In A General Introduction To Psychoanalysis, Freud writes as follows: "In phantasy, ... man can continue to enjoy a freedeom from the grip of the external world, one which he has long since relinquished in actuality. He has contrived to be alternately a pleasure-seeking animal and a reasonable being; for the meagre satisfaction that he can extract from reality leaves him starving." 381. Freud seems to imply that, absent fantasy, humans would experience "starvation," as if fantasy were food. What "pleasure" is the animal seeking in its fantasies?

Reality does not feed the whole body, only the reasonable part. Fantasy is the form that unreasonable desire must assume in reality, an unreal representation of the real body. The fantasy is a "mirror image" of the real story, a "mere reflection." Fastastic form is without depth, it is strictly superficial, appearing on the skin of the real form.

Reality is the projection of a "reasonable being," and no place for a "pleasure-seeking animal." The pleasure seeker is forced to feed on the surface. But there is, O Monks, no real form without an unreal surface.