The Equalizing Eye—Unconscious Envy: III

I CANNOT SAY FOR SURE IF LOOKING or not looking is the first interposition of will and choice available to the nascent ego but it is surely among the first. No more is required than the blink of an eye or the turn of a head for the infant to establish or obliterate the potential experience in its field of vision. Smell, touch, temperature, hearing and kinesthesias are probably not so malleable in babies but their attention can be engaged1; these sensations require distractions of a more substantial sort. Each of the senses can be hypertrophied or augmented at the expense of the other by concentrating attention, not at the source, but at the receptor. Bion (1970) has observed that insofar as this activity interferes with the senses working in common, it compromises what is generally called the ability to use common sense. And because looking is more submissive to acts of will and ego than the other senses, it may well achieve a preeminent role as the monarch of the senses—that to which the others defer. In that capacity looking and seeing can alter the impact of the Other as it is conveyed through the senses to the self both by becoming the primary mode of apprehension and then, by becoming subject to the acts of the ego and will by which the self hopes to shape or reshape the world of experience. When information is located only in the domain of the senses or only in memory, it is less difficult to diminish something's