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In the previous chapter it was suggested that ‘Transformations’ could be read as a series of experiments in thought aimed at describing the method of psycho-analytical observation as serial transformations of observable ‘facts’ into thoughts capable of ‘growth’ and accretion of meaning, and further that this series of experiments can be visualized as conducted in a particular way. The method seems akin to that of the mathematician who invents arbitrary signs and rules for their manipulation and sees how far they carry him before new signs and rules need to be invented. The first such experiment, in the ‘Elements’ employed signs called psycho-analytical objects composed of three grid categories from the ‘growth’ axis, sensa (A), myth (C) and passion (row G, mysteriously). It seemed never to get off the ground (if we may return to the model of Leonardo's flying machine intended to navigate the cosmos of the mind). The second experiment (Chs. 1-5 of ‘Transformations’) employed simple navigational instruments called transformations but soon discovered that they were somehow produced by love of the truth and an aesthetic sense which was a function of the analyst's total personality plus training and experience, and anyhow resulted in nothing grander than his ‘opinion’ of what was happening in the consulting room.
So experiment three was initiated by remodelling the concept of ‘binocular vision’ originally outlined in ‘Learning’ as a function of the correlation of the conscious and unconscious, delineated by the elaboration of the ‘contact barrier’ composed of the ‘membrane’ of alpha-elements. It was now to be remodelled in a way that might give some substance to the ‘empty’ differentiation of conscious-unconscious by filling them with differing points-of-view, (now to be called ‘vertices’ in order to eliminate the bias in favour of visual criteria suggested by ‘viewpoint’). Chapter 6 introduces the new experiment. By remodelling the problem of psycho-analytical communicat