The Eye and the ‘I’

I have been struck by the fact that, for some patients in analysis, looking at the analyst, or being looked at by the analyst, seems to carry a particular significance. It is something they are either compelled to do or cannot do. In this paper I hope to explore the theme of eyes and of looking, together with some of the personal developmental, and archetypal meanings and connections which have emerged from the work with these patients.

Starting with language, we talk about ‘black looks’, or ‘looking daggers’, or we say ‘if looks could kill’. Job confirms the experience of eyes being used as sharp and penetrating weapons: ‘Mine enemy sharpeneth his eyes upon me’ (Job 16:9).

The notion of the ‘evil eye’ is an extreme development of the idea of a malevolent power exerted by the eye. To put the evil eye on someone is a most dreaded fate in some primitive cultures. That person is then bound by a malignant spell from which there is no escape. In analysis, the fear of being envied, often a projection of active envying, sometimes feels like the fear of the evil eye; and, of course, the word ‘envy’ is derived from a Latin word meaning ‘to see’.

However, it is not only attacking, hostile power that the eyes exert: we talk about ‘giving someone the glad eye’, and about lovers ‘making eyes’ at each other; the writer of the Song of Songs says to his beloved ‘Thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes’ (4:9), and he compares her eyes to ‘the fishpools in Heshbon’ (7:4), combining the overwhelming, captivating image with the deep, receptive, containing one. Women seem long to have been aware of the seductive potential of their eyes: as early as the Neolithic Age