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Although psychoanalytic theorists have noted the nonvisual qualities of spatial experience during projective identification, they have used visual metaphors to describe that experience. Spatial experience, however, is multimodal since vision, hearing, and the other senses interact to create a sense of space. This paper will attempt to show that the ear allows us to perceive relatively undifferentiated spaces (psychoanalytic and auditory), and further, that modes of communication within these types of space share significant theoretical parallels due to their reliance on the auditory mode of perception.
Psychoanalytic space is one of many important concepts Wilfred Bion (1970) developed in his theory of projective identification. He based his work upon the Kleinian theory of projective identification, which postulated a visual image of three-dimensional space into which a person projects the split-off parts of his personality (Klein 1946, 1955; Grinberg, Sor, and deBianchedi 1977). Bion differed from Klein, however, by positing that “in certain types of patients the notions of space and time are based on a psychic reality which does not derive its form from a physical reality” (Bion, 1970, p. 94). Projection for the analyst takes place, therefore, in “the realization of mental space” (Bion, 1970, p. 94). This mental or psychoanalytic space