ABSTRACT
The experience of physical, sensuous space was not abandoned. It was clung to with such tenacity that it prevented the loss of security involved if pictorial sense were lost. It obscured realization that Euclidean proofs depended on their being visually obvious. Euclidean geometry thus remained for centuries without a rival. There was no rival in the sphere of education since communication of what is known, by those who know it, to those who are ignorant of it, depends on visual sense. The 'obvious' was evidence and proof of the truth of what was asserted. 'Time' was as unquestioned as 'space'. Events are supposed to occur at a particular time and in a particular place; the 'past' and the 'future' depend upon sensuous experience, but there is no more recognition of that than of the dependence of Euclidean geometry on the sense of sight. Theories about 'mental life' are taken for granted, as was the background to the theories of Euclidean geometry; similar assumptions about 'mental time and space' imperil growth of mental life. Theories of causation, commonly adumbrated in the context of the physical world, are based on the undiscussed and unquestioned foundation of ideas about 172time and space. Newton accepted that foundation. What he applied to the physical world was applicable to the mental or psychical or spiritual world. Should these assumptions be accepted by psychoanalysts or philosophers? Descartes had no doubt about the value of philosophical Doubt and yet did not doubt the validity of 'cogito ergo sum'; although he came so near, he did not take the final step. The psycho-analytical theory, first formulated by Melanie Klein, I propose to extend to areas not in fact included by her in the therapeutic domain for which she proposed it. The extension involves supposing that not only does the individual harbour omnipotent phantasies of destruction and dispersal, but that there is an omnipotent being or force that destroys the whole object and disperses the fragments widely.
