Le Bon actually uncovers in
the dynamics of the crowd some fundamental truths about language
itself. Le Bon’s central mistake is in seeing these as a pathological dis-
tortion of the functioning of language rather than revealing some of its
essential features. The central problem is in conflating the rational with
the normal and individual, on the one hand, and the irrational with
the pathological and the group, on the other. Laclau believes Taine pre-
sented the most extreme form of this dichotomization, which was then
dissolved in Freud’s work.
Laclau’s main point of interest is Le Bon’s assertion that in the crowd
suggestion takes place through ‘images, words and formulas’, in such
a way that the images evoked by words are ‘independent of their real
significance’. Le Bon has in mind especially ill-defined terms like democ-
racy, socialism, equality and liberty, which have popular appeal and
evoke emotive images despite being very fluid in their meanings.
The error here for Laclau is in thinking that any word has a ‘true’
meaning (a fixed relationship with a signified). The way meaning is
developed within the crowd context actually tells us something about
how meaning works in general. Laclau reworks the three mechanisms
by which Le Bon believes words are impressed on crowds. First, affirma-
tion, or the assertion of something as being beyond proof, does not have
to mean it is a lie, says Laclau. It could equally be pointing to something
beyond the scope of present discourse. Secondly, there is no ground for
distinguishing repeated assertions that sediment rational decisions (as a
basis for identity) from manipulated irrational habit. Thirdly, Laclau
argues, following Freud, that Le Bon does not explain how contagion
works. Laclau puts forward the possibility that it occurs when a symbol
expresses ‘a common feature shared by a group of people, one which is
difficult to express in a direct way’ (2005, p. 28).
Laclau picks up on one detail in Freud’s account, which he devel-
ops into the basis for his theory of populism. The roots of this are
traced to Tarde and McDougall where Laclau sees the beginnings of a
trend completed by Freud in which the two poles of rational-normal-
individual and irrational-pathological-group are allowed ‘to contam-
inate one another’ such that both ‘logics’ are present in all social
behaviour. Unlike Park, Laclau emphasizes that both crowd and public
involve a logic of homogenization.
Types of Action 161
Laclau notes that Freud (1921) is talking only about primary groups,
deliberately side-lining the kinds of organized groups that McDougall
has identified (marked by temporal continuity, the idea of the group
itself, the idea of an outgroup, a binding to each other and to the group
by tradition, and the internal differentiation of the group). These latter
are groups that have acquired the characteristics of the individual that
were ‘extinguished in him by the formation of the group’. Laclau’s argu-
ment is that the logic supposedly operating here and the logic of the
primary group operate in all social groups and merely represent poles
of a continuum. Freud allows for this different logic when he accepts
that sometimes the group member’s ego and ego ideal are not separated
that much. It is precisely this minor concession of Freud’s that Laclau
believes determines the social-political alternatives emerging from the
group. So whilst he agrees with Borch-Jacobsen’s argument that for
Freud the social is dependent on the political (i.e. on leadership or hier-
archy), he does not accept that this is necessarily purely authoritarian,
and allows for the possibility of democracy. For when group members’
egos and ego ideals are not so far removed, Freud notes that leaders do
not have to be so exceptional. The consequences of this, says Laclau, are
that, first, identification within the group does not take place purely on
the basis of the tie to the leader, but on the basis of some quality the
group is seen to have in common, which is also present in the leader.
Secondly, that identification with the leader becomes possible. Thirdly,
that the leader is not purely narcissistic, for he is part of the group as well
as its leader. A more democratic leadership is thus made possible. Freud
is therefore seen by Laclau as capping a progressive movement towards
recognizing that social homogeneity and social differentiation exist as
a duality rather than a dualism. The joint operation of these two logics
becomes the basis for Laclau’s distinction between logics of equivalence
and logics of difference. He is particularly inclined towards Tarde’s later
work in which he moves from emphasizing the role of unilateral sugges-
tion towards interaction within physically separated publics (although
these can descend into crowds). Here, one persistent social division is
replaced with ‘incomplete and variable segmentation whose limits are
blurred, in a process of perpetual renovation and mutual penetration’
(Laclau, 2005, p. 47).
New cultural approaches to emotion

Goodwin et al. (2001) believe that prior to the 1960s emotions were
seen as the key to explaining movements (though their definition of
what classes as an emotion is broad; Jasper, 2007, includes frustration,
anger, alienation and anomie), whether through crowd psychology or

individual pathology. But they write of the rational actor tradition that
then emerged; ‘just as older theorists had concluded that their emotions
made protestors irrational, the new generation of scholars – eventually
dubbed the resource mobilization paradigm – treated rational protesters
as devoid of emotions’ (Goodwin et al., 2001, p. 5). Goodwin and
Jasper’s aim is to redress the cognitive bias of recent social movement
theorizing. The cultural turn laid the ground for this. This affective turn
asks theorists to reconsider both the origin of emotions, and the rela-
tionship between emotion and action (see also Flam & King, 2008).
I identify a number of arguments at work in this tradition.
First, Goodwin et al. (2001) argue that ‘Emotions can be seen as an
aspect of all social action and social relations. They accompany rational
acts as fully as irrational ones’ (p. 9). It is indeed important to avoid the
dichotomy between affective irrational collective behaviour and affect-
free rational individual behaviour. And it is equally important to avoid
dichotomizing affective irrational movements and affect-free rational
movements. Jasper is right to ridicule those who ‘trot out emotions
only to study Nazis, moral panics and other movements they dislike’
(Jasper, 2007, p. 607). However, there is nonetheless a temptation to sug-
gest that psychoanalytic theories may have more relevance to precisely
these kinds of movements, which ‘manifest strange beliefs and feel-
ings’ (Crossley, 2002), but to emphasize the close relationship between
emotions and cognitive processes when it comes to more ‘acceptable’
movements. The key is that the same theoretical framework must be
able to account for the whole range of social movements, even if within
this we want to make normative distinctions.
Leading on from this decoupling of emotion and irrationality,
Crossley argues:
It is perfectly understandable that a person who is mistreated will

become angry, for example, just as it is perfectly understandable that
an individual who loses a loved one will become upset. We would not
deem an individual who reacted in these ways irrational and would
probably think it odd if they did not react in these ways.
(Crossley, 2002, p. 49)
Crossley conflates things here that Weber clearly distinguishes. One is

the ‘motivational understanding’ of the observer (and in this instance
behaviour would be understandable). The other is the nature of the
motive itself, which may have an affective meaning, or indeed be
unconscious, and irrational.
Types of Action 163
Thirdly, Goodwin et al. (2001) argue that ‘Emotions are shaped by

social expectations as much as they are emanations from individual
personalities. They depend on traditions and on cognitive assessments’
(p. 9). This approach emphasizes that emotional reactions are deter-
mined by contextual knowledge, moral values and the understanding
of roles. These latter are obviously socially patterned, and therefore so
are emotional responses themselves. The point is that the same stimu-
lus (for example a policeman striking a protestor with a truncheon) will
provoke different emotional responses in observers depending on their
understanding of the situation (including their background knowledge
of what preceded it, their view on the legitimacy of the protest, their
understanding of the role of a police officer and so on). This reflects
the bridge established by these authors between emotions and ‘frames’
through which movement causes are understood (I return to framing
theory later). Jasper (2007) makes the case for decentring personality
by saying that although individuals may sometimes display abnormal
emotions, the sociology of emotions is interested in establishing gen-
eral patterns. This is a strong sociological argument. But Goodwin et al.
(2001) are mistaken to think that personality is merely what throws up
the occasional ‘abnormal reaction’, rather than something that more
systematically determines emotional response. Goodwin et al. overem-
phasize the role of cultural expectations and understandings at the
expense of acknowledging the ways in which personality is determined
by social relations.
Fourthly, not only are emotions socially learned, but, Jasper (2007,
p. 607) claims, ‘can be relearned if they consistently hurt one’s posi-
tion’. He is right to draw attention to the fact that emotional responses
are ‘learned’, in the sense that they are not innate emotional responses
to objects. But if ‘learned’ implies a process of adaptation, then this is
misleading, especially if this is thought to be a conscious process. Psy-
choanalysis tells us that adults are resistant to changing their emotional
responses. Psychoanalysis provides a framework that explains how it is
that emotions are both learned in childhood and resistant to learning.
The resolution of the Oedipus complex, for example, involves the trans-
formation of rivalry and anger towards the father into admiration and
love. This occurs through a process of learning, but not a conscious one.
And in adults, these emotions are likely to be carried through into new
relationships.
Fifthly, Crossley argues that
Emotions feed into the communicative processes which constitute

the fabric of the social world and therein their reasonableness is
assessed and ways for acting on them devised. Agents can discuss,
for example, whether their feelings of impatience are reasonable, and
if they decide they are then they may elect to act upon them.
(Crossley, 2002, p. 108; see also Tarrow, 1998)
I think this is absolutely true. But Weber’s point (also Adorno’s) stands.
It must not be inferred from this that the rationality by which agents
debate their emotions is somehow independent of the source of the
emotion itself. To use one of Freud’s analogies, the ego is not a rider
in control of his mount (the id), but is more often than not forced down
the path the id dictates whilst maintaining a semblance of control.
Sixthly, it is argued that emotions can be manipulated in social move-
ments, and especially by leaders. Again, there is something in this
which it is hard to refute. And here Goodwin & Jasper’s emphasis on
movement leaders meets the tradition of Le Bon’s agitator theory. One
difference, however, is that where Le Bon thought leaders themselves
were half-deranged, Jasper (2007, p. 592) presents them as though they
manipulated emotions only to win converts: ‘It is affects and emotional
responses that political organizers appeal to, arouse, manipulate, and
sustain to recruit and retain members.’
Goodwin and Jasper use these assumptions to rejuvenate understand-
ings of social movement ‘frames’, recruitment through networks, and
collective identity, making three main points. One is to see the posi-
tive emotions associated with collective action as an auxiliary incentive
to the achievement of social change itself (a ‘solidary selective incen-
tive’ in the terminology explained below; see also Shepard, 2011, as
cited in the Introduction). There is no doubt that emotions such as joy,
love, loyalty and so on exist within social movements and help sus-
tain them. But there is an issue here which, as discussed later in this
chapter, presents a problem with all attempts to rationalize movement
participation. To the extent that theories like Goodwin and Jasper’s
acknowledge these rewards of participation, which are in themselves dis-
connected from the movement’s aims per se (the same emotions might
be present in any movement), then the theories merge with the collec-
tive behaviour accounts they are trying to get away from. Any theory of
emotions and social movements cannot treat solidary emotions as sep-
arate from, and auxiliary to, the motives that attract individuals to the
cause.
The second point is that emotions can alert us to the fact that
something is socially ‘wrong’ in the first instance. Thus the origins of
activism lie not in a cognitive assessment of a social situation, but in
Types of Action 165
an emotional reaction to it. But, crucially, this is determined in the first

instance by social expectations and understandings, which influence the
reaction non-consciously. There is some uncertainty here, especially in
Jasper’s (2007) discussion of the temporal relationship between the emo-
tional and cognitive components of blame. Do we feel angry and then
look for somebody to blame? Or do we need to first identify a perpetra-
tor of injustice before we are able to feel angry (see Herzog & Golden,
2009, for a similar discussion of disgust and ideology)?
In outlining the third argument, Jasper claims that ‘emotions give
ideas, ideologies, identities, and even interests their power to motivate’
(2007, p. 606) and ‘cognitive agreement alone does not result in action’
(Goodwin et al., 2001, p. 6). As Crossley puts it, for Tarrow (1998) ‘emo-
tions are very often a crucial source of the energy which fuels movement
activism and engagement’ (Crossley, 2002, p. 137). And yet the argu-
ment that Jasper puts forward elsewhere is that the source of emotions
is in ‘ideas’ in the first instance. The question then is where the ‘added
energy’ of the emotions comes from. In concluding, he remarks that the
‘spectre of irrationality’ arises when ‘we assume that emotions . . . lead us
to do things we normally would not do or do not “really want” ’ (Jasper,
2007, p. 607). Jasper’s solution is to say that new contexts arouse reactive
emotions because of pre-existing affective attachments such as love. Lest
this be seen as opening the door to irrationality, Jasper then says that:
Affective loyalties such as love might blind us in this way, for they are
more likely to frame the interpretation of new information, making
us less adaptable and thus less rational. But since these affects are very
close to moral values and basic goals, a commitment to them is hard
to dismiss simply as irrational.
(2007, p. 591)
This expands our understanding of the situation arousing emotion to

include both the immediate situation and the more general context of
the actor’s goals and values. But this only defers the dilemma. These
issues are resolved if it is accepted that the added emotional energy
comes from our unconscious investments in objects, which always
outstrip their meaning for us on a cognitive level.
Instrumentally rational activism
Zweckrational action is defined by Weber (1922, p. 330) as action ori-

ented ‘in terms of rational orientation to a system of discrete individual
ends’. In its purest form this exists ‘when the end, the means, and the
secondary results are all rationally taken into account and weighed’. He
then makes it clear that in this process the weighing of ends must in
fact be interrelated; it involves ‘rationally estimating the relations of
means to ends, that of ends to the associated consequences, as well
as that of the various ends’ (1922, p. 330). The impact of pursuing
one end on the attainment of another must be taken into account,
and the impact of different means on this balance will be decisive.
Weber unambiguously distinguishes this from affective and tradition
action.
Olson’s logic of collective action

Behaviour arguably approximates this ideal type most closely when it
concerns the realization of an individual’s ‘material values’ as opposed
to ‘ideal values’ (Weber, 1904a). Indeed Mancur Olson’s (1965) text,
Logic of Collective Action, which served as the platform for what Crossley
(2002) calls ‘rational actor theories’ of social movements (but which can
equally be called rational choice theories of social movements), makes
it clear that he is interested in organizations that are expected to further
the interests of their members. By interests he has in mind gaining some
‘particular advantage’ or ‘some particular thing needed for the purposes
of life’ (following Aristotle). It is in these cases, to which Olson wisely
confines himself, that the calculation of costs and rewards seems most
possible. In a footnote he merely adds:
Philanthropic and religious organizations are not necessarily

expected to serve only the interests of their members; such organi-
zations have other purposes that are considered more important . . . .
The logic of the theory developed here can be extended to cover com-
munal, religious, and philanthropic organizations, but the theory is
not particularly useful in studying such groups.
(Olson, 1965, p. 6 footnote)
Weber does, nonetheless, allow that the orientation of action to ideal

values can in principle still be considered fully zweckrational should the
actor take the alternative and conflicting ends towards which she/he
might strive ‘as given subjective feelings of need arranged in a scale
consciously balanced according to their urgency and so orienting his
action that they will be satisfied in the relevant sequence (the princi-
ple of “marginal utility”)’ (1922, pp. 330–1). To give an example, an
Types of Action 167
actor may place a certain value on ‘social equality’ or ‘protecting the

environment’, but they may also value consumer goods, family time
and leisure pursuits. If their action is fully zweckrational, they will have
ranked these values and calculated the best means by which to pursue
them, given the impact of the pursuit of one on their attainment of all
the others.
Such an extension of the narrow economistic emphasis of Olson’s
concept of ‘interests’ was advocated by Terry Moe:
To this point, we have assumed that the entrepreneur and his clients
are economically self-interested. This, of course, greatly idealizes the
value structures of individuals, for we know that people respond to a
complex assortment of incentives in virtually every area of social life.
Moreover, as regards group activities in particular, studies of small
groups and larger voluntary associations have consistently suggested
that values other than economic self-interest are often important
determinants of individual behaviour.
(1980, p. 113)
Other incentives Moe considers include altruism, belief in a cause or

ideology, loyalty, beliefs about right or wrong, camaraderie, friendship,
love, acceptance, security, status, prestige, power, religious beliefs and
racial prejudice. Many of these come under the heading of what he calls
‘purposive’ incentives: ‘these are the intangible benefits that accrue to
a person by virtue of his support of causes, value systems, principles or
ends that he considers to be worthwhile’ (Moe, 1980, p. 117). Satisfac-
tion may come just from the act of contributing or a sense of doing the
right thing. Others are ‘solidary incentives’ associated with acting with
others for its own sake. On this basis:
If they feel strongly enough, they could certainly find it worthwhile

to contribute. Should this be so, their contributions would be quite
rational – although not in their economic self-interest.
(p. 116)
Moe accepts that
these represent enormous complications for an analysis of individual

choice. Any person must be viewed as possessing a complex system of
values on the basis of which he evaluates alternatives and determines
the ‘best’ available option in a specific situation. This is not an easy

process to depict analytically.
(1980, p. 114)
This concession to the range of ends towards which human behaviour

may be oriented – the relative merits of which cannot be determined
sociologically for Weber – has become a mainstay of US social movement
theory since the cultural turn.
For rational actor purists like Olson, fellow activists are treated
instrumentally as means to an end. He begins by attacking theories that
posit a herd instinct in humans or assume collective behaviour replaces
lost functions. Put simply, Olson assumes that collective action should
not normally occur. The Logic of Collective Action (1965) is an attempt
to resolve a problem manufactured for himself, in that collective action
actually happens quite frequently. As an economist, Olson sets out the
puzzle he needs to solve by first using a parallel taken from familiar
ground: the competition between firms in a marketplace.
He uses this as an example of shared interests being in conflict with
individual interests, and the bottom line for him is that although col-
lective action (in this case an agreement between firms on limits to
production) would work in the collective interest, it does not happen.
Here is how he presents the dilemma:
The firms in a perfectly competitive industry, for example, have a

common interest in a higher price for the industry’s product. Since
a uniform price must prevail in such a market, a firm cannot expect a
higher price for itself unless all of the other firms in the industry also
have this higher price. But a firm in a competitive market also has
an interest in selling as much as it can, until the cost of producing
another unit exceeds the price of that unit.
(Olson, 1965, p. 9)
So long as it is profitable to do so, each company produces as much as it

can of its product, even though the effect of every company doing the
same is that all end up worse off than before because overproduction
lowers the cost of the product they are all selling.
Olson assumes that ‘a firm in a competitive market also has an inter-
est in selling as much as it can’. But on what grounds, exactly, has
he arrived at this conclusion? For the whole thrust of his argument
goes to show precisely that selling as much as it can will result in the
company being worse off (other companies will follow suit, leading to
Types of Action 169
overproduction and a price drop). It is therefore quite clear that the

company has an interest in limiting production, in line with the collec-
tive interest. The individual interest in producing as much as possible
exists only if the firm assumes that it is in competition with other firms
who will try to produce as much as possible themselves regardless of
their own actions. In explaining the existence of the competitive mar-
ket, Olson relies on all firms assuming that they are in a competitive
market from the beginning.
The question then is how to explain the ‘widely understood and
accepted’ paradox that Olson identifies. One answer would be that
Olson’s ‘perfectly competitive industry’ never exists (and in an unequal
industry the collective and individual interests will not coincide).
Another would be to draw attention to the degree to which each firm
is aware of the collective interest. A third would be to consider whether
they trust how other firms will behave. A related point is raised by those
who argue that competitive social norms govern capitalist enterprise
and are the precondition for entering the game in the first place. There-
fore, actors are bound by social norms that ensure competitiveness. In a
context in which different social values and norms applied, individuals
might not expect the others to compete with them. In conditions in
which each firm is aware of the interests it shares with other firms, and
is aware that these other firms are also aware of their shared interests
as the basis for mutual trust, then we would expect each firm to act in
accordance with its own individual interest, identical to the collective
interest, and agree to limit production. All Olson has therefore told us is
that in conditions of inequality and competition, actors are unlikely to act
collectively (to put it simply, capitalism is responsible for producing the
kind of agent Olson identifies, see also Wood, 1989).
Olson then considers groups that share the same interest in securing
the provision of a ‘public good’ (a good that is secured for the entire
group and not just the particular individuals who contributed to secur-
ing it). The public good could be better pay and conditions, public access
to woodland, the right to vote and so on. Olson’s famous ‘free-rider
problem’ refers to his assumption that when an interest group is suffi-
ciently large, each individual reckons that their contribution will be so
small relatively, that they can get away with not contributing, but will
still benefit from provision of the public good.
Olson’s base assumption is that collective action entails a great deal of
cost, and no individual would pay out this money because they will ben-
efit from the lobby (and the ‘public good’ it procures) whether or not they
contribute to it. Each individual would rather the others pay the costs.
This is highly suspect. Most sociologists would recognize that social

actors are bound by norms based on the values of social justice and
equality (however much these might contradict other values). These are
internalized in the form of a social conscience, and so actors suffer from
guilt where they know they have benefitted to the detriment of others.
Psychoanalytic theory adds to this an understanding of the unconscious
criticism that might also accompany such acts.
According to Olson, the only ways in which the free-rider problem is
avoided are as follows. The first is in situations in which the group is
so small that contributions can be enforced. Olson only recognizes the
mechanism of direct social coercion. He does not realize that such mech-
anisms are deeply internalized by social actors such that they operate
even in situations in which contributions cannot reasonably be enforced
using punitive sanctions. The second arises in situations where particu-
lar individuals stand to gain a large proportion of the benefit themselves.
In this case, Olson suggests collective behaviour will happen, but that
there will nonetheless be negative competition with others to provide
as little as possible, and ‘he will discontinue his purchase of the collec-
tive good before the optimal amount for the group as a whole has been
obtained’ (1965, p. 33). This assumes some kind of proportional enjoy-
ment of a collective good is possible, which is not always the case. But he
is at least right that where the costs of acting alone are still exceeded by
the value of the public good, then a zweckrational actor will act anyway.
This underlines the point that rational actor theory is really concerned
with whether individuals act in pursuit of an interest or not, rather than
with the decision to join collective action. The third possibility is the pro-
vision of ‘selective incentives’. These are additional incentives provided
only to those who actually contribute to the collective action, over and
above the enjoyment of the public good made available to all.
Many of the problems with rational choice theory, especially its more
‘cultural’ version, are identified by Moe himself as its proponent. The
first is the most significant and challenges not just rational choice the-
ory as a universal model of activism, but the very possibility of rational
action as understood by Weber. Moe raises what seems like a straightfor-
ward empirical question. If we are to evaluate rational choice theory’s
predictive validity, we need a way of determining in advance the respec-
tive value that an actor attaches to each of his preferences, and how
much of each they believe is to be realized in concrete situations. Ratio-
nal choice theory assumes a separation between two moments: a system
of a priori preferences, and a moment in which a choice of action is
made in light of those preferences within a given context. Rational
Types of Action 171
Choice Marxists, such as Roemer, imply the (paradoxical) ‘automatic-

ity’ of choice (see the excellent paper by Wood, 1989). What an actor
will do in any given context is, in effect, predetermined by their pref-
erences, so that there is little actual ‘choosing’ to be done. Rational
choice models retain the notion that the individual acts in accordance
with what they know their preferences to be. The problem here is that
it is assumed that preferences exist in the abstract before contextual
decision-making, when in fact our preferences are themselves intrin-
sically context-dependent. How much sense does it make to say that
I attach a certain value to ‘being with friends’ in the abstract? After all,
in some contexts I might value being with friends very much, but not
in others. My preferences are also, of course, dependent on the prefer-
ences of others. The context-dependent nature of our own preferences
means that we necessarily have an incomplete knowledge of them at any
given moment. One of the criticisms often levelled at rational choice
theory is that it assumes the actor is aware of the context in which they
act (see Crossley, 2002, for example). This is actually a red herring, and
plays into rational actor theory’s hands, as its leading proponents always
stress that actors make decisions based on their understanding of context,
not the context itself. The issue is actually that rational choice theory
assumes actors are aware of their own preferences.
Given that what we know about our preferences in advance is never
an adequate basis for making a decision about that situation, we can
but reason on the basis of what we know about our preferences in the
abstract. But because of the inadequacy of this understanding as grounds
for action in the specific circumstance, we also always learn about our
preferences through the choices we make. There is always an element
of our preference structure that is revealed in our choice that exceeds
what we previously knew. To the extent that past ‘preferences’ are always
inadequate for the next scenario, we continually revise the very basis by
which we recognize ourselves. Our identity thus follows in the wake of
our choices, and not the other way around. There is a gap between the
grounds on which we make choices (our ‘preference-identities’ if you
like) and our choices (as subsequently articulated). The gap between
these two is the unconscious. For Freud it is nonetheless possible to
close this gap, whereas for Lacan, the unconscious arises precisely in the
movement between the previous preference-identity and the one artic-
ulated retrospectively as a means of describing choices actually made.
This is one way of interpreting Lacan’s statement that the unconscious
arises in the gap between the signifier (the recognized grounds on which
the choice is supposedly made) and the signified (the decision itself).
In this operation, the grounds themselves are ‘repressed’ as signifiers

that have ‘passed through’ the subject. They came initially from the out-
side anyway (they were attached to the subject by virtue of the subject’s
choices, and were not chosen by the subject), were used to recognize the
subject, and then became a discarded part of the subject’s history.
Many of the other problems associated with rational choice theory
derive from this fundamental problem. This includes Moe’s (1980) own
concern that norms and ideologies emerge from the group, rather than
being their grounds, and are affected in particular by leadership; which
is the central problematic of crowd psychology. Moe (1980) also fur-
nishes us with the concept of ‘solidary selective incentives’, which refers
to the satisfaction gained from human relationships, which are suffi-
cient to persuade people to participate in a movement they adhere to,
rather than free-ride. Crossley suggests that this blurs completely the
line between rational actor theory and the collective behaviour theories
they set out to challenge.
Crossley’s (2002) critique of rational actor theory begins with the
commonsensical observation that as social actors we are not contin-
ually weighing up the costs and benefits of action. Crossley places
emphasis on affect deriving from cultural understandings, especially
empathy. But he also holds an important place for action determined
by adherence to more or less consciously held social norms and duties
(citing both Durkheim and Blumer), which leads it closer to value-
rational action. One way in which rational actor theory attempts to
account for behaviour that seems on first glance to be more affective or
value-rational is to identify emotional states or values as ends in them-
selves towards which action is directed. Here Crossley’s critique really
comes into its own. As he argues, this demonstrates the tautological
conclusions towards which rational actor theory inevitably descends.
It provides two polar solutions. The first is to take the specific actions
undertaken and to assert that these had value to the actor in and of
themselves. Here, actions that might otherwise be seen as means to more
general ends become ends in themselves. So, for example, if I protest
against whaling it is because I have a preference for protesting against
whaling. As Crossley says, this then explains nothing. Even within
North American social movement theory, it has been argued that Ratio-
nal Actor Theory can explain participation in movements better than
non-participation (Snow & Oliver, 1995). That is to say that activists can
often identify what they gain from their activism, but it remains hard to
explain why others who share the same interests, values and resources,
do not make the same decisions.
Types of Action 173
The other option, which Crossley identifies with Laver’s (1997) work,
is to reduce every action to a single set of basic human motivations.
All action is seen as somehow, no matter how circuitously, a means to
these ends. Here, all apparent ends are reduced to mere means to some
other end. Crossley’s point is that simply asserting this again tells us
nothing. It is the social shaping of desire that is the issue of sociological
interest. Crossley is pointing to something very important here, which
is the possibility that the fate of all ‘means’ is to become ‘ends’ in them-
selves. This is something Weber (1904b) uncovered historically in the
Protestant Ethic Thesis. It is also central to the contemporary Lacanian
interest in the repetitions of history. Speaking of the Left’s melancholia,
Jodi Dean (2013, p. 89) says: ‘Over time, as its process – its failure to hit
its goal – is repeated, satisfaction attains to this repetition and the prior
object, the lost object of desire, is abandoned, useless.’
Another issue arises here when it comes to the blurring of the bound-
ary of costs and rewards. It has been noted that often when the ‘costs’
of activism increase, activism actually rises rather than falls (see Gould,
2004, on high-cost, low-reward movements). This of course completely
confounds the expectations of rational choice theory. Yet, again, this can
be understood through psychoanalytic, and especially Lacanian theory.
We can make sense of this once we understand that the prohibition of
some object is what sustains desire in the activist and provides moments
of jouissance in the midst of conflict. It is through repression and fail-
ure that enjoyment is made possible. The more ferociously the object
is defended, the greater the hypothesized jouissance were that barrier
removed. This also helps make sense of what is known about ‘career
activists’ who move from cause to cause, looking to sustain desire.
The development of social movement studies in the US

Rational Actor Theory became the basis for a set of interrelated branches
of social movement theory in the US as it became established as a field of
study in its own right. I outline these very briefly here. This is partly to
demonstrate the impact of rational choice theory as the basis for think-
ing about social movements in the US, but also because I orient my
discussion in Part III around a number of concepts developed by these
approaches (whilst, of course, remaining highly critical of the assump-
tions underpinning them). As Crossley points out, these branches made
various departures from Olson, but retained his emphasis on rationality
and cost–benefit analysis. Indeed, the cost–benefit model was taken as
such a given that the whole purpose of social movement studies was
shifted. The ‘why’ question of mobilization was considered resolved,
and attention now shifted to a set of ‘how’ questions (Melucci, 1985).

Five branches of theory can be identified (though there are many links
between them, see for example, McAdam et al., 1996). If there is a sixth
branch it is the approach to emotions represented in Goodwin and
Jasper’s work as discussed previously.
The first branch is resource mobilization theory, which attempted
to describe how social movements accrued the resources they needed,
especially through internal organization and their relationship with
external allies. They also sought to develop a model of how social move-
ment organizations compete with each other within a social movement
industry, in direct analogy with firms competing in the marketplace.
McCarthy & Zald (1977, p. 1226) outline 11 hypotheses founded on
rational choice assumptions. They suggest that ‘entrepreneurs’ form
social movement organizations when they believe there is a ‘market’ for
a ‘product’, and then advise researchers to ‘Assume that SMOs operate
much like any other organization (J. Q. Wilson, 1973), and conse-
quently, once formed, they operate as though organizational survival
were the primary goal’ (1977, p. 1226).
The second branch is an offshoot of resource mobilization theory that
has paid attention to the way in which existing social networks facilitate
the recruitment of activists to social movements. There is good empirical
evidence to support the observation that activists are recruited through
networks, even if the exact nature of relevant networks is nuanced (see
Freeman, 1971; McAdam, 1982; Morris, 1986; Diani, 1992). The expla-
nation for the salience of networks is that they affect the cost–benefit
analysis of joining. It has been noted that this tradition stands in direct
opposition to the arguments of the functionalist school, which assumed
that recruits were more likely to be poorly socially integrated, and seeking
precisely such reintegration through the movement.
The third branch is political process or political opportunities theory.
The aim of political process theory was to redress what it saw as the
overemphasis in previous approaches on factors internal to the move-
ment, and a neglect of the impact of the political context in which a
movement operated. McAdam maintains these two things are equally
important, but in its radical form (e.g. Tilly, 1978) it has been attacked as
a form of political reductionism (see Melucci, 1989). Key factors include
who is granted membership of the polity, the existence of elite allies, the
extent of stability or conflict within elites, and the level of repression
elites are capable of (see McAdam et al., 1996, Part I). Tilly’s argument
is that social movements flourish where the political structure facili-
tates them and disappear where it is repressive. This, of course, flies
Types of Action 175
in the face of ‘grievance’ theories. Tarrow (1996) distinguishes between

‘state-centred’ and ‘proximate’ approaches to political opportunities.
The former emphasizes that ‘any event or broad social process that serves
to undermine the calculations and assumptions on which the political
establishment is structured occasions a shift in political opportunities’
(McAdam, 1982), and this affects all movements, even if the disruptive
event or process is not directly related to their cause. Proximate oppor-
tunities approaches, on the other hand, emphasize events specific to
a particular movement. McAdam’s version of political process theory
owes a debt to Marxism. He appreciates the ‘latent political leverage’
of movements, where Tilly assumes movements are always beholden to
elites to provide them with resources, and also recognizes that what is
important to insurgency is therefore not real political opportunities, but
perceived opportunities (see also Gamson & Meyer, 1996) associated with
‘cognitive liberation’.
The fourth branch is the repertoires of protest model, which emerges
from Tilly’s (1978) work as an attempt to understand how the tactics
employed by social movements are determined. Tilly’s central claim is
that movements possess ‘repertoires of protest’. That is to say that move-
ments do not choose their tactics from an inexhaustive list, but from
a more limited range of possibilities. Hence the repertoire for Western
movements typically involves various forms of demonstration, strikes,
petitioning and the formation of pressure groups. It does not typically
include the hijacking of planes, self-immolation or lynching, although
in other social and historical contexts these are more common. Tilly
identifies five factors determining the nature of this repertoire. He argues
that movements adopt a ‘flexible repertoire’, in which they weigh the
efficacy of different tactics and their familiarity with them, but are
drawn towards familiar tactics in a way that is disproportional to the
advantage that comes with such familiarity.
The fifth branch is framing theory. Developed by David Snow and
a number of his colleagues, framing theory sees its subject matter as
‘ideology’ or ‘ideological factors’ in mobilization. As such they present
the theoretical apparatus of framing theory as an alternative to previ-
ous approaches to studying ‘ideology and its elements – values, beliefs,
meanings’ (Snow & Benford, 1992, p. 135). As Crossley (2002) argues,
ideology had been addressed in work by Blumer, Smelser and McAdam.
But framing theory was introduced on the grounds that ideology was
undertheorized in these traditions. Collective behaviour theorists were
seen as guilty of ‘treating [ideology] as if it flowed almost naturally or
magically from the movement’s underlying strains’ (Snow & Benford,
1992, p. 136), whilst resource mobilization theorists had tended to

