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This study is based on three patients whose chief complaint was difficulty in seeing, accompanied by a sensation of seeing objects as if through a screen. This symptom occurred in patients who might be called ambulatory schizophrenics or borderline characters or belong in the category which Freud designated as the narcissistic neuroses. The symptom is a result of a narcissistic emotional disturbance in object relationships, leading regressively to a libidinal reinvestment in secondary narcissism. This results in an infantile fixation. The physiological dysfunction in the eyes has resulted from pathological emotional investment in a visual hallucination, a waking screen. This screen expresses a wish to relax into sleep in order to prevent a disruption of destructive impulses or a psychosis from becoming overt. It also sympbolizes the cold hostile separation from the world.
I have observed otherwise "normal" individuals who had transitory episodes of clouding of vision, particularly following acute infectious diseases. When referred to ophthalmologists they are reassured that nothing is wrong with them and the symptoms disappear. Ophthalmologists are often aware of benign transitory