ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the unbridgeable gap between what is and how psychoanalysts come to have any knowledge of it at all, a characteristic of the world that, in the realm of language, led Ludwig Wittgenstein to develop his ‘picture theory’ of meaning. It suggests that we think initially and inescapably in models, whether as scientists, psychoanalysts, patients, or babies. The phenomenological dictum, ‘back to the things themselves’ can be a useful reminder of something achievable only as an approximation, because ‘the things themselves’ are inaccessible directly. Each practitioner holds, explicitly or implicitly, a personal philosophy informing their work, and it is bound to include ideas bearing on the distinction between the realms of knowing and being. The chapter suggests that the practice of analytic work is likely to be deepened if the analyst looks further into their thinking on these matters.
