ABSTRACT
Ivo Kohler's experiments with prolonged wearing of distorting spectacles which alter the habitual integration of visual perception with bodily movement generate a psychology which may be termed “poretic,” 1 from the Greek poros, meaning passageway, ford, contrivance. This also relates it to, and differentiates it from the philosophical aporia, or impasse, and hodos, the beaten path of method, as in “meta hodos.” A poretic psychology focuses on the process in which the circular interplay of experimental action and vigilant observation constantly secures a path between the equally impossible extremes of repetition and innovation.
Kohler's demonstration of dehabituation and rehabituation as complementary processes in bodily orientation represents an extension of the ideas of Ewald Hering to the sphere of action. A nexus of Kohler's experimental research with depth psychology, which Kohler has suggested, may be seen in the figure and influence of Josef Breuer. Breuer was an early co-worker with Hering, and later, as is well-known, 24with the young Freud. Freud has acknowledged his debt to both Hering and Breuer. Thus it is not surprising that we find certain likenesses between the perceptual action experiments of Kohler and Freud's clinical therapeutic procedures.
