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Over ten million people in this country, 75 per cent of whom are females, have been fitted for contact lenses in the last fifteen years (Mandell, 1974). Of those seeking contact lenses between the ages of 17 and 24, about 80 per cent are female (U.S. Vital and Health Statistics, 1971, p. 10). Despite the fact that regular glasses have become very fashionable in recent years, the number of women wearing contact lenses has increased, though research shows that many abandon their lenses after wearing them for only a short time.
These facts raise several questions. Why do females constitute the majority of contact—lens wearers? Why are three out of five of the women wearing lenses adolescent females between the ages of 17 and 24 (U.S. Vital and Health Statistics, 1971, p. 11)? Why do these women give up their lenses within a short period of time? And, finally, why do these late adolescent women abandon their lenses as they reach full sexual maturity? These questions suggest that the reason for the use of contact lenses include the operation of unconscious fantasy.
The references to contact lenses in analytic material undoubtedly have many different unconscious meanings. Although clinically I have found the introduction of the subject of lenses associated with a rich proliferation of unconscious fantasy, it is my intention here to delineate those few categories of meaning I have most often observed. The cases I have studied have all been young women, with the exception of one middle-aged woman who wished to be a young girl again. Some of the unconscious issues will be illustrated in the examples that follow.