Depth,Perception, and Action: Past,Present, and Future

This paper examines how images of depth are employed in the psychoanalytic literature and how they illuminate or obfuscate. It examines as well the price of using familiar terminologies to introduce new ideas, a practice more common in psychoanalysis than in many other disciplines. By obscuring the differences between old ideas and new through using the same terminology for both, the sense of adherence and belonging to the psychoanalytic community is enhanced but the ability to see fully the new possibilities for theory and practice to which these new ideas point is constrained. In elaborating on this point, the paper also considers the differences between a past-centered, archaeological model and a model in which older patterns are perpetuated through their repeated consequences, both intended and unintended. In such a model both action and perception are taken into account, as the aim of analysis becomes not just the patient’s internal world but her lived life.