‘ignore or gloss over mobilizing beliefs and ideas, in large part because of
their presumed ubiquity and constancy’. Taking the concept of ‘frames’
from Goffman (though, as others have noted, using the term as a noun),
Snow defines them as: ‘schemata of interpretation that enable individ-
uals to locate, perceive, identify and label occurrences within their life
space and the world at large’ (Snow et al., 1986, p. 464). They allow
the recognition of the world, guide perception, build expectations and
enable people to make sense of reality.
Snow & Benford (1988) identify three core framing tasks that every
movement must undertake: diagnostic frames identify the problem,
prognostic frames identify the solution, and motivational frames pro-
vide ‘a call to arms or rationale for engaging in ameliorative or corrective
action’ (p. 202). In another paper, Snow & Benford relate movement-
specific frames to what they call ‘master frames’. Master frames are
overarching social ideologies that movement frames wire into. Snow
et al.’s main link with resource mobilization theory has been through the
analysis of ‘frame alignment’; ‘the linkage of individual and SMO orien-
tations, such that some set of individual interests, values and beliefs and
SMO activities, goals, and ideology are congruent and complimentary’
(Snow et al., 1986, p. 464). They identify four ways in which move-
ments align their ideology with that of the individuals they are trying
to mobilize.
The criticisms of framing theory turn on its relationship with, and
infiltration by, a rational choice paradigm. The first is that framing the-
ory takes a cynical view of the framing process in which movement
leaders in particular decide on how to frame issues based on how suc-
cessful they think they will be in mobilizing people (see, for example,
Snow & Benford, 1988, p. 198). Critics of framing theory challenge the
notion that movements can ‘choose’ diagnostic and prognostic frames
and ask from what position the movement makes these decisions, and
what ensures continuity of identity. An ‘outside’ element is needed to
account for this, and for Snow this is the leader. Secondly, it overra-
tionalizes the process by which recruits to a movement align themselves
to it. Davis, for example, argues that
the framing perspective . . . emphasizes – in fact overemphasizes –

the role of clearly articulated and coherent reasons for movement
activism. Narrative analysis, by contrast, illuminates persuasion and
shared vision at more subtle, imaginative and pre-prepositional
levels.
(Davis, 2002, p. 24)
Types of Action 177
He believes ‘stories precede frames, stories make frames compelling,

and stories overshadow frames in mobilizing power and as a political
resource’ (2002, p. 25). Examples might be the abolition movement and
the story of slavery, or Zionism (there is a link here to Rose’s, 2005,
discussion of Zion and fantasy). Snow & Benford (1988) recognize the
importance of ‘narrative fidelity’, but not of narrative itself. The third,
and most interesting, criticism is identified by Crossley (2002), and
points to the ambiguity of framing theory’s ontology. On the one hand
it appears to take a constructionist view of social reality. But on the
other, Snow et al. (1986) suggest that one factor that affects the success
of framing is the extent to which it resonates with people’s experiences.
In other words, they acknowledge that frames can have greater or lesser
degrees of empirical validity.
Before moving on, it should be noted that the rationalistic empha-
sis of US social movement theory is not without its counterparts in
European social theory. The ‘extended reflexivity thesis’ of Ulrich Beck
(1992) and Anthony Giddens (1991) has been attacked on the grounds
that it overemphasizes the individualistic rational decision-making that
goes into determining collective behaviour and social movements (see,
for example, Hetherington, 1998). Beck extends the Habermasian per-
spective on rationality and holds out hope for the development of a
cosmopolitan global democratic public sphere. But at his worst he con-
flates activism with a series of everyday ‘political’ consumer choices (see
Ormrod, 2013).
Value-rational activism
Weber likens value-rational action to affective action in so far as neither

are concerned with the success of the action but with ‘the form of the
action itself’ (1922, p. 330). They nonetheless differ ‘in the conscious
elaboration of the ultimate point of direction of action and consis-
tent planned orientation with respect to these details’. In wertrational
action, the actor is conscious of the values underpinning the action,
and monitors the action in light of these values. Weber continues:
Value-rational action pays no regard to the expected consequences of

action; the person acts out of a conviction that duty, honour, beauty,
religious pronouncement, piety, or the importance of a ‘cause’ of
whatever kind so demand. Value-rational action is in our sense
always an action governed by ‘decree’ and according to ‘demands’
which the actor believes are imposed upon him. We will talk here
of value-rationality only where human action is oriented to such
demands – something which occurs in greatly varying degrees, and

mostly only in a very small number of cases.
(1922, p. 330)
Other translations give the first line as ‘action of persons who, regardless
of possible cost to themselves, act to put into action their convictions’ (see
Weber, 1978), which gives an altruistic inflection to the action. In his
discussion of zweckrational action, Weber acknowledges that the actor is
often presented with competing and conflicting aims and consequences,
but he suggests that the ranking and weighing of respective ends (as dis-
cussed previously) is not the only way of determining action. His
inference is that sometimes the individual is in no position to ‘choose’
to order these competing ends on a subjective basis, but feels them to be
a set of already ordered duties imposed from the outside. In these cases,
Weber says, ‘only the means are selected by instrumentally rational
criteria’ (1922, p. 330).
But, finally, Weber says:
From the perspective of instrumental rationality, however, value-

rationality must always be irrational, the more so when action is
governed by absolute values. For the more that action elevates
such absolute values, the less it reflects upon the consequences of
such action, and the more unconditional do considerations of inner
disposition, beauty, the absolute good, absolute duty become.
(1922, p. 331)
In other words, where the individual feels under obligation to cer-

tain values that cannot be compromised, there is little thought to the
consequences of action at all.
Whilst Weber implies that pure wertrational action is rare, activism is
often marked by the elevation of a single value above all others. And
this often appears irrational. This is illustrated well by Schwebel (1993,
pp. 59–77) who, attempting to work with a rational actor model, says
(following Kinder & Sears): ‘Participation in peace activism may be so
central to their lives that they cannot forego their involvement’ (p. 63,
my emphasis). There is a sense here in which the end value of peace is
so elevated that it becomes binding. What this also alludes to is the close
connection between these elevated goals and the affective components
of identity.
Another point extends from Weber’s assertion that value-rational
action pays no attention to its prospects of success. As Eldridge (1971,
Types of Action 179
p. 58) emphasizes, ‘rationalization’ implies that we give up on goals we

believe cannot be reached. Yet the principled but hopeless protest is a
common occurrence. Activists will often engage in action even when
they accept it has little or no prospect of success. There are a num-
ber of ways of making sense of this as a form of wertrational action.
The first represents a mere continuation of the above argument. If the
goal is elevated to such prominence that nothing else matters, then the
hopelessness of the protest makes no real difference.
Alternatively, it could be argued that there is another duty that comes
into operation, which is analytically distinct from duty to the cause but
becomes fused to it. This is the duty to protest (in accordance with one’s
other values). Here protest, otherwise a means to an end, takes on a
value in and of itself. This value has a variety of forms, from duty before
God to a democratic duty. Where the duty to protest outweighs the duty
to the goal itself, this is reflected in an activism that goes through the
motions, often experienced as a burden, and which may give way to
traditional action in which memory of the relation of means to ends
has faded.
This sense of duty could alternatively be understood through Moe’s
(1980) concept of ‘purposive incentives’. Yet purposive incentives are
distinguishable from the sense of ‘duty’ insomuch as here the actor may
choose not to do their ‘duty’ or ‘the right thing’ if they value certain
other ends over and above the pleasure derived from doing the right
thing. Wertrational action is the result of a sense of overwhelming duty,
which can only be imposed and cannot be individually assessed.
Weber identifies cases where the values to which action is ultimately
oriented are imposed on the actor but where the means are nonetheless
chosen. But one of the features of wertrational action is that often the
‘choice’ of means is also imposed from without. Weber distinguishes
formal and substantive rationality. The latter involves means related to
the absolute values to which it is oriented. This congruity between goals
and means has been recognized in social movement theory, especially in
Tilly’s work where it is identified as one of the factors influencing choice
of form of protest. For example, it is possible that some particular goal of
the peace movement might ‘best’ be achieved through violent protest.
But this is ruled out from the start.
These issues combine to produce one phenomenon of interest in
recent work, which is the increased salience of the logic of bearing wit-
ness. Della Porta & Diani (1999) identify three logics of protest, of which
the others are the logic of numbers and the logic of material damage.
The logic of numbers and the logic of material damage weigh means and
ends more instrumentally than the logic of bearing witness. If bearing

witness has affects on a movement’s chance of success it is paradoxically
through its refusal of more instrumental forms. Bearing witness could be
understood as an affective reaction without thought of consequences,
or as a gesture in the event that an actor cannot change anything but
nonetheless has a duty to express their discontent. But it is known to
also be a powerful mobilizer; in acts of self-immolation, for example.
What is so interesting about the logic of bearing witness as an analytic
concept is that it exists at the interstices of zweckrational, wertrational
and affective action, and yet cannot combine them. If it is too ‘instru-
mental’ in considering its mobilizing effects it cannot be affective or
value-rational. If done out of duty or affect it barely qualifies as a ‘logic
of protest’.
So far, I have mainly considered the ways in which protest is valued
in itself as the result of duty. There are, however, more ‘positive’ rea-
sons why activism might happen because of a person’s adherence to
a particular value. This possibility is highlighted by new social move-
ment theorists, and put most succinctly by Alberto Melucci when he
says: ‘The new organizational form of contemporary movements is not
just “instrumental” for their goals. It is a goal in itself’ (Melucci, 1985,
p. 801). This is to say that new social movements are not simply protest
movements oriented towards the ability of those in power to alter social
structure. The realization of alternative social and cultural forms within
the movement is seen as being an end in itself. Actions taken within the
movement therefore have no end outside of themselves.
Such a perspective is implied in all New Social Movement Theory that
sees the purpose of new social movements as in itself the construction
of a new framework within which the coordinates of life are challenged.
In reality, most New Social Movement Theory exists in tension between
such a view and the instrumentally rational view inherited from
Marxism that sees these new value-orientations as anchored in objec-
tive shifts in social structures (see Habermas, 1981, and Touraine, 1981,
for example). The problem otherwise lies in explaining how a switching
of frames takes place. It leaves unanswered the question of what makes
new ideologies compelling. Eder (1985) has drawn on the concept of
habitus as a way around the difficulties in arguing that the new social
movements are the result of either changing objective structures, on the
one hand, or shifting subjective values, on the other. His argument is
that it is the acquisition of a new habitus that allows change. Habitus is,
after all, acquired in objective social circumstances, but Bourdieu allows
for innovation. This seems a superficial understanding of how these
Types of Action 181
changes happen, but it leads into a discussion of other work drawing

on Bourdieu.
Traditional activism
Weber refers to traditional action as ‘very frequently merely an empty

reaction to familiar stimuli following an ingrained pattern’ (1922,
p. 330). He associates this with ‘ingrained everyday actions’, but accepts
that this can be ‘sustained with various degrees of self-consciousness’.
It should also be noted that Weber identifies the majority of social
action as carried out ‘in a dulled half-aware condition, perhaps entirely
unaware of its “intended meaning” ’ (p. 327). Hence, whether rational
or irrational in motive, most of the time we are not conscious of an
intended meaning to our action, even if our action might be understood
‘as if’ it had an intended meaning.
But in any case, this does not on the surface seem compatible with
activism. After all, activism seems concerned with challenging existing
structures, rather than non-consciously reproducing them. I think this
generally holds, but it is worth identifying ways in which activism is
drawn towards this type of action. Tilly (1978) identifies three types
of claim represented in social movements – competitive, reactive and
proactive – and provides a history of their emergence. Competitive
actions, which dominated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ‘lay
claim to resources also claimed by other groups which the actor defines
as rivals, competitors, or at least as participants in the same contest’
(Tilly, 1978, p.144). Examples are the charivari and the village fight.
As Tilly says, many of these were highly routinized, and ‘usually small,
short-lived, localized. They rarely linked with revolutionary movements
or great rebellions’ (1978, p. 145). Although Tilly does not want to
trivialize them, these claims could be considered more as part of the
social order than as an attempt to challenge it. It is conceivable that
the ‘activists’ involved do not have any clear concept of why they are
doing what they are doing, and moreover that the affective motives
sublimated within it are scarcely discernible.
Some similar observations might be made about the institutionaliza-
tion of social movements. There is not room to explore the long-running
debates about the inevitability of institutionalization, or whether or not
it represents success for a movement (see, for example, Guigni et al.,
1999). But what studies of institutionalization point to is that in becom-
ing part of the formal political system (or, alternatively, being commer-
cialized) the typical motives of activists change over time. ‘Activists’ may
no longer be invested in the movement’s aims, but may relate to it as

any other professional career. Their motivation, as is the case in resource
mobilization theory’s understanding of movement entrepreneurs, has
nothing to do with the aims of the movement itself, which (to para-
phrase Weber, 1904b, in another context) ‘prowls about in our lives like
a ghost’.
Finally, like Eder, Nick Crossley’s (2002) work also draws on Bourdieu’s
notion of habitus to explain activists’ dispositions towards activism.
Crossley’s aim is not to discount the importance of framing and
interpretive processes, but to point in addition to the importance of
dispositions:
Just as the children of the educated middle classes are brought up

in an environment rich in art and aesthetic sensibility, such that
they inherit aesthetic dispositions, [Bourdieu] argues, so too are they
brought up in political environments, where they acquire the taste,
disposition and know-how, not to mention the inherited ‘ticket’ of
cultural capital, such as a university degree, required for involvement
in the political public sphere.
(2002, p. 175)
People can be drawn to action, including political action, without con-

scious direction. Furthermore, Crossley notes that this accounts for why
involvement in protest increases the likelihood of involvement in sub-
sequent protest. Crossley’s break from Bourdieu comes in arguing that
habitus is not suspended in times of crisis (when the ‘unconscious’
doxic assumptions of the social order are brought into discussion), but
informs reactions to crisis. How strains are both perceived and acted
upon is dependent on the actor’s habitus. This habitus ‘is something
we may map and such maps will help us to explain the activities of
social agents. But specific habitus are phenomena which, in turn, we
must attempt to explain. This might involve a biographical and social-
psychological explanation’ (Crossley, 2002, p. 173). He adds that the
habitus is not necessarily conservative, but a ‘radical habitus’ or ‘resis-
tance habitus’ ‘can be born in periods of change and discontent and
can give rise to durable dispositions towards contention and the various
forms of know-how and competence necessary to contention’ (2002,
pp. 189–90).
As Crossley accepts, norms can be consciously adhered to in a
detached way, as in Weber’s notion of legitimate order, but they can
also be internalized, as in Durkheim. Of course what psychoanalysis
Types of Action 183
draws attention to is the unconscious mechanisms associated with this

internalization.
Summary
One of the aims of this chapter has been to recount the history and
present of social movement theory, paying particular attention to the
forms of action attributed to activists. This includes affective action
(arguably best represented in Le Bon), instrumentally rational action
(as derived from Olson), value-rational action (as in Melucci) and tradi-
tional action (as is a key feature of Crossley’s work). My argument is that
none of these models suffices as a universal model of social movements.
In order to provide a more complete model of activism, some attempts
have been made to work other forms of action into such theories. This
has, as Crossley in particular recognizes, meant that the logic of each
model has to be extended to a point where it collapses into the other
models against which it has established itself. Weber’s typology of action
provides a useful tool in making sense of this as he appreciates that his
ideal types are only that, and that real social actions only ever approach
these forms as horizons of action, contaminated by, and easily morph-
ing into, other forms. I would argue that social movements can also
be characterized by typical forms of action. Changes over time are par-
ticularly affected by processes occurring within movements themselves;
processes on which contemporary social movement theory has often
focused, but without the more complex ontology this book attempts to
outline. The unconscious and fantasy play a central part in this ontol-
ogy, and Weber’s typology of action allows that the concept of modes of
fantasy can illuminate processes at work in social movements where the
current alternatives on offer seek to stifle such an understanding.
6
Smelser’s Theory of Collective
Behaviour
This chapter represents an unfashionable engagement with the work

of the collective behaviour theorist Neil Smelser (1962, 1969). Smelser
studied under and worked with Parsons (see Parsons & Smelser, 1998),
and his sociological work was heavily influenced by his functionalist
framework, as he acknowledges. Although he did not hold that society
was often in a completely harmonious and stable state, he retained the
notion of such equilibrium as the baseline from which the emergence
of collective behaviour needed to be explained. His theory therefore
hinges on the idea that social movements are the results of strains in the
social structure, defined as ‘the impairment of the relations among, and
consequent inadequate function of, the components of social action’
(Smelser, 1962). According to Smelser, ‘people join radical movements
because they experience social dislocation in the form of social strain,
especially when such strain springs from rapid social change’ (Smelser
cited in Weeber & Rodeheaver, 2003). The notion of strain is arguably
the most critical component of his model of the determinants of col-
lective behaviour (Weeber & Rodeheaver, 2003), although the existence
of strains alone was not considered enough to explain why collective
behaviour occurred at the times and in the forms that it did. Impor-
tantly for this book, Smelser assumes ‘that perceived structural strain
at the social level excites feelings of anxiety, fantasy, hostility, etc’
(1962, p. 11). Collective behaviour was seen by Smelser as an attempt
to ‘reconstitute’ the sociocultural environment from which it emerged
(1969, p. 47) (such similarity with Blumer as exists is evident in this).
For Smelser, movements ‘reassure participants that something is being
done to redress the underlying source of strain’ (Weeber & Rodeheaver,
2003, p. 182). Whatever the issues with his work, Smelser recognizes the
relationship between strain and dislocation, fantasy and ideology.
184
Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour 185
Work such as Smelser’s has been largely forgotten in contemporary

social movement theory (with notable exceptions, e.g. Crossley, 2002),
even as the field attempts to reintegrate social structure, emotion and
social psychology. Despite the many criticisms of collective behaviour
theory and its supposedly ‘irrationalist’ model of collective actors, there
is much of value to be retained from Smelser’s ontological understand-
ing (a view shared by Crossley, 2002). In the attention paid to social
psychology, and psychoanalytic ideas in particular, it draws attention to
important issues neglected by contemporary social movement theory.
The value-added model
In his seminal Theory of Collective Behaviour (1962), Smelser outlined

a ‘value-added’ theory of collective behaviour. This used the produc-
tion process as a metaphor to explain how different determinants went
towards shaping the final form of behaviour, distinguishing between the
panic, the craze, the hostile outburst, the norm-oriented movement and
the value-oriented movement. Only the latter two would commonly be
called social movements (referred to as ‘social protest movements’ in
later work, see Smelser, 1969).
The determinants that shaped behaviour into one form or another
were as follows (see Smelser, 1962, pp. 15–17). Although Smelser might
now be an unpopular theorist, Crossley (2002, p. 187) offers some
suggestions as to how these components are still being studied in
contemporary social movement theory.
1. The most basic level is that of ‘structural conduciveness’, by which

Smelser refers to the structural characteristics of societies that serve to
permit or inhibit episodes of particular kinds of collective behaviour.
Crossley suggests that this is the aspect of social movement formation
that interests the political opportunities theory developed by Sydney
Tarrow and Charles Tilly.
2. Most important perhaps is what Smelser calls ‘structural strain’; a

specific structural development which works in combination with struc-
tural conduciveness. It is realized as a strain when circumstances fail to
meet group or individual expectations, and is therefore a psychological
state as well as an objective condition. Smelser refers to ‘ambiguities,
deprivations, conflicts, and discrepancies’ as the major types of strain.
3. Collective behaviour will not, however, take place in the absence

of ‘the growth and spread of a generalised belief’. This belief is what
enables actors to make sense of a strain, what has caused it, and what is
to be done about it. This sometimes takes precedence in Smelser’s writ-
ing, for example when he writes that ‘the central defining characteristic
of an episode of collective behaviour is a belief envisioning the reconsti-
tution of some component of social action’ (1962, p. 11). Crossley says
that this dimension has been taken up by framing theorists like David
Snow, and others like Bert Klandermans and Doug McAdam.
4. But mobilization still does not take place in the absence of ‘pre-
cipitating factors’ – those ‘dramatic events’ which trigger an outbreak
of collective behaviour. He gives the example of racial tensions being
ignited by the arrival of a black family in a white neighbourhood. Here
the reactive view Smelser has of social movements becomes most appar-
ent. Crossley suggests that McAdam’s concept of ‘suddenly imposed
grievances’ is the best attempt to capture this in contemporary the-
ory. Smelser (1972) himself later suggested this determinant might be
dropped as it merely added a time dimension to other determinants.
5. The next determinant is the ‘mobilization of participants for action’;
in other words, the movement from feelings and ideas to action.
Crossley (2002) suggests this stage is undertheorized by Smelser, espe-
cially in terms of how agency is accounted for. Smelser’s emphasis on
the role of leaders recalls earlier agitator theories. Crossley suggests this
focus has been extended by the resource mobilization theory tradition
in social movement theory, as well as Tilly’s and Tarrow’s work on
networks, and Gamson’s work on communication channels.
6. Finally, Smelser accepts the part played by ‘the operation of social

control’; those forces which ‘prevent, interrupt, deflect, or inhibit’
the building of collective behaviour. These may work to prevent
collective behaviour occurring in the first place, or to control it
once it has started to happen. The police and the media have key
roles to play here, though their effects are not always to inhibit
further action. Social control is factored into McAdam’s political
process theory and McCarthy’s resource mobilization theory, says
Crossley.
Smelser (1962, p. 298) does go on to outline his own phases of develop-

ment (for norm-oriented movements at least) – incipient, enthusiastic
mobilization, institutionalization and organization – but he stresses
that the elements outlined above can emerge in any chronological
order.
Rethinking conduciveness, strain and social change
Smelser’s theory implies that the occurrence of collective behaviour is

indicator of imbalance in the system. Smelser was a careful theorist,
and he admits that these strains are not uncommon. But crucially he
still holds that in principle the system is a harmoniously functioning
one. He fails to consider, in Crossley’s words, ‘the intrinsically con-
flictual nature of some social systems’ (2002, p. 52). The necessity of
‘strain’ as a determinant distinguishable from ‘structural conduciveness’
implies a strain extraneous to the contradictions of the system itself.
Marxist theory tends to prefer the concepts of contradiction and crisis,
which emphasize that temporal strains are merely the result of sys-
temic contradictions. Weeber & Rodeheaver (2003) also credit resource
mobilization theory with an understanding that ‘there are always social
strains and conflicts of interest built into existing social arrangements’
(p. 186). But if this is true, then the emphasis is more on individual
conflicts of interest than on the structured nature of these conflicts.
This feeds into debates around whether ‘a more specific type of strain,
such as relative deprivation [should] be substituted for the more gen-
eral category of strain’ (Marx & Wood, 1975, p. 376). This also raises
questions about the closeness of the relationship between structural
strain and specific kinds of mobilization. Smelser was interested in this
question, but ultimately concluded that the relationship was ‘indetermi-
nate’ (see Weeber & Rodeheaver, 2003). Despite Smelser’s discussion of
structured risks, he is often criticized for ignoring inequality and power.
He acknowledges, under the heading of ‘structural conduciveness’, that
social structures themselves have a part to play in the generation of col-
lective behaviour, but this refers more to the ability of the system to
tolerate strain than to cause it.
Smelser has a model in mind for how social change should nor-
mally occur, and this is through the gradual realignment of values and
norms (a common principle underlying crowd psychology, as discussed
in Chapter 5). Weeber & Rodeheaver (2003) note that Smelser associates
strains with rapid social change, where existing knowledge and skills
prove inadequate for new situations. They argue that value-oriented
movements can be associated with both the transition from traditional
societies to modern ones, and from modernity to postmodernity. But
Smelser’s point is that collective behaviour necessarily ‘short-circuits’
processes of social change. This is one aspect of his theory that has led
to charges of irrationalizing collective behaviour. Marx & Wood, noting
Smelser’s (1970) response to his critics, naively argue that ‘Generalised
beliefs can be classified with respect to the degree to which they are
exaggerated and irrational, as against realistic and rational, and the cor-
relates of various types of beliefs should be examined’ (p. 408). Crossley’s
(2002, pp. 47–8) objection to the suggestion that the ecology move-
ment’s philosophically grounded critique of existing practices represents
a ‘clumsy’ or ‘impatient’ attempt to bring about change nonetheless
seems reasonable.
Crossley rightly argues that it is possible to abandon the ‘short-
circuiting’ assumption without damaging Smelser’s basic framework.
I would add, however, that it is possible to still accept the existence
of the ‘irrational’ even when the movement itself represents a neces-
sary (and desirable) mechanism for social change. Smelser’s acceptance
of the irrational component of psychology fits neatly with his short-
circuiting thesis, and so the two are easily attacked together. I think it is
necessary to distinguish them, however, so that one is abandoned whilst
the other can be salvaged. The issue can be clarified by distinguishing
between two levels at which the charge of irrationality might be lev-
elled at social movements. These correspond to the two levels Smelser
distinguished in subsequent work, as outlined later in this chapter. One
is ‘irrationality’ at the level of the social system; in other words, collec-
tive action responding to social strain in a way that does not represent
the most efficient way of restoring what has been lost (social integration
and regulation). Here the appropriate term should really be ‘functional’
rather than rational. The other is irrationality at the level of the indi-
vidual; in other words, action that fails to live up to Weberian standards
of instrumentally rational action. But it is important to recognize that
these do not necessarily map onto one another. Individual behaviour
can be irrational whilst socially functional. And, on the other hand,
individual behaviour can appear instrumentally rational whilst being
socially dysfunctional (as in the actions of individual capitalists).
A taxonomy of collective behaviour
According to Smelser (1962), the different forms of collective behaviour

address strains as they are manifest at different levels of reality, or differ-
ent ‘system elements’ in the Parsonian terminology. (a) The ‘panic’ was
a flight response to problems made visible in the form of insufficient
situational facilities, where social actors found their skills, competences
and abilities insufficient to cope with circumstances. (b) The ‘craze’ sim-
ilarly addressed problems with situational facilities, but this time some
‘magical’ solution to the problem was identified. As it is the form of

collective behaviour Smelser identifies as corresponding most closely
with fantasy, I return to this later. (c) The ‘hostile outburst’ involves
the targeting of a specific group of people as responsible for problems
experienced at the level of social organization. This also includes a fan-
tasy dimension as there is ‘ “wishful thinking” that mobilised groups can
actually gather up the power to remove these sources of evil’ (Weeber &
Rodeheaver, 2003, p. 195). (d) The ‘norm-oriented’ and (e) ‘value-
oriented’ movements addressed problems at the levels of norms and
values respectively (and correspond roughly to Blumer’s, 1951, reform
and revolutionary movements).
For Smelser, these elements were hierarchically ordered such that a
value-oriented movement would imply necessary change on all the
other levels (for example, social norms would have to be changed in
line with a change in values), whilst the reverse did not hold. But change
at higher levels was often blocked, and collective behaviour channelled
towards change at a lower level.
Smelser includes utopian movements in the ‘highest’ categories of
value-oriented and norm-oriented movements because they envisage a
radical reordering of society. At the other end, a much ‘lower’ form of
collective behaviour is the craze, which is mobilized in the name of a
‘wish-fulfilment’ or magical belief in the face of anxiety and social iso-
lation. Participants in a craze respond to some social strain at the most
immediate level – that of immediate situational facilities – acting on
the basis of a fantasy about an object and its power to redress their
grievances. The ‘hostile outburst’, on the other hand, identifies a par-
ticular social group as scapegoats responsible for the strain and directs
hostility towards them.
In his initial work at least, psychoanalytic concepts seem much more
relevant when discussing lower forms of collective behaviour. But,
importantly, Smelser believed that if grievances can be expressed at
lower levels, then they will be. Hence, ‘in order for value-oriented move-
ments to crystallize, all other avenues for the expression of grievances
must be unavailable’ (1962, p. 332). For Smelser, the higher forms of
collective behaviour have the same root as the lower forms, but are
simply forced to express these grievances at increasingly comprehen-
sive levels of social reorganization. These higher levels therefore contain
within them lower-level elements. For example, panic, craze and hos-
tility, ‘appear, explicitly or implicitly, in the beliefs that accompany
norm-oriented movements’ (1962, p. 271).
In later work Smelser accepts that wish-fulfilment fantasy necessarily

entails violence:
[T]he future state of social bliss, peace, and harmony that is fre-
quently envisioned by adherents to a cause . . . tap very vivid Oedipal
and sibling-destruction fantasies of what the world would look like if
only the hated objects were obliterated and the child could have the
loved object to himself or herself.
(1969, p. 65)
His analysis of the splits identified between the movement and its oppo-
nents has clear Kleinian undertones, although he does not cite Klein
until much later in his work, and only in passing. He goes on to say: ‘The
protest movement is typically an occasion which permits the repressed
elements of [Oedipal and sibling] crises to emerge and be gratified,
though certain other defenses continue to operate’ (1969, p. 67). Fan-
tasy clearly remains in operation here, and yet there is very little detail
as to how the fantastic elements relate to the more ideological com-
ponents of norm- and value-oriented beliefs. And in particular there is
no attention paid to how isolated fantasies are articulated into general-
ized beliefs. The latter seem to appear spontaneously (the root of Snow’s
criticism).
In line with the hydraulic analogy that once inspired Freud, Smelser’s
arguments imply that the pressure expressed in an episode of collec-
tive behaviour seeks the easiest path to release. Therefore, ‘if facilities
conducive for (say) a craze are available for a distressed group, energy
will be diverted away from norm-oriented attempts to modify exist-
ing structural arrangements’ (1962, p. 285). Smelser’s assumptions are
the reverse of those theorists of Utopia who suggest that the Utopian
impulse attached to the most perfect reorganization of society is forced
downwards into increasingly less perfect forms; sometimes referred to
in the critical utopian tradition as ‘opportunistic utopianism’.
The functionalist filing cabinet
The mode of analysis that Smelser adopts bears the mark of Parsons.
Ian Craib (1992) refers to Parsonian functionalism as a ‘filing cabi-
net’ approach to sociology. Social systems are broken down into their
constituents, which are then classified and cross-referenced with other
component parts. Theory of Collective Behaviour (Smelser, 1962) is marked
by the construction of rigid hierarchical typologies, which are then
broken down taxonomically into their component parts (Marx & Wood,
1975, who refer to Smelser’s method as ‘systematic comparative illus-
tration’, provide a very detailed account of the taxonomic tradition
in collective behaviour theory). Each of the five types of collective
behaviour is broken down into its six determinants, and Smelser some-
times then provides a commentary on how specific determinants relate
to other determinants. There are two possible levels of critique here. The
first relates to style alone. Many might think the study of social move-
ments should occasion a lively, passionate and engaging analysis, yet
Smelser’s theory of social dynamics can seem dry and laborious. This
does not in itself, of course, deliver him further from the truth. It does,
however, relate to a more serious point of academic critique.
Smelser’s model is sometimes described as overly mechanistic
(Crossley, 2002). In one sense it is an ironic criticism given that the aim
of his value-added model was to demonstrate that the form an episode
of collective behaviour takes is contingent on the particular combina-
tion of factors. The final form is not determined by the structural strain
itself, therefore, but unfolds through the accumulation of causes. How-
ever, when a single episode of collective behaviour, or one component
of an episode, is made the object of analysis, one thing that does disap-
pear is agency. When talking about the analysis of generalized beliefs,
he says:
From these beliefs we may look in two directions in the value-

added process as a whole. First, we may look ‘backward’ to the
particular component under strain which each generalised belief
restructures . . . . Second, we may look ‘forward’ to the kind of collec-
tive behaviour each type of belief produces – if other determinants
permit action to flow.
(Smelser, 1962, p. 83)
Even though accepting other determinants will come into play, there
seems little room for interpretive process. And, more importantly, con-
tingency itself disappears when working backwards from any realized
mobilization. As Staggenborg (2008) argues, it is always possible to trace
a mobilization to some kind of strain. It is hard to imagine a movement
occurring without its participants experiencing any strain in their lives.
Weeber & Rodeheaver’s (2003) analysis of citizens’ militia move-
ments in the US illustrates this pitfall. Weeber & Rodeheaver set out
to test empirically what various commentators had presupposed to be
the determinants of the citizens’ militia movement (for a review of
other attempts to ‘test’ Smelser’s theory, see Marx & Wood, 1975, who
argue for more quantitative research). They concluded that Smelser’s
determinants were present (with the exception of the effects of social
control, which they dismiss as less important), and hence support
Smelser’s theory. One of their research questions is precisely whether
activists experienced strain ‘prior to or during their tenure in the mili-
tia’. Of course the answer is yes. The study is further weakened by its
methodology, consisting of interpretive analysis of online discussions.
This meant taking participants’ self-reports of ‘strain’ as evidence of
strain. Discussions of ‘fear of the United States federal government’,
for example, is taken as evidence of strain, when it is much closer to
what Smelser would call a generalized belief. Smelser might emphasize
that strain must be experienced or felt in order to result in collective
behaviour, but the point is that strains are ‘felt’ before their causes and
solutions are constructed. Without this it would be impossible for move-
ments to short-circuit change; they would respond directly to whatever
strain they were experiencing. Belief and motivation must be separated
(see Marx & Wood, 1975, p. 383). Moreover, there is a flawed assumption
that if the determinants of collective behaviour can be identified, then
Smelser’s theory must be proved. The critique Staggenborg makes high-
lights that in practice all Smelser’s determinants will always be found
if we look for them. The subtlety that is lost is that Smelser’s theory
is about the way in which determinants combine to shape the form of
collective action. It is not enough to run off a checklist of whether deter-
minants are present or not, empirical work needs to demonstrate how
they combine. Whether or not a detailed theory can ever be predictively
useful, as Weeber & Rodeheaver suggest theirs is, is debatable.
Crossley accepts that Smelser’s is not a model that portrays collective
behaviour as a reflex response to strain. He appreciates Smelser’s empha-
sis on intersubjective expectations and the interpretation of strain
(2002, p. 187). Despite this, Crossley attributes its mechanical qual-
ity to Smelser’s basic assumption that in anomic situations ‘the agent
regresses to a level of “primary” psychological processes’, which ‘evacu-
ates any sense or reason from it’ (2002, p. 48). It is mechanistic in that
it does not account for agency. That is to say, it employs a ‘reductionist’
model of psychology which does not give enough credence to the actor’s
ability to apply reason. Smelser himself might not have recognized this
criticism. In later work, he says that he had previously ‘assumed that
no special motive or mentality (such as psychological regression) neces-
sarily characterizes the participants in episodes of collective behaviour’
(1969, p. 48), and criticizes Freud on those grounds. Whilst going on to
explicitly criticize theories that regard ‘the individual as a kind of pas-

sive vessel through which social forces work’ or in which ‘the individual
himself is not seen as processing or modifying, much less initiating these
social forces’ (1969 p. 55), Smelser comments:
many who have written about collective behaviour have stressed the
uncontrolled and impulsive behaviour of participants. But it should
not be forgotten that such behaviour is continuously conditioned by
the operation of personal controls.
(1969, p. 63)
The charge that Smelser’s model is mechanistic is not helped by his fail-
ure to ground his work in any detailed empirical research. He is very
much a historian of movements, and where empirical cases are referred
to, they are hand-picked illustrative snippets from accounts of signifi-
cant events and contextual factors. The emphasis is on the abstract logic
of the model, and Smelser is just about as close to being an epistemologi-
cal rationalist as you get within sociology. Weeber & Rodeheaver’s (2003,
p. 202) praise is quite telling here; Smelser’s theory ‘provides a theoret-
ically grounded, logical, and temporal rationale for the appearance of
a movement’. But the absence of empirical detail does not necessarily
mean a place cannot be reserved within it for the complex interplay of
social determinants and individual psychology. Indeed, if the model fol-
lowed a purely structural logic, then it would undermine Smelser’s ideas
about short-circuiting, and would look more like a cybernetic model.
Smelser’s model does imply the need for a sophisticated model of the
actor; he just does a poor job of illustrating this in practice in Theory of
Collective Behaviour. This is not surprising as, in setting up the problem
the book addressed, he says:
[episodes of collective behaviour] cluster in time; they cluster in cer-

tain cultural areas; they occur with greater frequency among certain
social groupings – the unemployed, the recent migrant, the adoles-
cent. This skewing in time and in social space invites explanation:
Why do collective episodes occur where they do, when they do, and
in the ways they do?
(1962, p. 1)
He also makes clear that what defines collective behaviour is sociologi-

cal and not psychological (1962, p. 11). In later work (Smelser, 1969), he
explains that his intent had been to develop a distinctively sociological
model. As Crossley says, Smelser was wary of irrationalizing sociologi-

cal phenomena, as turn-of-the-century crowd behaviour theorists had
done, and therefore stopped short of assigning the psychodynamic a
central role in social movements (Crossley, 2002, p. 46).
Smelser’s psychosocial model
Smelser (1969) went on to argue that all behaviour could be studied at

both the psychological and/or social levels. A psychological problem is
one defined at the level of the individual’s psychological motives. A soci-
ological problem is one defined at the level of aggregated rates, and
might include questions about why collective behaviour occurs amongst
particular social groups and at particular times (Durkheim’s study of
suicide is his model here, though his reading of Suicide is an extreme
structuralist one, and thus a straw man, see Smelser & Wallerstein, 1969,
p. 12). In either case, Smelser argues that both psychological and social
factors can be introduced as explanatory variables. In keeping with the
Durkheimian–Parsonian tradition to which Smelser belongs, he sees per-
sonality as the product of social forces. Personality, in turn, determines
behaviour, and therefore patterns of behaviour can be explained in
terms of patterned differences in personality shaped by social structures.
This might be another sense in which Smelser’s model of psychology
could appear ‘mechanistic’.
Smelser (1969) argues for a synthetic approach to collective behaviour
that studies its ‘meaning’ at both the social and psychological levels
(‘double description’, or what it is for the individual and what it is for
the social system), and that combines both psychological and social
determinants. This is done with the aim of avoiding disciplinary reduc-
tionism (a critical realist stance is implicit throughout his work; see
especially Smelser, 1996). In his own field of collective behaviour, socio-
logical reductionism leads to the view that activists and revolutionaries
act as passive agents in the realization of structural change (a charge
he levels at Marx and Marcuse; Smelser & Wallerstein, 1969). Such
models fail to explain why some social conditions, for example unem-
ployment, are not experienced in the same way by all affected, nor are
people all mobilized to the same degree. The relatively weak explana-
tory value of the structuralist models of social movements has been
emphasized again much more recently (Melucci, 1985, for example).
This is true not only of models like the classical Marxist one in which
actors with collective economic interests are differentially mobilized,
but also of New Social Movement theories which predict mobilizations
on behalf of constituencies with different relationships to the social

system and principles of progress, prosperity, economic growth and
scientific rationality on which it is founded (see Habermas, 1981, for
example). These theories rely on actors who appreciate the contradic-
tions of late-modern society in which their own lives are enmeshed,
but they require an explanation of how some actors become motivated
to join a social movement while others do not. As Crossley (2002)
notes:
The ‘strains’ or grievances that groups mobilize around will only

function as such insofar as they disrupt the structure of the lifeworld
and/or otherwise come to be defined as strains within the terms of
the lifeworld. Events which are of great and obvious significance for
the academic may have little or no significance for the populations
analysed by the academic and may not even be noticed at all.
(p. 173)
In a world in which issues concerning the destruction of the environ-

ment, global capitalism, third world poverty, racism and so on are highly
salient, only some individuals are motivated to join social movements.
Smelser (1969) suggests it is possible to imagine structural changes
that provoke a reaction in everyone, on the one hand, or only in a
psychologically distinct minority, on the other, but in studying col-
lective behaviour mobilization is usually differential, and this is what
needs explaining. Even when a number of structural factors are taken
into account, traditional sociological models struggle to predict those
who will and will not be mobilized. On the other hand, psychologi-
cal explanations cannot explain either the content or the clustering of
collective behaviour (1969, p. 52). Furthermore, they tend to patholo-
gize activists. Smelser himself is frequently criticized for pathologizing
collective behaviour, but he in fact warned against the ‘prejudicial
assumption that the “causes” of the revolutionary movement lie solely
in the neurotic conflicts of the revolutionaries and that, in consequence,
the revolt itself will have no adequate reality justification’ (Smelser &
Wallerstein, 1969, p. 17). In an attempt to bridge the structure–agency
divide, Crossley (2002) aligns himself with Habermas in saying that
actors join social movements only when structural processes impinge
upon their personal lifeworlds. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, Crossley
acknowledges that this can occur tacitly, but he does not develop an
account of the mechanisms that might link structure to motivation at
an unconscious level (which is especially important where movements
contest issues that do not appear on the horizon of the lifeworld, see
Ormrod, 2013).
In a post-positivistic era of sociology, Smelser’s synthetic approach
seems less radical than it might once have done. Exactly how social
and psychological meanings and determinants should be combined in
cases of collective behaviour has, however, been far from resolved. It is
important to remain open to the different ways in which personality
and ‘structural determinants’ interact in social movements. Some of
Smelser’s examples suggest a dualistic thinking about the interrelation of
structure and personality. Indeed, he refers to his double-description as
taking place on ‘parallel conceptual levels’ rather than convergent ones.
He could be seen therefore as upholding the distinction between the
disciplines of sociology and psychology even as he calls for their integra-
tion. This is particularly true where he relies on the idea that structural
change might simply activate a latent predisposition, but without much
attention to how or why. Take, for example, his analysis of prison riot-
ing in 1952 and 1953 (also of race riots, 1969, p. 54). He notes that the
social causes of the riots lay in prison reforms, with riots clustered in
those prisons that had undergone reform. But, he notes that
within these prisons, not every inmate rioted, even though all were
presumably affected in some degree by the reforms . . . . To account
for this differential involvement, recourse must be made to psycho-
logical determinants. According to some accounts, the rioters were
composed mainly of psychopathic and homosexual inmate leaders,
and more passive individuals who feared reprisal or loss of favour in
the eyes of the riot leaders.
(1969, p. 56)
These episodes of collective behaviour seem to be explained by invok-

ing psychological characteristics of leaders unrelated to the structural
causes of the outbreaks. The two causal determinants are treated sepa-
rately (and this certainly falls into the trap of pathologizing activists, as
well as homosexuals). Returning to the distinction made earlier, the riots
are made sociologically understandable (they have their ‘reality justifi-
cation’ in the prison reforms) and yet the rioters appear to be only the
irrational.
If such dualism is implied by some of Smelser’s examples, this is not
his intention. Take the following statement:
[T]he explanatory power attained by adding and combining social

forces reaches a limit, and . . . it is necessary to supplement the
Durkheimian account with a serious attempt to understand the ways

in which individuals react to and process these social influences in
relation to the play of intra-psychic determining forces.
(Smelser & Wallerstein, 1969, p. 12)
In the more sophisticated (and less dualistic) applications of his syn-

thetic approach like this, Smelser identifies the differential affects of
personality (more specifically, intra-psychic forces) on the processing of
structural changes. To put this another way, the same structural issues
may be experienced differently by different people dependent on the
unconscious forces at work. This is a point made by Hollway & Jefferson
(1997, p. 262), who elsewhere suggest that psychosocial studies must
take into account both early experiences of security and the differ-
ent cultural channels available to adults for the expression of anxiety
(Hollway & Jefferson, 2000, p. 125). The unconscious should be seen as
taking an active rather than a passive role in this.
It should be remembered, furthermore, that the early experiences
Hollway & Jefferson have in mind are also socially patterned. Hence,
whereas Smelser’s point about the limits of sociological analysis might
be fair on an epistemological level, he is perhaps guilty of conceding
ontological ground to constitutional psychology too readily. When con-
sidering psychology, Smelser’s sociological understanding disappears.
He identifies family or personal history as the sole cause of disposi-
tion. Indeed, in discussing a religious cult of migrants to San Francisco
he reduces it almost entirely to a happenstance collection of individual
biographies.
What makes analysis difficult is that social structures do not generate
psychologies naturally adapted to life within them (as often assumed
by functionalist sociology), but rather a variety of pathological con-
tradictions. These then combine with a host of other social processes
in complex ways. Smelser does in principle accept that ‘strains could
cluster together in unusual ways, and the relationship among multiple
strains could be complex’ (Weeber & Rodeheaver, 2003, p. 184). This
allows the re-centring of social determinants in collective behaviour
without resorting to one-dimensional sociological reductionism. This
involves a more deeply psychoanalytic understanding of structuration.
Summary
This chapter has outlined some of the important contributions Neil

