The choice of the phobic object is therefore overdetermined. This object does not come at random out of the void of nothingness; in some situation it has previously evoked an affect in the patient. His phobia is the latent presence of this affect at the root of his world; there is an organization that has been given a form. For the object, naturally, need not be there, it is enough that somewhere it exist: It is a possibility.

Frantz Fanon, Constance Farrington, Black skin, white masks, loc. 589