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The language of psychoanalysis is inextricably bound up with the metaphors of surface and depth. Any attempt to review the ubiquity of these metaphors would necessarily be endless, but an outline of some of the main areas of usage might include the following: topographical distinctions between the surface of consciousness and the depth of the unconscious, the surface or manifest content of the dream versus the deep or latent content, the notion of the depth of the transference as indicated by either developmentally or functionally regressive states, and the presumption of deep psychic structures whose operation underlies or gives rise to our surface subjectivity. However, metaphors have a way of outgrowing their original uses and taking on a life of their own, entailing all sorts of conceptual consequences that go unchallenged because they go unnoticed. The reification of psychic processes into metaphors of psychic “structure,” intimately entwined with those of psychic “depth,” is one that has begun to undergo increasing scrutiny, and authors such as Schafer (1976) and Stolorow (1978) have encouraged us to become conscious of its implications.
This chapter explores further a few of the myriad implications of the metaphors of surface and depth and suggest ways in which our conceptualization of the mind has been entangled by their unexamined usage. I will organize my critique around Stolorow and Atwood's attempt to repudiate what they have called “the myth of the isolated mind” (1992). They have outlined three main areas of alienation from the essential embeddedness of life that are a consequence of this myth: (1) alienation from nature, including the illusion “that there is a sphere of inner freedom from the constraints of animal existence and mortality”