Word.ws English Dictionary

restitutive fantasy

restitutive fantasy noun: an imaginary reality created by someone to avoid what they cannot handle emotionally.

Noun

restitutive fantasy (countable and uncountable, plural restitutive fantasies)

  1. An imaginary reality created by someone to avoid what they cannot handle emotionally.
    • In restitutive fantasy, the person imagines some goal object which is not present in the environment: the fantasy thus serves as a replacement for the absent real object. The lonely child imagines his parents when they are away from him.1963, Jesse E. Gordon, Personality and behavior, page 158
    • If Keats cannot, in restitutive fantasy, resurrect "the teeming autumn, big with rich increase," his imagination will, in a second attempt, rise to another response in an effort to deny the obdurate blankness of the stubble-plains […]1985, Helen Vendler, The Odes of John Keats, page 256

Examples of restitutive fantasy in a sentence

  • The enactment of such a restitutive fantasy serves the defense against the depressive affect about loss: the defense against mourning.2007, Leon Wurmser, Torment Me, But Don't Abandon Me:
  • Jeremy's father gave him a leg up into the restitutive fantasy of specialness by providing the adoption story of the “chosen” and “special” child.2013, Susan Miller, Shame in Context, page 116:

Forms of restitutive fantasy

pluralrestitutive fantasies

Questions about restitutive fantasy

What does restitutive fantasy mean?
Restitutive fantasy means an imaginary reality created by someone to avoid what they cannot handle emotionally.
How do you use restitutive fantasy in a sentence?
The enactment of such a restitutive fantasy serves the defense against the depressive affect about loss: the defense against mourning.
What part of speech is restitutive fantasy?
Restitutive fantasy is a noun.
What is the plural of restitutive fantasy?
The plural of restitutive fantasy is restitutive fantasies.

Words near restitutive fantasy in the dictionary

  1. restitutionist
  2. restitutionists
  3. restitutions
  4. restitutive
  5. restitutive fantasies
  6. restitutive fantasy
  7. restitutively
  8. restitutiveness
  9. restitutor
  10. restitutors
  11. restitutory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: restitutive fantasy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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