ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes that looking, as well as listening, is a valuable aspect of the psychoanalytic situation. Insights and pathways to growth and development result from both analyst and patient talking, listening, and looking. Esther’s psychoanalytic journey demonstrates how the analyst gains insight into the patient’s conflicts, fears, and desires by observing her physical appearance, facial expressions, clothing, ways of walking, and lying on the couch. The analyst strove to help Esther open her eyes to both seeing and being seen in a new way. Esther revealed that she enjoyed the pity and imagined guilt she evoked in strangers, and the compassion of other patients who saw her in the waiting room. As treatment unfolded and Esther was free to regress, a new sense of self developed in which she could enjoy being seen as an attractive, fashionable woman rather than a woebegone sad sack.
