The notion of action-presentation (or action-representation) is based on two Freudian models: on the one hand, the idea that representation derives from the failure of hallucinatory wish-fulfillment, developed in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), and on the other, the model that establishes the unconscious "thing-presentation" as a mental "representative" of the instinct, elaborated in "Repression" (1915d) and "The Unconscious" (1915e). Such a grouping of concepts aims to bring out the dynamic functions of fantasies within the general realm of a theory of representation (Perron-Borelli, 1997).

Action-presentations, which are ubiquitous in dreams because of the hallucinatory process induced by the inhibition of motor discharges, are at the core of fantasmatic organization. Indeed, fantasies cannot be reduced to object-presentations: They originate in a dynamic organization that from the outset brings together intrapsychic...