Smelser has made to the understanding of collective behaviour. In
particular, he has provided an integrated model of the various structural
determinants of collective behaviour, and supplemented this with a

synthetic model of the social and psychological determinants. The lat-
ter are understood in psychoanalytic terms, and he rightly sees the
unconscious as affecting how perceptions of social strain are processed
and understood. This depth ontology is crucially important. Moreover,
Smelser assigns fantasy a determining role in the generation of collec-
tive behaviour. Fantasies can be expressed in collective behaviour that
does not formulate coherent political demands related to the strains
to which the movement is responding. Indeed, grievances are more
easily addressed through such means, especially when more compre-
hensive forms of social change are blocked. But whilst attempting to
mark important distinctions between ‘magical thinking’ and the ide-
ologies of social movements, he is also clear that the former (and the
affects it crystallizes) underpins and is reworked through the latter. This
arguably brings such a picture closer to Elliott’s (1996) arguments, as
encountered in Chapter 2. Smelser’s work allows that movements may
be constituted of activists who invest structures and conflicts with phan-
tastic significance to greater or lesser degrees. Some may be founded on
paranoid-schizoid functioning, whilst others work phantasy through to
inform ideologies that are more fully consciously elaborated and ‘reality-
tested’. Activism can ‘short-circuit’ structural change as Smelser suggests,
but it can also identify and seek to resolve profound contradictions in
the social system.
But there are a number of issues with Smelser’s work, which I have
argued can be resolved by formulating a different kind of theory based
on similar ontological assumptions. My first argument is that the sep-
aration of structural conduciveness and structural strain can be highly
misleading, and reflects a functionalist understanding that social order
is a normative baseline, and that movements only emerge in response
to rapid social change in which order is disrupted. I would argue that
strains only make manifest the underlying contradictions upon which
order is based in the first instance. So, whilst it might be useful to sepa-
rate the two in order to understand the timing of activism, ontologically
they can usefully be rolled into a single category. Insofar as Smelser artifi-
cially separates the forces of control from these contradictions, his final
determinant – the operation of social control – can also be subsumed
under this category. Empirically these apparatuses might appear to oper-
ate with a degree of autonomy from other social antagonisms, but their
very mobilization in response to movements highlights that they are
central to the understanding of the construction of the antagonism in
the first instance.
My second argument is that we should recognize that the struc-

tural conflicts that movements address at any moment in time and
the psychology generated by structural conditions are not in sync with
one another. I believe Smelser implicitly acknowledges this. It has
something to do with the arguments encountered earlier about the
‘conservative’ nature of psychology. This does not have to refer to an
irrational attachment to authority. It merely points to the determina-
tion of adult reactions to social phenomena through early childhood
experiences; experiences determined primarily through a relationship
to carers whose own psychology was a product of an earlier period of
history.
Thirdly, as has been noted, Smelser relatively undertheorizes the
organization on which mobilization is based. This is one of many
respects in which Smelser’s work might be seen as mechanistic. It is
therefore necessary to take a lead from more recent social movement
theory, which has provided a number of concepts to help grapple with
these issues. The important thing is that the processes to which these
concepts refer must be understood in relation to the depth ontology pro-
vided by Smelser, rather than being reduced to a series of instrumental
cost–benefit calculations.
Finally, whilst I believe typologies of movements are important if
social movement theory is to have any political implications, in rework-
ing Smelser’s typology I think it is important to see movements as
produced in complex tensions between different forms, rather than
seeing the typology as a series of rigid designations. And movements
certainly cannot be assigned labels from the armchair without detailed
empirical work sensitive to all aspects of a depth ontology.
7
A Typology of Social Movements
In Chapter 5, I argued that Weber’s insights were useful in pointing

to the affective, instrumentally rational, value-rational and traditional
aspects of activism, and that these should be understood as operat-
ing in all movements, but in different combinations. In Chapter 6,
I argued that a typology of movements such as Smelser’s could be
constructed (Crossley, 2002, also reworks Smelser’s typology), paying
particular attention to the ways in which fantasy was worked over
in social movements. The aim in this concluding chapter is to work
these two arguments into a typology of social movements. This typol-
ogy is mapped onto the typology of modes of fantasy outlined in
Chapter 4, as seen in Figure 7.1. It should be noted that other typolo-
gies and distinctions abound in social movement theory, and that some
of the distinctions made here will map onto these, but rarely exactly
(McCarthy & Zald’s, 1977, concept of ‘withdrawal movements’ is a case
in point).
A typology of social movements
Hedonistic movements
Hedonistic movements are those associated with hallucinatory forms
of satisfaction. These are rarely movements in which all social action
is suspended, but rather where action oriented towards change is sus-
pended. Within hedonistic movements the emphasis is on celebration
of what is perceived to be a space within which wishes are fulfilled and
there is no limit to enjoyment. Because the feeling of satisfaction can
never be maintained, such movements can only ever be short-lived.
Most often they represent the collapse of other projects, and towards
their end attempts are usually made to avoid slipping back into another
200
A Typology of Social Movements 201
HOSTILE CRAZES
Millenarian Prefigurative
HEDONISTIC Escapist INSTITUTIONALIZED
Figure 7.1 A typology of social movements
mode of fantasy. Crucially, in these moments, movements cease con-

stituting themselves in relation to a contemporary outside or a future,
and only in relation to a transcended past. They tend to be celebra-
tory, as in St John’s (2008) ‘protestivals’, and lose their political nature.
Within such spaces any limitation to consumption is often denied and
there is an illusion that the Law has been suspended. This is true to
the extent that no demands are formulated and the movement relies
on access to enjoyment that can be secured with a minimum of con-
scious thought. In many respects they resemble the carnival, except the
carnival’s suspension of Law is recognized from the start as temporally
and spatially limited. The hedonistic movement is also necessarily tem-
porally and spatially limited, but this is denied. Because the existence
of others always threatens to destabilize the hedonistic movement from
within, it can only be sustained all the while social interaction is limited.
Hostile crazes
The name for this type of movement hybridizes Smelser’s ‘craze’ and
‘hostile outburst’. There are good reasons for doing this. Smelser him-
self acknowledged their interdependency, as did Freud, Klein and Lacan.
The object that is the centre of the craze can only sustain action so
long as it is considered to be withheld by some group (in its broad-
est sense). Hence this group is posited as the obstacle to enjoyment,
failing to fulfil its proper role within social organization. Such a fan-
tasy always gives rise to a form of pleasure obtained from actions to
eradicate this group. Such a movement is associated with the narcis-
sistic mode of fantasy. That is to say that objects are pursued in the
hope of ‘magically’ returning the self to a state of former jouissance,
and are associated with fantasies of omnipotence and unity. These fan-
tasies are paranoid-schizoid to the extent that they employ splitting
processes in the construction of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ objects, friends and

opponents. Such fantasies are rooted in the unconscious and its pro-
jections onto the external world, but activists adhere to an unshakable
pursuit of the objects they have part or fully consciously identified. The
effect of involvement in such groups is the protection of each member’s
narcissism, and paranoid-schizoid mechanisms are mutually reinforced.
Institutionalized movements
Institutionalized movements are those which distinguish between their
fantasies and political realities. Fantasy may still be acknowledged, but
it is decentred from their politics. Utopian ideals and fantasies deemed
‘unrealistic’ are compromised by what are seen as the cold realities
of political life. Often such movements remain committed to radical
political ideals in the abstract, whilst their actions are routinized. Insti-
tutionalized movements are associated with the depressive mode of
fantasy. There is a realization that the ideals, and impediments to those
ideals, are but useful fictions; necessary for the semblance of a politi-
cal project but ultimately to be betrayed. They may be characterized by
melancholia related to the lost idealized object, and therefore by guilt,
and they may cling to an idealized version of the past. Alternatively
they may have accepted the empty nature of the object, and have disin-
vested in it, whilst still using it to guide their actions. Institutionalized
movements should not be associated with Machiavellian politics, which
is better associated with the attempts by narcissistic activists to infiltrate
the sphere of formal politics for their own advantage. Activists within
institutionalized movements are more likely to identify with others
within the movement, and within political institutions more generally,
appreciating their relations of co-dependence.
As in the typology of modes of fantasy, if these three types of movement

stand at the three apexes of Figure 7.1, I have also identified three types
of movement that exist in tension between these apexes.
Millenarian movements
Millenarian movements are associated with the fatalistic mode of fan-
tasy. Millenarian movements make predictions about the future closure
of the social system, whether this takes on a horrific or beautific hue
(to use Glynos’s, 2011, terms). They may thus construct doomsday or
‘end times’ scenarios, or scenarios in which they are saved by gods,
aliens and such like. They are often identified as cults, and have been
the subject of extensive sociological research. As in hostile crazes,
fantasies are constructed on the basis of paranoid-schizoid splitting;
A Typology of Social Movements 203
the construction of idealized good objects, and catastrophically destruc-

tive ones. A mode of jouissance is established through the fantasy, such
that ‘omens’ of the doomsday, which on the surface might be horrific,
enable a perverse enjoyment. The difference is that where the hostile
craze understands its actions in the world to be necessary for the real-
ization of fantasy, and therefore accepts more fully its castration, the
millenarian movement understands the fulfilment of the fantasy sce-
nario to be fated, and therefore achievable without their interventions
(although some amount of preparation for the end times provides access
to enjoyment). The relationship with hedonistic movements is there-
fore that future realization of fantasy is understood to be paradoxically
located within the present. This stems from a belief that the present is
the way it is only because of what is yet to come. It makes sense only as
part of a narrative. This type of movement has more longevity because
desire is sustained up to such a point as it is necessary to impose time-
limited predictions. Such movements are usually founded on strong
splits between supporters and enemies. But, on the other hand, there
is the same necessity of retaining a distance from each other as there
is in hedonistic movements. They are therefore often characterized by
mutual accusations of treachery, insincerity and so on.
Escapist movements
Escapist movements are associated with the dissociative mode of fan-
tasy. They are typified by movements in the creative arts, especially
literary movements, and fandom. These are ‘hallucinatory’ insofar as
they stage wish-fulfilment in the ‘here and now’ through the creation
of a world within a world wherein disbelief is suspended. But they
are depressive insofar as activists are capable of distinguishing between
their artistic creations and the world beyond them, and recognize their
fantasy products as fictions. Insofar as the movement recognizes itself
in these productions whilst accepting they are not real, it disinvests
from political action. The processes of softening fantasy are necessarily
involved here, but always to a degree that risks betraying the uncon-
scious in favour of something aesthetically pleasing. This is not to
say that such literature is apolitical. In Veldman’s (1994) study of the
romantic movement, she argues that fantasy represents a protest, and
in Tolkien expresses ‘the escape of the prisoner’ rather than the flight
of the deserter. Such literature can be a force for change, even if not
through the movement that generated it. This is not to say that all lit-
erature produced by activists is necessarily ‘escapist’ in any case. It is
merely to say that to the extent that a movement tends towards being
escapist, it will tend to present desire as fulfilled in a creation that
only serves to deny the subject’s unconscious fantasy. The relationship

between activists in escapist movements is always represented in a bal-
ance between a distancing from each other and a borrowing of aesthetic
elements.
Prefigurative movements
Prefigurative movements exist in tension between hostile crazes and
institutionalized movements. They are motivated by an attachment to
a fantasy, but at the same time are able to forgo wholesale attempts
to secure the object of fantasy in favour of accepting local and tem-
poral partial manifestations of fantasy. It is acknowledged that this is
a necessary step in realizing fantasy more fully later. It involves some
recognition of political realities, and often spatially uneven develop-
ments, and is able to take these into account whilst not abandoning
their attachment to an object. I associate prefigurative movements with
the interventionist mode of fantasy in which alterations are made in
the real conditions of existence on the basis of fantasy, whilst activists
retain an understanding that their actions do not represent the fulfil-
ment of fantasy, or even necessarily a particularly certain step in the
right direction. They involve an engagement with other people, espe-
cially as these are understood to be necessary to the realization of goals.
Yet rather than see fellow activists or opponents as mere tools or bar-
riers to the subject’s realization of fantasy (and to idealize or demonize
them), they are imagined as capable of transformation in the process of
working towards collective goals. This recalls again Winnicott’s notion
of ‘potential space’, and Erikson’s arguments about the construction of
reality through collective engagement with the external environment.
Summary
I have outlined six types of social movement based on the dominant

mode of relating to fantasy within them. The aim, as in Chapter 4, is
not to provide rigid categories, but rather ideal types towards which
movements can tend. And this is not to suggest that all activists within
a movement can be characterized by the same relationship to fantasy.
All movements are likely to be comprised of actors with different kinds
of relationship. Patterns can nonetheless be usefully identified. These
patterns can change over time dependent on processes occurring within
the movement (as illustrated in Chapter 11). The model can therefore
also be used to chart the evolution of social movements.
Part III
A Case Study of the Pro-Space
Movement and Fantasy
This part of the book aims to demonstrate how the theoretical argu-
ments of Parts I and II can feed into a case study; in this instance of
the pro-space movement (see also Ormrod 2007, 2009). Other illustra-
tions can be found in my work on the Voluntary Human Extinction
Movement (2011b) and outer space protection movement (2012).
Since the 1970s (though with their precursors) a number of citi-
zen ‘pro-space’ organizations have been established to promote human
activity in outer space. Some groups/activists are devoted to exploration
(human or robotic) or tourism, whilst others set their sights on develop-
ing resources and space settlement. While most are for the exploration
and development of space in general, some have specific targets like the
Moon or Mars, or imagine artificial space colonies. There have always
been differences in the movement about which particular activities and
goals are worth pursuing (Bell, 1985b, 1985c). The movement talks
about the creation of a ‘spacefaring civilization’, and recent rhetoric
states that ‘space is a place not a program’. There is variation in their
political activity, but many groups regularly lobby governments about
space issues. Outside of this, most groups also promote space activ-
ity by sponsoring research, holding scientific discussions, supporting
private sector projects, educating the public and producing news maga-
zines for their membership. They also organize trips, parties and other
social events. National organizations convene only once or twice a year,
whilst gatherings are much more frequent amongst local chapters of
these organizations and local groups affiliated to them.
The movement has never been particularly large in social movement
terms. Membership is generally formalized through joining one or more
pro-space organizations (costing roughly US$30–40 a year). Yet surveys
of membership in recent years have been limited. The last record as of
1985 suggested there were 150,000–200,000 citizen pro-space activists
206 Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy
(Bell cited in Michaud, 1986). Movement numbers probably peaked in

the late 1980s/early 1990s at about 200,000–250,000. Since the 1970s,
the vast majority of organizations have been based in the US, though
independent organizations and international chapters of US groups do
exist in other developed countries (including Australia, Canada, the UK,
France and Japan).
Despite members of pro-space organizations referring to themselves as
part of a pro-space movement, Michaud (1986) points to the existence of
some debate as to whether or not it is a true social movement (see also
Bainbridge, 1976). In 1980, writer Trudy Bell believed that the emerging
movement could go on to be as powerful as other social movements.
Only two years later she was less optimistic (Bell cited in Michaud,
1986), and in 1985 concluded ‘that the space community was too frag-
mented and had too diverse an agenda to be called a movement’ (1985,
p. 305). Michaud argues that some older groups do not qualify as being
part of a social movement because of their economic interests, and nor
do enthusiast groups (within which category one could include astron-
omy and rocket clubs and science fiction fans), but believes some of the
newer groups ‘seeking significant change . . . may indeed reflect a social
movement’ (Michaud, 1986, p. 304). It is on these latter groups that my
own research has focused.
Narrating pro-space history
Although activists frequently narrate the history of the movement, there

are few published histories, and I have relied largely on Bainbridge
(1976) and Michaud (1986) as well as Kilgore’s (2003) history of
‘astrofuturism’ (both a social movement and mode of literary expres-
sion). The pro-space movement, like any social movement, has a com-
plex history marked in particular by mergers and splinters amongst its
organizations, and close associations with non-activist individuals and
groups. One common way of telling the history of the movement is to
divide it into three waves.
The rocket societies of the 1920s and 1930s are certainly the oldest
organizations that could claim to be part of the heritage of the pro-space
movement. This includes the German Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR),
the British Interplanetary Society (BIS), which is still going today, and
the American Interplanetary Society (AIS) (see Winter, 1983; Kilgore,
2003, chs 2 & 3; Michaud, 1986, pp. 5–10). The VfR was an organization
dedicated to pursuing spaceflight directly through the design and test-
ing of rocketry, though they did attempt to work channels of political
Case Study of Pro-Space Movement and Fantasy 207
influence. Its best-known member was Werner von Braun who worked
on the V2 rocket for the Nazis, and was later taken to work on the
US space programme as part of Operation Paperclip. He established the
National Space Institute (NSI) in 1974, part of the second wave of pro-
space groups. The AIS was most similar to the organizations established
in the second wave. With backgrounds in science fiction, their inter-
est was more in imagining and legitimating human spaceflight than
actively achieving it themselves.
The 1940s and 1950s are often called the golden age of science fic-
tion, and as Kilgore demonstrates, this was interwoven with popular
science. But, with a few exceptions, the second wave of pro-space orga-
nizations would not emerge until after the 1969 moon landing, and
until that point the American Rocket Society (which emerged from the
AIS) continued to dominate space advocacy with thousands of indus-
try members. The space group boom of the 1970s’ post-Apollo era saw
the birth of many organizations to which current groups can trace their
heritage. The most noteworthy of these was the L-5 Society, inspired
by Princeton academic Gerard K. O’Neill. O’Neill designed an orbiting
space colony using current science and technology, worked out the costs
mathematically, and linked his colonies with a revision of the Limits to
Growth thesis. Though their plans would supposedly be capable of gen-
erating profit, the L-5 Society still placed a lot of faith in NASA to realize
them. In 1986, the organization merged with Von Braun’s National
Space Institute to become the National Space Society (NSS).
The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw the emergence
of a number of new pro-space organizations, formed as membership
of the older organizations had dropped. These had a clearer focus
on supporting small, entrepreneurial, private space ventures, the own-
ers of which were often considered part of the pro-space movement
themselves (referred to as the ‘NewSpace’, ‘alt.space’ or ‘private space’
movement, see Bereinstein, 2002), and/or on promoting the space
tourism industry (arguably a distinct space tourism movement, see
Ashford, 2002; Spencer & Rugg, 2004). The lobbying group ProSpace,
formed in 1994, and the Space Frontier Foundation, formed by Rick
Tumlinson in 1998, are good examples of organizations belonging to
this third wave. I have heard Tumlinson introduced as ‘the dark side of
space advocacy’, and he uses the Jolly Roger as a symbol. Other new
organizations, like the Mars Society, formed by Robert Zubrin in 1998,
combined a NewSpace focus with other features familiar from older
groups. At the same time, the NSS, once thought of as a NASA fan club,
also started a campaign of support for NewSpace ventures. Michaud
actually noted the third wave emerging as early as 1986, saying that
‘in a sense, the new, young space entrepreneurs are a subculture of the
pro-space movement’ (Michaud, 1986, p. 269, also Bell, 1985c).
Antagonisms in the pro-space movement
As well as narratives of movement history, there are also a number of

discourses that seek to divide the movement politically. Michaud (1986,
p. 316) presents a table juxtaposing two different sides of the movement:
Space Development Space Exploration

Manned spaceflight Unmanned spaceflight
Space commercialization Space science
Aerospace industry University researchers
Space defence Space arms control
American pre-eminence International cooperation
Outward migration Public service
Limitless resources Limits to growth
The second column of the table is intended to characterize groups such

as Carl Sagan’s Planetary Society. The first column refers to groups such
as the National Space Society. The NewSpace movement emerges from
the first position.
From within the movement, Rick Tumlinson frequently provides an
alternative tripartite distinction based on adherence to the principles of
the three pro-space figureheads: Von Braun, O’Neill and Sagan (see also
Klerkx, 2005). Von Braunians are imperialistic, militaristic and elitist.
Saganites are amazed by space (in a quasi-religious way), but advocate
exploration and not interference. Tumlinson refers to this as ‘cosmic
voyeurism’. The third wave of the movement is seen as the legacy of
O’Neill. Though O’Neill had more faith in the state, he encouraged the
pro-space imagination, and enabled activists to see their futures as living
and working in space, using resources put there for us, and expanding
‘the bubble of life’.
Kilgore (2003), whilst not attempting to cleave the astrofuturist move-
ment as neatly as Michaud or Tumlinson, locates distinctions within it
on the Left–Right political spectrum (see also Michaud, 1986). Kilgore
implicitly talks about what framing theorists would call astrofuturist
‘diagnostic frames’, suggesting that the problems with American society
to which space development has been seen as the answer have histor-
ically been numerous (2003, p. 4). For Jerry Pournelle, argues Kilgore,
this was irritation with the welfare state. For Gerard O’Neill it was the
‘malling of America’. For Ben Bova, it was exasperation with the limits
to growth thesis. Kim Stanley Robinson’s challenge was made more gen-
erally at the direction and methods of late capitalism, whilst Vonda
McIntyre saw problems in institutions regarding race and gender. These
of course relate to different prognostic frames regarding the politics of a
spacefaring civilization.
It is often easy to see the influence of right-wing science fiction
writers like Robert Heinlein, Pournelle and Bova in the pro-space move-
ment. However, Kilgore emphasizes the existence within astrofuturism
of images of space colonies founded on radically different socialist
solutions to differently framed problems:
Astrofuturist speculation on space-based exploration, exploitation,

and colonization is capacious enough to contain imperialist, cap-
italist ambitions and utopian, socialist hopes. . . . This [speculative]
impulse has produced a strand of futurist thought that seeks an eter-
nal extension of contemporary political and economic arrangements,
albeit stripped of unpleasant resonances and rendered innocent.
However, astrofuturism also carries within it an idealism, a liberal or
utopian commitment that seeks alternatives and solutions to these
problems and conflicts characterizing contemporary American life.
It can imagine space frontiers predicated on experimental arrange-
ments and the production of relationships uncommon or unknown
in the old world.
(2003, pp. 1, 4).
It is important to accept that the fantasy of a spacefaring civiliza-

tion is not anchored to any political project. And Robinson’s work in
particular is praised by Jameson (2005) as well as Kilgore for its anti-anti-
utopian qualities; rather than provide a blueprint for Martian settlement
it provides for plural and continually renegotiated utopian projects.
The pro-space movement as a psychosocial case study
My work on the pro-space movement has often drawn suspicions that

I sought a case particularly amenable to the kind of psychoanalytic
interpretation outlined in this book.
After all, the centrality of fantasy to those pursing the human explo-
ration, development and settlement of space is well established. It is
reported that the early rocket pioneers like Robert Goddard were driven
by imaginative day-dreams. Carl Sagan describes a young Goddard

sitting in a cherry tree and envisioning exotic new vehicles (cited in
Kilgore, 2003, p. 42). Ideas propounded within the movement, such as
space colonization, have been readily dismissed as ‘technological dis-
guises for infantile fantasies’ (Lewis Mumford, cited in Michaud, 1986,
p. 71; see also the discussion of Lasch in what follows). Perhaps the
first thing to say is that there are nonetheless other ways of repre-
senting the movement. More sympathetic researchers have suggested
psychoanalytic explanations and then disregarded them (Bainbridge,
1976, p. 255). Whilst in places Bainbridge admits the drive to go into
space may be primitive and irrational (1976, p. 197, 1991, p. 2), his
own research has been an attempt to elicit pro-space frames and quan-
titatively study their popularity and correlation (identifying different
‘orders’: inspirational, exploration/adventure, international harmony,
excitement, aesthetic and nationalist). Michaud (1986, pp. 305–6) draws
on Moe’s (1980) concept of a ‘bounded rationality’ to explain the
involvement of activists who do not have interests in the industry,
whilst concluding that it consists predominantly of groups campaigning
in the interests of engineers and scientists who stand to gain financially
from the continued exploration and development of space. Further to
this, since I concluded my research, allegations have been made about
the extent to which one pro-space organization’s professional lobbying
is founded on (disclosed and undisclosed) major financial interests.
As a second line of defence, I would point out that when I began
this research in 2003 not only was I as yet unfamiliar with the seminal
texts on psychosocial research – Hollway & Jefferson’s (2000) develop-
ment of the free association narrative interviewing method (now FANI)
and Wengraf’s (2001) Biographical Narrative Interview Method (BNIM) –
but I had yet to locate myself firmly within the psychosocial paradigm
as a researcher at all. I had been interested in the motivations of pro-
space activists (amongst other things), but I had not conceptualized
these psychoanalytically in designing the research. I only came to a slow
realization that fantasy was an important thing to study (Peter Dickens
having pointed me in the direction of psychoanalytic work on narcis-
sism when discussing my early material), and this was in ignorance of
the literature reviewed in this book coming out of the ‘imaginative turn’.
This is not to say, of course, that it was a coincidence that this partic-
ular psychosocial framework emerged from this particular case study.
Whatever ideologies and interests are at work, I would concede that
fantasy is more obvious in the pro-space movement than in other
movements. ‘Old’ social movements, for example, are less obviously
amenable to such an analysis. And yet one of the strongest criticisms

of analyses such as Taine’s and Le Bon’s has been that they have studied
class-based movements about material deprivations whilst pathologiz-
ing them as the product of irrational crowd dynamics. Subsequent
studies of the French Revolution, such as Rude’s, have proved more sen-
sitive to the conditions from which such demands emerged. But going
beyond either type of analysis, it can be said that even the demand for
bread is based on a fantasy (Laclau, 2005, approaches this point). This
is not to say that the provision of bread would not have satisfied the
sustenance needs of the French peasantry, or that such demands were
‘unrealistic’ and unlikely to be met. The point is merely that bread was
never the thing that the peasantry desired; it merely served as a symbolic
container. This was what Rousseau’s ‘great princess’ unwittingly real-
ized when she said ‘let them eat cake’! The desire was never for bread
specifically, though something specific had to be demanded.
The theoretical approach identified here can thus be applied to any
social movement. As I argued previously, it is vital that social movement
theory avoid its past mistakes in employing one framework for move-
ments it opposes and another for those it sympathizes with. But equally
importantly, it must be capable of making distinctions between move-
ments. This is what the typology outlined in Chapter 7 aims to provide.
As will become clear, I see the contemporary pro-space movement as
an example of a hostile craze. That is to say, it identifies objects, in the
form of the technologies capable of achieving a spacefaring civilization,
as the means to recovering a withheld enjoyment. These objects promise
a sense of omnipotence and unity. They are pursued through the relent-
less attempt to destroy barriers to the realization of the fantasy. The
scope of both ‘reality-testing’ and the construction of collective images
of the future are shaky. But this is not to say the pro-space movement
has always been, or always will be, best characterized as a hostile craze.
Social movements are nothing if not dynamic.
Psychosocial methodology
My research into the pro-space movement was conceptualized as an

ethnography, albeit in the sense of living the lives of the participants
(see Hine, 2000) rather than of immersing myself in a particular set-
ting for an extended period of time. It was mainly conducted at various
pro-space events in the US and the UK in 2003 and 2004, although
this was supplemented by reading pro-space magazines and web-
sites. Material came from formal and informal interviews, conference
papers by activists, panel discussions and lobbying appointments with

congressional staffers. Previous studies had relied on the publications
of movement leaders, large-scale attitude surveys, or interviews with a
few selected activist-informants (and had tended to take all answers at
face value). One of my interviewees described the (usually annual) con-
ferences as being like a shot in the arm. These conferences generally
last a few days. Delegates pay a nominal fee and reduced room rates
to stay in a comfortable hotel and during the day listen to papers on
technical, policy and philosophical issues. The conference also includes
discussions over meals and in the hotel lobby, and possibly night-time
parties, trips, lobbying exercises, dinner speakers, awards ceremonies,
art exhibitions, films, music, children’s programmes and so on. In the
US, I attended the NSS Legislative Conference 2003 in Washington DC,
ProSpace March Storm 2004, also in Washington DC, and the Interna-
tional Space Development Conference (ISDC) 2004 in Oklahoma City.
I also attended two smaller events in the UK: the Mars Society UK
Annual Conference 2004 in Leicester, and the Mars Society Europe
Conference 2004 in Milton Keynes.
As already implied, the realization that fantasy was an important
thing to study within a social movement dawned slowly. And lacking a
grounding in the methodological literature, working out how to access
activists’ fantasies and locate them within their socio-biographies was a
painful process. There are shortcomings in the material I have, which
might not have been there had I drawn on psychosocial method from
the beginning of my research. My subsequent studies have been able
to draw (albeit loosely) on Hollway & Jefferson’s and Wengraf’s models,
which I believe has made for much richer biographical accounts, elicited
fantasy more directly and guided better analysis.
I conducted interviews with 23 people, though most of my analy-
sis is based on just a few of these. The questions I asked changed as
my research progressed, but finally fell into four sections. The first was
aimed at eliciting a general life story. This approach to interviewing is
intended to help the researcher gain access to a level of personal nar-
rative often otherwise reworked through, or masked by, the rhetoric
of activism (Blee & Taylor, 2002). I would now question the extent
to which this is possible, as demonstrated in Chapter 8. The second
section was about when they became interested in space. The third was
about joining the movement. Fourthly, I asked them why they thought
we should explore and develop space, and about the origins of these
arguments and understandings.
Fantasies sometimes emerged as part of these interviews, but they

were also divulged during conference papers and discussions. Most of
the time these posed as technical discussions, especially as they related
to the feasibility of various technologies and forms of construction. But
they were often described using terms like ‘we will’, rather than ‘we
could’; for me one clue to the existence of narcissistic fantasy.
Organization of Part III
Chapter 8 makes the case for the central importance of fantasy in the
movement, and illustrates three typical formations of pro-space fantasy:
weightlessness, conquering space and viewing the Earth from space.
Chapter 9 looks at how particular social conditions, often identified with
a ‘culture of narcissism’, might have affected activists’ mode of fantasy,
which I characterize as predominantly narcissistic. Chapter 10 analy-
ses the relationship between the collective spacefaring fantasy and the
movement’s libertarian Right ideology. Chapter 11 explores the organi-
zation of the pro-space movement, and the way in which a ‘spacefaring
culture’, hierarchical organizational structure, narcissistic leadership and
opportunistic politics combine to give the movement its form as a
hostile craze.
8
Fantasy in the Pro-Space Movement
Recent psychoanalytic theory has often argued that the unconscious is

hidden in plain sight. This may point us in the direction of the funda-
mental truth of the pro-space movement; that it is a movement whose
orientation is towards furthering the human exploration, development
and settlement of outer space. This is, of course, written on the out-
side of the movement, so to speak. But it is easily missed. For when the
movement engages in political action of whatever sort, the one thing
it cannot say is that the human exploration, development and settle-
ment of outer space has value in and of itself. The legitimation of these
programmes must always come from the outside, from values extrane-
ous to outer space development itself. In briefing activists, the head of
one organization alluded to the view that it was dangerous when lob-
bying to talk enthusiastically about space development itself. Instead,
the social, political and economic rationale was to be emphasized. The
movement spends a great deal of time rehearsing this rationale inter-
nally, with conference sessions dedicated to ‘The top ten reasons to go
into space’ and so on. This advice was couched in terms of not being
too radical (for example, not using the word ‘colonization’) or too kooky
(not wearing fake Spock ears when meeting congressmen, as had hap-
pened in the past, for example), lest congressional staffers’ eyes should
glaze over. But the point goes deeper than this. Activists cannot hope to
win over political allies without arguments that speak to the interests of
those they need to mobilize. In constructing these rationales, however,
they deny the nature of the movement. It is not a movement about eco-
nomic growth, or stimulating scientific aspirations, or national pride, or
world peace. It is a movement about exploring, developing and settling
outer space. This observation is simply Lyotard’s point that science had
always relied on metanarratives – of freedom or prosperity – outside of
itself for its own justification. Nothing can justify itself from the inside.
215
This is precisely Žižek’s point about the ideological fantasy. The

project of developing space takes on a fantasmatic role. As what Scott
would call a ‘fantasy echo’ it is this that enables the historical and
contemporary ruptures in the movement described by Tumlinson and
others to be understood as ruptures in the same pro-space movement. The
realization of this fantasy is the central aim of the movement, and yet
the one thing that the movement cannot assign value to in public dis-
course. Instead, the latter must circle around this central absence. The
movement subverts its own ends into means for the ends of those it
wishes to mobilize. Space development, actually its goal, is presented as
the best solution for goals concerning poverty, cultural malaise and war.
The abundant evidence that space development is not the best solution
to these problems threatens to destabilize this rationalization at every
turn, but the movement must pin its colours to some mast. It is for this
reason that the movement’s attempts at what Snow would call ‘frame
alignment’ with other movements has not worked. Pro-space activists
often consider themselves part of the environmental movement (high-
lighting, for example, the contribution that photographs taken from
space supposedly made to the environmental movement), and are
bemused that environmentalists do not make the same connections.
But, as argued in Chapter 3, Žižek sometimes falters in not recogniz-
ing that what might seem fantastic from the perspective of ideology is
not at all unconscious. The goal of creating, in one leader’s own words,
‘a spacefaring civilization’ is planned, drawn, even sung about, within
the movement. There is, as Žižek’s own work predicts, a distancing of
activists from their rationalizations. Each understands that the sessions
on ideology and rhetoric are necessary, but that the movement is built
on the visions that circulate amongst them. Arguments about the eco-
nomic, social and political benefits of space programmes are, in one
activist’s words, merely ‘window dressing’. ‘Honestly, we want to go
because we want to go’. There is a pro-space maxim: ‘you either get
it or you don’t’. This echoes Arthur C. Clarke, as quoted in Bainbridge
(1976):
Any ‘reasons’ we may give for wanting to cross space are

afterthoughts, excuses tacked on because we ought rationally to have
them. They are true but superfluous, except for the practical value
they may have when we try to enlist the support of those who may
not share our particular enthusiasm for astronautics yet can appre-
ciate the benefits which it may bring, and the repercussions these
will have upon the causes for which they, too, feel deeply. The urge
to explore, to discover, to ‘follow knowledge like a shrinking star’ is
Fantasy in the Pro-Space Movement 217
a primary human impulse which needs and can receive no further

justification than its own existence.
(Clarke, 1946, p. 68)
Launius (2003) makes a similar point about the subsequent develop-

ment of ‘reasons’. There is another layer hinted at in this, and a layer
revealing itself as time goes on. This is that beneath activists’ implicitly
utopian idea of a spacefaring civilization is the idea of going to space
themselves. Early groups more rarely expressed that wish openly. Barbara
Marx Hubbard (1989) admits she found herself quite shocked when after
several years of advocacy she realized she had wanted to go into space
personally the whole time. There were exceptions, however. In 1984,
the World Space Foundation (WSF) adopted the slogan ‘I want to GO’
(Michaud, 1986, p. 103). More recent groups have become even more
explicit about their ambitions. The Artemis Society supports a privately
funded colonization project, the Artemis Project, which advertises that
‘you can come too!’ The emergence of the space tourism market and
commercial projects like Mars One allow ‘activists’ to disengage from
the utopian. If the desire to go into space personally was once only on
the tips of activist tongues, it is now a fantasy that circulates widely and
freely.
Following Adorno, there are distinct layers of ideology here. The
movement’s engagements with the outside world (albeit prepared
through internal dialogue) are thoroughly ideological, but circle around
their attachment to the idea of a spacefaring civilization. Within the
movement, the vision of a spacefaring civilization is collectively con-
structed, with personal visions softened and integrated. In interviews,
individual activists’ desire to explore, develop or settle space themselves
begins to be elaborated. To uncover the truly unconscious source of
the fantasy means digging beneath even that level at which activists
acknowledge their own personal desire to go into outer space. It is here
that we track the true meaning of pro-space activism.
The origins of pro-space activism
Pro-space activists are generally fairly well able to articulate when they
became activists. The formal membership basis for the movement assists
in this. Most see the first time they signed up to an organization
or attended an event like the International Space Development Con-
ference for the first time as marking a transformative moment. The
‘hook’ can also often be identified, and might be reading a book by
the leader of the organization, for example. Gerard O’Neill’s (1989) The
High Frontier originally developed arguments about resources in space.

