ABSTRACT
In 1921 Paul Klee painted Revolving House. It captured a significant ‘moment’ of change in our capacity to perceive – from the position of a single ‘view’ and ‘viewer’ he anticipated the postmodern shift to the recognition of the simultaneous presence of a number of vertices of possible perception of the same object – if we could but ‘see’. The painting helps to give visual form to something that speaks to the heart of what I am trying to convey in this chapter: the necessity of holding in mind multiple simultaneous perspectives on psychic pain, healing, relational trauma, the nature of the self, unconsciousness and the psychotherapy project itself. How we imagine the human project depends on one’s point of view – and in turn our perception from that point of view will influence how we think and theorise the human condition, make meanings and even ‘decide’ what is meaningful. This, in turn, will affect our ongoing capacities to perceive.
