This is a criticism of the view that the term "representation" has a peculiarly tangible clinical referent, a unique phenomenological meaning, and a special power to reveal subjective reality undistorted by theoretical constructs. Such a view is illegitimately encouraged by a tendency to think of "image" when we say "representation," even though we mean something more like "understanding," and by a tendency to treat understandings as though they were discrete experiences of the subject, rather than abstractions made by the observer. Because the reliance on representational terms mixes method with data, its covert principles of abstraction cannot be used to learn from new data.