Loewald’s “binocular vision” and the art of analysis

process as a transformation of the drives aimed at re-creating what he presumes to be the subjective experience of infantile attachment. To describe this experience, he invokes a state of mind that he calls “binoc-ular vision. ” He maintains that this mental state may arise not only in activities usually associated with sublimation, such as the creation and enjoyment of art, but in all forms of sublimation, including effective psy-choanalysis. Because Loewald’s discussion is largely theoretical, it does not convey how the concept of binocular vision may inform clinical tech-nique and interdisciplinary study. A comparative application of his theory to psychoanalytic process and to the viewer’s response to art enables one to grasp binocular vision as a common aspect of both. It emerges as a useful model with which to conceptualize and integrate the ambiguous reality of analytic experience. In Loewald’s 1988 monograph, Sublimation, he expands on Freud’sideas, generating a theory that I believe can enrich both clinical work and interdisciplinary study. In the epilogue to this book, which Loewald wrote near the end of his life, he calls it “unfinished, ” adding that “partic-ular aspects... need to be taken up at much greater length ” (p. 82). One such aspect, which he discusses only briefly, is his concept of “binocular vision ” as the outcome of the most fully realized sublimation. After a review of Loewald’s overall theory of sublimation, I will take up binocular vision and what I consider to be its potential applications