Robert Zubrin’s (1996) The Case for Mars put forward arguments about
inspiration and human nature. Other writing, such as that of the pio-
neers Tsiolkovsky, Oberth, Goddard and Von Braun, and even science
fiction writers Clarke, Heinlein and Bradbury, contained ideological as
well as fantastic elements. These hooks are moments of realization that
the creation of a spacefaring civilization can be socially, politically or
economically legitimated (in a manner that resonated with their exist-
ing ideas). But crucially these are not narratives of ‘conversion’ (see
Brown, 2002). Pro-space activists were always, in my experience, believ-
ers before they were activists. They simply could not express this as a
political demand.
The question about why humans should explore, develop and settle
outer space is (too) easily answered. Indeed, any competent pro-space
activist is expected to be able to give the reasons for their political
demands. Probing questions reach their limit, however, in discussions
about why the activist wants to go into space themselves, or, if they do
not want to go into space themselves, why they enjoy thinking about
others in space. As I will show in a moment, they are capable of elabo-
rating peculiar fantasies about what they would do in space, but these
can never be formulated as an answer to the ‘why’ question. Here is
evidence of the existence of the object a. Activists are also sometimes
capable of discussing the origins of their space fantasies, though this is
not always the case. The first thing to be said is that activists always, in
my experience, traced their interest in human activity in space to early
childhood. The average age given was around seven years old. There
were two main catalysts for activists’ space fantasies, though in most
cases it would be fair to say that one led to the other before long. The
first is through reading science fiction literature. For many of them, the
interest in science fiction apparently began at an early age. One activist
traced this to reading Rupert and the Spaceship at four years old. From
this early interest, activists often developed an appetite for the genre.
Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein (along with Isaac Asimov, Ray
Bradbury and a few others) have a particularly close relationship with
the pro-space movement.
Reading science fiction was often portrayed as a positive identification
to replace a negative one. In some cases, this interest in science fiction
was located in a (typical) narrative about a childhood of social marginal-
ity and exclusion from mainstream activities such as sports. In some
other cases it was related to a narrative about poverty, especially in one
case where the activist had grown up in a single-mother household after
his father had died, and where more expensive leisure activities were
unaffordable. It is possible here to emphasize the contingent nature of
the child’s love of science fiction. In some of these fragments of stories
there is nothing intrinsic to science fiction that appealed to the child;
it merely served to fix an identity where previously there was none.
Especially where it represented the acceptance of parental financial con-
straints, it is possible to see how this might represent the desire of the
other, but moreover the desire to desire.
In addition to science fiction, when discussing how they got ‘into’
space, nearly all pro-space activists will mention something about their
memories of watching space missions. Again, it is childhood memories
that are the most pertinent. Amongst those I interviewed were people
whose first memories ranged from the Soviet Sputnik I, the first satel-
lite to be put into space in 1957, to the first launch of the American
Space Shuttle in 1981, though a large cohort grew up during the Apollo
era. Usually this meant being huddled around the family TV, although
sometimes the launch and ascent of rockets was witnessed in person.
In either case, the presence of family members who were also excited by
the launch was either made explicit or could be inferred. In a couple of
cases, activists had become interested in space through building back-
yard rockets with their fathers, or being given a telescope. Little work is
needed to imagine that in all of these instances the child was encour-
aged to watch and enjoy what was happening by their parents, and that
this formed a crucial education in desire. Again, these memories came to
play a crucial role in establishing identity. One activist said that Sputnik
was ‘the thing that defined everyone’s life back then’. Another, when
asked to tell his life story whilst putting space aside, began ‘OK. I was born
the year before Sputnik and as a consequence of that, grew up at a time
when all of this sort of thing was in the news.’ Another, when asked to
do the same, said: ‘I’m 53 years old, I was 18 when they landed on the
moon, I was interested in space before that. Oh, you said leave space
behind! (laugh) Whoopsee!’ These were, it seems, moments of entry into
the social order that provided coordinates without which activists’ lives
become unnarratable.
It was made clear that these ontogenetic accounts represented the end
of the road for any explanatory logic. This is how one activist responded
to the question of why he wanted to travel into space:
For the fun of it or for the . . . It’s hard to say it’s just been a dream
of mine to be in space, you know. So, why do you want to be in
space; it’s exciting, you know, it’s not something that everybody does
but still it’s not trying to beat the Joneses or anything. It’s just one
of those desires you grow up with from when you’re a kid, it’s just
a strong desire so you kind of lose track of the original reason . . . .
So let me think about that, I might be able to answer you better in
the future, but it’s not one of those things . . . It’s sort of like asking
somebody ‘why do you scratch your head up here instead of over
here?’ It’s like ‘I just got into the habit of doing it’.
This confused response calls to mind Lacan’s (1966) discussion of ‘I

can’t but . . .’ statements. There is no answer to the question because
the subject can only think from a position determined by the very
assumption they are being asked to call into question. Lots of other
pro-space activists got agitated when pushed on the origins of their
self-confessed ‘drive’. One resorted to saying ‘the mystics amongst us
might say God put it there’. With another activist, he agreed when
I attempted to draw the parallel with Sisyphus. Both support the expla-
nations encountered in Chapter 3. The argument that ‘God put it there’
says little more than that it was present already in the birth of the
subject. The Sisyphus myth reinforces the notion that it is in the con-
struction of frustrated desire that its function for the individual can be
located.
It must be accepted that the availability of such fantasies comes as
the result of activists growing up in a social reality in which science fic-
tion and space missions were taking place. Insomuch as these belonged
to the symbolic order, these fantasies can be said to have been pro-
duced by that order. Journalist Marina Benjamin (2003) explains how
the American programme filled her and others like her with inspira-
tion and dreams when they were young, and gave them high hopes for
what mankind could achieve in the future. In her book lamenting what
she sees as the extinction of spacefaring dreams, Benjamin describes the
way the space age had made her feel as a kid, and the questions pro-
voked upon visiting the Florida coast from which space launches had
been made:
[Some] questions were more reflexive in nature, as they threaded back

into my childhood dreams and threatened to expose them as delu-
sions, or else reminded me why so many of us once invested so much
in NASA’s dream peddling. Was I naïve to believe we’d simply hop
from the moon to other planets and thence to the stars?
(Benjamin, 2003, p. 3)
What this also illustrates is that fantasy maintains a distance from its
symbolic sources. Benjamin did not simply identify with the NASA mis-
sions. She used the images they produced to stage her own desire.
The creative aspects of science fiction fandom have been the subject
of considerable attention in cultural studies (see, for example, Jenkins,
1992).
Narcissism, unity, omnipotence and pro-space phantasy
Because of his relevance to Chapter 9 as well as this, I anchor my dis-

cussion here in Lasch’s (1979, 1991) account of narcissism and fantasy.
Lasch (not unproblematically) merges Freud’s and Klein’s theories of
psychic development as the starting point for his theory of narcissism.
From Freud he takes the assumption that all infants must pass through a
stage of primary narcissism. Born prematurely, the young infant’s needs
are necessarily met by others (in the classical account, by the mother).
At the bare minimum he or she must have physiological needs like
warmth and food provided, but in many cultures he or she can expect a
great deal more fussing and cooing than these alone. In Freud’s famous
phrase, he is treated by his care-givers as ‘His Majesty the baby’ (Freud,
1914, p. 556). Lasch notes two ways of conceptualizing the experience
of primary narcissism.
The first, taken from Freud’s original paper on narcissism, empha-
sizes the infant’s experience of omnipotence, of power over his external
universe (see Almond, 1997, p. 4). According to such an account, the
mother’s initial attentiveness and willingness to provide the breast on
demand mean that the infant experiences control over other objects as
over their own body.
In the 1991 afterword, Lasch announces his discovery of what he calls
a second concept of primary narcissism. This second concept does not
rely on the idea that narcissism is defined by the attachment of the
libido to the self or self-object. Rather it emphasizes the phase during
which the infant is literally unable to distinguish between itself and
its motor actions and the existence and actions of others. The infant’s
universe is subjectively one of wholeness, unity or fusion.
The path of development from Freud’s universal stage of primary nar-
cissism involves confronting frustration, separation and the realization
of dependence. It is inevitable (and universal) that the infant’s expe-
rience of the world is disturbed as they grow older. This frustration
arises from the mother’s unexplained absences and failings, which can
be attributed to the father, siblings and so on. The result of this frustra-
tion is the discovery that one is dependent upon others. For Freud, in
normal development libido is withdrawn from the self and invested in
an anaclitic attachment to someone else on whom the infant depends
(the mother or father and those who subsequently take their place).
At the same time, the infant’s self-love is displaced onto an omnipotent
ego-ideal; an idealized self against which the ego is evaluated, creating
a gulf between ego and ego-ideal ‘that he (sic) will spend the rest of his
life trying to bridge’ (Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1975, p. 7; following Freud,
1914, p. 95).
The alternative, Freud argues in On Narcissism, is development into
secondary narcissism – a stage at which a love object is chosen that
resembles or represents the self. This is distinct from primary narcissism
on the grounds that a specific object has been chosen. Secondary narcis-
sism is a result of the infant’s failure to properly follow the experience
of frustration with a realization of dependence.
Lasch argues that narcissists sustain themselves through fantasies of
either omnipotence or unity (the latter added in the 1991 afterword).
These are denials of dependence that promise to magically resolve the
pain of frustration in different ways. The desire for unity in the face
of the necessary separation from the mother has been associated with
conscious religious convictions and beliefs (Lasch, 1991; see also Frosh,
1991, p. 75).
Omnipotent fantasies in which the fantasizer is totally self-sufficient
represent both a desire to return to a state of unity and a denial of this
wish (see also Lasch, 1984). Lasch associates this with fantasies about
technology and control (see also Elliott, 1996). In the depressive posi-
tion, Klein (1937) argued that the young child experiences an active
desire to reject the mother as well as to cling to her. This desire for
separation exists precisely because the infant finds its own dependence
frightening and fears the loss of the mother (p. 326). The healthiest way
to emerge from the depressive position is arguably a balancing of the
two conflicting desires (Lasch, 1984; see also Keller, 1986).
Fantasies of omnipotence are a direct and, according to many the-
orists, normal response to the realization of human vulnerability and
dependence (see, for example, Ellman & Reppen, 1997). This is arguably
accentuated for men in patriarchal cultures (and men constitute the
majority of pro-space activists) because of the demands placed on
them to separate themselves as individuals, whilst women maintain
a closer relationship with the mother (Keller, 1986). Subsequent fan-
tasies develop around the male need to deny their dependence on
others, which Keller argues leads to ‘phallic conquest and promotes an

aggressive narcissism’ (1986, p. 29).
The two formations of fantasy – one about unity and one about
omnipotence – have the same origins, but are manifest in different
ways. Fantasies about unity remove the lost object from the centre of
the frame, in a way that conceals its necessity. Omnipotent fantasies, on
the other hand, place the object centre stage so as to conceal the desire
for unity that the object represents. Outer space and the objects associ-
ated with its exploration provide symbolic substitutions for both these
basic fantasy structures. As Michaud (2007, p. 3) notes, ‘the cosmos is
a vast canvas on which we can paint our most imaginative and radical
theories, our hopes and our fears’. It should be noted that here, follow-
ing most of the authors mentioned, I am not talking about omnipotent
fantasy in the sense that Lacan associated with psychosis in subjects
that have not entered the Symbolic. They are all object fantasies inso-
far as the sense of omnipotence is (re)gained through access to external
objects. As one of my students, Andrew Howard, has argued, in previous
work I have concentrated on identifying the omnipotent nature of such
fantasies at the expense of the Lacanian analysis of how the fantasy
scenario stages desire through the relationship between the castrated
subject and the object.
Formations of pro-space fantasy
In what follows, I distinguish three recurrent formations of pro-space

fantasy, though they often occur in various combinations. The first
relates to trips, often just into Earth’s orbit, in which the activist experi-
ences weightlessness. A second formation consists in fantasies about the
development and settlement of other planets, the Moon and asteroids.
A third entails looking back at Earth from space, seen as a unified (and
in many accounts insignificant) whole.
Fantasies of weightlessness
Bainbridge (1976) reports that the early rocket pioneers like Konstantin
Tsiolkovsky had a fascination with weightlessness. A number of activists
told me about their own desire to become weightless. The best example
of this came from an activist who was at her first pro-space event when
I interviewed her:
A: I, when I was a child, going way, way back, oh it’s embarrass-

ing, I was interested in the idea of no gravity. I watched things like
‘Bewitched’ and ‘I Dream of Jeannie’. And the idea of being able to

fly on my own, you think in a kid’s mind, that’s the kid’s mind,
that’s what fascinated me . . . . The idea of almost being able to almost
breathe underwater, so to speak. And it was that. So there’s that versus
now, which is the practical. And I know lots of people that don’t have
jobs, that have a technical background, that are under-employed, and
if some kind of technology like this could take off we could start
employing people again in real jobs.
She is embarrassed about this fantasy, and soon returns to acceptable

pro-space discourse.
There are a number of precedents for how this fantasy about flight
and weightlessness can be interpreted psychoanalytically. Freud himself
offers a number of interpretations (see Delaney, 1997). In the first, it is
associated with childhood games such as the seesaw. In the second flight
is associated to birds, and he notes that the German and Italian word for
a bird is also a nickname for the penis. Elsewhere, the defiance of grav-
ity involved in flying is associated to the way in which the penis defies
gravity in the act of gaining an erection. Freud also provides an interpre-
tation in his psychobiography of Leonardo da Vinci. As discussed earlier
in the book, this associates the tail of the vulture to the penis. Hence, all
three of Freud’s interpretations point to the equation of flight with the
pursuit of phallic pleasure and sexual experience. Freud notes that ‘the
dreamer is always very proud of their ability to fly’ (Freud, 1900, p. 390,
cited in Ogilvie, 2004, p. 37).
Drawing loosely on object relations theory, Ogilvie offers a number of
alternative interpretations. These are very different, but supposedly all
represent
a desire to recapture feelings of being the object of devoted care and

attention of the mother. These are images and expressions of latent,
impossible-to-verbalize yearnings for the reestablishment of a subjec-
tive sense of self that was acquired during a period of core-relatedness
with a devoted caretaker before trouble set in.
(2004, p. 155)
The first interpretation, open to a Lacanian reworking because of the

significance of the gaze, associates flight with the recapturing of atten-
tion: ‘Rising “like a star in the firmament” approximates the feelings of
being lifted up and held as an object of glowing wonderment for others
to behold’ (Ogilvie, 2004, p. 154). Delaney (1997) also associates it with

a sense of superiority.
The second interpretation associates weightlessness with the feeling
of being physically held by the mother: ‘imaginary flight comes about
as part of an attempt to restore sensations of being lifted up, of rising
effortlessly and being securely carried about in the arms of an adoring
caregiver’ (Ogilvie, 2004, pp. 155–6). The ease with which the infant
moves through space carried by the mother is perhaps represented
in the obsession within pro-space literature with the development of
flying wings (perhaps also linking more directly with the Freudian
interpretation based on the associations of birds) designed for ease of
movement (see fantasy from Tsiolkovsky’s Beyond the Planet Earth to
Collins’s drawings in Ashford, 2002, p. 66).
Ogilvie only approaches a third interpretation obliquely, but the sug-
gestion is that the destination of flight is the womb. This is a more
common(sense) interpretation of the pursuit of weightlessness in space
in particular. Bainbridge toys with the possibility that Tsiolkovsky’s ‘rap-
ture’ about weightlessness ‘had a deep, presocial significance for him’.
He goes on to note that ‘the mystical or fusion experience is described
by a number of authors as involving a sense of weightlessness, like that
which we may imagine is felt by the unborn child in the womb’ (1976,
p. 22). White (1987, p. 23), when discussing the experiences of astro-
nauts, again refers explicitly to the womb-like nature of being in space.
Previously, it was likened to being able to breathe underwater, a super-
human ability actually experienced in the womb. It is also noted (and
by more than one review of the film Gravity) that the cables connect-
ing spacewalking astronauts to their vehicles might represent umbilical
cords.
The basic formation of the weightless fantasy is often supplemented
by details that point to its overdetermination. I will just give just two
examples here. One activist repeatedly alluded to a fantasy of having
sex in zero-gravity conditions. If the psychoanalytic assumption that
adult sexual relationships are sought and experienced themselves as an
attempt to recapture a lost experience of union, then ‘zero-g sex’ is per-
haps the ultimate image of unity. Another fantasy is represented in the
services of Charles Chafer, who (endorsed by the pro-space movement)
offers space funerals. The dead person’s ashes are rocketed into orbit and
are released into space where they drift away eventually to be pulled
back into the Earth’s atmosphere where they burn up. The individual is
thus spectacularly returned to a state of fusion with the universe. The
desire for unity is often understood psychoanalytically as not simply

regressive, but as a manifestation of the death drive; a desire to be rein-
tegrated back into nature. Chafer’s space funerals thus represent two
fantasies about nirvana.
There is a basic difference to be flagged up between orthodox and
Lacanian interpretations of these fantasies. Orthodox interpretations see
these fantasies as substitutions representing the real experience of unity
experienced in the womb (see especially Grunberger, 1989, on this) or
in early infancy. The Lacanian interpretation, on the other hand, under-
stands these fantasies as constructing such an experience through the
positing of some obstruction to this experience and some object capable
of restoring what has been lost. I want to say something briefly about
how both obstruction and object are represented in these fantasies as
neither is immediately apparent. One activist described the fantasy as
‘to break the bonds of gravity’ (see also Ogilvie, 2004, p. 155; Delaney,
1997). Here is the fantastic obstacle; the fantasist first appears in fan-
tasy as being overly restrained by gravity. This is possible because the
Real nature of gravity was codified by Newton as a Law. This ‘castration’
by gravity enables the subject to stage a mode of jouissance. As I have
argued, in fantasies of unity, the object is obscured from the frame. It is
unclear from these fantasies what the object is that is capable of break-
ing the bonds of gravity and restoring jouissance. The answer, of course,
is that most appropriately Phallic of objects, the space rocket. This is
no doubt another overdetermined object by virtue of its resemblance to
the biological penis. As if to underscore the point, the walls of the office
in which I attended a NASA appropriations hearing during my research
were hung with portraits of past NASA directors, each painting superim-
posing a rocket onto the man, usually bursting forth from his crotch in
a cloud of pubic smoke.
Fantasies about conquering outer space

The most common formations of fantasy amongst the groups I studied
established the fantasizer (or their point of identification within the fan-
tasy if they were not in it themselves) in some kind of relationship with
a space object, be it an asteroid, the Moon, Mars, or, more abstractly,
specific locations within space (such as the Lagrangian Points between
Earth and the Moon). Some examples will give an idea of the many
specific contents of these fantasies. A number of pro-space activists are
amongst those who have bought plots of land on the Moon as part of
Dennis Hope’s (legally unrecognized) scheme. One activist talked sim-
ply about his desire to bounce up and down on the Moon. A number of
activists have described in great detail plans to mine asteroids and other
bodies in space for precious materials. Others have also imagined how
they would construct settlements on the Moon or Mars from such mate-
rials. A peculiar fantasy came from the head of one organization, who
suggested that his organization would no longer be necessary when he
got to play nine holes of golf on the Moon. Fantasies about terraforming
(altering the climates of other planets to make them Earthlike) are very
common.
It is here that language does a clear injustice to the fantasy, but I have
previously referred to these as fantasies about owning, consuming, tam-
ing or conquering outer space. Of course these terms are not present in
the fantasy, and to some extent reinscribe the fantasy scene within my
own discourse. Some of these articulations might be more ‘obvious’ than
others. Buying plots of land or altering a planet’s climate might repre-
sent control in a more transparent way than jumping up and down on
something or playing golf on it. But all in some way represent modernist
fantasies (in Elliott’s broad sense).
Space objects are first created in fantasy as objects beyond the indi-
vidual’s control. In pro-space fantasy the object is brought back under
control. One activist said to me about the Moon, ‘I don’t want to look
at it up there, I want to walk on it’. This identifies both the imagined
gap between subject and object, and the way in which enjoyment will
be released through being reunited with the object.
I have elsewhere outlined a Kleinian interpretation of the biographic
development of one fantasy of the pro-space pioneer Barbara Marx
Hubbard (Ormrod, 2011b), but I want to present a slightly different
interpretation of it here. Marx Hubbard’s mother developed, and even-
tually died from, breast cancer, and as a result had a mastectomy. In her
autobiography Marx Hubbard describes her horror on walking in on
her mother undressing and seeing the absent breast. Describing a fan-
tasy she had during a trance she calls her ‘cosmic birth experience’, she
suggests ‘the cosmic child had touched the breast of the moon’ (1989,
p. 95). It is not difficult to see here the intersubjective nature of desire.
The mother was clearly understood as lacking the breast, and in her
fantasy Marx Hubbard sees herself as gaining the breast her mother so
wanted. Interestingly, a common theme in pro-space writing about col-
onization is the idea that rather than taking building materials and fuel
with us, we will live off the planet itself (see, for example, Zubrin, 1996).
The object brought back under control is thus synonymous with the
nourishing and providing parent. It should be noted that within dif-
ferent discursive formations this fantasy about re-establishing a sense
of unity through space settlement was more speakable than it is now.

Marx Hubbard spoke openly about this by anchoring her fantasy in the
philosophy of de Chardin. On these grounds she was able to proclaim
that at the moment of the moon landing ‘we had all experienced our
oneness and birth’ (Marx Hubbard, 1989, p. 95).
There is one peculiar manifestation of this omnipotent fantasy that
I want to discuss here because it has been discussed elsewhere in the
literature. Activists will often describe fantasies of catastrophe befalling
Earth, usually a devastating asteroid impact, but otherwise nuclear win-
ter or other contamination, or the death of the Sun. Lasch (1984) sees
the escape to space from a doomed planet as part of the ‘prepare for the
worst’ mentality, albeit one with hope for a new start. Elsewhere he uses
it as an indication that ‘people no longer dream of overcoming difficul-
ties but merely of surviving them’ (1979, p. 49). Likewise, Smelser (1962,
p. 190) suggested fear of asteroid impact had resulted in mass panic. But,
crucially, in the pro-space movement the horrific element of this fantasy
exists in relation to its solution. The asteroid is constructed as an exter-
nal force threatening our enjoyment. Through fantasies of control over
such catastrophic events, activists deny the necessity of the limitation
of enjoyment, and also receive a supplement of pleasure from the idea
of destroying the asteroid, or, as one of my interviewees said, we could
mine these ‘bags of money that would kill us’ before they hit the Earth.
Catastrophe becomes triumph. To put this in Kleinian terms, in scoop-
ing out and introjecting the contents of the good breast, the attacking
breast poses no threat. Lest the omnipotent nature of such fantasies is in
any doubt, I recall Gerard O’Neill saying that settling space would make
humans ‘unkillable’.
Fantasies about the view of Earth from space

Another common fantasy stages a scene in which the fantasizer trav-
els into space to look back at Earth. This is a more complex fantasy.
On the one hand activists represent this as a form of transcendence
and separation from (mother) Earth. But many activists also anticipated
a new sense of unity with the Earth, not only upon their return, but
whilst still in space, observing it as a whole of which they feel part.
White argues that it is ‘the ultimate journey from part to whole’ (1987,
p. 3). He emphasizes, as have many who have commented on the per-
spective offered by photographs of Earth from space (for a critique see
Cosgrove, 1994), that Earthly political divisions are invisible from space.
One activist similarly suggested to me that Earthly conflicts could be put
into perspective and we could achieve a new sense of unity.
There are many lenses through which this could be understood. One,
suggested in previous work (Dickens & Ormrod, 2009) is Jung’s (1968)
myth of the hero. The journey into outer space could be read as a par-
allel to an internal, psychic journey. For Jung, myths were particular
cultural manifestations of underlying universal ‘archetypes’; shared rep-
resentations of the unconscious. For him, all hero myths seek to express
the human psychic journey, charting the emergence of ego conscious-
ness in adolescence and eventually death and a return to the womb to
be reborn in immortal form. The passage often involves a period of sep-
aration and wandering, symbolizing a longing for the lost object that
cannot be possessed. In this sense, a journey away from Earth into space
represents the necessary break from the mother. Return to Earth then
becomes a much desired return to the womb, a ‘re-entry’ to use the
space terminology. My issue with such an interpretation is that the fan-
tasy does not seem to reconcile activists to this psychic journey. To me
it appears as another attempt to deny loss.
There are some details within the formation of these fantasies that
point in such a direction, through emphasizing the omnipotence of the
fantasizer. White explains how astronauts on their return have sought
desperately to communicate their experiences of unity to the rest of
the world (with, it must be said, little impact). These astronauts have
cast themselves in the role of saviours; having transcended Earth and
obtained a ‘God’s eye view’, they see their role as Earthly salvation.
The fantasy is one of humility on the one hand and aggrandisement
on the other. The gaze from space represents an omniscient relationship
with Earth. This was only heightened in the detail of one activist’s fan-
tasy in which the Earth was so small that it could be covered by their
thumb. Mother Earth is therefore ‘under the thumb’ and subservient.
In extreme cases of adult narcissism, Ernest Jones (1913) pointed to
a ‘God Complex’, characterized by identification with an omnipotent
God-figure and excessive phantasies about one’s own omnipotence. This
is particularly pertinent as one commentator on the pro-space move-
ment has argued that activists often confuse outer space and heaven
(Fulda, cited in Bell, 1985a, p. 98). Certainly a lot of Jones’s notes on
this personality type seem to apply to pro-space activists. Of course they
are very much concerned with the future and prediction (though quite
accepting of new technology, contrary to Jones’s description). Most of
them are atheists, which Jones believes results from an inability to tol-
erate the existence of any other God. It should also be noted that Jones
talks about fantasies of the birth of a new planet where everything is
‘remoulded nearer the heart’s desire’ (1913, p. 222).
My suggestion is that these fantasies should be understood, follow-

ing Alford, as ‘mock reparative fantasies’ ‘which in their omnipotent
restoration of the object evince a lack of confidence in one’s real repar-
ative powers’ (1989, p. 54). What Alford is pointing to is that this is
not a depressive concern with repairing mother Earth, although the
manic attempts to disseminate the message of peace seem to point in
this direction, but a reparation that takes place through the subject’s
omnipotence in respect to the object.
Summary
In this chapter I have hoped to present a convincing case that, first,

the collective fantasy of a spacefaring civilization lies at the heart of the
pro-space movement, and is indeed what enables its history to be told.
But this fantasy, unspeakable in political action, is precisely the focus of
sustained discursive attention within the movement ‘back stage’. What
are occluded in such discussions, to a greater or lesser extent, are the
fantasies of individual activists, which discussions of a spacefaring civ-
ilization represent. I have argued that there are three basic formations
of such fantasies: of weightlessness, of conquering outer space and of
viewing Earth from space. These can all be understood as ‘narcissistic’,
but they are inflected in different ways so as to foreground the desire for
unity, the desire for omnipotence and the (mock) desire for reparation.
But the important question remains: what do these fantasies do? Are
they destined to reproduce, through the subject’s ideological identifica-
tion, the symbolic structures from whence they came? My argument is
that they are not. What these fantasies end up doing, for me, depends
on the subject’s mode of fantasy. As Laclau (1985) points out, the sub-
ject is located in multiple discursive frameworks. Huddled around the
family TV watching a space launch, the subject is provided with fantasy
formations produced by one such framework. But of course the symbolic
coordinates of the family and the other social groups to which the sub-
ject belongs might be quite different. These social structures produce the
subject’s mode of fantasy in a way that bears no straightforward relation-
ship to the structures that produced the fantasy formations identified in
this chapter. This is why Chapter 9 is important.
9
The Pro-Space Movement and
Social Structure
I have argued that it is important to understand the way in which modes

of fantasy are generated through various social structures and contradic-
tions. Having previously outlined how narcissistic space fantasies are
formed, this chapter formulates hypotheses about why the pro-space
movement might have emerged when it did, where it did, and amongst
the social groups it did, based on the argument that pro-space activists
also relate to their narcissistic fantasies through the narcissistic mode.
As he provides the best known account of the way in which social
conditions bring out narcissistic traits, I begin with the work of Lasch.
Reading Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism
As a popular cultural historian, Christopher Lasch has been widely read,

and his ideas also informed Jimmy Carter’s famous ‘national malaise’
speech. The Culture of Narcissism (1979) has been acknowledged as a
landmark text across a number of disciplines, especially psychoanalytic
sociology. Lasch’s starting point is that social changes have a profound
effect on the shaping of the personality. ‘Every society reproduces its
culture – its norms, its underlying assumptions, its modes of organizing
experience – in the individual, in the form of personality’ (Lasch, 1979,
p. 34). Drew Westen, in his book on the same subject, puts it similarly:
‘Disturbance and normalcy begin to merge, something that always sug-
gests the existence of a psychological state which is fixed in place by
an external determinant, by the organization of society’ (1985, p. 125).
Lasch attributes to Durkheim the view that ‘personality is the individual
socialised’ (1979, p. 34).
In both labelling and explaining the personality type that had come
to dominate 1970s’ America, Lasch turned to psychoanalysis. He argued
231
forcefully that psychoanalysis should not be used to diagnose collective

social conditions, but was its most useful when examining the chang-
ing nature of individual psychology. The personality type Lasch believed
was emerging was narcissism. Initial evidence comes from anecdotal
suggestions that the type of patient presenting themselves for analy-
sis had changed from Freud’s hysterics to a ‘chaotic and impulse-ridden
character’ (see also Giddens, 1991, p. 154; Craib, 1994, p. 6). Lasch’s
argument, however, is not that pathological narcissism was becoming
more common, but that narcissistic traits were becoming more normal
in the population. His 1991 afterword suggests narcissistic traits are uni-
versally latent in everyone but ‘brought out’ by a culture of narcissism.
Critics have taken issue then with his decision to use clinical anecdotes
as a way in.
Whilst Lasch himself criticized previous social theorists for not engag-
ing sufficiently with the clinical definition of narcissism, his own work
drew the same complaint. Comments in the 1991 afterword suggest that
he accepted at least some of this criticism and continued to refine his
understanding of narcissism prior to the publication of The Minimal Self
(1984). In various places Lasch provides lists of traits he takes as defining
the narcissist: they are haunted by anxiety, but not guilt; seek meaning
in life; regard everyone as rivals; have permissive sexual attitudes but
find no sexual peace; they distrust competition, even though they are
highly competitive; their cravings have no limits and they are never sat-
isfied; they live for immediate gratification; they have no interest in the
future; they have no capacity for loyalty or gratitude; they are shallow;
they have a fear of commitment, and a fear of ageing; they self-disclose
for attention; they engage in self-indulgent self-analysis; and they attach
themselves to celebrities. Perhaps the overriding point is that the exter-
nal world exists for the narcissist merely as a mirror for reflecting back
qualities about the self. The reason the narcissist relies so heavily on the
reflections of the self provided by others is the absence of inner-direction
(framing this in relation to Riesman), or an internalized set of guidelines
and standards.
About the only consensus in the secondary literature on The Cul-
ture of Narcissism is that there is no consensus about how the book
should be read. Lasch’s intellectual allegiances are not always clear.
Whilst his social and psychological ontology owes a debt to Durkheim
and functionalism, much of his political critique seems to be influ-
enced by Marxism, or at least its Gramscian version. I will attempt to
outline as briefly as possible my interpretation of Lasch’s thesis. The
tenth chapter is decisive in establishing Lasch’s theoretical arguments,
Pro-Space Movement and Social Structure 233
though easily missed. I believe for Lasch the root of both the dom-
inance of the narcissistic personality and the cultural practices with
which it is recursively associated is a transition in the structural orga-
nization of capitalism: from its early competitive stage to the era of
monopoly capitalism. This is necessarily accompanied by trends towards
managerialism and the extension of bureaucratic control of the corpora-
tion, which are methods by which profitability is prolonged. Lasch notes
that these trends brought into being a new managerial elite to replace
the traditional bourgeoisie. Most corporations now include not only a
hierarchy of team and line managers, but a host of other positions that
involve working with other employees in order to maintain their pro-
ductivity, rather than directly producing profit themselves. Lasch does
not provide a list, but it might include: personal assistants, secretarial,
administrative and ‘support’ staff, personnel departments, payroll and
pensions, health and safety, childcare workers, counsellors and security
personnel in their role of protecting staff rather than premises. In addi-
tion there is a plethora of professionals who make a living as consultants
to such corporations: equality and diversity trainers, team-building cen-
tres, life coaches, professional development and image consultants, and
employment lawyers.
These all point to the increasing management of the workforce.
Lasch’s argument is that such practices at some point extended into
the management of ‘private’ lives, including our management as con-
sumers rather than producers, through the interference of professionals
employed either privately or by the state. Such a list would include
social workers, probation officers, advertisers, beauticians and therapists.
Where Lasch is weak, and he appears to accept this, is in explain-
ing exactly how this transposition from the workplace to private lives
occurred. A classical Marxist reading is possible, in which the new man-
agerial elite imposed new forms of cultural authority on an unwilling
public (and this is to an extent reflected in his discussions of changes
to the criminal justice system). My preferred reading, however, is a
Gramscian one. The rise of managerialism in the more ‘legitimate’
domain of work had naturalized it before it extended its reach in
other aspects of social life. And many of these intrusions in the work-
place appeared, commonsensically, to operate in the worker’s favour;
improvements around childcare provision through the workplace, for
example. This blurring of the boundaries between ensuring productiv-
ity and social care was further heightened by a reverse transposition as
care previously provided by the state was privatized, often as part of
employment packages, and therefore came to be thought of as a bonus
rather than an entitlement: private healthcare and dentistry, legal ser-

