I Wish That You Could Stay a Little Longer: Seeing the Image in Psychoanalysis

ABSTRACT

This article is about the experience of seeing in psychoanalysis. It is a realm of sensation that has been minimized since Freud privileged hearing and the word over the image. I discuss Diana Fuss’ study of the architecture of the first psychoanalytic office and Debra Roth’s argument for restoring the value of the surface to have a flow between exterior and interior. I present the work of the philosopher, Merleau-Ponty, emphasizing seeing preceding language and the importance of the image for the psychoanalyst. Paying attention to what is seen in dreams, photography, and the psychoanalytic office may bring the analyst into a more vulnerable and fully realized mutual participation with the patient.

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Notes on contributors

Mark Gerald

Mark Gerald, Ph.D., is a psychoanalyst and photographer. He is on the faculty of the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Psychoanalysis. He has taught and supervised at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York and at the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Chile. He trained in photography at the International Center of Photography and Pratt Institute. Mark has written, taught, and presented about the psychoanalytic office and the creative process. His ongoing study, In the Shadow of Freud’s Couch: Portraits of Psychoanalysts in their Offices, includes photographs of analysts from North and South America, Europe, and Mexico. His work has been shown in New York, Athens, and Chile, and has been featured in The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning, The Daily Beast, BBC, GDC Interiors, and other print and on-line publications. Mark lives in New York, where he maintains a private practice on the Upper West Side.