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Loewald's "Binocular Vision" and the Art of Analysis

George Washington University Medical School, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, jdmiller1957{at}earthlink.net

In his 1988 monograph on sublimation, Hans Loewald describes the process as a transformation of the drives aimed at re-creating what he presumes to be the subjective experience of infantile attachment. To describe this experience, he invokes a state of mind that he calls "binocular vision." He maintains that this mental state may arise not only in activities usually associated with sublimation, such as the creation and enjoyment of art, but in all forms of sublimation, including effective psychoanalysis. Because Loewald's discussion is largely theoretical, it does not convey how the concept of binocular vision may inform clinical technique and interdisciplinary study. A comparative application of his theory to psychoanalytic process and to the viewer's response to art enables one to grasp binocular vision as a common aspect of both. It emerges as a useful model with which to conceptualize and integrate the ambiguous reality of analytic experience.

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Vol. 56, No. 4, 1139-1159 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0003065108325586


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