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The Stuff of Dreams: Anxiety, Fantasy, and Psychoanalysis

Author(s) : Kirsty Hall

Reviews and Endorsements

'How can we keep our anxieties from overwhelming us, while at the same time containing the knowledge that our life ends in death, Hall asks. Central to an answer to that dialectical question is the role of fantasy. We need our fantasies, whether they are described in the gothic novel, science fiction, popular TV programmes or religious ritual, to help us with our anxieties, she suggests. However fantasies can also be used to avoid facing the Real. It is here that the psychoanalytic discourse of Freud and Lacan have helped us to understand that we cannot avoid anxiety, that it is indeed part of what it is to lead a life, even though we create elaborate defences against this knowledge. This is an arresting book that brings together ideas from popular culture, literature and psychoanalysis, while addressing deeper philosophical
question of the meaning we give to life in the face of the inevitability of death.'
- Prophecy Coles, Psychoanalytic psychotherapist

'In my experience, a title like "The Stuff of Dreams: Fantasy, Anxiety and Psychoanalysis" usually refers
to a book treating everyday life in a very complicated way, thus concealing the author's failure to understand what he or she is writing about. Kirsty Hall's book is exactly the opposite. Using ordinary language, she demonstrates the importance of our commonplace fantasies and anxieties. Furthermore, she writes very well - reading this book was a genuine pleasure for me. The combination of her clinical experience, cultural references and knowledge of differing psychoanalytic theories becomes more and more a rarity that we have to cherish.'
- Prof. Paul Verhaeghe, PhD; Chair of the Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Ghent, Belgium