Where are we now? Further thoughts on Ways of Seeing

ABSTRACT

John Berger, the influential art critic, essayist and novelist died in January 2017. His friend the theatre director and actor, Simon McBurney, said, ‘Listener, grinder of lenses, poet, painter, seer. My Guide. Philosopher. Friend. John Berger left us this morning. Now you are everywhere.’ Berger insisted that observation was key to the project of ‘seeing’ truly. Are we there now? Are these ideas indeed ‘everywhere’? The author examines this view in the light of current developments in observation, in the psychoanalytic field, while reaching out to other disciplines to make closer links. She uses observations from students, comments they have made about the process of observation, and a moving observation of an old lady with dementia. John Berger prided himself on being a ‘listener’ as well as an observer, listening with an ear for everything in the other, not only what was spoken, and I hope that we may indeed listen to one another in the service of moving forward across disciplinary lines.

KEYWORDS:

• Ways of Seeing
• art criticism
• listening
• poetry
• psychoanalysis
• observation
• psychiatry
• dementia

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Adam Goren and Nicola Levison for permission to use their observations, to Audrey Ng for permission to quote from her unpublished dissertation, and to Angela Pirie and Laurence Kalbreier for permission to use their thoughts about the observational task.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Judith Edwards PhD is a retired consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist who worked at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust from the 1980s to 1993, and continues to teach and supervise various courses at the Tavistock Clinic as a visiting lecturer. Since retirement she has also been a visiting lecturer at Roehampton University. Her book of selected papers Love the wild swan was published in 2016 in the Routledge World Mental Health series. Apart from her clinical work, one of her principal interests has been in the links between psychoanalysis, culture and the arts, as well as in making psychoanalytic ideas accessible to a wide audience. To that end, she has published a pamphlet HELP! for parents and children about psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Her memoir Pieces of Molly: An ordinary life was published by Karnac in November 2014.

Notes

1. All names in both observations are changed for reasons of confidentiality.