The author discusses the idea that psychoanalysts could benefit from a common paradigm, not necessarily a single theory, but a general frame through which to view their work. Focusing on perception as a basic modality of psychic life, in combination with the system-environment approach, could provide this common baseline. The text explores how this approach relates to the work of Freud, Bion, and Winnicott, emphasizing the interconnectedness of systems and their environments, the role of perception, and the concept of a contact barrier. The notion of tangential interlocking is proposed as a way of illustrating how the system Freud called perception-consciousness is the contact-barrier common to all the psycho-somatic functions of interest to psychoanalysis.