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The title of this conference, The Mind's Eye, draws attention to the connection between the eye and the mind. This connection is vividly reflected in everyday language. To make eye-contact means making a relationship, and seeing eye-to-eye means experiencing mutual understanding. We can look with love and we can look with hate. The evil eye can injure by a look, and looks can kill. ‘I see’ means ‘I understand’. To have one's eyes open is to be emotionally and intellectually aware of what is going on. But if there is something we do not want to bear in mind we lose sight of it. Or if there is something we do not want to acknowledge, because it may be too painful, we turn a blind eye. An unpleasant truth can hit you in the eye. Giving insight means giving internal sight with the eyes of the mind.
The eye is not just an organ of vision, a human camera, but is one of the most basic organs through which an individual relates to the world. After the mouth, the eye is the most important organ through which a baby and its mother make contact with each other. It is surprising, therefore, that psychological aspects of eye disorders are such a neglected field.
The late Mrs Inman's bequest to the British Psycho-Analytical Society to further her husband's pioneer work is, therefore, as Jennifer Johns has made clear, very welcome. I am particularly grateful that I was asked to initiate the project and have now seen over a hundred patients suffering from common eye disorders. I shall first give a brief overall description of my work. I shall then give clinical material to illustrate some of the stresses that seem, among the numerous medical factors, to contribute to the development, and sometimes to the recurrence, or the perpetuation, of many of these disorders. Finally, I shall discuss my findings.
Mrs Inman had requested that some work should be carried out in her husband's old hospital, Queen Alexandra, Portsmouth. Peter Fenton, the senior ophthalmic surgeon at the time, had alwa