vices, access to education and gym membership. Managerialism became
hegemonic, though spawning its own forms of resistance (something
captured in social movement theory by Habermas, 1981).
This argument sits (uncomfortably) alongside another about the
influence of monopoly capitalism. This concerns the evolution of the
Protestant work ethic. This has been characterized by the progressive
decline of the Calvinist notion of ‘the calling’ from God, and of the
idea of a personal responsibility to the community. To put it crudely,
the Calvinist was individualistic because of a sense of personal duty, but
the culture of narcissism has turned competitive individualism into a
preoccupation with the self. The suggestion is that in the era of com-
petitive capitalism the worker was able to identify with the organization
in the face of competitors, whereas now the competition is within the
corporation, where everyone is regarded as a rival.
Lasch’s interest is in consequences of the erosion of traditional sources
of authority – which at one point he names as fathers, teachers and
preachers – for the personality, as the state and private sector invade the
process of bringing up children. Lasch refers to the process of usurping
the family’s role in socializing children as ‘the socialization of repro-
duction’. This is traced through a number of aspects of socialization,
beginning with the liberalization of young offenders’ treatment within
the criminal justice system, extending to the development of self-help
parenting books, the intrusion of advertising and technology into the
home, and the rise of surveillance. Whilst the state was rolled back from
the time Lasch published The Culture of Narcissism, its colonizing role
was increasingly taken over by the private sector (within social move-
ment theory a development taken up by Crossley, 2003, in particular
in revisiting Habermas), especially through the media. The popularity
of reality TV programmes such as Supernanny and Jamie’s School Dinners
testifies to a continued fascination with the advice of parenting pro-
fessionals (increasingly celebrities). The, often implicit, assumption was
that these new sources of social and cultural authority introduced insta-
bility into the traditional father-teacher-preacher matrix, and were also
often unstable in themselves, marked by dispute, and generally more
liberal and hence less truly authoritative (a more explicit account of this
is provided by Westen, 1985). It is no surprise that Lasch is often seen as
a conservative thinker.
Lasch’s understanding of the nature of adult narcissism is not neces-
sarily always clear. A simplistic reading of Lasch, popular at the time, was
that he was talking about a society in which the values of the superego
had given way to the values of the id. In other words, in the absence of
traditional structures of authority, the individual’s superego had failed
to develop, leaving the id unchecked. What was left was an individual
seeking instant gratification, with little concern for the well-being of
others. Lasch makes it clear in the 1991 afterword that he does not view
his book as simply another ‘jeremiad’ against self-indulgence or com-
mentary on ‘the “me” generation’. Lasch had in any case been critical
of Jules Henry who talks about ‘the collapse of ancient impulse con-
trols’ and the drift ‘from a society in which Super Ego values (the value
of self-restraint) were ascendant, to one in which more recognition was
being given to the values of the id (the values of self-indulgence)’ (cited
in Lasch, 1979, p. 177). Despite superficial similarities, the culture of
narcissism is not a culture of hedonism (see Bell, 1976). The narcissist,
for Lasch, is not without superego. Lasch distinguishes the primitive
superego from the social superego. The social superego is the result of
the internalization of social norms, and this is what has been eroded
for Lasch. What is left over, however, is a primitive superego based on
very early phantasies of the parents as unpredictable and as harbour-
ing violent intent towards the child (for Klein, this being the result
of the infant’s own violent phantasies towards its parents) (Reich’s,
1954, ‘archaic superego precursors’). These superego introjects con-
stantly attack and devalue the narcissist. In 1991 Lasch drew on Klein
to explain the important difference that the social superego punishes
through guilt, but the primitive superego punishes through fear.
Lasch’s narcissist is therefore continually anxious given that he is con-
stantly interrogated but without norms to guide proper conduct. He is
characterized by self-loathing rather than self-love or arrogance, which,
as he rightly says, imply a strong sense of selfhood. The idea that nar-
cissism is associated with self-love is one that Lasch associated with
Erich Fromm. This is not quite fair. Fromm actually explicitly refused the
term ‘self-love’ in relation to the narcissist, referring only to ‘self-regard’,
which has a very different meaning (1972, p. 151).
Matt Adams (2007) argues that classical psychoanalysis lays responsi-
bility for narcissism on chronically cold mother figures, and that Lasch’s
understanding reflects this. Even if true, this also has the potential to
be misleading. The notion of a cold mother can conjure up images
of a neglectful or distant mother who fails to invest in her child.
In fact, Lasch’s picture of the narcissistic mother who produces nar-
cissistic children is of somebody who acts mechanically towards her
children, rather than coldly. She may appear cold to the child, but this
is because her response ill fits the child’s needs. Her reliance on manuals
on childrearing has left her doubting her ability to parent, and thus
applying the advice of experts without allowing herself to respond to
the child’s needs more naturally (and she cannot do this even when
instructed to). But far from being detached from the child, the child is
overinvested in emotionally. Because the child is seen as a source for val-
idating the mother’s own self-worth, she projects her own needs onto it,
rather than responding to it on the basis of its needs. As Colombi, 2010
puts it, the intrusion of the ‘hyper-present’ mother is as much a prob-
lem as absence (p. 1081), especially if the mother says, ‘You must not
be afraid; you are marvellous and nothing could ever happen to you’
(p. 1082). This manifests itself, says Lasch, in parents lavishing praise
on the child, and showering it with material gifts, lest it should feel dis-
appointed in the mother (or ‘deprived’ as Frosh, 1991, p. 100, puts it).
To the outside world (as well as the mother) this may well appear to be
warm, generous parenting, though of course it is not this either.
Nobody has done more to explore the mother’s role in gently
introducing the child to frustration than Winnicott. His concept of
‘good-enough mothering’ refers to mothering that allows the infant to
gradually relinquish their omnipotence. The danger, as Frosh describes
it, is: ‘If the mother fails the child too early, the self will never be
formed, or will be hidden away behind a mask; if she fails too late,
or too suddenly, the boundaries of selfhood will always be confused –
grandiose, but insecure’ (Frosh, 1991, p. 98). Though the temporal dis-
tinction between failing the child too early and failing the child too late
can be useful, the narcissist is actually failed both too early and too late.
The child’s real needs, including the recognition of those needs by the
mother, are failed very early on. This leads to a fear of their own needs.
At the same time, the infant learns that through embracing the illusory
self projected by the mother onto him, he can maintain her love, enthu-
siasm and interest. The failure to provide a ‘good enough’ environment
in the past leaves little middle ground for the narcissist between engulf-
ment and omnipotence. Dependence is frightening moreover because
the narcissist fears their inability to meet the demands of others.
It is generally assumed, and I think correctly, that Lasch’s book is pri-
marily about the effect of socio-economic change on the personality.
However, this is complicated by the attention paid to specific sociocul-
tural institutions, and in particular the family. As he makes clear at least
at one point (1979, pp. 176–8), the family plays a central role in trans-
lating structural change into the socialization of the adult personality:
‘Other institutions – for example, the school and the adolescent peer
group – merely strengthen earlier patterns by satisfying expectations
created by the family’ (see critique in Valadez & Clignet, 1987). And
yet sociocultural institutions, including the family, are seen as express-
ing as well as generating or reinforcing narcissistic traits. The family is in
a bind because narcissistic parenting produces narcissistic personalities
in children. Other institutions in which similar dynamics take place are
therapy culture and the culture of celebrity.
The way out of this negatively spiralling dialectic is not altogether
clear within the book, especially since (as outlined in the Introduction)
even progressive social movements are becoming narcissistic. Commen-
tators have often resorted to associating Lasch with the desire to return
to more traditional forms of social organization; a view he explicitly
rejects. We also know, however, that the Marxism underpinning his
understanding of the culture of narcissism is not carried forwards into
his politics in any straightforward way. His hope is expressed only in the
development of what he calls ‘communities of competence’.
Other theories of narcissistic culture
It should be noted that Lasch is not the only theorist to account for the
culture of narcissism using psychoanalytic theory. Kovel (1980, p. 199)
had argued at the same time as Lasch that ‘pathological narcissism is
a pox of late capitalism’. I have already mentioned the contribution
of Dean (2000). Dickens (2003) identifies three factors: insecurity and
individualism in the labour market, the rise of virtual communication
and advanced consumerism. Writing together, we have referred to a
condition of ‘adult infantile narcissism’ in which there is a failure to
‘adequately grow up’ (Dickens & Ormrod, 2007a, p. 613). This empha-
sizes continuity with primary narcissism, and points to the ways in
which disorganized capitalism might quite genuinely postpone expe-
riences of frustration. Thus where other authors point to the cultural
fostering of illusions of omnipotence, Dickens can be read as pointing
to real social changes.
This brings me to another theorist of the culture of narcissism whose
work I have found useful, Drew Westen (1985). Westen’s account has
many overlaps with Lasch’s and was written at a similar time, but also
has divergences. For one thing, Westen traces the culture of narcissism
to its origins in modernity (and he thus makes more theoretical use of
classical theory, whereas Lasch makes only ontological use). He does
not deny the dynamism of modernity, but does not identify the same
historical rupture that Lasch does. In addition, whilst Lasch theorizes
narcissism through the concept of the superego, Westen does it through
the ego-ideal, referring to cultural and socio-economic changes. He dis-

tinguishes between factors affecting the content of the ego-ideal, on the
one hand, and the form of the ego-ideal, on the other.
The content of the ego-ideal is associated with ‘the self/other balance’.
This he relates to the modern shift from communitarian collectivism
to individuated collectivism. Westen identifies six factors contributing
to the change: (i) material security, (ii) improvements in education,
(iii) commodity fetishism, (iv) shaping of the character according to
the needs for entrepreneurs and consumers, (v) individualization in the
labour market, and (vi) geographic mobility.
The form of the ego-ideal refers to the extent to which it is founded
on a coherent and stable model. As Westen says, ‘a number of aspects
of modernization, particularly in its earliest phases, lead to a disruption
of the smooth intergenerational transmission of ideals and systems of
meaning, and a consequent experience of conflicting internalizations’
(1985, p. 349). He identifies five factors here: (i) migration and the mass
media, (ii) urbanization and anonymity, (iii) mobility, (iv) the conflict
between the family and other agents of socialization, and (v) the ado-
lescent’s late entry into adult society, by which time they are already
critical of sociocultural values.
Pro-space demographics and the culture of narcissism
The Culture of Narcissism was written about the US. There has been
considerable debate about its applicability outside of the US. Perhaps
more importantly, it has been argued that Lasch was describing a
middle-class phenomenon, and that amongst less privileged groups
his observations did not ring true (more personal attacks have also
been made suggesting the book was influenced by Lasch’s own nar-
cissism). Sennett (1974) identifies a culture of narcissism within the
quasi-technical, quasi-routine, middle classes who identify themselves
on the basis of personality qualities. What Westen’s analysis also makes
us more sensitive to is some of the demographics that might make a
difference to narcissism. Pro-space activists can be located within this
demographic.
As noted previously, the pro-space movement is largely a US phe-
nomenon. Indeed even with the US it has historically been concentrated
in the West and Southwest, as well as California (which has been
attributed to either greater political or greater economic support, see
Michaud, 1986, pp. 150–2, and Millward, 1980, respectively, although
equally this could be explained by greater exposure to images of space
exploration). Few pro-space organizations keep demographic data on

their members now, and so the data available are again rather dated.
An L-5 Society survey in 1983 (see Michaud, 1986, pp. 112–14) found
that of its members, 86 per cent were male, 61 per cent were single,
71 per cent had college degrees and 76 per cent were aged 25–50. The
Space Studies Institute obtained remarkably similar results from its sur-
vey the same year. The National Space Institute reported in 1984 that
the average age of its members was 34, the average income was £32,000,
84 per cent were college educated, and that 44 per cent were profes-
sionals whilst 28 per cent had technical jobs (although only 15 per cent
had direct involvement with the space programme) (cited in Michaud,
1986, 112–13). It is interesting to note the absence of racial data. In the
course of my research I came into contact with around 400 pro-space
activists, and the profile I noted differed little from this, but with some
subtle trends. First, whilst still predominantly male, the gender bal-
ance is not as skewed as it was in the 1980s. Indeed, the Mars Society
(founded relatively recently in 1998) reported to me in a personal com-
munication that ‘only’ two-thirds of their members are male. Secondly,
there is a noticeable ageing of the movement, although newer orga-
nizations like the Mars Society seemed to have recruited a younger
demographic.
There is, therefore, good reason to suggest that not only did the pro-
space movement emerge as a political movement around the time that
Lasch was writing, and in the US, but that its members belong to the
comfortable, educated, technical middle class that is often associated
with narcissism. The activities they were involved with as part of the
movement also suggested they were used to electronic communication
and were geographically mobile (at least in the short term, though a
number of my interviewees had also relocated inter-state during their
lives).
As already explained, with a lack of grounding in biographical-
interpretive technique, what I could add to these demographics on the
basis of the interviews conducted was more limited than it might oth-
erwise have been. What was clear is that whilst demographically these
activists were not socially marginalized, many had experienced unset-
tling life events such as unrequited love, failed ambition, redundancy
and bereavement. In particular, more than might have been expected
reported disrupted contact with parents during the early stages of life,
including the death of their father. Unfortunately, it was hard to ascer-
tain how exactly this connected with the formation of space fantasies
and subsequent activism biographically.
Pro-space fantasy and the narcissistic mode
During my research I was told stories of how some activists assumed

‘the science fiction crowd’ would provide a natural resource pool from
which the pro-space movement could draw members. However, they
found that being interested in science fiction in no way guarantees that
a person will have any interest in trying to get into space or in engaging
in political action to advance space activity. In a lengthy conversation
with me, two activists suggested that science fiction fans had funda-
mentally different personalities. They were described as flaky, passive,
‘escapist dreamer types’. They agreed with each other that these peo-
ple had suffered an ‘emasculation’ of their self-image and had had ‘the
idea of being able to influence the world in any way . . . crushed out of
them by life experience’. Their own activism was presented as health-
ier social adjustment. Regardless of this normative evaluation, I think
it points to the significance of modes of fantasy. Pro-space activists are
not ‘narcissistic’ because their fundamental fantasies are inherently any
more narcissistic than those of science fiction fans. They merely relate
to these fantasies in a narcissistic way.
In this respect, I think Lasch actually miscategorizes pro-space advo-
cates. In his account of narcissism in general, he emphasizes the ele-
ments of anxiety and even self-loathing that characterize the narcissistic
psyche. For Lasch, omnipotence is a fragile defence for the narcissist.
Without a foundation of emotional security, the child lives only through
fantasies, beneath which there is an inner emptiness and fear. He goes
on to develop an account of the ‘minimal self’; one desperate only for
survival (Lasch, 1984). As mentioned previously, it is in the context of a
climate of fearful survivalism that Lasch anecdotally mentions the early
space colonization advocates like Gerard O’Neill (1984, pp. 87–90). Not
only does Lasch fail to see the ‘beautific’ side of this fantasy, but he
misses the way in which pro-space fantasy can, in principle, sustain
the activist. This is not to say Lasch is wrong to dissociate narcissism
from self-love or a stable ego (which Westen implies in some of his
arguments). But Frosh (1991) mentions that seen through Lasch’s lens
‘everything comes out the same’. I am not convinced that makes for
good sociological theory. I have previously argued that whilst for Lasch
the whole space colonization idea appears as yet another manifestation
of the culture of narcissism, there are ways in which it can also be seen
as a response to it.
One thing that could have been said about pro-space fantasies up
until very recently is that at least there was little danger of achieving
them. Unlike the consumer stumbling from empty promise to empty

promise, pro-space fantasy could at least remain stable. And vicarious
(and perverse, because reinforcing the ‘if only it was me’ of fantasy)
enjoyment could be achieved through watching space missions, as
many of my interviewees reported. In articulating together activists’
individual fantasies the fantasy of a spacefaring civilization also ensured
an unobtainability. When would such a project be complete? But there
is a danger: the development of the space tourism sector threatens to
realize activists’ fantasies. One activist had responded to this in exactly
the way Lacan would have predicted: ‘Originally my goal was to get to
Low Earth Orbit. I’ve set the bar a bit higher; I want to walk on the sur-
face of the moon one day.’ This activist, who had not been to Low Earth
Orbit, had already pushed his fantasy further out into space by the time
it became feasible he could achieve it. As one of my students, Andrew
Howard, has argued, outer space is in this sense the ideal setting for
fantasy, for the fantasmatic horizon can recede infinitely. The problem,
and the one Žižek identifies in his reworking of Lasch, is the instability
of desire associated with such regression. This might be stabilized to the
extent that the vision of a ‘spacefaring civilization’ continues to articu-
late together multiplying fantasies, but this has always been a difficult
task when the majority of activists relate to their fantasies narcissistically
in the first instance. It is to these difficulties that I turn my attention in
Chapter 11.
Summary
This chapter has provided an interpretation of Lasch’s The Culture of

Narcissism, arguing that his central thesis relates to the transition from
competitive to monopoly capitalism, and the relationship between
managerialism at work and the socialization of reproduction, which has
undermined structures of authority and led to the development of a
widespread condition of narcissism. I also introduced other theories of
narcissism, and in particular that of Drew Westen, who identifies a set
of more concrete social, economic and cultural changes that have had
an effect on both the content and form of the ego-ideal. It was argued
that taken together these accounts of the culture of narcissism could
explain the emergence of the pro-space movement. This is especially
true when examining the demographics of activists, who belong to the
social strata most associated with narcissism. In this respect, the contrast
between ‘emasculated’ science fiction fans and pro-space activists is use-
ful. I have accepted that more psychosocially informed research may
have enabled me to build better connections between individual biogra-

phies and activists’ modes of fantasy. I finished with a critique of Lasch’s
own analysis of pro-space advocacy, which reduces it to a survivalist
movement. This denies the way in which pro-space fantasies can poten-
tially sustain the subject, although it is noted that this is jeopardized
when activists are offered the fulfilment of fantasies.
10
The Pro-Space Movement
and Ideology
In order to constitute itself as a political movement, the pro-space

movement must legitimate itself by articulating political arguments.
Viewed from the perspective of the discourses they use, the image of
a spacefaring civilization serves as fantastic support. Viewed from the
perspective of the movement, the political demands it makes evoke its
own obstacles. In conceding to make specific demands to the state, the
state is named as the (paternal) authority forcing individuals to remain
Earth-bound. Pro-space activists argue that individuals should have the
choice to visit, live, work and play anywhere they want. As one activist
at the ISDC in 2004 put it, ‘people can stay at home if they want, but
others must be allowed a different choice, we have the right to do that’.
Gerard O’Neill also claimed that our ultimate right was the right to leave
(Kilgore, 2003). What complicates this position is that it confuses the
state’s repressive function with its failure to intervene. A number of pro-
space organizations, including both the NSS and ProSpace, have lobbied
for the removal of government red-tape and safety restrictions for pri-
vate spacecraft as they represented barriers to the individual freedom to
choose to go into space. But the arguments go beyond this to the state’s
failure to facilitate people leaving. This means activists find themselves
in the contradictory position of lobbying the government for support
of a political project that eschews interventionism. Even Berlin says,
‘if I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air . . . it
would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced’
(1969, p. 122). The negative theory of freedom would not normally hold
that human beings should be able to do anything and everything they
wish, merely that the state or other individuals should not impede their
choices. This distinction gets lost in pro-space discourse, and often the
state is invoked as the agency responsible for gravity’s binding effects on
individuals.
243
As discussed earlier, the ideology of the pro-space movement has been

contested. The version currently dominant, however, is for activists to
proclaim themselves libertarians. Launius (2003) points to the central-
ity of libertarian philosophy in the movement from the start. But in
constituting itself as a libertarian Right movement, ties to national-
ist and religious discourses, for example, have been cut (not without
ongoing struggle). The particular form of libertarianism within groups
like ProSpace is one associated with the political right, and emphasizes
the freedom to accumulate over other social freedoms. The ideology
of the libertarian Right brings a new coherence to pro-space dis-
course, especially as activists identify a necessity for private sector space
development in the face of cuts in state space expenditure.
Contemporary pro-space ideology and the libertarian Right
The danger of work influenced by a reading of framing theory, or posi-

tivistic approaches such as Bainbridge’s, is that ideological ‘elements’ (to
use Snow’s term) are treated atomistically. It is crucial to recognize that
these elements are articulated together in the form of chains. The dis-
cursive articulation characterizing contemporary pro-space ideology can
be represented as below. It has previously been discussed in Dickens &
Ormrod (2007, pp. 162–73, see also the useful summary in Parker, 2009,
pp. 90–1).
increased consumption = economic growth = prosperity =

individual freedom = inspiration = peace
This is, of course, a familiar chain used to construct a particular

version of social order. In the past I have identified this as Right libertar-
ianism. However, to the extent to which it collapses libertarian values
into market freedoms (a point made by Smart, 2004, p. 268, following
Bauman, 1993), it is always threatening to become the collapsed form
of Right libertarianism usually referred to as neoliberalism.
Insofar as this chain holds together, the argument is that each element
is realized through the others. Because this results in equivalentializing
these elements, any explanation for the existence of a social problem
(declining standards of living, recession, poverty, political repression,
cultural malaise or war) cannot come from within the chain. Any prob-
lem must therefore be attributed to something outside of the chain
(to a non-political element) that prevents its full realization. These social
Pro-Space Movement and Ideology 245
problems are, of course, actually symptoms (in Žižek’s Lacanian–Marxist

sense) of the chain itself. Rather than each element ensuring the other,
the realization of any one element causes problems elsewhere in the
chain.
From the perspective of such an ideology, the development and set-
tlement of outer space is the trans-ideological fantasy that resolves these
contradictions. Rather than attribute social problems to libertarian Right
politics itself, the issue becomes the Earth-bound nature of the social
order. Once this is transcended, the chain will function properly. The
function of the fantasy of a spacefaring civilization is to provide a
depoliticized element. There are very few grounds on which potential
opponents could launch an offensive against the idea of a spacefaring
civilization per se. The demands for a spacefaring civilization mean the
equivalential chain in two senses. They are equivalent to all the ele-
ments of the chain, and at the same time the extraneous means by
which the chain can be realized.
It is important to point out that the pro-space movement makes its
intervention at the level of the fantasy sustaining the ideology of its
opponents. One of Žižek’s arguments about fantasy is that it closes down
the actual range of possibilities. When, since the Club of Rome, com-
mentators have remarked that to sustain Western consumption patterns
across the globe we would need two, three, four, even five Earths, this
has been put forward to mark the boundary of possibility (‘we don’t
have more than one Earth, so we must instead think of realistic ways
of resolving the crisis’). But pro-space activists, in Žižek’s (1997) terms,
‘accept the empty gesture’. They take seriously the need to create more
Earths (most radically through terraforming other planets), and thus
invert the fantasy from one necessitating Earthly transformation to one
abolishing it.
The following identifies how exactly it is that the exploration, devel-
opment and settlement of outer space enters into this ideological
formation in order to save it. One place to start analysis is with a quota-
tion that encapsulates the chain almost in its entirety. This comes from
an activist introducing himself at the ProSpace ‘March Storm’ lobbying
event in 2004. Every activist had been asked to do the same.
This will be my 8th March Storm, and I come to the March Storm
because of love. Love for people, love for freedom and love of oppor-
tunity. I have 7 kids, I’d like to leave them the kind of world where
they’re safe and have the opportunity for prosperity. I love my fel-
low man, I like to see them happy and prosperous and having a good
time. Without the kind of opportunity that comes from the resources
and materials of space I don’t see that opportunity being as wide as
it could be otherwise. I love freedom. I love the possibility that they
can go off into the Universe and make their own kind of lives in
their own ways without interference by any quantity of other folks
who have decided what is best for them. . . . So I come to Washington
to help us unleash the power of the market to change the operating
paradigm of space.
We could begin to unpick this rather dense passage from any number
of points. But I begin with that most floating of signifiers, ‘freedom’.
What freedom means depends, of course, on its place within a particular
discursive formation. It is a term that has been understood very differ-
ently in different social and political discourses (see Berlin, 1969, and
Marcuse’s, 1970, very different takes on this history). The way in which
it is used in contemporary libertarian Right pro-space discourse relates
to what Berlin called ‘negative’ freedom. This relies on the contradictory
notion of a social order in which individuals are free from interfer-
ence by the state or other individuals that might limit their choices or
‘opportunity for action’.
Insofar as this form of libertarianism tends to collapse freedoms
into market freedoms (however full of contradiction this might be), it
transmutes into a more broadly hegemonic neoliberal discourse about
consumption. This relates to the arguments made around the impor-
tance of unlimited access to resources. Because resources on Earth are
understood to be becoming increasingly scarce (including minerals,
fuel and land in particular), there is a fear of increasingly restric-
tive controls on individual freedoms to appropriate these resources.
As Rick Tumlinson (co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation)
has said;
Ultimately, nearly everything you want to do in a sustainable world

will be something someone else cannot – and that will mean limits.
Limits to when and where and how you travel, how much you con-
sume, the size of your home, the foods you eat, the job where you
work, even how long you are allowed to live. If the rest of the world
is to become more wealthy in such a system, consuming more, you
will be forced to consume less. Equilibrium will be the goal of the
state and individual freedoms will become ever more expendable.
(cited in Launius, 2003, p. 343)
What is interesting here is that the ideological fantasy of space devel-

opment allows the contradiction of the notion of negative freedom to
be spoken. Here Tumlinson accepts that one person’s freedom means
another’s constraint; something that could not have been said from
within libertarian thought without the space colonization fantasy.
The diagnosis of a resource crisis and the prognosis of developing
space resources are one of the most common framing connections made
in pro-space discourse. This is not, however, a form of catastrophism.
The concerns are not Malthusian ones about the failure to meet the
needs of the poor and the ensuing moral degradation of society. They
are concerns primarily about the failure to continue the rise in ‘living
standards’ (read consumption levels), especially as this failure might be
identified with some external force such as the state. There is an implied
concern with that most optimistic of the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth
scenarios; that of a gradual slowing in growth. Bell (1981, p. 54) adopts
the pro-space response, arguing that ‘space industrialization does not fly
in the face of the “limits to growth”; it makes them obsolete’. Pro-space
writers like Gerard O’Neill (1989) and Lewis (1996) have demonstrated
mathematically how space resources can be used to support increasing
human resource demands. These include raw materials from asteroids,
Mars and the Moon and solar power. In different versions these are
either to be returned to Earth, used in situ, or as materials and fuel
for further space development. The economics of these solutions has
been debated ad infinitum amongst pro-space activists, economists and
politicians.
The increased consumption of resources is obviously linked to eco-
nomic growth, but economic growth means much more. This is made
clear in this passage from an activist at the ISDC in 2004, who also
makes the link with personal greed (made a virtue through its perceived
relationship with the pursuit of freedom):
What was that when the guy said that greed is good? Who was that?
I would like to turn that . . . maybe rephrase that to say that growth
is good because it’s been the growth of, let’s say, human knowledge,
acquisition . . . growth of acquisition of resources, growth in terms of
the range of products that are available to us that has led to the con-
tinual improvement in the quality of life of the human species. And
all good capitalists are always looking for new markets and new ways
in which to grow, and it seems to me that in terms of long term
economic reasons, that is a natural progression of the direction that
the human species has been going in since day one. And I would
suggest that there are going to be many more long term economic
reasons that we can’t even begin to imagine what those might be
today, because growth leads you into entirely new arenas of endeav-
our. We cannot envision that, but I think it’s pretty certain that if we
stop growing we’re doomed.
And the geographic dimension is brought in by this activist speaking at

the ProSpace ‘March Storm’ in 2004:
I have an overwhelming belief that growth is essential to human-

ity and that’s really at the heart of what we are, and that can occur
in all kinds of different ways, which I think that we all recognise,
but without physical growth, without the ability to grow outwardly,
without opening these new areas, these new territories, these new
opportunities, we limit ourselves, and to me a world that is limited is
not as good as a world that’s unlimited. . . . You can have a world that
is growing in all kind of ways. People grow emotionally, they grow
socially, we grow . . . we are growing in our ability to access informa-
tion, growth in computers, we had growth in the Internet, we’ve got
growth in medicine, we got all kinds of growth. But if you live in a
world that cannot grow physically, if you live in a world that cannot
expand physically then you are limited. . . . And that ability to grow
outward is being frustrated because it is difficult.
Of course, nobody would deny the necessity of growth for the capital-
ist system, and the likes of David Harvey (2006) have made very clear
that geographic expansion is central to attempts to sustain this growth
dynamic (his acknowledgement that these ‘spatial fixes’ are not actually
permanent resolutions to capitalist crisis reflects, as Howard suggests, his
understanding that they are fantastic even though they are materially
real and have real material effects). What this discussion reflects more
significantly is the equation of a stagnant economy with a ‘moribund’
society (see Sklair’s critique, 1970). It is argued within this discourse that
societies that grow have survived and prospered, whilst societies that
have not grown have become extinct. Of course, whilst it may well be
true that non-expansive cultures have fared less well than their coloniz-
ing others, it is not known how such cultures would have fared in the
absence of ‘growth’ societies.
Such discussion also outlines activists’ concerns about becoming an
introspective and virtual society with no ‘real’ growth, drawing on
developments such as reality television as an example. Since the end of
the golden age of space exploration in the 1960s and 1970s, many pro-
space activists point to what social theorists might call the postmodern
disintegration of the modern worldview (though not discussed in these
terms). Their ‘progressive’ ideals are being threatened by a decline
in faith in progress, social disintegration, inward-looking narcissism,
present-time orientation and an emphasis on simulation rather than
real projects on nature (Benjamin, 2003). Space development represents
to them a project that will remedy this sad situation, inspiring youth
and giving meaning to people’s lives. One activist at the Mars Society
UK Conference cited Bertrand Russell to the effect that all societies need
a non-destructive adventure in order to survive. Pro-space intellectual
Frederick Turner says:
We live at a time when . . . there is a widespread sense of a loss of

value, dignity, and grandeur in our vision of ourselves and our cos-
mos. Nothing brings us together as the great religions, and even great
wars, once did. The young, especially, seem to suffer the lack of a
grand societal project, a vision (and perhaps turn to drugs as a sub-
stitute). The existence of a Martian enterprise would create a general
improvement in morale, as the peoples of the world realize that they
are working for something worthy of human attention, not just for
personal wealth or national prestige.
(Turner, 1990, p. 34)
Turner sees a world lacking in meaning, with people crying out for social
integration and a sense of grandeur of the human condition. Interest-
ingly, Turner contrasts this Martian enterprise with the goals of personal
wealth or national prestige. This therefore represents a potential splin-
ter point in the discourse, as whilst the idea of inspiration is articulated
within the libertarian Right discourse of the contemporary movement,
it is the object of considerable hegemonic challenge. The idea of a
grand societal project (on nature) provides the trans-ideological fantas-
tic support for Dark’s (2006) argument that the pro-space movement is
fundamentally a modernist movement aimed at reclaiming notions of
progress.
As in the quote from Turner above, social fears are articulated espe-
cially in relation to youth. Many pro-space activists attribute youth
problems to the absence of a grand inspirational project. Realizing that
space holds special appeal to children, pro-space activists believe that
renewed space activity is vital to inspiring kids and encouraging them to
take an active part in society, ideally in science- and technology-related
careers. This extract is from a three-way conversation at ProSpace ‘March

Storm’ in 2004:
A1: You have a lot of people who don’t see the immediate future as
positive.
A2: Yeah, right, and in fact in DC itself, in the schools there, surveys
say that a lot of the kids don’t think they’re gonna live beyond
age 21 or something like that, they’re just gonna be killed on the
street. So it really changes your attitude if you don’t think you’re
gonna live that long, how you’re acting, how you’re . . . when you’re
thinking about anything.
I: Yeah. Do you think you can get kids who don’t think they’re gonna
live that long to then care about space which is even longer . . .
A2: Even longer, yeah. Only if somehow it really looks like a brand
new opportunity to start over and you can personally . . . there aren’t
these big barriers involved. If you can somehow get them feel-
ing that they can be personally involved and get themselves help
actively doing something in space.
My rather clumsy intervention served to clarify that within this dis-

course ‘inspiration’ works through convincing young people that they
or their children can live on other planets, or at least become involved
in the space programme in an active way. It is therefore wrestled free
from other potential meanings, perhaps bearing in mind that the Soviet
people were expected to take a great deal of inspiration from a space
programme in which they were involved only by virtue of it being
conducted on their behalf.
As well as concerns over youth violence, recent pro-space discourse
has argued that war would also be relieved by the creation of a
spacefaring society, as illustrated by this activist at the ISDC in 2004:
The world situation has never been really stable, it’s becoming more
unstable again as it was back in the early sixties again and I think
we really need to keep the human race alive. I think turning outside
of our small environment on Earth and opening up these possibil-
ities of the world, the Universe, to kids will take a lot of stress off
these . . . I know to the people that are fighting them do not seem
petty wars, but over land, over religion.
I was conducting my research in the wake of 9/11 and in the context

of the war on terror. What was interesting was the way in which this
argument, which is not entirely new, came to a position of prominence

at the time. It demonstrates the ways in which this discursive formation
is prone to change, as new elements are added or removed. Construct-
ing this argument relies on connections with other ideas previously
discussed. It takes for granted that demand on resources (in this par-
ticular case, land) must grow, and that people will react adversely to
encountering the limits of this in the form of other people. Expanding
the available resource base will avoid confrontation with these limits
and ensure peace.
The idea of the inevitability of war once limits are reached (which
is the fantasy that binds pro-space discourse about war) is supported by
reference to assumptions about the ‘natural’ foundation of human social
action. This is captured by another activist at the ISDC in 2004:
An animal that’s cornered will do things that . . . under normal cir-

cumstances when it has the freedom X talked about is pretty passive,
but you corner that animal it starts to react in a very negative way.
Our world is becoming increasingly cornered to a lot of people.
A reality claim is made for the paranoid fantasy of living in a cornered

world by reference to the kind of violence it purports to explain. Such
circularity is able to function through the support of the one element
that does not put itself up for discussion as part of the argument; the idea
that cornered animals fight. This brings us to the end of the discursive
chain that characterizes pro-space political discourse, and into the realm
of a much more general imaginative project.
The sociobiological fantasy
Where the pro-space fantasy risks being drawn too closely into the ide-
ological framework it supports, another ‘apolitical’ element enters into
this discourse which has a long history in supporting the libertarian
Right. That element is sociobiology and especially the arguments made
within that tradition about the naturalness of human acquisitiveness
and inquisitiveness. Sociobiology was built on the Darwinian theory
of evolution and, more dangerously, the teleological theory of Wallace
(who in 1907 also wrote about the possibility of Mars being habitable),
and was developed by Edward O. Wilson. More recently it has been asso-
ciated with the contributions of Richard Dawkins. Sociobiology posits
that the origin of all human social behaviour, like animal behaviour and
physical characteristics, is the result of natural selection. Behaviours that
survive do so because they represent (or represented) a selective advan-

tage. The arguments against sociobiology are extremely well established,
and there is not room to elaborate on them fully here (in relation to pro-
space arguments specifically, there is a passing critique in Bainbridge,
1991, pp. 220–1). One particularly useful insight in the present context
is, however, provided by Marshall Sahlins:
What is inscribed in the theory of sociobiology is the entrenched

ideology of Western society: the assurance of its naturalness, and the
claim of its inevitability. Since the seventeenth century we seem to
have been caught up in this vicious cycle, alternatively applying the
model of capitalist society to the animal kingdom, then reapplying
this bourgeoisified animal kingdom to the interpretation of society.
(quoted in Dickens, 1990, p. 62)
What Sahlins makes clear is that the ‘trans-ideological’ world of biology

has been an important prop for ideology, and yet the way in which the
biological has been imagined has been shaped precisely by the ideology
it serves (Rose et al., 1984, argue that sociobiology is an inherently polit-
ical discourse). It is because sociobiology reflects taken-for-granted ideas
about human nature that it can function as a trans-ideological element.
The biological is taken as a set of imperatives that are beyond question,
and that therefore bracket the field of political discourse.
This argument about nature’s imperatives can mean importing ideas
about human social life from the behaviour of other species. During a
panel discussion, one activist at the ISDC 2004 asserted:
Life at any level, whether it be an individual organism, bacteria or an

animal or a plant or a species or a tribe of people or an ecosystem,
at any level life tends to expand to fill whatever niches around it,
whatever niches are nearby. This is drilled into us through evolution.
The argument that curiosity and exploration are an adaptive survival

trait for the human species is well rehearsed. Some activists frame their
discussion of human nature directly in relation to Dawkins, who has
become popular reading. It is believed that when resources become
scarce, it suits the group (there is some theoretical confusion here in rela-
tion to Dawkins) to have some or all of them pre-programmed to explore
their surroundings for more resources. In this way human social groups
are not limited to one ‘ecological niche’, but can expand and grow to
other niches. For many pro-space activists outer space represents the
next ‘ecological niche’ for mankind. Other analogies abound as support
for this idea. For Sagan, the exploration of space was as significant as
the first time fish left the water for land. In Tsiolkovsky’s analogy to the
human life cycle the Earth was the cradle of humanity ‘but one cannot
live in the cradle forever’. A slightly different version was propounded
by Henson (1985, cited in Michaud, 1986), who believed that the desire
to explore space was a specific ‘meme’; a term coined by Dawkins to
describe the reproduction of ideas by analogy to genetics.
It is ‘natural’ for humans to explore and settle other places. As a fan-
tasy echo, this holds together the version of human history recounted
in the pro-space movement as the history of exploration: Columbus and
the discovery of the Americas, the Pilgrim Fathers and the settlement
of the US, Lewis and Clarke and the opening of the American fron-
tier, and Neil Armstrong and the Moon landing. Exploration is therefore
founded on assumptions about human nature, and then reproduces for
successive generations the symbolic framework for the same fantasy.
Because the socio-political impetus to explore relies on the biological
‘need’ to explore, the two can be confused. Take this exchange during a
panel debate at the ISDC in 2004:
A1: I’m a big believer in exploration and investigation and adventure.

