The Visual in Psychoanalysis

Seeing and being seen is an essential part of our interactions. As analysts we can notice the way in which patients move into our offices—be it the subtle shifts in gait of the elderly, or patients who initially skip enthusiastically into our offices only to drag in with reluctance as the work proceeds. Tall, short, fat or trim, beautiful or homely, it is all part of the picture. And then there is the changing shape of patients over the course of treatment. Beards shaven or newly grown. Hair colored or cut or even added to. And the subtle changes in the color of patients' skin. The pallor of illness and anxiety, the glow of romantic happiness, the tan of adolescent immortality, the wrinkles and discoloration of aging. There is the language of color, be it the blues of depression or the green of envy. Added to which is the color patients choose to bring to us. Each day patients have a choice of what artwork they choose to show us. For example, the patient who wore nothing but black and beige until one day a change was announced by a red scarf, which she splashed over the canvas of the couch.

Like many people I doodle and sketch while listening. Whether in a meeting or listening from behind the couch, I will inevitably draw. Nancy Chodorow, in her introduction, asks what I think are the essential questions about the role of my drawing as an analyst. She wonders whether I draw in order to listen or whether I listen through my drawings. I think the short answer is that I do both.

There is little doubt that I listen better while sketching or drawing.

Kris (1952) wrote that the “fantasies and thoughts hidden in doodles are those of which the doodler wants to liberate himself, lest they disturb the process of concentration” (p. 91). He described a patient of his who, finding herself unable to listen during a concert, had resorted to doodling. Rather than her typically preferred pattern—a flower with three leaves—she now drew flowers with only two. Eventually a series of two-l