Lacan has characterized the unconscious as pre-ontologic. .

l neither
being, nor non-being, but the non-realized. (pp. 2324) Fantasy
depicts not an unreal but a non-realized which is the preontologic, in
the sense that it is logically prior to the construction of positivist reality.
For Heidegger the phenomenon is also non-realized. The term pheno-
menon l . . says nothing about the being of the objects under study, but
refers only to the way in which they are encountered." (Heidegger,
History, p. 85) It is in this preontologic, Where the real and the unreal
are still undifferentiated in the non-realized, that fantasy is at home.

Thus the nouns of reality cannot account for fantasy. Our reality" is
a socially determined convention of fantasy itself. Manlove points out
that fantasy tends to be Written in the form of fairy tale for a child.
(Impulse, pp. 23) But if we see fantasy in the light of Husserl, well
realize that childlren dont escape reality to fantasy. They come from
fantasy, trailing clouds of glory, to our reality. The unrecoverable
childhood" of folk tale, is doubly prior to the imposition of our
reality, which comes after a long social and personal history. Fantasy
comes rst. Thus adult appreciation of fantasy must proceed by brac
keting, or the setting out of consideration of the question of the exis
tence of things that is central to Husserls phenomenological method,