It’s part of us. It’s innate. Our babies, even before they can crawl
start to investigate, explore. And once they can crawl they become
mobile investigating machines. And this is an important part of us
and it’s an important part of our motivation and I think it will be
a good point for us to win support for what we’re doing and for
something like the Mars mission it’ll be part of our program.
A2: I think these reasons, while not the best reasons that I’ve already
alluded to, are reasons that have a certain amount of power. Because
what you’re really getting at here, basic human drive towards adven-
ture, is a notion of social values and of a society committed to a
pioneer spirit. In other words . . . there are a certain number of peo-
ple who support the space program because it reflects an ethos that
they would like to see maintained in our society, which they see
as fundamental to that which has built our society, which is peo-
ple willing to take risks to go somewhere, dare the unknown. These
are the kinds of values we need to celebrate. These are the kinds of
people we need to be and therefore the space program is about us,
about who we are, OK?
The first view, from a former astronaut, is pure biological determinism.

He constructs his position from observations about children, which he
sees as a good way of reading raw human nature untouched by culture.
The second speaker, the leader of a pro-space organization, on the other

hand, appears to be agreeing with him but is actually using an argument
that places the origin of the desire to explore in the social and not the
biological.
This discussion also brings me to another important way in which the
biological fantasy underpins pro-space ideology, and which is crucial to
the construction of what Snow would call ‘motivational frames’. This is
the idea (not without contradiction) that there are certain people who
are ‘naturally’ drawn to explore. Take this extract from a joint interview
at the ISDC:
A1: I really think I’m the kind of personality that if I was born in 1840
I’d have been saying ‘gee ma I’m going to get the next wagon train
out west’. It’s there, it’s adventure, it’s excitement, it’s a frontier.
I think humanity always has people who are naturally drawn to the
frontier even though it’s probably going to get them killed.
I: Not necessarily everyone
A1: Not everyone, there’s always a certain percentage of people and
within the next six days you will see a very large percentage of peo-
ple in this organization are of that type. Some are into space for
other reasons, I think you’ll find a lot of latent frontiersmen here.
...
A2: I suspect that the adventure gene in humanity is a minority gene,
like a real significant minority gene and always has been and always
will be.
These activists claim to recognize in themselves evidence of the genes

they are talking about. Because of the exoneration of previous explorers
in American culture (see Mumford’s, 1926, critique of romanticizing the
pioneer), it is a trait they are extremely proud to have as the few who
are biologically chosen to lead society to the next level of its evolution.
Displacing the frontier jouissance
In Laclau’s work the frontier is a crucial theoretical device. The con-

struction of an antagonistic frontier is what enables any discursive
articulation. The rearrangement of this antagonism in temporal terms
represents the narrativization of this antagonism (see Žižek, 1997). Its
arrangement in geographic terms is central to colonialist discourses (see
Said, 1978, for example). And it is through this construction, and the
violence it implies, that a mode of jouissance is made possible.
This fairly straightforward picture is complicated by the romanti-

cization of the frontier itself in American culture. This represents a
displacement of the frontier. No longer is enjoyment experienced at the
frontier by virtue of attempts to colonize the other in the name of some
future state of harmony, but the frontier itself becomes utopian. This
shift has a depoliticizing effect; the political project represented at the
frontier is obscured by a focusing on apolitical imagery.
Pro-space activism draws upon the tradition that has argued that the
frontier is essential to the American national character and that without
a frontier American society will stagnate. This tradition owes its roots
to Frederick Jackson Turner’s (1893) The Significance of the Frontier in
American History. His argument was that the challenges of the frontier
fostered an individualist survivalism based on risk-tasking and hostility
towards centralized power, which in turn led to American democracy
and the American entrepreneurial spirit. What is of note in Turner’s the-
sis is that it is the inverted form of the ‘normal’ function of the frontier
in political discourse. For Turner it is the experience of the frontier that
provides America with its political coordinates, and not the other way
around. As one activist said in an interview with me, ‘America is a prod-
uct of the frontier. That’s why we became, not a perfect, but a democratic
society’. And, of course, it is then on the grounds of American democ-
racy that contemporary frontiers are being pushed back in relation to
the war on terror and the invasion of rogue states.
The image of ‘the frontier’, replete with the character-types and set-
tings it evokes, has provoked a great deal of reflection and passion
within the pro-space movement (see Bereinstein, 2002, p. 12), where
it is as ubiquitous as it is in science fiction (from Heinlein to Star Trek).
Gerard O’Neill first popularized the frontier discourse in the pro-space
movement, making the title of his seminal (1989) book The High Frontier.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century the term was as popu-
lar as ever. In 2002 an edited book appeared entitled Space: The Free
Market Frontier (Hudgins, 2002). The 2004 ISDC was subtitled ‘settling
the space frontier’. And the Space Frontier Foundation has become a
major pro-space organization. These make use of another fantasy echo.
In 2004 both the Mars Society and ProSpace used the US Western
frontier analogy whilst lobbying (President Bush had used the same
historical precedent in January that year when unveiling his Moon–
Mars Initiative). The Mars Society used a painting blending an image
of Lewis and Clarke’s expedition on one side with an image of future
Mars colonization on the other. Robert Zubrin cites Turner and argues
that ‘without a frontier from which to breathe life, the spirit that gave
rise to the progressive humanistic culture that America has offered to

the world for the past several centuries is fading’ (Zubrin, 1996, p. 297).
ProSpace cited Lewis and Clarke’s expedition in the presentation packs
they gave to congressional staffers.
Summary
I began this chapter by emphasizing that whilst the pro-space move-

ment necessarily has to articulate political arguments to support the
demands it makes (largely to the state), it is not anchored to any par-
ticular ideology. It is, however, currently characterized by a libertarian
Right hegemony. From the perspective of this ideology, the fantasy of a
spacefaring civilization serves as its trans-ideological support. It allows
symptoms arising from the libertarian Right equivalential chain to be
fantastically resolved, rather than allowing them to reveal internal con-
tradictions. The central axis of this chain links consumption, growth,
prosperity, freedom, inspiration and peace. The fantasy of creating a
spacefaring civilization fills the gap left in that chain by virtue of his-
torical experience. I argued that insofar as pro-space discourse threatens
to articulate itself too closely to this chain, it too relies on trans-
ideological support in the shape of a fantasy about human nature, and
on a displacement of jouissance at the frontier, wherein the frontier itself
becomes a romanticized utopia.
11
The Pro-Space Movement and
Political Organization
The organization of the movement relates to the way in which fantasy

is managed within the movement. Some general principles common to
all social movements hold here, as already discussed. First and foremost
is the way in which the movement fantasy of a spacefaring civilization
is kept at a critical distance from the ideology of the movement. And
then, at another level, the way in which individual activists’ fantasies
are held at a distance from this more general fantasy in turn. As I will
discuss towards the end of this chapter, the management of this is cen-
tral to understanding the evolution of the pro-space movement over
time. But to begin with I want to explore some of the ways in which the
pro-space movement currently manages fantasy through more specific
features of its organization, and, crucially, how these features allow for
the production of enjoyment within the movement (recalling some of
the discussion of Stavrakakis’s work in Chapter 3).
The pro-space movement attracts, and sustains, activists who predom-
inantly relate to their space fantasies through the narcissistic mode. It is
the organizational features of the movement that allow such a move-
ment to hold itself together, and that give it its distinctive form as
what I have called a ‘hostile craze’. Different movements attract activists
with different fantasies and different modes of fantasy. The ways in
which these are managed within each movement will vary across dif-
ferent movements and over time through the dynamic interactions of
its participants.
A theory of movement organization founded on the recognition
of an unconscious component to activism must recognize two fun-
damental but conflicting processes through which fantasies might be
managed. Seldom have both kinds of process been recognized within
the same social movement model. On the one hand, activists’ fantasies
257
are sustained, and even elaborated, in association with other similarly

narcissistic actors. However, these processes alone would make pur-
suit of fantasy difficult within the movement’s political context. The
movement’s organization also serves to channel fantasy so that it can
communicate with policymakers and coordinate campaigns. This sus-
tains fantasy in its own way through the promise of success. In a crude
way, this relates to the distinction between the group’s ‘basic assump-
tions’ and their task-orientation and organization, as found in Bion’s
work (see Alford, 1989). Theories of crowd psychology and collective
behaviour have tended to focus on the way in which the collective
nature of social movements amplifies the irrationalities at work in indi-
vidual actors. Resource mobilization and political process theory, on
the other hand, have focused on the rational channelling of resources
towards realizable political goals.
My argument as regards the pro-space movement is that both pro-
cesses are involved in aspects of its organization. The way in which such
processes interact here is particularly characteristic of hostile crazes.
To put it crudely, in hedonistic movements the internal elaboration of
fantasy is likely to predominate, whilst in institutionalized movements,
processes aiming to shape fantasy so as to make it politically resonant
are likely to take the upper hand.
A spacefaring culture
New social movement theorists such as Melucci (1996) have refo-

cused attention on the cultural basis of social movements. But the
relationship between the conscious and unconscious, and the sym-
bolic and imaginary, in this culture can be understood very differently.
Psychoanalytic theories in organizational studies, however, seek to
understand precisely these dynamics (see, for example, Hinshelwood,
1987, in the Kleinian tradition, or Cederstrom & Hoedemaekers, 2010,
in the Lacanian tradition).
One of the concerns about the group from an object-relational per-
spective has been the extent to which the group functions as a screen for
the fantasy of its individual members. Anzieu (1984, p. 95) argues that
The group exists as a reality that is both immanent and transcends

each of them, like a good, exacting, and giving mother who only has
good children, and like an enclosed room whose walls are lined with
mirrors that send on to infinity the idealised narcissistic reflections
of each participant.
Pro-Space Movement and Political Organization 259
In this sense the group is often seen as a regressive pre-Oedipal merger

(see also Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1975). Fornari (1975) argues that the sus-
pension of reality means the individual falls back on their own ‘autistic
truths’. The group for Fornari therefore, rather than providing a space in
which the individual must temper himself to others, represents a space
in which the individual fantasy is protected. Hinshelwood & Chiesa
(2002, p. 21) note that Fornari also draws on Winnicott’s notion of tran-
sitional space as a metaphor for the group, ‘the function of which is to
sustain the individual’s unrealistic illusions’. But, as previously outlined,
Winnicott’s view of potential space allows for a much more positive
understanding of the potentials of the group than this.
On the other hand, it is argued that because the anxieties and ide-
alizations projected onto the group have real effects, the projection
of fantasy ends up feeding back into the lives of its members (see
the discussion in Alford, 1989). But either way, object relations the-
ory of organizations has tended to approach the organization in terms
of what it means for the individual. What can go missing here is a
sense that the individual encounters an organization not simply as a
group of other individuals, but as a structure that makes certain sym-
bolic demands of the individual. Lacanian approaches to organizations,
however, have tended to focus on the relationship between the for-
mal symbolic identity of organizations and the imaginary ‘underside’ of
organizational fantasy (what Žižek calls the ‘institutional unconscious’).
Stavrakakis (2010) makes clear that for him Lacanian theory transcends
the limitations associated with both ‘the paradigm of (transcendent)
externality – where a pre-constituted individual encounters the Other
as a force limiting its subjective autonomy from the outside – and that
of (immanent) internality – where the subject becomes a mere effect
of the Other’s ideological/discursive construction’ (p. 61). And yet, to
echo criticisms made in Chapter 3, because the organizational level is
the primary problematic of Lacanian organizational studies, Stavrakakis
talks about fantasy and enjoyment as though they were the homoge-
neous corollaries of the organization’s symbolic order. What is missing
from such an account is, again, a sense of how it is that individuals
arrive at the organization, and how it is that fantasies and modes of
enjoyment formulated before arriving at the organization are negoti-
ated within that organizational culture. It is important that both sides
of this meeting between individual and organization are considered
simultaneously.
However, the useful thing that Lacanian theory tells us is that every
organizational order (which in the case of social movements consists
in necessary subscription to the explicit demands and ideology of the

movement, as well as formally designated tactics) relies, because of its
capacity for the production of enjoyment, on the possibility this order
provides for a form of transgression of this order. From the perspective
of the movement’s organizational order, one of the central transgres-
sive spaces lies in its promulgation of a distinctive ‘spacefaring culture’,
which one activist explained to me represents not only the glue that
binds the movement in the present (his terms), but also the seeds of
the future culture of a spacefaring civilization. This culture, as a shared
imaginary, thus provides the grounds for identification between activists
past, present and future. The elaboration of the fantasy of a spacefar-
ing civilization provides the essence of this cultural transmission. Not
only does this shared fantasy underlie the movement’s ideology onto-
logically, but it also takes the form of material social practices central to
the enjoyment of pro-space activism.
The continual renewal of this culture is ‘transgressive’ and yet also
foundational for the movement insofar as it represents an interactional
space largely hidden from the official policy agenda and political prag-
matics of the movement, and poses as a ‘supplement’ to the movement’s
political action, even whilst it is wholly necessary in order for activists to
invest in the movement in the first instance (this notion that such pro-
cesses are merely supplemental to the motivation of activism can also be
found lingering in accounts such as Shepard’s, 2011, as discussed in the
Introduction). The necessity of such spaces is elided precisely by the way
in which the movement as a whole has marginalized these practices.
There are organizations, such as ProSpace, which are solely lobbying
bodies. Within their annual ‘March Storm’, there are no spaces set aside
for the kinds of cultural practices outlined later in this chapter. This is
not to say that fantasy never erupts into the event, but merely that there
are no sustained spaces for the elaboration of fantasy. The ISDC, on the
other hand, does promote such space, in various ways. Both physical
space and time are set aside for a variety of supplemental practices. But
this in itself sets the ISDC aside from other pro-space events as another
kind of thing. It is more of a festival space. Of course, the deliberate
setting aside of such space attests to the way in which the symbolic
structure of the movement attempts to keep tabs on this supplemental
space, but importantly this space can never be officially acknowledged
as the raison d’être of the event.
In what follows, I provide snapshots of three ways in which the space-
faring culture was renewed in these spaces at the ISDC in 2004: through
social parties, through filk music and through space art.
Parties are often held during events such as the ISDC. I attended one
such party thrown by the Huntsville Alabama L-5 Society in a reception
room at the hotel where the conference was taking place. A row of chairs
lined the right-hand side of the wall and was occupied by activists chat-
ting in pairs, with paper plates of buffet food in their hands and maybe
a glass of wine or bottle of beer. Stretching down the left-hand side of
the room was a long buffet table. At the far end of the thin channel that
remained in the middle of the room was a fridge where a few activists
were readying drinks. The channel itself was populated by small cliques
engaged in conversation. These cliques were hard to break into because
of the technical language used to describe fantasies. Where the talk was
not of the latest electro-propulsion technology, it was of who Burt Rutan
was working with in the Mohave Desert, what engines he was using and
so on. The party seemed to be a space in which old friends were sought
out in order to renew conversations started many months ago, or over
the internet, and to share very elaborate fantasies together. There was a
complex dynamic involved in these fantasies. On the one hand, the very
act of articulating fantasy in technical language softened their ‘fantastic’
and repulsive elements so that they could engage in conversation. But
at the same time, over-elaboration in technical language made much
of what activists had to say boring, especially to those with no shared
interest.
Another medium through which the pro-space collective imaginary
is renewed is filk music. Filk music is folk music (music of the peo-
ple) about the exploration, development and settlement of space (it can
arguably also include fantasy folk music about dragons and such like,
which pro-space activists generally dislike). The word filk came about, so
legend has it, as the result of a simple typographic error on an announce-
ment at a space event where there was to be some space-related folk
music (Jenkins, 1992, p. 270). The word filk stuck, and filk fans are a
small circle that overlaps with the pro-space and science fiction commu-
nities (Jenkins, 1992). Filk is performed more spontaneously at events
like the ISDC. One activist, a filk artist himself, played me a recording
of Leslie Fish’s ballad ‘Witnesses Waltz’. The chorus conveys the sense of
solidarity amongst space enthusiasts who, unnoticed, gather to picnic
as they watch space launches. He then played Fish’s epic ‘Hope Eyrie’
which encourages space enthusiasts to remember the Apollo’s Eagle lan-
der to their children and remain resolute in pursuing space exploration.
On listening to it, one activist said it was impossible not to feel ‘some-
thing’, although he could not articulate what this feeling was. He said
it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up – an unrepresentable
(maybe even Real) jouissance. Filk, as the music of the pro-space peo-
ple, is an evolving community art form. Its songs are passed on by
performance and repetition in the same way as folk songs. Though com-
ing from a very different perspective, Eyerman & Jamison (1998) have
emphasized the role that music has in constructing the meaning of a
social movement as well as ‘collective structures of feeling’ (although
pro-space filk may well undermine their understanding of the necessary
‘fit’ between the form of music and movement ideals).
Finally, space art also contributes to the pro-space imaginary as a
stock of shared images, and this is well recognized. The images of
artists from Chesley Bonestall to Don Davis have been as important
to space fantasy as science fiction literature. Davis’s best-known paint-
ings are of life within artificial space colonies. Nuclear families play
on sunny beaches, or communities picnic, whilst hang-gliders fly over-
head (the meaning of such images was inverted in the 2013 Neil
Blomkamp film Elysium). At the ISDC a room was set aside for the
duration of the conference for an exhibition by various space artists
(though the range of art varied from fantasy images, to expressionist
images of planets, to images more similar to Davis’s). At the conference’s
award ceremony, space artist Joy Day received a Space Foundation Life-
time Space Achievement Award, which again demonstrates the ongoing
dynamic between the formal symbolic order of pro-space activism,
and the fantastic support sustained through supplementary cultural
practices.
The centrality of these kinds of practices and spaces to a social move-
ment represents, in large part, the distinction between different types
of movement. More hedonistic movements might be expected to afford
more space for them, whilst in more institutionalized movements such
spaces are marginalized, and greater attempts are made to contain and
circumscribe them within the movement’s symbolic structure. This has
much to do with the discussion in the Introduction of the supposed
changing role of fantasy in social movements. Many of the changes
noted there point to a shift towards recognizing the importance of such
practices, even at the expense of maintaining a formal symbolic struc-
ture. But, as Stavrakakis (2010) makes absolutely clear, this is a dynamic
evolution. For as such practices become more recognized as central to
activism, so new expectations and commands emerge to govern these
practices such that they are integrated into what the movement offi-
cially stands for, and the enjoyment provided by them is subsequently
displaced elsewhere.
Organizational hierarchy
The development of an internal hierarchy to social movement organiza-

tion, which is particularly well developed in the pro-space movement,
could, quite rightly, be seen first and foremost as a concession towards
institutionalization. However, I want to demonstrate that such struc-
tures do not simply limit the fantasy and enjoyment of activists, but
actually provide new outlets for precisely these things.
Pro-space organizations have a formal membership and bureaucratic
offices and procedures. In several cases this includes a cadre of board
members. Election to the representative board of pro-space organiza-
tions is democratic and strictly regulated. Board procedures are then
also highly regulated. Above board level there has been a modest profes-
sionalization of the pro-space movement (Bell, 1985a, noted its general
professionalism increasing). This is largely at the chief executive and sec-
retarial level, though it should be mentioned that one man, Jim Muncie,
has managed to make a career from professional lobbying on behalf of
a number of pro-space organizations and private companies.
The operation of a formal (as well as informal) hierarchy gives rise to
interesting dynamics between members. One feature of pro-space cul-
ture is an obsession with its organization, hierarchy and history. The
internal politics and bureaucracy of pro-space organizations come to
dominate the lives and conversations of those who have been members
of the movement for any considerable time. The board of directors is an
object of particular fascination. The board is constructed as extremely
important by those who are on it or on the periphery of it. One board
member refused an interview with me initially because he assumed
I wanted the dirt on what happened on the board. Numerous board
meetings take place during conferences, and he could frequently be
heard puffing out loud as he walked through the corridors, to make
it clear that he was rushing from board meeting to board meeting.
My argument would be that the movement hierarchy offers a form
of sublimation as well as a shifting of the boundaries between friends
and opponents. It displaces the obstacles to realizing pro-space fantasy
onto fellow activists, and in doing so provides access to another form of
enjoyment through internal politics.
My first interaction with the movement was hearing a veteran activist
educating someone new to the movement in its history. The newcomer
was eagerly quizzing him on his feats as one of the founders of the move-
ment, and I heard other activists do the same at other conferences. Most
veterans are keen to talk about the history of pro-space activism, the
mergers and splinters of groups, the campaigns, the conferences and so
on. During one conference presentation I was startled by a tap on the
shoulder from another veteran who had, without solicitation, drawn
up a timeline of space activism for me. The creation of shared mem-
ory is vital for the solidarity of the movement, but this history also
sustains aspiration within the movement, whilst offering a depressive
compromise to veteran activists.
Leadership
Leadership is important to all social movements, but as is being increas-

ingly recognized (see, for example, Barker et al., 2001), leadership can
take many forms. In this section I discuss one of the important dynamics
within the pro-space movement as it negotiates between charismatic-
narcissistic and more pragmatic forms of leadership. Movements more
generally vary in terms of their reliance on one or other of these types.
Hedonistic movements rely on the former type, whilst institutionalized
movements are associated with the latter. But, again, this is not to say
that pragmatic leadership simply denies a movement access to fantasy
and enjoyment. It may, as I go on to argue, actually provide further
licence for fantasy and enjoyment.
Della Porta & Diani (1999) suggest that social movements are associ-
ated with charismatic leadership. As discussed previously in this chapter,
for Freud (1921, p. 124), leaders were ‘absolutely narcissistic’. But, as dis-
cussed in Chapter 5, Laclau develops an alternative reading of Freud in
which a continuum exists between two possibilities: one in which there
is a great deal of distance between the leader and the group member’s
ego-ideal, and one in which there is less distance. The latter allows for
a more democratic form of leadership and an identification with the
leader, and also for the leader to be less narcissistic. But despite this
passing comment, Laclau says little about what has been an important
issue in social movement theory and organizational studies, which is the
relative importance of the leader in generating a movement ex nihilo by
virtue of particular personality qualities, respective to the movement’s
role in selecting a leader with these particular qualities.
This is a debate taken up especially in the object-relations tradi-
tion, which is concerned in particular with whether the qualities of
the leader belong to them, or represent the projections of their fol-
lowers (see Alford, 1989). On the one hand, Chasseguet-Smirgel (1975,
p. 85) emphasizes the instigative role of the leaders as ‘promoters of
illusion’. Their promise of the arrival of illusion ‘stimulates the wish for
the fusion of ego and ideal by way of regression and induces the ego to
melt into the omnipotent primary object, to encompass the entire uni-
verse’. In this account, leaders might stimulate a wish in the follower,
but the ego is there in the first instance and distinguished from the ego-
ideal. As Hinshelwood & Cheisa (2002, p. 76) put it, like the group itself,
the leader allows the group’s regression to omnipotent fantasy. Such an
account resonates with theories of crowd psychology such as Le Bon’s.
Frosh (1991, p. 87), on the other hand, has argued that it is narcis-
sists who seek out those who offer the fulfilment or embodiment of
fantasies in the form of narcissistic leaders. Hence the psychology of
rank-and-file activists is the more important factor. Both these views,
however, assume that the leader has particular qualities prior to his or
her articulation as a leader. As Alford draws out in his discussion of Bion,
the alternative argument is that leaders are empty vessels or compli-
ant personalities. Freud assumed the identification with the leader was
a mature one, but Bion questions whether it might instead be a form
of projective identification. He also asks if groups choose their most
paranoid-schizoid members as leaders because they realize they are to
be dependent on the leader and therefore want the leader to be depen-
dent on the group. Alford’s argument is that such leaders ‘are best able to
give internal anxieties a compelling external location and focus because
they have had more practice at this way of thinking’ (1989, p. 73). The
paranoid-schizoid leader is ‘more imaginative at generalizing his own
paranoid-schizoid defences to the objective problems faced by the group
and at selling this interpretation to others’ (p. 73). He ‘holds the group’,
objectifying their anxieties. Such a view takes into account the psycho-
logical constitution of both leaders and followers (which I would cast
in terms of their respective modes of fantasy). It also allows that the
content of the group’s fantasies might be influenced by the leader’s own
formulation, whilst accepting that the leader is not free to give these
fantasies whatever idiosyncratic content he or she wishes.
This echoes Erikson who advocated conceiving of a ‘ “great” man’s
crises and achievements as communal events characteristic of a given
period’ (Erikson, 1975). For Erikson, the appeal of the personal con-
flicts that movement leaders enact lies in their resonance with the public
they mobilize. Success is the result of re-enacting their existential curse
‘in a medium communicative to their fellow men and meaningful in
their stage in history’ (1975, p. 164). His arguments regarding Gandhi
exemplify this approach: ‘In the process of mastering his own fear and
weakness, he reassured several generations that they need not fear those
that had conquered them’ (1975, p. 119). I have drawn on such an

understanding in an analysis of Bruce Gagnon, a leader in the outer
space protection movement (Ormrod, 2012).
Michaud acknowledges that pro-space organizations were dominated
by their early leaders (citing Moe’s, 1980, ‘entrepreneurial model’ of
single leader organizations). The leaders of the second wave of the pro-
space movement – Von Braun, Sagan and O’Neill – were undoubtedly
narcissistic. They were all successful in courting the popular media, and
their ideas captivated activists who used these ideas as the framework
for developing their own fantasies. These leaders all dabbled in science
fiction themselves, revealing rich fantasy lives (Von Braun, 1968; Sagan,
1985; O’Neill, 1981). They appeared self-assured and certain of the fea-
sibility of their visions. There are differences between them, of course.
Sagan’s rhetoric has been identified as ‘priestly’ (see Lessl, 1985, 1989).
O’Neill, meanwhile, refused a political role, but nonetheless brings to
mind Hoffer’s description of the ‘infallible leader’ (though Hoffer was
writing in the context of a discussion of mass movements such as
Nazism):
For men to plunge headlong into an undertaking of vast change, they

must be intensely discontented yet not destitute, and they must have
the feeling that by the possession of some potent doctrine, infal-
lible leader or some new technique they have access to a source
of irresistible power. They must also have an extravagant concep-
tion of the prospects and potentialities of the future. Finally, they
must be wholly ignorant of the difficulties involved in their vast
undertaking.
(Hoffer, 1951, p. 11)
O’Neill was not only the infallible leader, but the source of potent
doctrine and new technique.
The deaths of these leaders no doubt instigated a period of crisis and
transition (Bell, 1985a, had noted the effects of losing earlier leaders).
The gaps they have left have been filled in different ways. One is that
new narcissistic and idealized leaders, such as Robert Zubrin and Rick
Tumlinson, have emerged. Zubrin is quick to put others down both
within and outside the movement, uses his status as a scientist as lever-
age, and frequently speaks over people. Yet he is adored by activists.
Another science fiction author (Zubrin, 2001), like O’Neill, he provides
a vision, ‘Mars Direct’ (Zubrin, 1996), and sells it. He was introduced at
an ISDC luncheon in his honour as ‘one of the people that energises me
and makes me feel like alive and interesting’. When he makes appear-
ances he often signs copies of his books to fans who love him because
of, and not in spite of, his extreme narcissism.
However, a different kind of leader has also emerged in the move-
ment. Leaders such as Brian Chase and George Whitesides have more
pragmatic styles of leadership founded, it would seem, on a different,
more interventionist, mode of fantasy. The previous director of the
National Space Society, Brian Chase, who was well versed in the pol-
itics of Capitol Hill, was unpopular because of the ‘realistic’ approach
to lobbying mentioned previously, which included telling activists not
to talk to politicians about space colonization. For Chase, the way to
win Congress round was to make the right arguments and to target spe-
cific bills before Congress. At the ProSpace ‘March Storm’ this included
expressions of support for bills to introduce prizes for the develop-
ment of space technology, to provide tax breaks for space investors,
and to remove red tape governing the regulation of private launches.
At its extreme (and going to support those who have argued that it is
impossible ever to determine what role a social movement has played
in social change), this meant that grassroots lobbyists were directed to
ascertain congressional positions (on such things as the then recently
announced Bush Moon-Mars Initiative) so that the organization could
alter its demands accordingly. Thus it was possible to claim success for
campaigns on bills that they knew were likely to pass Congress in any
case. This represents an extreme form of pragmatism, or what was once
called ‘possibilism’.
The strategic advantages of such forms of leadership are obvious, but
it raises important questions about how it was that such leaders rose to
prominence and achieved popular support within the movement in the
first instance. One answer is that such leaders, in explicitly curtailing
fantasy, actually facilitate it. This might be true in two senses. The more
intuitive explanation is that activists are encouraged by the promise of
more assured small gains that their more grandiose fantasies are also
achievable. In this sense it gives activists greater licence to indulge in
such fantasies. The more counter-intuitive version is that by electing
leaders who are seen to sell the movement short, activists erect another
barrier to the achievement of fantasy and so sustain it. Moreover, in giv-
ing more concrete form to this barrier, one that it is within their power
to overturn, casting dispersions over this leadership allows for another
form of jouissance. It is possible for activists to enjoy attacking the leaders
they elect, and therefore it can be argued that in some instances activists
will (albeit not deliberately) elect pragmatic leaders in order that they
can subsequently enjoy attacking them. There is, again, a sense that
their true enjoyment (the enjoyment promised by their space fantasies)
would be realized if only the leader was not there.
The question that remains then is why is it that movements some-
times embrace narcissistic leaders, and sometimes embrace (whilst also
resenting) pragmatic ones? The answer, I would suggest, has to do with
the ongoing interaction between the movement and its external polit-
ical and social environment (as emphasized in political process theory,
and which Lacanian political theory has been criticized for ignoring,
see Foweraker, 1995). For the election of pragmatic leaders saves a
movement when the promises made by charismatic-narcissistic lead-
ers seem to be failing. The leader then represents a new fantasmatic
barrier to the realization of the pro-space fantasy that can be over-
come more easily. Problems then arise when pragmatic leaders are too
successful, or find too many open political channels. Here the move-
ment threatens to lose its political identity. The leadership is no longer
able to sustain the desire of the movement’s participants. There is a
danger that when opportunities for success (as defined by the move-
ment) are too plentiful, the movement’s command to its members
approaches the imperative to enjoy, and hence activists become disin-
vested in the movement. Here the issues surrounding pro-space leader-
ship blur into much more general issues surrounding the movement’s
evolution.
The evolution of the movement
The pro-space movement has had a dynamic relationship with external

agencies since its inception. This includes Congress, NASA and private
companies. Michaud (1986) identifies a general pattern of movement
evolution that he believes applies to the pro-space movement: big idea,
realities of politics, scaling down and privatization, direct pursuit of
goals. Many social movement theorists have noted similar universal
models, especially in relation to the institutionalization of movements
(following Weber and Michels). It is only more recently that theorists
such as Della Porta & Diani (1999, p. 149) have foregrounded com-
mercialization as another possibility for social movement evolution.
On the surface Michaud’s model describes the pro-space movement well,
although my argument would be that this is not a linear development
or a necessary one. I think this path remains dynamic, and movements,
including the pro-space movement, can move backwards and forwards
along it.
Michaud noted considerable change in the pro-space movement. He

believed that fanatics like the Hensons (or Hubbards) were needed at the
start as an initiator movement, but the movement soon became more
conservative (under Driggers’s leadership) and took their lobbying more
seriously. If Bainbridge is right that this institutionalization began with
the shuttle era, it was most likely as NASA itself was seen as becom-
ing more conservative, and federal funding was being withdrawn, and
therefore a gap appeared to have opened up between the agency’s pro-
grammes and the fantasy of a spacefaring civilization. It is often noted
that the movement, or at least some organizations, became a ‘NASA fan
club’ over this period, fighting single-issue campaigns over proposed
budget cuts. However, this was support for the agency not in what it
was doing, but in respect to maintaining what they saw as its origi-
nal visionary goals, now being betrayed both within and outside of the
agency. And this new lobby may have benefited from favourable com-
parison with earlier radicals in the same way that mainstream groups
benefit from comparison with their more extreme contemporaries (‘rad-
ical flank effects’, Barkan, 1979; Haines, 1988). There was certainly then
a long period in which, compared with most new social movements, the
pro-space movement enjoyed a relatively harmonious relationship with
the routines, agencies and actors that make up the institution of US gov-
ernment. One way in which this institutionalization of movements
can occur is through alignment with government agencies (Lipsky,
1965). Since the O’Neill-inspired NASA–AMES Summer Study into space
colonization in 1975, the pro-space movement has had an intimate
relationship with NASA (see Bainbridge, 1976, p. 16). Respected sci-
entists within the movement, such as O’Neill, Sagan and now even
Zubrin, have enjoyed informal consultancy roles for the administra-
tion. Michaud (1986) notes that by 1985 O’Neill was already part of
the establishment. Consultancy breeds a trend in social movements
towards professionalization (see Della Porta & Diani on consultancy,
1999, p. 239). As leaders become regular actors within government they
are more likely to become professionals. Michaud predicted this would
likely happen in the pro-space movement and he has been proved
correct to a certain extent, though grassroots activism has not disap-
peared. The NewSpace movement has weakened this relationship with
NASA, but has managed to contain its criticism of NASA sufficiently
that it can still do a fair amount of NASA cheerleading (congratu-
lating them on the successful first post-Columbia shuttle launch, for
example, despite many of them being fierce critics of NASA and the
shuttle).
In the years prior to beginning my research, federal budget deficits,

public loss of support for NASA, and a rapidly growing and vocal
entrepreneurial space sector had, however, opened up new political
opportunities for the movement by both providing the preconditions
for policy change and creating governmental cleavages (such things are
identified as determining factors in mobilization by political process the-
orists). National Space Society and ProSpace lobbyists found their mark
as their agendas offered exactly what politicians wanted; the benefits
of space exploration and development without the drain on the federal
budget of previous public programmes. This represents the movement’s
third incarnation as the NewSpace and space tourism lobbies dedicated
to support for a competitive and commercial private space industry.
Of course, such an agenda not only aligned the movement with some
sectors of Congress, but has also established close ties with start-up com-
panies such as SpaceEx, XCor, Blue Origin, Armadillo, SpaceDev and
Scaled Composites, along with the celebrity entrepreneurs associated
with them, such as Jim Benson, Charles Chafer, Paul Allen, Elon Musk,
Jeff Greason, Jeff Bezos and John Cormack, as well as the engineers
working with them, such as Burt Rutan. Indeed, the term ‘NewSpace
movement’ is often intended to designate these companies themselves
as much as the grassroots activists and organizations that support them.
These companies have seen themselves as so restrained by law and
the historically uncompetitive tendering environment for governmen-
tal contracts that they have become activists in their own right. At the
pro-space events I attended this melding of grassroots activism and
entrepreneurial interests was all too apparent. This ranged from numer-
ous talks about the Ansari X-Prize for testing a reusable suborbital space
tourism vehicle, to an invitation to activists to lunch with the CEO of
the space tourism company Space Adventures, to presentations at the
ISDC by a company offering to send personal effects into space (such as
teddy bears) and then return them to you.
There is a case to be made that the increasingly close relation-
ship between the movement and private companies (as well as certain
political actors) has meant that the pro-space movement is no longer
necessary as a social movement. The success of the private sector means
that those with pro-space fantasies can seek fulfilment directly through
space tourism, rather than engaging with a social movement. There is
a command to enjoy emerging within the pro-space movement. And,
as mentioned earlier, it could be argued that this might make any ide-
ological articulation unnecessary (Dark, 2006). Hand in hand with this
is the reduced need to engage in the collective elaboration of the fan-
tasy of a spacefaring civilization. But, as argued in Chapter 10, so long
as the pro-space movement continues to be a social movement it needs

some form of ideology and some collective fantasy to sustain this. The
contemporary collapsed libertarian ideology employed by the move-
ment performs this role, although it can be seen as the last throes of
ideology. The continued necessity of political action has even enabled
the movement to achieve new articulations between its organizations
such as the 2004 SEA Coalition, and the move to co-sponsoring the
ISDC. In a movement whose history has been marked by a tendency
for organizations to splinter, there are even now opposing trends.
The question remains over the ultimate fate of the pro-space move-
ment. Whilst it might disintegrate into the individual pursuit of pro-
space fantasies through various consumption practices on offer, these
practices may themselves be revealed as unsatisfying. The example was
given earlier of the activist for whom taking a trip to Earth orbit was
no longer enough. The solution here was investment in a grander com-
mercial vision, but it remains possible that pro-space fantasies can be
rearticulated into other collective visions and ideologies. This might
include a closer relationship with other movements. Whilst pro-space
activists often bemoan what they see as their rejection by the environ-
mentalist movement, such disappointment is the result of a failure to
reach out to the environmentalist imaginary and to explore the differ-
ences between their respective fantasies. A range of recent developments
suggest this exploration of the relatedness of pro-space and other polit-
ical imaginaries and ideologies is happening within the wider public.
One example would be the manifesto emerging from the Arts Catalyst’s
recent ‘Republic of the Moon’ exhibition, which drew on the notion
that we might Occupy the Moon (White, 2014).
Whether or not pro-space activists are able to rearticulate their own
fantasies within these new frameworks depends to a large extent on their
mode of fantasy, and the ways in which their fantasies and enjoyment
continue to be managed with the movement. I have argued that pro-
space activists generally exhibit a narcissistic mode of fantasy. But I have
also pointed to the (paradoxically necessary) existence of leaders with
more interventionist modes. There are also those, arguably especially
those on the fringes of the movement, who show signs of a depressive
mode of fantasy. One activist I interviewed put the space programme in
a very ‘realistic’ context while discussing budget demands, emphasizing
other social priorities such as ‘health, travel and cities’. Though clearly
pursuing a fantasy, he accepted it was possible to live without space
travel. In the UK, such reflexivity was more common. A conversation
with Andrew Howard prompted me to see that the following could be
interpreted as an activist traversing his fantasy:
I: Do you find yourself still day-dreaming about space a lot?

