Abstract
Education—of all sorts—is suffused with fantasies. This is no revelation to anyone involved in the activity, at whatever level, yet as a subject relatively little scholarly attention has been directed by educationalists at elucidating its nature. The most sustained reflections on the nature of fantasy stem from psychoanalysis, which argues that the totality of mental life is governed by unconscious phantasies, many of which are unknowable. This renders everyday notions of reality problematic and challenges both mainstream and alternative education in its epistemic claims. The present chapter aims to contribute to an understanding of fantasy, particularly fantasies of education, by drawing on work from four psychoanalytic schools, those of Freud, Klein, Winnicott and Lacan. Such multiplicity of perspectives both reflects the broad range of contemporary psychoanalysis, each with an array of conceptual tools, and offers important balanced access to the discipline’s profound study of subjectivity within which fantasy bridges both the conscious and unconscious mind.
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Notes
- 1.
As a term, fantasy has been spelled with either an “f” or a “ph,” depending on either the psychoanalytic school that uses it or the topographical position of the fantasies being considered. Both spellings will be employed here.
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Willoughby, R., Demir-Atay, H. (2016). Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Educational Fantasies. In: Lees, H., Noddings, N. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Alternative Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41291-1_8
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