ABSTRACT
Some 50 years ago in Buenos Aires, Henri Pichon Riviere, a psychiatrist and one of the pioneers of the psychoanalysis of psychotics, showed me his hospital’s collection of psychotic paintings and drawings. He drew my attention to the fact that in nearly all of them there was a representation of an eye or eyes – often either fragmented or hidden.This interested me at the time but it didn’t lead any further. Over the years, however, I noticed more and more the crucial role of voyeurism in psychotic functioning. The link between perversions and psychosis is well established, as is the role of psychotic concrete projective identification. It has struck me, however, that among the perversions voyeurism seems to play a crucial part in the shift between psychotic and non-psychotic functioning. More and more often I remembered Henri Pichon Riviere and began to think that in every shift from neurosis to psychosis there is, however fragmented or hidden, the powerful impact of seeing. In a way it isn’t surprising. Seeing the world and ourselves as we are is sanity, distorting the vision takes us into the world of hallucinosis.With psychotic patients I often observed that a breakdown was preceded by an increase in voyeuristic activities and that being aware of that in time could frequently, in my experience, prevent an outbreak of psychosis and enable it to be contained in the session.