A1: [resounding] Yes. Probably too much, but it’s one of those things
that’s so rigid in my psyche I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to get it
out really. Nor would I want to, I don’t think. Yeah, a lot of people
say I spend too much time up there.
This activist was nonetheless pursuing a fantasy, and one central to his
identity, but one that he recognized took him away from other people.
With such recognition comes the potential for all kinds of progressive
rearticulation between fantasy and ideology.
Summary
This chapter has looked at the organization of fantasy and enjoyment

in the pro-space movement and how these might contribute to the
shaping of the movement as a hostile craze. It began by looking at
the movement’s ‘spacefaring culture’. It was argued that parties, filk
music and space art contribute to the creation of a shared imaginary
that stretches into the past as well as the future as a fantasy echo. This
‘supplementary’ space is vital to the movement. Here it is held in a del-
icate tension between official disavowal and recognition. This manages
to foster a collective fantasy of a spacefaring civilization without this
either diverting the movement from political action or forcing activists
to identify too greatly with the movement’s official ideology. The hier-
archal organization of the moment serves to sublimate the pro-space
fantasy, giving activists another source of pleasure. Whilst on the sur-
face a move towards institutionalization, it actually allows activists to
recast the (hated) barriers to the realization of their pro-space fantasies
as belonging inside of the movement. Not dissimilarly, it was argued
that whilst narcissistic leaders have been necessary in providing mod-
els for the content and mode of pro-space fantasy, more interventionist
leaders are also valued insomuch as they permit frustration at the barrier
they represent to the realization of the pro-space fantasy, thus sustaining
it. Finally, questions were raised about the future of the pro-space move-
ment due to its embrace of newly available commercial avenues for the
realization of fantasy. Whilst disintegration is possible, the horizon may
well be opened for new forms of collective imagining and new ideolo-
gies. As in any movement, this will depend on the balance of modes
of fantasy in the movement, and the different processes of managing
fantasy this allows.
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Index
Locators in bold denote figures.
99%, the, 130 agency, 86, 127, 129, 158, 186,

1960s movements, 9, 141 191, 195
aggrandizement, 229
abolition movement, 177 see also omnipotence
Abraham, K., 75 aggressive fantasies, 19, 47–8, 68, 76,
absent mother, 71, 83, 104, 119, 80–1, 82, 83, 84, 90, 92, 190, 235
221, 236 see also anal attack fantasies;
see also failure of mother; mother ambitious fantasies; beating
action, in relation to fantasy, 1, 9, fantasies; extermination
14–17, 19, 20, 21, 30–2, 34, 36, fantasies; violence and social
38, 46, 47, 48–9, 53, 57, 61, 64, movements
66, 72–3, 75, 86, 93, 94–5, 97, agitator theory, 87, 147, 164, 186
108, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 201, see also leadership
202, 203, 204, 272 Aguinis, M., 69
see also affective action; Alford, F., 20, 85, 89–91, 97, 230, 258,
instrumentally-rational action; 259, 264, 265
traditional action; types of alienation, 61, 99, 104, 107, 110, 117,
action; value-rational action 159, 162
Adams, M., 235 Althusser, L., 124, 128
Adams, M.V., 13–14
altruism, 8, 88, 167, 178
Adorno, T., 19, 60–5, 126, 135,
ambitious fantasies, 39, 47–8
164, 217
ambivalence, in depressive mode,
advertising
93–4
and activism, 11–12
amentia, 34
and narcissism, 117, 234
American Interplanetary Society (AIS),
aesthetics, and fantasy construction,
206–7
44, 112, 203–4
American Rocket Society (ARS), 207
affects, 3, 4, 17, 29, 35, 36, 41, 52, 53,
62, 64, 69, 74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 83, anal attack fantasies, 75, 80
85, 86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 95, 122, anarchism, 3, 10–1, 15
128, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145–65, antagonism, social, 5, 107, 114, 119,
172, 174, 178, 185, 198, 236, 121–2, 126, 198
240, 248 antagonistic frontier, 121, 254
learning of emotion, 163 anti-anti-utopianism, 5
see also feelings, specific emotions see also anti-utopianism; utopia
affective action, 21, 144, 145–65, 177, anti-essentialism, 7, 124
180, 181 see also post-structuralism
affective turn in social movement anti-Semitism, 19, 60–5
theory, 3, 142, 162 see also Nazism
age of fantasy, 4, 11 anti-Socialism, 147
288
Index 289
anti-utopianism, 88 Bell, T., 205, 206, 247, 263, 266

see also anti-anti-utopianism; utopia Benjamin, J., 90
anxiety, 29, 40, 41, 60, 80–2, 84, 90, Benjamin, M., 220–1, 249
91, 92, 93, 94, 113, 117, 118, 158, Berlin, I., 243, 246
184, 189, 197, 232, 235, 240, Bey, H., 5
259, 265 Bianchedi, E. de, 33, 49
Anzieu, D., 258 Biographic Narrative Interpretive
apolitical element, fantasy as, 130, Method (BNIM), 210, 212
251, 255 biography, 59, 129, 130, 132, 182,
Arab Spring, 15, 17 197, 212, 227, 239, 242
arationality, 142 see also psychobiography
see also irrationality; rationality biology
art, 10, 17, 39, 44, 46 49, 52, 84, sexual difference, 48, 129
85, 203 see also instincts; need; nature;
see also space art sociobiology
Artemis Society, 217 Bion, W., 26, 49, 76, 85, 258, 265
Asch, S., 156 blame, 165
‘as if’, fantasy as the, 32, 52, 78 Bleandonu, G., 135
Asimov, I., 218 Bloch, E., 19, 53, 57–8
association (psychoanalytic), 11, 13, Blum, H., 33, 42, 44, 49, 50
78, 79, 113 Blumer, H., 149, 153, 154–5, 156, 157,
asteroids, 223, 226, 227, 228, 247 159, 172, 184, 189
astrofuturism, 206, 209 bodily sensations, see somatic
see also science fiction Bonestall, C., 262
astronomy clubs, 206 Bookchin, M., 10, 12
atomization, social, 159 Borch, C., 154, 157
see also fragmentation, social Bosnian conflict, 95–6
attacking, fantasies of, see aggressive bouncing on the Moon fantasies, 226
fantasies boundaries, 94, 95, 236
authoritarianism, 60–5, 161, 234 bounded rationality, 1, 210
auto-eroticism, see masturbatory Bourdieu, P., 180–1, 182, 195
fantasy bourgeois, 10, 57, 58
Bova, B., 209
baby, 68, 72, 83, 84, 221, 253 Bradbury, R., 218
see also child bread, demand for, 211
bad object, 19, 72, 75–6, 81, 82, 83, 20 breakdown theories, 141, 153, 159
Badiou, A., 119, 130 breast, 31, 69, 71, 72, 79, 80, 81, 83,
Bailly, L., 102, 108 111, 221, 227, 228
Bainbridge, W., 206, 210, 223, 225, see also good breast; Moon, as breast
244, 252, 269 Brierly, M., see Payne, S.
Baudrillard, J., 13–14 British Interplanetary Society
Bauman, Z., 6–7, 244 (BIS), 206
bearing witness, 15, 179–80 Britton, R., 26, 34, 36, 80
beating fantasies, 43 Brown, W., 7
Beck, U., 92, 116, 177 brute materiality, 101
beliefs, 51–2, 59, 61, 74, 144, 159, see also material reality
162, 167, 175, 176, 186, 188, 189, Bush, G.W., 255, 267
190, 191, 192, 203, 222 Butler, J., 13, 100, 131
Bell, D., 8–9, 235 buying Moon, 226, 227
290 Index
cadre (of pro-space movement), 263 Clarke, W., 253, 255–6

Calhoun, C., 10 class, 7, 8, 10, 51, 54, 57, 141, 153,
capitalism, 5, 7, 14, 58, 117, 125, 128, 159, 182, 211, 238, 239
129, 169, 188, 195, 209, 233, 234, see also bourgeois; middle-classes;
237, 241, 247, 248, 252 working class
competitive capitalism, 234 Club of Rome, 245, 247
consumer capitalism, 7, 127 see also limits to growth thesis
monopoly capitalism, 233, 234, 241 coercion, in movements, 54, 170
career activists, 173 cogito, 104
caring, 6, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90, 97, 224 cognition, see secondary process
carnivalesque, 14–15, 201 thought; thinking
Carter, J., 231 cognitive liberation, 175
Castoriadis, C., 2, 94, 112, 119 cohesion, social, 158
castration, 36, 99, 105, 109, 114, 135, cold mothering, 235
203, 223, 226 see also mother
see also Oedipal fantasies, Oedipus Coleridge, S., 58, 135
complex collapsed libertarianism, 244, 271
cavitas, 89 collective behaviour theory, 21, 22,
see also love 25, 26, 29, 141, 144, 145, 146,
Ceausescu, N., 126 151, 153–5, 157–9, 164, 168, 172,
celebration, social movements and, 175, 184–99, 258
17, 23, 200, 201 collective mind, 148
celebrity, 11, 12, 232, 234, 237, 270 collective nature of fantasy, 1, 2, 4, 5,
chains of equivalence, 110, 121, 122, 17, 18, 24, 50–3, 58–59, 66, 97,
126, 244–5, 251, 256 114, 119, 123, 124–9, 130, 138,
Chafer, C., 225–6 139, 176, 188–9, 211, 213, 217,
charismatic leadership, see leadership, 229, 230, 260, 261, 262, 270, 272
charismatic colonization, see space colonization
charivari, 145, 181 command to enjoy, the, 14, 127–8,
Chase, B., 267 268, 270
Chasseguet-Smirgel, J., 47, 222, 264 commercialization of social
Chicago School of sociology, movements, 16, 24, 181, 208,
153–5, 157 268, 270, 272
Chiesa, M., 259 communism, 2, 54, 56, 130, 159
child, 23, 30, 33, 35, 36, 37, 42, 43, communist desire, 130
45, 55, 61, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, The Communist Manifesto, 2
74, 77, 78, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, see also Marxism; socialism
103, 104, 105, 108, 109, 112, 118, compromise, fantasy as, 19, 40–2, 44,
148, 152, 163, 182, 190, 199, 218, 48, 60, 63, 66
219, 220, 222, 223, 224, 227, 235, concern for others, 84, 90, 93,
236, 237, 240, 249, 253, 258 230, 235
see also baby concrete utopias, see utopia, concrete
Chodorow, N., 90 condensation, 34, 41, 111
Christianity, see religion conquering space, fantasies of, 23,
circular interaction, 149 226–8
citizens’ militia, 191 conscious fantasies, as distinguished
civil rights movement, 141 from unconscious fantasies, 1, 3,
claims, types of, 181 19, 27, 29, 33, 34–5, 36, 37, 38,
Clarke, A., 216–17, 218 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49,
Index 291
51, 65, 66, 71, 78, 79, 96, 113, crowd psychology, 21, 91, 141, 144,
126, 127, 132, 134, 136, 137, 148, 146–52, 153, 155, 157, 162, 172,
198, 202, 210, 222 187, 258, 265
conscious mental processes, in cults, 197, 202
relation to unconscious fantasy, culture of narcissism (including The
29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 38, 39, 41, 44, Culture of Narcissism), 9, 23, 213,
49, 64, 72, 77, 78, 113, 151, 177 231–9, 240, 241
see also secondary process thought see also narcissism
conservative populism, see populism,
conservative Darwin, C., see evolution
conservative psychological factors, Da Vinci, L., Freud’s analysis of,
182, 199 36–7, 224
constellation (ontological), 17, 25, 26, Davis, D., 262
65, 132 Davis, J., 176–7
Dawkins, R., 251, 252, 253
consultancy, 269
Dawson, C., 155
consumption, 9, 16, 24, 60, 117, 128,
Day, J., 262
201, 244, 245, 246, 247, 271
day-dreams as synonym for fantasy, 27
consumer choice, 177
Dean, J., 7, 130, 173
consumer fantasies, 5, 24 Dean, K., 116, 237
consumerism, 6, 117, 237 death (fantasies about), 82, 229
contagion, 147, 149, 152, 154, 156, see also nirvana
157, 160 death drive, 101, 226
contingency of fantasy, 123, 129, death instinct, 47, 80, 82
131, 219 Debord, G., 11, 16
contradiction and social order, 13, 62, decentredness, 52, 116
64, 121, 187, 195, 198, 231, 245, De Chardin, T., 228
246, 247, 256 deconstruction, 107
Controversial Discussions, the, 25, 26, defence mechanisms, 72
42, 67, 68, 69, 72, 77 see also specific mechanisms
convergence theories, 147, 156 deference of meaning, 106
cost-benefit analysis, 173, 164, 199 Della Porta, D., 15, 16, 179, 264,
see also instrumentally-rational 268, 269
action; rational actor theory delusion, fantasy as, 51–3, 220
Crack Capitalism, 5 demands, political, 19, 23, 24, 120–2,
124, 198, 201, 211, 218, 243, 245,
see also utopias, interstitial
260, 267
Craib, I., 8, 86, 90, 98, 190
distinguished from need and desire,
crazes, 22, 185, 188, 189, 190, 201
111–12
see also hostile crazes democracy, 4, 10, 64–5, 123–4, 159,
creative writers, 6, 44, 58 160, 161, 170, 179, 255, 263, 264
creativity, 3, 12, 14, 15, 39, 44, 49, 58, democratic leadership, 161, 264
84, 93, 95, 97, 131, 138, 203, 221 radical democracy, 5, 131
critical realism, 25, 194 social democracy, 89, 97
see also realism demographics (of pro-space
Crossley, N., 158, 162, 163–4, 165, movement), 23, 238–9
166, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 182, denial, 76, 78, 82, 94, 222
185, 186, 187, 188, 191, 192, 194, dependence, 9, 84, 87, 202, 221–2,
195, 200, 234 236, 265
292 Index
depressive mode of fantasy, see mode disorientation, 61

of fantasy, depressive displacement, 34, 38, 41, 86, 111, 222,
depressive position, 19, 20, 21, 82–5, 255, 262, 263
88, 89, 91, 93–5, 97, 118, 131, dissociative, fantasy as, 92
134, 222, 230, 264 see also mode of fantasy, dissociative
see also mode of fantasy, depressive dissociative mode of fantasy, see mode
deprivation, 185, 187, 211, 236 of fantasy,
see also poverty dissociative
Derrida, J., 107 doomsday fantasies, 202
Descartes, R., 104 double description, 194, 196
desire, 8, 10, 11, 13, 23, 33, 42, 50, 53, doxa, 182
55, 60, 64, 71, 77, 84, 88, 91, 99, dreams, sleeping, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37,
105, 108, 109, 111–16, 117, 125, 38, 40–1, 44, 48, 49, 58, 63, 74,
127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 135, 136, 78, 92, 110, 111, 117, 126,
143, 152, 154, 155, 159, 173, 137, 224
203–4, 211, 217, 219, 220, 221, Driggers, G., 269
222, 223, 224, 226, 227, 229, 230, drives, 47, 62, 92, 94, 101, 102, 104,
237, 241, 253, 254, 268 111, 118, 119, 148, 210, 220,
see also staging of desire 226, 253
destructive fantasies, see aggressive see also death drive
fantasies Duncombe, S., 4, 11–13, 14, 124
determinants of collective behaviour Durkheim, E., 172, 182, 194, 197,
(Smelser), 22, 185–6, 191–2, 231, 232
193–4, 196, 197–8 duty, 128, 177–80, 234
diagnostic frames, see frames,
diagnostic ecology movement, 188
dialectics, 121 see also environmental movement
constellation of fantasy and, 134 economics, 11, 54, 55, 56, 61, 62, 63,
external and internal worlds, 75 129, 141, 142, 157, 166–8, 194,
paranoid-schizoid and depressive 195, 206, 209, 215, 218, 236, 238,
functioning, 21, 93 241, 244, 247–8
projection and introjection, 75 Eder, K., 180, 182
individual and social, 54, 55, 237 ego, 19, 32, 34, 41, 42, 43, 47, 49, 53,
law and transgression, 108 64, 66, 71, 72, 75, 80, 81, 82, 104,
social identifications and, 156 110, 135, 136, 152, 153, 161, 164,
Diani, M. see Della Porta, D. 222, 229, 240, 265
Dickens, P., 237 ego-ideal, 48, 104, 117, 152–3, 161,
difference, 5, 7, 90, 96, 100, 102, 103, 222, 238, 264, 265
106, 121, 122, 129, 147, 154, 161 ego-psychology, 104
diffusion of responsibility, 149 Ehrenreich, B., 15
discomfort, 18, 31, 59, 65, 102, 104 Elliott, A., 20, 21, 86, 91–6, 97, 104,
see also unpleasure 118, 128–9, 138, 198, 227
discourse, 16, 21, 24, 96, 110, 120, Ellis, H., 37
123, 125, 126, 129, 130, 160, 208, Ellul, J., 94
216, 224, 243, 244, 246, 247, 248, Elsner, C., 154
249, 250, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256 Elysium (film), 262
see also language emasculation, 23, 240, 241
Discourse Theory, 120 emergent norms, 155–6
disgust, 40, 165 emotion, see affect; feelings
Index 293
empathy, 172 excess, in Lacanian theory, 64, 102,

empiricism, 55 111, 122, 136
empty realism, see realism, empty expectations, emotions and, 163, 165,
empty signifier, see signifier, empty 185, 192
endogenous, fantasy as, 68–70 experience, and relationship to
end times fantasies, see doomsday fantasy, 19, 20, 30, 31, 35, 36–7,
fantasies 45, 55, 64, 65, 68, 69, 70, 74, 78,
energy, necessary for activism, 165 83, 84, 86, 92, 93, 94, 95, 100,
Engels, F., 2, 5, 19, 54, 55–7, 66, 87 103, 104, 106, 111, 118, 132, 136,
enjoyment, 8, 9, 14, 20, 24, 33, 44, 52, 137, 138, 143, 192, 194, 197, 199,
73, 91, 95, 102, 109, 114, 117, 221, 222, 226, 237, 239, 240
118, 123, 127–8, 145, 173, 200, see also memories
201, 203, 211, 218, 219, 227, 228, exploration of outer space, see space
241, 255, 257, 259, 260, 262, 263, exploration
264, 267, 268, 270, 271, 272 extermination fantasies, 64, 76
see also jouissance; pleasure; external allies, 174, 268
perverse enjoyment; external objects, 69, 71, 73, 75, 76, 80,
satisfaction 88, 92, 138, 143, 223
entrepreneurs, social movement see also objects
leaders as, 167, 174, 182, 208, external world, 8, 20, 21, 31, 32, 38,
266, 270 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 50, 51, 53, 55,
environmental movement, 12, 63, 66, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 80, 84,
216, 271 86, 87, 91, 92, 102, 110, 116, 135,
see also ecology movement 136, 137, 138, 146, 202, 204, 221,
envy, 54, 84, 88 228, 232, 247, 259, 265
equality, 54, 64, 153, 160, 170 see also brute materiality; material
equivalential chain, see chain of reality; reality
equivalence Eyerman, R., 262
epistemology, 54, 96, 193, 197
Erikson, E., 37, 53, 92, 204, 265
erogenous zones, social construction failure of mother, 80, 104, 118, 236
of, 102 see also absent mother; cold mother
Eros, 47, 64–5, 89–90 fairytales, 37
erotic fantasies, 39, 41, 47–8 fall, fantasies of the, 114
escape, fantasy as, 1, 54, 240 fallatio fantasy, 37
see also escapist movements; false consciousness, 13, 98, 120
withdrawal into fantasy family, 23, 50, 86, 89, 159, 197, 219,
escape into action, 95 230, 234, 236–7, 238, 262
escapist movements, 17, 23, 203–4 see also child; parents; siblings
ethical mode of being, the, 131 fancy, 58, 135
ethics, 7, 54, 66, 144 fandom, science fiction, 203, 221
ethnography, 211 fantasy echo, 129–30, 216, 253,
Evernden, N., 101 255, 272
evolution fantasy frame, see frames, fantasies as
Darwinian, 251–2 fantasy-thinking, see
evolution of social movements, 204, phantasy-thinking
257, 262, 268–72; see also fascism, 7, 61, 62, 64–5, 87, 159
phases of social movement see also anti-Seminism; Nazism;
development neo-fascism
294 Index
fatalistic mode of fantasy, see mode of freedom, 4, 8, 10, 24, 87, 148, 158,
fantasy, fatalistic 215, 243, 244, 245–7, 251
father, 42, 43, 84, 104, 108, 117, 163, Freedom Summer, 15
219, 222, 234, 239, 243 free-riders, 169–70
see also Name-of-the-Father; parents French Revolution, see Revolution,
fear, 40, 41, 51, 60, 61, 62, 65, 78, 80, French
83, 84, 90, 94, 109, 113, 192, 196, Freud, A., 67, 68, 69, 84, 136
222, 223, 228, 232, 235, 236, 240, Freud, S., 5, 6, 16, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26,
246, 249, 265 27, 29–66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72,
see also anxiety 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 80, 81, 85,
feelings, 35, 38, 74, 76, 78, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 96, 98, 99, 102,
86, 87, 109, 144, 155, 162, 164, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 119,
166, 184, 186, 224 123, 124, 135, 136, 144, 146, 148,
see also affect 152–3, 157, 160, 161, 164, 171,
Feiner, K. see Knafo, D. 190, 192, 201, 221, 222, 224, 232,
feminism, 2, 48, 154 264, 265
feminist history, 21, 129–30 Freudian theory, 10, 26, 29–66, 68, 69,
Ferenczi, S., 71 85, 89, 94, 97, 111, 116, 132, 142,
filk music, 24, 260, 261–2 158, 225
film as source of fantasy, 113 Friere, P., 57
Fink, B., 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 109, Fromm, E., 158, 159, 235
110, 112, 115, 116 frontier
Fish, L., 261 antagonistic, see antagonistic
fixation, 46, 138 frontier
flying fantasies, 224–5, 262 space, 24, 209, 253–6
forbidden, 108, 112, 114 Frosh, S., 86, 117, 236, 240, 265
see also Law, the; prohibitions frustration, 46, 50, 55, 68, 69, 76, 80,
fore-pleasure, 44 158, 161, 221–2, 236, 237, 272
see also softening of fantasy functionalism, 22, 60, 63, 157–9, 174,
Fornari, F., 259 184, 190–1, 197, 198, 232
Foucault, M., 132 fundamental fantasy, 113, 127
fragmentation, social, 116, 153 Furedi, F., 11, 17
see also atomization
frame alignment, 176, 180, 216, 247 Gagnon, B., 266
frames, 96, 129, 142, 176, 177, 182, Gamson, W., 186
209, 210, 252 Gandhi, M., 265
diagnostic, 176, 208 gaze, the, 102, 114, 224, 229
and emotions, 163–4, 165 gender, 22, 48, 77, 89, 209, 222, 239,
fantasies as, 91, 112, 113, 226 see also biology, sexual difference
master, 176 generalised belief, 22, 190–2, see also
motivational, 176, 254 beliefs
prognostic, 176, 209 genesis of fantasy, 34–6, 43, 68
and stories, 177 genocide fantasies, see extermination
framing theory, 3, 175–7, 186, 244 fantasies
Frankfurt School, 60, 87, 89 geographic expansion, 248
free association, see association geographic space, splitting of, 96, 254
Free Association Narrative Gettys, W. see Dawson, C.
Interviewing (FANI), 210, 212 Giddens, A., 7, 92, 93, 116, 177
Index 295
Glynos, J., 2, 98, 113, 119, 126, 130–1, Harvey, D., 2, 58, 96, 248
134, 136, 202 hate, 41, 43, 54, 76, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89,
God/gods, 61, 94, 179, 202, 220, 234 90, 123, 190, 272
God complex, 229 Hayman, A., 26, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 77,
God’s eye view, 229 83–4
see also religion Heaven, 53, 229
Goddard, R., 209–10, 218 hedonism, culture of, 235
Goffman, E., 176 hedonistic movements, 17, 22, 23,
golf on the Moon fantasy, 227 200, 201, 203, 258, 262, 264
good breast, see good mother Heelas, P., 10
good-enough environment, 119, 236 Hegel, G., 108, 121
good-enough mother, see good hegemony, 234, 246, 256
enough environment hegemonic logic, 122, 124
good mother, 72, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, hegemonic struggle, 120, 249
118, 119, 132, 228, 258 Heimann, P., 71
good object, 19, 71, 72, 75, 77, 82, 83, Heinlein, R., 209, 218
85, 90, 202–3 held, fantasy of being, 224, 225
Goodwin, J., 141, 142, 161, 162, 163, helplessness, 48, 52
164, 165, 174 see also vulnerability
Gramsci, A., 232, 233 Henry, J., 235
Gravity (film), 225 Henson, K., 253, 269
gravity, 223, 224, 225, 226, 243 herd instinct, 153, 168
Great Refusal, the, 89 heroism, 149, 150
greed, 88, 89, 247 hierarchical organization, see
grievance theories, 175 organization, hierarchical
group, the (psychoanalytic), 90–1, Hinshelwood, R., 71, 259, 265
152–3, 158, 161, 202, 258–9, historical materialism, 53, 56
264, 265 see also materialism
group influence, 156 history of pro-space movement, 206–8
growth, 24, 195, 215, 244, 247–8, Hitler, A., 150
252, 252 Hoffer, E., 158–9, 266
see also limits to growth Holloway, J., 5
guerilla gardening, 16 hollowed-out utopia, see utopia,
Guevara, C., 16 hollowed-out
guilt, 8, 19, 40, 42, 43, 51, 82, 83, 85, Hollway, W., 86, 197, 210, 212
88, 89, 93, 95, 131, 170, 202, Homer, S., 98, 101, 104, 105, 108, 111,
232, 235 112, 113
homosexuality, 196
Habermas, J., 4, 8, 177, 180, 195, 234 Hope, D., 226
habitus, 145, 180, 182 hope, 84, 88, 123–4, 154, 155,
radical habitus, 182 223, 228
hallucination, 18, 30–2, 33, 34, 76, 83, horror, 41, 113, 202, 203, 228
92, 203 hostile crazes, 17, 18, 23, 24, 201–2,
hallucinatory mode of fantasy, see 203, 204, 211, 213, 257, 258
mode of fantasy, hallucinatory see also crazes; hostile outbursts
hallucinatory satisfaction, 18, 21, hostile outbursts, 22, 185, 189
23, 30–2, 33, 34, 70, 73, 76, 77, Howard, A., 223, 241, 248, 271
80, 81 human nature, 24, 218, 252, 253
Hartmann, H., 45 humour, 14, 15
296 Index
Huntsville Alabama L-5 Society, 261 104, 105, 108, 110, 112, 116, 118,
hypnotism, 148, 149, 152 120, 122, 123, 130, 135, 136, 137,
hysterics, 40, 112, 232 138, 176, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209,
210, 223, 225, 227, 251, 252, 265
iconoclastic utopianism, see utopia, Lacanian, 20, 99, 100, 102–4, 105,
iconoclastic 108, 109, 112, 118, 120, 122,
id, 42, 43, 63, 71, 72, 77, 164, 235 123, 125, 126, 130, 132,
ideal I, see ego-ideal 258, 259
idealization, 19, 81, 82, 94, 202, 203, see also social imaginary
204, 222, 259, 266 Imagination, the (Coleridge), 58, 135
ideal types, 22, 23, 135, 142, 166 imaginative turn, 2, 3, 210
ideal values, 166 imagining (Winnicott), as distinct
ideational representatives, 109 from fantasying, 137
identification, 1, 7, 44, 50, 71, 76, 90, imagos, 19, 81, 82
97, 102, 104, 107, 115, 117, 119, imitation, 149, 150–1, 152, 154
120, 122, 123, 129, 130, 132, 135, impotence, 46, 158, 159
153, 156, 157, 161, 202, 218, 221, impulsers, 8
226, 229, 230, 234, 238, 260, 264, inadequacy, sense of, 48
265, 272 incest
see also projective identification incest taboo, 46
identity, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 20, 60, 91, 93,
incestuous wishes, 43
96, 107, 111, 116, 118, 119, 120,
individual fantasies, 129, 241, 259
121, 122, 123, 125, 127, 129, 130,
individualization, 7, 10, 158, 238
131, 136, 142, 149, 156, 158, 159,
inequality, 158, 169, 187
160, 164, 171, 176, 178, 219, 259,
Infante, J., 33, 37, 80
268, 272
inferring the existence of unconscious
spoiled identity, 158
fantasy, 78–9
identity politics, 7, 119
ideological mode of being, 131 ingress, 4
ideology, 6, 7, 10, 13, 23, 24, 55, 57, inner direction, 10, 232
59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 94, 115, 119, inner revolution, 9
120, 122, 124–5, 126, 127, 128, insatiability, 111, 116, 117
129, 132, 155, 165, 167, 172, 175, inspiration in pro-space discourse, 24,
176, 180, 184, 190, 198, 210, 213, 210, 218, 220, 244, 248, 249–50
216, 217, 218, 230, 243–56, 257, instant gratification, 235
259, 260, 270, 271, 272 instincts, 19, 20, 29, 30, 32, 37, 40, 47,
illusion as synonym for fantasy, 33, 52, 55, 64, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 79,
51–2 80, 82, 88, 101–2, 108, 109, 132,
illusory self, 236 147, 148, 149, 152, 159
images, 2, 6, 11, 13, 19, 20, 23, 31, 32, see also herd instinct;
38, 39, 40, 46, 48, 66, 69, 70, 77, self-preservation instinct; sex
78, 96, 102, 103, 104, 105, 112, instinct
113, 116, 134, 149, 160, 209, 211, institutionalization, 155, 181, 186,
221, 224, 225, 238, 240, 243, 263, 268, 269, 272
255, 262 institutionalized movements, 17, 23,
imaginary, 1, 2, 3, 6, 10, 12, 13, 16, 202, 204, 258, 262, 264
27, 33, 34, 40, 41, 43, 46, 50, 51, institutional politics, 10, 11
52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 65, 67, 79, institutionals, 8
85, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 103, institutional unconscious, 259
Index 297
instrumentally rational action, 14, 21, Jacoby, R., 57

22, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, Jameson, F., 2, 5–6, 19, 56, 57–60, 209
165–77, 178, 180, 183, 188, Jamison, A. see Eyerman, R.
199, 200 Jasper, J., 3, 11, 141, 161, 162 163,
see also rationality 164, 165, 174
integration, social, 97, 174, 188, 249 jealousy, 84, 88
intended meaning, 110, 143, 146, Jefferson, T., 197, 212
151, 181 Jensen’s Gradiva, 41
see also meaningful action Jessop, B., 101
interest politics, 7 jesters, 12, 15
interests, 57, 62, 63, 120, 142, 149, Jews, 63, 64, 123
157, 165, 166, 167, 168–9, 170, Jones, E., 229
172, 176, 187, 194, 206, 210, jouissance, 20, 102, 108, 109, 111, 112,
215, 270 118, 123, 125, 128, 132, 173, 201,
internal needs, 31, 32 203, 226, 254–6, 262, 267
see also needs see also enjoyment
internal objects, 45, 69, 71, 75, 76, judgement, 49, 72
82, 93 Jung, C., 26, 42, 46, 111, 229
see also objects
internal politics, 24, 263
Kant, I., 45
International Space Development
Keller, C., 222–3
Conference (ISDC), 212, 217, 255,
260, 261, 262, 266, 270, 271 Kilgore, D., 206, 207, 208, 209
interpretation, psychoanalytic, 48, Killian, L., see Turner, R.
111, 124, 224, 225, 226, 227, 229 Klapp, O., 159
interpellation, 117, 124–5, 127, 128 Klein, M., 10, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27, 36,
interstitial utopias, see utopias, 45, 67–97, 99, 103, 109, 112, 113,
interstitial 118, 119, 131, 134, 136, 137, 190,
201, 221, 222, 235
interventionist mode of fantasy, see
mode of fantasy, interventionalist Kleinian theory, 19, 26, 27, 40, 41,
67–97, 111, 116, 118, 119, 136,
introjection, 71, 72, 75, 81, 82, 83,
190, 227, 227, 258
228, 235
Knafo, D., 1, 45
introspective, 8, 248
Kornhauser, W., 159
introversion, 42, 46
Kovel, J., 237
inverted protests, 10
Ku Klux Klan (KKK), 125
irony, 14, 15
irrationality, 1, 13, 49, 54, 60, 87, 117,
127, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, L-5 Society, 207, 239
151, 154, 157, 159, 160, 162, 165, Lacan, J., 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 41, 45, 68,
178, 181, 185, 187, 188, 194, 196, 98–133, 136, 171, 201, 220,
199, 210, 211, 258 223, 241
Isaacs, S., 25, 27, 41, 67, 68, 70, 71, 72, Lacanian Left, the, 119, 123, 124
73, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 84, Lacanian theory, 2, 4, 5, 20, 26, 27,
103, 109 40, 59, 63, 64, 81, 93, 94, 95,
isolated social demand, 120, 121, 98–133, 136, 148, 173, 223, 224,
122, 124 226, 245, 258, 259, 268
isolation, 158, 159, 189 lack, 105, 107, 116, 117, 120, 122,
Israel, 126 123, 124, 125, 128, 132
298 Index
Laclau, E., 2, 7, 13, 20, 106, 119, libertarian right, 24, 213, 244, 245,
120–2, 124, 130, 131, 146, 160–1, 246, 249, 251, 256
211, 230, 254, 264 see also collapsed libertarianism
language, 3, 11, 38, 39, 66, 77, 78, 79, libido, 35, 42, 46, 47, 76, 80, 82, 87,
100, 101, 102, 103, 105–11, 113, 131, 135, 152, 221, 222
114, 115, 118, 120, 124, 134, 135, life instinct, 80
149, 159, 160, 224, 227, 261 see also instinct
see also discourse lifestyle politics, 7
Laplanche, J., 37, 41, 112 lifeworld, 195–6
Larana, E., 7, 8 limits to growth thesis, 207, 208,
Lasch, C., 9–10, 14, 24, 117, 118, 209, 247
221–2, 228, 231–7, 238, 239, 240, liquid modernity, 6
241, 242 see also late modernity
late modernity, 92, 93, 116, 117, 195 literary movements, 203
see also postmodernity literature as a source of fantasy, 43,
Launius, R., 217, 244 113, 218
Law, the (Lacan), 94, 108–9, 113, 114, lobbying, 169, 205, 207, 210, 212,
115, 128, 201, 226 215, 245, 255, 260, 263, 267,
see also forbidden; prohibitions; 269, 270
transgression local chapters, 205
Leader, D., 25, 67, 68, 99, 103, 105, logic
109, 112, 113 of difference, 161
leadership, 16, 24, 54, 147, 148, 149, of equivalence, 161
150, 152, 153, 155, 161, 164, 172, of object a, 122, 124
176, 186, 196, 212, 213, 217, of protest, 15, 179–80
264–8, 269, 271, 272 logocentrism, 106
London riots, 149
charismatic leadership, 264, 268
see also riots
narcissistic leadership, 24, 161, 213,
loosening the grip of fantasy, 130–1
264, 265, 266, 267, 268, 272
loss, 23, 71, 76, 83, 113, 114, 131,
pragmatic leadership, 24, 264,
222, 229
267, 268
love, 46, 76, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89, 90,
and prestige, 148, 152
104–5, 111, 152, 153, 163, 164,
see also agitator theories
165, 167, 190, 222, 236, 239, 267
Le Bon, G., 144, 146–50, 151, 152,
see also cavitas; self-love
153, 154, 156, 157, 160, 164, 183,
lynching, 2, 125–6, 175
211, 265
Lyotard, J-F., 215
Lefebvre, H., 16
Left Bank (Paris), 118 Machiavellianism, 202
Left melancholia, 7–8 Maffesoli, M., 4–5
LeGuin, U., 60 magnetic influence, 148, 149
Lemlij, M., 34, 48, 79 see also hypnotism
Lenin, V., 56, 150 Malthus, R., 247
Lewis, J., 247 managerialism, 233, 234
Lewis, M., 253, 255, 256 mania, 84, 94, 230
LGBTI, as acronym, 107 Mannheim, K., 6
liberalism, 3, 58, 87, 90, 209, 234 Marcuse, H., 15, 16, 17, 89, 90, 129,
see also neoliberalism 194, 246
libertarianism, 244, 246, 247, 271 marginalization, 159, 239
Index 299
Mars, 205,218, 226, 227, 251, 253, Melucci, A., 8, 16, 174, 180, 183,
266, 267 194, 258
Mars One, 217 meme, 253
Mars Society, 207, 212, 239, 247, memories, and fantasy, 31, 32, 35,
249, 255 36–7, 38, 42, 50, 68, 69, 70,
Marx, G., 141, 157, 187, 191, 192 110, 113
Marx, K., 2, 19, 54–7, 60, 66, 87, 194 mental unity of crowds, 149
see also Marxism messianism, 126
Marx Hubbard, B., 217, 227–8 metanarrative, 215
Marxism, 2, 4, 7, 13, 16, 19, 53–7, 120, see also narrative
141, 145, 175, 180, 187, 194, 233, metaphor, in language, 107, 108, 110,
237, 245 118, 127
see also Marx, K.; post-Marxism; methodology, 78, 211–12
rational choice Marxism see also inferring the existence of
mass movements, 9, 60, 158, 159, 266 unconscious fantasy
mass psychology, 143, 144, 145, metonym, 107, 110
147, 150 Michaud, M., 206, 207, 208, 210, 217,
master frames, see frames, master 223, 238, 239, 266, 268, 269
masturbatory fantasy, 43, 46, 76 Michels, R., 268
materialism, 55
micro-utopias, see utopias, micro
see also historical materialism
middle classes, 54, 182, 238, 239
material reality, 15, 27, 44, 45, 47, 56,
see also class
69, 73, 95, 101, 109, 126, 132,
Milgram, S., 156
248, 260
millenarian movements, 17, 23, 202–3
see also brute materiality; external
world; reality mining asteroids, 227, 228
material values, 166 mirror stage, 102–4
May, 1968 9, 14, 87 mise-en-scene of desire, fantasy as, 112
McAdam, D., 15, 174, 175, 186 see also staging of desire
McCarthy, J., 171, 186, 200 mock reparative fantasies, 230
McDougall, W., 152, 158, 160, 161 modernism, 4, 7, 249
McGowan, T., 127, 128 modernist fantasies, 227
McIntyre, V., 209 modernity, 6, 8, 14, 58, 64, 91–2, 94,
meaning, nature of, 39, 77, 103, 95, 96, 117, 147, 187, 237, 238
106–7, 111, 122, 130, 136, see also late modernity;
137, 160 postmodernity
meaningful action, 142, 143, 144, modes of fantasy, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22,
146, 150–1 23, 24,26, 91, 118, 131, 132,
means (in relation to ends), 12, 142, 134–8, 135, 183, 213, 230, 240,
143–4, 166, 167, 168, 172, 173, 242, 257, 271, 200, 202, 231,
178, 179, 198, 216 265, 272
see also instrumentally-rational closed, 131, 134
action depressive, 17, 21, 23, 82, 132,
mechanical, criticism of Smelser’s 136–7, 138, 202, 271; see also
theory as, 22, 192 depressive position
media, 11, 12, 13, 16, 87, 96, 113, 186, dissociative, 17, 21, 137, 203–4; see
234, 238, 266 also dissociative, fantasy as
melancholia, 7, 173, 202 fatalistic, 17, 21, 137, 202–3
300 Index
modes of fantasy – continued narcissistic fantasy, 23, 57, 213,

hallucinatory, 17, 135, 136, 137, 222–3, 230, 231, 240
200; see also hallucination; narcissistic leadership, see
hallucinatory satisfaction leadership, narcissistic
interventionalist, 17, 20, 21, 138, narcissistic punctum, 6, 59
204, 267, 271, 272 see also culture of narcissism
narcissistic, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 119, narcissistic mode of fantasy, see mode
131, 135–6, 137, 138, 201, 231, of fantasy, narcissistic
240, 257, 271; see also narrative, 2, 13, 114, 127, 176–7, 203,
narcissism 206–8, 212, 215, 218, 219, 254
open, 134 see also metanarrative
Moe, T., 167, 170, 172, 179, 210, 266 narrative analysis, 176
Moon, 205, 207, 219, 220, 223, 226, nation, 2, 6, 126, 255
227, 228, 241, 247, 253, 255, National Aeronautics and Space
267, 271 Administration (NASA), 207, 220,
as breast, 227 221, 226, 268, 269, 270
see also buying Moon nationalism, 210, 215, 244, 249
moral panics, 162 national malaise, 231
see also panics National Space Institute (NSI), 207,
More, T., 59 239, 267
mother, 37, 42, 46, 69, 70, 74, 77, 78, National Space Society (NSS), 207,
79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 89, 100, 208, 270
102, 104, 105, 108, 112, 113, 118, nature, 53, 89, 90, 101, 226, 249, 252
119, 130, 132, 218, 221, 222, 224, see also human nature
225, 227, 229, 235, 235, 258 nature reserve, as metaphor for
mother Earth, 228, 229, 230 fantasy, 33, 42
motivated looking, 50 Nazism, 60, 123, 159, 162, 207, 266
motivation, fantasy as, 34, 48, 50, 64, see also anti-Semitism; fascism;
72–5, 134, 204 Hitler, A.
motivational frames, see frames, need, 14, 30, 31, 32, 45, 54, 62, 63, 64,
motivational 71, 73, 101–2, 104, 111, 117, 158,
motivational understanding, 162 166, 211, 221, 235, 236, 247,
Mouffe, C., 123 252–4
mourning, 83, 131 distinguished from demand and
music, see filk music desire, 111, 211
Mussolini, B., 150 negative freedom, 243, 246, 247
myths, 4, 6, 37, 50, 126, 155, 220, 229 see also freedom
myth of the hero, 229 neo-fascism, 7
see also fascism
Nagera, H., 37 neoliberalism, 6, 117, 244, 246
Name-of-the-Father, 108, 110, see also liberalism
117, 118 networks, 17, 164, 174, 186
see also father neurosis, 20, 39, 40, 45, 46, 47, 51, 71,
narcissism, 7, 10, 24, 48, 53, 54, 69, 79, 99, 132, 136, 195
85, 92, 102, 103, 104, 105, 117, new age movements, 10
152, 159, 202, 210, 221–3, 229, new social movements, 4, 7, 8, 10, 16,
231–8, 239, 240, 241, 249, 142, 180, 269
258, 265 New Social Movement Theory, 3, 21,
narcissistic anarchism, 10 139, 145, 180, 194, 258
Index 301
NewSpace movement, 207, 208, opportunistic utopianism, see utopia,

269, 270 opportunistic
Newton, I., 226 oral attacks, 80
new vitalism, 157 oral impulses, 71
nirvana, 100, 226 organization
normalcy of fantasy, 39–40, 79–80 hierarchical, 24, 213, 233, 263–4
norm-oriented movements, 22, 185, of movements, 22, 87, 155, 174,
186, 189, 190 180, 186, 199
nuclear catastrophe, 228 of pro-space movement, 24, 213,
257–72
organizational studies, 258, 259, 264
obedience, 153
origins of fantasy, 36–7, 218–20
Oberth, H., 218
see also endogenous, fantasy as;
object, see bad object; external objects;
fundamental fantasy
good object; internal object;
Osborn, R., 54–5
object petit a; part-objects;
Other, the (big), 7, 105, 110, 127, 259
transitional objects
other, the (little), 76, 81, 87, 90, 94,
object petit a, 99, 108, 109, 112, 118,
95, 99, 104, 105, 219, 255
120, 122, 124, 125, 127, 129, 218
outer space protection movement, 96,
object relations, 69, 84, 88, 91, 93, 136
205, 266
object relations theory, 70, 73, 88,
over-determination, 122, 124, 137,
224, 258, 259, 264
225, 226
obsessional neurosis, 51, 112 over-investment (in child), 236
see also neurosis
obstacles (in fantasy), 42, 59, 123, pain, 32, 75, 76, 81, 88, 92, 102, 112,
136, 173, 201, 204, 226, 243, 263, 113, 128, 222
267, 268, 272 panics, 22, 185, 188, 189, 228
Occupy the Moon, 271 see also moral panics
Occupy Wall Street, 130 paranoid-schizoid position, 19, 20, 21,
Oedipal fantasies, 42, 190 82–3, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 94, 95,
Oedipus complex, 61–2, 84, 102, 105, 97, 118, 134, 136, 198, 201, 202,
108–9, 163, 190 251, 265
see also castration see also splitting
Ogilvie, D., 224–5 parapraxis, 29, 110, 126
Olson, M., 21, 166–70, 173, 183 parents, 35, 36, 37, 42, 54, 61, 63, 71,
omnipotence, 23, 48, 76, 80, 81, 82, 80, 81, 84, 85, 103, 112, 114, 219,
85, 92, 94, 105, 159, 201, 211, 227, 234, 235, 236, 237, 239
221, 222, 223, 228, 229, 230, 236, see also father; mother
237, 240, 265 Paris Commune, 147
O’Neill, G., 207, 208, 209, 217, 228, Park, R., 153–4, 158, 160
240, 243, 247, 255, 266, 269 Parker, I., 124–5, 126, 127, 128, 129
ontological security, 92–3 Parsons, T., 60, 184, 188, 190, 194
ontology, 2, 4, 13, 14, 17, 19, 22, 25, parties, 14, 24, 205, 212, 260, 261
26, 29, 46, 47, 55, 61, 65, 66, 67, part-objects, 71, 80, 81
75, 96, 98, 101, 103, 119, 132, paternal metaphor, see
199, 183, 185, 197, 198, 199, 232, Name-of-the-Father
237, 260 pathologizing activism, 89, 97, 144,
open mode of fantasy, see mode of 158, 160, 162, 195, 196, 211
fantasy, open pathology and fantasy, 1, 40, 79
302 Index
patriarchy, 105, 108, 222 political reductionism, 174

see also gender politicians, 11, 147, 267, 270
Payne, S., 42 Pontalis, J-B., see Laplanche, J.
peace, in pro-space discourse, 24, 215, populism, 121, 125, 146, 160
230, 244, 251 conservative populism, 125
peace movement, 178, 179 post-industrialism, 8
penis, 37, 105, 111, 224, 226 post-Marxism, 13, 120
see also phallus post-material politics, 8
perception, 19, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38, postmodernism, 8, 249
45, 49, 50, 55, 56, 65, 66, 68, postmodernity, 9, 91, 92, 187, 189
73–7, 79, 82, 85, 96, 100, 102, see also late modernity
103, 104, 134, 136, 176, 184, 198 post-structuralism, 7, 13, 107, 132
persecution, fantasies of, 80, 81, 82, potential space, 92, 138, 204, 259
84, 91 Pournelle, J., 208, 209
Person, E., 33, 41, 68 poverty, 195, 216, 218, 244
personality, 8, 22, 39, 42, 60, 61, 62, see also deprivation
63, 64, 78, 118, 163, 194, 196,
pragmatic leadership, see leadership,
197, 229, 231, 232, 233, 234, 236,
pragmatic
237, 238, 240, 254, 264, 265
praxis/practice, utopia as, see utopia,
perverse enjoyment, 109, 126,
as praxis
203, 241
pre-conscious system, 19, 30, 34, 35,
see also enjoyment; transgression
37, 38, 65, 66, 79
phallus, 104–5, 108, 109, 118, 226
preferences, individual, 170–1, 172
phallic pleasure, 223, 224; see also
prefigurative movements, 17, 23, 204
penis
prefigurative utopias, see utopias,
phantasy, as spelling of fantasy, 26–7
prefigurative
phantasy-thinking, 72
pre-Oedipal phase, 104–5
phases of social movement
prestige, of leaders, see leadership and
development, 155, 186
prestige
see also evolution of social
movements primal fantasies, 37
phylogenetic fantasy, 37, 38 primal horde, 153
Planetary Society, 208 primary group, 153, 161
play, 3, 14, 15, 16, 33, 49, 73, 78, 92 see also group, the
pleasure, 4, 15, 32, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, primary process, 31, 34
47, 58, 68, 81, 92, 102, 104, 114, see also condensation; displacement
125, 127, 179, 201, 224, 228, 272 primitive fantasies, 42
see also enjoyment prison riots, 196
pleasure principle, 31, 32, 33, 41, 102 see also riots
policing, 156, 163, 186 privatised utopias, see utopias,
political demands, see demands, privatised
political problem-solving, fantasy and, 49
political disengagement, 10, 11 prognostic frames, see frames,
political opportunities, 174, 175, prognostic
185, 270 progress, belief in, 4, 56, 195, 249
political organization, see organization progressive politics, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13,
of movements 20, 21, 93, 94, 97, 237
political process theory, 3, 174, 175, prohibitions, 84, 102, 108, 127, 173
186, 258, 268, 270 see also forbidden; Law, the
Index 303
projection, 63, 74, 75, 76, 80, 81, 86, rationality, 1, 64, 93, 120, 141, 142,
87, 89, 90, 95, 104, 202, 236, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148 154, 157,
259, 264 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 167, 170,
projective identification, 19, 75, 76, 173, 177, 178, 181, 188, 195, 258
80, 83, 94, 265 substantive rationality, 179
proletariat, see working class see also instrumentally rational
ProSpace, 207, 212, 243, 244, 245, action
248, 250, 255, 256, 260, rationalization, of action, 63–4, 144,
267, 270 146, 179, 216
pro-space movement, 18, 23–4, rational understanding, 143
205–72 reaction formation, 42
prosperity in pro-space discourse, 24, Reaganism, see Thatcherism
195, 215, 244, 245 Real, the (Lacanian), 20, 100–1, 107,
protestivals, 14, 201 116, 120, 122, 125, 126, 132,
proto-concepts, 102 226, 262
psychic reality, 27, 45 realism, 98
see also reality empty, 101
psychic reciprocity, 154 see also critical realism
psychobiography, 224, 266 reality, 1, 2, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21,
see also biography 25, 26, 27, 28, and passim
psychological expressivism, 147 see also brute materiality; external
see also crowd psychology world; material reality; psychic
psychosis, 34, 39, 40, 80, 98, 105, 223 reality
psychosocial theory, 17, 20, 22, 97, reality principle, 13, 31, 32, 33, 49, 63,
139, 194–7, 210, 211, 92, 136
212, 241 reality-testing, 18, 21, 32, 34, 42, 50,
see also synthetic approach 56, 65, 66, 72, 73, 77, 80, 87, 95,
public goods, 169, 170 136, 150, 211
public utopias, see utopias, public reality-thinking, 72
publics, 153, 154, 156, 160, 161 realization of fantasy, 34, 40, 46, 60,
public sphere, 177, 182 123, 126, 136, 203, 204
puritanism, 14, 234 reason, role of, 8, 42, 52, 55, 56, 65,
purposive incentives, 167, 179 89, 90, 127, 154, 163, 164,
see also selective incentives 171, 192
reflexes, 30, 31
queer theory, 13 reflexive modernization, 7, 92
reflexivity, 91–4, 146, 177, 220, 271
race, 209 regression, 35, 46, 49, 115, 192, 226,
racial unconscious, 148 241, 259, 265
radical habitus, see habitus radical Reich, W., 9, 60, 87, 235
radical heterogeneity, 121 Reicher, S., 148, 149, 153, 156–7
see also difference religion, 4, 10, 51, 52, 53, 144, 166,
rational actor theory, 3, 21, 139, 144, 167, 177, 197, 208, 222, 244,
162, 166, 170, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250
174, 176 see also God/gods
rational choice Marxism, 21, 145, 171 reparation, 19, 23, 82, 84, 88, 89,
rational choice theory, see rational 90, 230
actor theory; rational choice reparative reason, 90
Marxism see also mock reparative fantasies
304 Index
repertoires of protest, 175 Russian Revolution, see Revolution,

see also tactics Russian
repetition Rustin, M., 20, 86–89, 90, 91, 93,
of history, 173 94, 97
of ideas, 148
repression sadomasochism, and authoritarian
psychic, 9, 30, 34, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, personality, 61
43, 52, 55, 64, 69, 72, 76, 77, Sagan, C., 208, 210, 253, 266, 269
88, 95, 101, 108, 110, 151, 152, Saganites, 208
172, 173, 190 Sahlins, M., 252
social, 9, 14, 15, 87, 174, Sandler, A-M., 35
243, 244 Sandler, J., 35, 37
repressive desublimation, 90 Sartre, J-P., 104
repressive satisfaction, 15, 128 satire, 15
Republic of the Moon (Arts satisfaction, 18, 19, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32,
Catalyst), 271 33, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45,
resistance habitus, see habitus, radical 46, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 69,
resource mobilization theory, 3, 139, 72, 73, 80, 89, 101, 111, 112, 116,
162, 174, 176, 182, 186, 117, 132, 136, 146, 152, 154, 155,
187, 258 166, 167, 172, 173, 200, 211, 232,
revenge, fear of, 81 236, 271
revolution, 7, 9, 10,54, 56, 58, 147–8, see also hallucinatory satisfaction;
181, 189, 195 repressive satisfaction
French Revolution, 211 Saussure, F. de, 103, 105, 106, 107, 110
scapegoats, 5, 123, 189
Russian Revolution, 53
Schutz, A., 143
revolutionaries, 58, 194, 195
science, 52, 55, 94, 62, 100, 207, 208,
rhetoric, 87, 205, 212, 216, 266
215, 249
Riesman, D., 159, 232
see also technology
riots, 2, 149, 156, 196
science fiction, 23, 206, 207, 209, 218,
ritualized protest, 145
220, 221, 240, 241, 255, 261,
see also routinized protest
262, 266
Robinson, K., 209 see specifically fandom, science
rocket clubs, 206, 207 fiction; space fiction
rockets, 206, 209, 219, 223, 225, 226 scientific socialism, see socialism,
Rodeheaver, D., see Weeber, S. scientific
Roemer, J., 171 Scott, J., 21, 129–30, 158, 216
romanticizing the frontier, 24, 254, secondary elaboration, 58
255, 256 secondary process thought, 18, 32, 48,
see also frontier, space 49, 65, 66, 80, 85, 87
romantic movement, the, 16, 203 see also thinking
Roosevelt, T., 150 sectarianism, new, 17
Rose, J., 1, 2, 45, 126, 177 seduction theory, 36
routine and ontological security, 93 Segal, H., 85
routinized protest, 181, 202 Segal, J., 67, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80,
see also ritualized protest 81, 83, 84, 85, 89
Rubin, J., 9 selective incentives, 164, 170
Rude, G., 211 see also purposive incentives;
Russell, B., 107, 249 solidary selective incentives
Index 305
self-dramatization, 10 socialism, 54, 56, 57, 86–90, 120, 147,

self-expression, 9, 11, 17 159, 160, 209
self-gratification, 9, 87, 235 scientific socialism, 56
self-help, 234 utopian socialism, 56, 57, 87
self-identity, 8 see also communism; Marxism
self-immolation, 15, 175, 180 social identity theory, 156
self-interest, 167, 235 socialization of reproduction, 234
self-loathing, 159, 235, 240 social movement society, 11
self-love, 222, 235, 240 sociobiology, 24, 251–2
self-preservation instinct, 29–30, 101 see also evolution, Darwinian
see also instincts softening of fantasy, 6, 19, 44, 58, 59,
self-realization, 89 66, 136, 203, 217, 261
self-sufficiency, 117, 222 solar power satellites, 247
Sennett, R., 9, 238 solidary selective incentives, 164,
senses, 21, 32, 38, 56, 135 167, 172
see also perception see also selective incentives
separation, 84, 88, 99, 100, 104, 108, somatic, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 77
112, 221, 222, 228, 229 Soviet bloc, 127
sex instinct, 29 Soviets, 123, 126, 250
see also instincts space art, 24, 212, 260, 262, 271
shame, 36, 41, 44 space colonization, 24, 205, 209, 210,
Sharpe, E. see Payne, S. 215, 217, 218, 227, 228, 240, 245,
Shepard, B., 14–16, 260 247, 253, 255, 261, 262, 267, 269
short-circuiting change, social space development, 205, 208, 209,
movements as, 187, 192, 193, 198 210, 212, 215, 216, 217, 218, 223,
siblings, 43, 104, 190, 222 244, 245, 247, 249, 261, 270
Sighele, S., 146, 154, 156 space exploration, 205, 208, 209, 210,
signified, 105, 106, 108, 110, 122, 160, 212, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 223,
171, 172 236, 238–9, 245, 249, 252, 253,
signifier, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 254, 261, 270
110, 122, 126, 130, 132, 171, 246 Space Exploration Alliance (SEA)
empty signifier, 122 coalition, 271
transcendental signifier, 107 spacefaring civilization, fantasy of, 24,
simulacrum, 13 205, 209, 211, 213, 216, 217, 218,
Singer, J., 47 230, 241, 243, 245, 250, 256, 257,
Sisyphus, 220 258, 260, 269, 270, 272
situationism, 14 space fiction, 23
slips of the tongue, see parapraxis see also science fiction
Smelser, N., 22, 60, 62, 152, 158, 159, space frontier, see frontier, space
175, 184–99, 200, 201, 228 Space Frontier Foundation, 207, 255
Snow, D., 172, 175, 176, 177, 186, space funerals, 225–6
190, 216, 244, 254 space industry lobby, 207, 270
Sobieraj, S., 16 space missions, 23, 219, 220, 221, 241,
social democratic politics, see 253, 261
democracy, social see also watching space missions
social imaginary, 24, 138, 260, 261, space programmes, 207, 216, 239,
262, 271, 272 250, 253, 271
see also imaginary space resources, see space development
306 Index
space settlement, see space substitution, 29, 37, 40, 42, 43, 46, 48,
colonization 78, 108, 109, 113, 135, 136, 152,
space tourism, 205, 207, 217, 153, 223, 226
241, 270 see also translation into
space tourism movement, 207 consciousness
spatial fixes, 248 suggestion, psychological, 148, 149,
spectacle, 11, 12, 13, 16 152, 157, 160, 161
Spillius, E., 69, 71, 75, 76 suicide, 194
Sun, death of, 228
spiritual consumption, 9
superego, 10, 42, 43, 51, 54, 55, 62, 63,
split subject (Lacan), 104
66, 88, 94, 109, 117, 234, 235, 237
splitting, as paranoid-schizoid
supplementary spaces for fantasy, 24,
mechanism, 19, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87,
260, 262, 272
90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 190, 201,
survivalist fantasy, 24, 228, 240, 242
202, 203
suspension of disbelief, 34, 203
splitting of ego, 81, 82 Symbolic, the (Lacan), 20, 100–1, 102,
see also geographic space, splitting 103, 105, 107, 108–9, 110, 111,
of; paranoid-schizoid position 112, 114, 115, 118, 120, 122, 125,
spoiled identity, see identity, spoiled 126, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 211,
Staggenborg, S., 191, 192 220, 221, 223
staging of desire, fantasy as, 13, 112, symbolic interactionism, 158
114, 125, 203, 221, 223, 226, 228 see also Blumer, H.
Star Trek, 215, 255 symbolization, 3, 13, 71, 75, 95, 125,
state, the, 2, 94, 130, 159, 175, 208, 137, 160, 207, 223, 229, 230, 253,
209, 233, 234, 243, 244, 246, 258, 259, 260, 262
247, 256 symptoms, 13, 29, 39, 40, 46, 47, 61,
Stavrakakis, Y., 5, 14, 20, 81, 98, 101, 78, 81, 85, 110, 126, 245, 256
105, 107, 108, 109, 11, 112, 113, syndrome, 61, 135
116, 119, 120, 122–4, 125, 127, synecdoche, 110, 122
128, 129, 131, 148, 257, 259, 262 synthetic approach, 22, 194, 196,
stereotypy, 63, 65 197, 198
Stern, S., 9 see also psychosocial theories
stories, see narrative
tactics, 155, 175, 260
Strachey, J., 29, 53
see also repertoires of protest
strain, social, 22, 158, 175, 182, 184,
Taine, H., 146, 160, 211
185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192,
Tajfel, H., 156, 157
195, 197, 198
taming, fantasies about, 227
stress, 19, 85
Tarde, G., 146, 149, 150, 154, 157,
structural conduciveness, 22, 185, 160, 161
187, 198 Tarrow, S., 11, 165, 175, 185
structural model (Freud), 42–3 technology, significance of, 94, 210,
structural models of social 211, 213, 222, 229, 261
movements, issues with, 194 see also science
structuration, 197 telescopes, 219
sublimation, 9, 24, 52, 75, 88, 146, television as source of fantasy, 113,
181, 263, 272 219, 230
substantive rationality, see rationality, temporary autonomous zones, 5
substantive terraforming, 227, 245
Index 307
Thatcherism, 10 Turner, F.J., 255

therapeutic practice, 47, 111 Turner, R., 4, 8–9, 149, 155
thinking, 5, 12, 29, 31, 32, 33, 38, 49, types of action, 21, 141–83
62, 66, 68, 72, 73, 76, 79, 82, 83, see also affective action;
85, 92, 94, 95, 99, 100, 104, 112, instrumentally-rational action;
113, 126, 132, 135, 155, 162, 163, traditional action;
164, 165, 178, 180, 189, 198, 201, value-rational action
216, 218, 220, 245, 265 types of social movement, 17, 18, 22,
in images, 19, 33, 38–9, 66, 77, 134 138, 188–9, 191, 200–4, 201,
in words (verbal thought), 19, 33, 211, 262
38–9, 66, 77, 134, 135 see also escapist movements;
see also secondary process thought hedonistic movements; hostile
three moments of fantasy (past, crazes; institutionalized
present, future), 35 movements; millenarian
Tilly, C., 174, 175, 179, 181, 185, 186 movements; prefigurative
Tolkien, J., 203 movements
topographic model (Freud), 29, 30, 41
Touraine, A., 8, 11 uncertainty, 61, 91, 131
tourism, see space tourism unconscious, the, 1, 3, 18, 19, 22, 25,
traditional action, 21, 144, 145, 146, 26, 27, 29–30, 70–2, 109–11, and
179, 181–3, 200 passim
transcendence, 228–9 uneven development, 204
transcendental signifier, see signifier, United Nations (UN), 95–6
transcendental unity, fantasies about, 23, 84, 122,
transference, 46, 78 201, 211, 221, 222, 223, 225, 226,
transgression, 95, 108, 114, 128, 160 228, 229, 230
see also Law, the unpleasure, 31, 32
trans-ideological fantasy, 115, 245, see also discomfort
249, 252, 265 utopia, 2, 3, 4–7, 15, 16, 19, 52, 56,
transitional objects, 92–3 57, 58, 59, 60, 66, 73, 85, 87, 88,
see also objects 90, 96, 122–4, 132, 154, 189, 190,
transitional space, 93, 259 202, 209, 217, 255, 256
translation concrete utopias, 57
into action, 94, 95 hollowed-out utopias, 7
into consciousness, 29, 48; see also iconoclastic utopianism, 57
substitution interstitial utopias, 4–5
trauma, 41, 94, 101, 115, 122 micro-utopias, 5
traversing the fantasy, 20, 21, 115, opportunistic utopianism, 190
116, 119, 123, 132, 271 utopia as praxis, 5
traversing utopia, 5, 123, 131 prefigurative utopias, 16
trial action, 16, 49 privatised, 6
truth, the abandonment of, public, 6
11–13 see also anti-anti-utopianism;
Tsiolkovsky, K., 218, 223, anti-utopianism
225, 253 utopian form, 57, 58
Tumlinson, R., 207, 208, 216, 246, utopian impulse, 57, 58, 190
247, 266 utopian socialism, see socialism,
Turner, J., see Tajfel, H. utopian
Turner, F., 249 utopian studies, 2
308 Index
value-added model (Smelser), Widener, A., 147, 150

185–8, 191 Wilson, E., 251
value-oriented movements, 22, 185, Winnicott, D., 26, 92, 137, 138, 204,
187, 189, 190 236, 259
value-rational action, 21, 145, 172, wishes, 1, 5, 6, 8, 20, 21, 23, 30, 31,
177–81, 183, 200 32, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44,
value-rationalization, 144, 146 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 56, 58, 62,
Veldman, M., 203 63, 68, 69, 72, 76, 77, 82, 112,
Verein fur Raumschiffahrt, 206 135, 189, 200, 217, 222, 265
vicarious enjoyment, 241, 250 wish-fulfilment, 5, 6, 19, 34, 40–44,
view of Earth from space, 23, 213, 56, 59, 63, 65, 70, 81–2, 189,
228–30 190, 203
violence, and social movements, 5, 7, withdrawal into fantasy, 42, 46,
15, 123, 148, 149, 179, 254 47, 136
see also aggressive fantasies withdrawal movements, 200
Voluntary Human Extinction Wolf Man (Freud’s), 37
Movement, 205 womb, 100, 225, 226, 229
Von Braun, W., 207, 208, 218, 266 women, 129–30
Von Braunians, 208 see also gender
vulnerability, 48, 131, 222 Wood, E., 169, 171
see also helplessness Wood, J., see Marx, G.
words, see language
war, 50, 85, 96, 216, 244, 249, work, 49, 53, 55, 104, 108, 208, 233,
250, 251 234, 241, 243, 246
war on terror, 250, 255 working class, 10, 54, 57, 117, 141
watching space missions, 219, 230, see also class
241, 261 World Space Foundation, 217
see also space missions
Weathermen, the, 9
Weber, M., 14, 21, 22, 60, 135, 142–6, youth, fears for, 249, 250
150–1, 162, 164, 165–6, 168, 170, Youth International, 9
173, 177–9, 181, 182, 188,
200, 268 Zald, M. see McCarthy, J.
Weeber, S., 184, 187, 189, 191, 192, zero-gravity sex, 225
193, 197 Zionism, 177
weightlessness, 23, 213, 223–6 Žižek, S., 2, 4, 13, 20, 98, 113, 114,
Wengraf, T., 210, 212 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123,
Westen, D., 231–2, 234, 237–8, 124–7, 128, 129, 216, 241, 245,
240, 241 254, 259
White, F., 225, 228, 229 Zubrin, R., 207, 218, 227, 255, 256,
Whitesides, G., 267 266, 269

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Fantasy and Social Movements

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Fantasy and Social Movements

Studies in the Psychosocial Series

Gath Stevens, Norman Duncan and Derek Hook (editors)

Kate Kenny and Marianna Fotaki

Studies in the Psychosocial Series

Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,

Also by James S. Ormrod

Introduction: Fantasy and Social Movements in Context 1

Part I Fantasy in Constellation: Fantasy, Reality, the

2 Fantasy in Kleinian Theory 67

3 Fantasy in Lacanian Theory 98

4 Modes of Fantasy 134

Part II Fantasy and Social Movement Theory

6 Smelser’s Theory of Collective Behaviour 184

7 A Typology of Social Movements 200

Part III A Case Study of the Pro-Space Movement

9 The Pro-Space Movement and Social Structure 231

10 The Pro-Space Movement and Ideology 243

11 The Pro-Space Movement and Political Organization 257

4.1 Modes of fantasy 135

reality; it is its precondition or psychic glue’ (1996, p. 3). Rose’s work

which deﬁes description). This book is about fantasies of life in ‘utopian’

Fantasy and social movements in historical perspective

In taking up such a challenge, this book attempts to go beyond revisit-

an ‘age of fantasy’ (Duncombe, 2007). This is arguably an age captured

Fantasy, social movements and the collective: The privatization

of belonging based on a given place’ (see Ormrod, 2011a, for an allegory

myths might be ‘distorted vestiges of the wishful phantasies of whole

Jameson attempts to understand utopia as some admixture of ideology,

The privatized utopias of the cowboys and cowgirls of the con-

Fantasy, social movements and the unconscious: Identity

House – a smorgasbord course in New Consciousness’ (1979, p. 14).

Fantasy, social movements and reality: The abandonment

Today’s world is linked by media systems and awash in advertising

For Duncombe, politicians, no less than advertisers, have learnt to

accepted by the electorate. But for Duncombe, progressive movements

Whether one approves of it or not, fantasy and spectacle have

He urges progressives to learn ‘from those who do spectacle best: the

With environmental protestors dressed in sea turtle costumes in

autonomous zones: a living, breathing dancing imaginary form of a

Duncombe is clear that progressive politics have to appeal to desire

Adams notes. It underscores Baudrillard’s position that this is a histor-

Fantasy, social movements, action and the blurring of protest

evaluated and reformulated. There is a parallel here with Freud’s notion

contestation, but exist as ‘networks of groups submerged in daily life’.

The argument of the book

Even insofar as these descriptions might be assumed correct, I would not

by a dominant mode of fantasy. The emergence of this particular

The organization of the book

argument, and these open up the possibility for recognizing further

political discourse it sustains. In so doing, it has obscured how it is that

movements. I believe that this reﬂects Weber’s original intention that

with the hallucinatory mode of fantasy; the hostile craze, associated

Postponing for the moment a discussion of ‘social movement theory’

A survey of contributions to psycho-analytical theory would show

Isaacs’s paper established her as the voice of authority on Melanie Klein’s

the various traditions around the time of the Controversial Discussions,

As Isaacs (1952, pp. 80–1) notes, Freud’s English translators introduced

The ﬁrst part of this chapter builds up a picture of Freud’s theory

The Freudian unconscious

‘The concept of there being unconscious mental processes is of course

self-preservation), but that it is embellished during the developmental

if inherited mental formations exist in human beings – something

By the latter, Freud is referring to phantasy. He makes a seem-