ABSTRACT
Suppose a painter sees a path through a field sown with poppies and paints it: at one end of the chain of events is the field of poppies, at the other a canvas with pigment disposed on its surface. A particular aspect of the concept of transformation deserves discussion. In today’s psychoanalytic literature we read a good deal about intersubjectivity and social constructivism. Transformation is certainly involved in intersubjective interactions, but the concept of constructivism is another matter. In the alimentary model thoughts are likened to food and the mind to the gastrointestinal tract, which conducts transformative “digestions” or “metabolizations” of the food so as to change it from raw food to ultimate breakdown derivatives that enter the cells of the body as nutrients. The nerve impulse courses down the neuron and ends at the synapse, which it stimulates.
