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A fixed fantasy – also known as a “dysfunctional schema” – is a belief or system of beliefs held by a single individual to be genuine, but that cannot be verified in reality. The term is typically applied to individuals suffering from some type of psychiatric dysregulation, most often a personality disorder.

The term is also used in the different context of psychoanalysis to distinguish between a normal transitory one and a fixed fantasy with respect to the fantasised fulfilment in conscious or unconscious thought of the sexualised wish.^[1]

Studies of borderline children often uncovered at the base of their self-destructive behaviour patterns “a “fixed fantasy” … a rigid, nonreflective scenario of self-induced pain.”^[2] As part of a psychic defence mechanism, “the omnipotence betrayed by the “fixed fantasy” underlying self-victimization or other forms of self-defeating behaviour … creates the illusory sense that they are actively producing the abandonment [and] pain”,^[3] rather than merely suffering it passively – “arranging deceits … arrang[ing] for blows to fall.”^[4] Unfortunately “in the course of development, these patterns acquire multiple adaptive functions … and serve as a key organizer of their sense of self.”^[5]

“In producing movement away from fixed fantasy systems, commonplace statements are often necessary because the more fixed and extensive the fantasy system, the fewer the transitional opportunities offered; there is little conflicting material to ride. Banalities may be the only resource”,^[6] as anything more complex may be used to feed back into the fantasy system itself.

A fixed fantasy differs from a delusion or delusional system in that, superficially, a fixed fantasy tends to appear plausible, and the person expressing the fantasy is not suffering a break from reality, as occurs in a delusional state. For example, sufferers of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder would believe that “everything has to be perfect” while sufferers of avoidant personality disorder would believe that they are “not good enough”. Challenging such “automatic thoughts … attitudes and basic negative beliefs”^[7] is an important part of cognitive therapy.

A fixed fantasy also differs from religion or superstition in that these are culturally bound, whereas a fixed fantasy is specific to an individual. In and of themselves, fixed fantasies are not necessarily harmful, but they can interfere with an individual’s ability to develop a coherent and integrated life experience.

In a disciplinary distinct usage (though one equally dependent upon emotional conditioning, upon how “emotions can become associated and linked together … an automatic switch,”)^[8] the term fixed fantasy has also been used in respect of psychosexual phantasies – conscious and unconscious.

“In rare cases, a person can become so fixed on a particular fantasy that he or she cannot become aroused without it.”^[9] Such fantasies underpin much perversion, where “the perverse and fixed “scenario” … is as much a defence against the anxieties associated with alternative fantasies as it is with the gaining of satisfaction.”^[10] Robert Stoller considered such fixed fantasies to structure “one’s preferred erotic script … at the centre of which is a remembered (not always consciously remembered, however) bad experience or relationship in early childhood.”^[11] The fixed fantasy is “a primal daydream that summarises the person’s erotic preferences and mirrors that person’s whole character structure.”^[12]

• I. V Halvorsen/S. N. Olsen eds., New Research on Personality Disorders (2008)
• Robert J. Stoller, Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred (1986)