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Imagoes, like instincts, have their destinies. The extreme limit of this destiny Pasche designates the zero image. He believes it constitutes the highest point of the great monotheistic religions. It is also, he argues, the cornerstone of a psychoanalytic
practice. An imago is an unconscious prototype, which means that the individual is not conscious of the origin of the deformations which he or she imposes in projecting this imago onto reality. The person is also unconscious of the representation he or she makes of the reality so modified; or the individual may be conscious of this idealized representation but will take it as a perception, as an indicator of reality. The deeper motivations for these distortions remain unconscious. Pasche examines with humor and considerable insight the function of this idealized "zero image" in religion, in ideologies, and in psychoanalysis. The imperceptibility of God and the radical incapacity of man to imagine the deity reflect these two aspects of infinite power and essential emptiness of the notion of the deity, invalidating every projection, putting every idealization into question, and making every value relative. The psychoanalyst uses analogous means in relation to the "zero image" he creates in therapy, with his silence, invisibility, and inaction.