Page 1 of 9
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 8
Publication Date: August 25, 2022
DOI:10.14738/assrj.98.12918. Keini, N., & Zerem-Ulman, V. (2022). Turning a Blind Eye and Unformulated Knowledge in the Family. Advances in Social Sciences
Research Journal, 9(8). 453-461.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
Turning a Blind Eye and Unformulated Knowledge in the Family
Noga Keini
Ashkelon Academic College
Vardit Zerem-Ulman
Ashkelon Academic College
ABSTRACT
This article addresses the issue of blindness, or turning a blind eye, employing two
alternative realms: Psychoanalysis, and System and Family Therapy. Reference is
made to deliberately turning a blind eye to well-established facts as part of a mental
mechanism in individuals for whom dealing with reality is unbearably difficult. A
disregard for facts may be viewed as an instrument that eventually leads to a
distortion of reality and to deficient, unconsolidated self-esteem, with shades at
times of psychosis. The subject is approached from two opposing realms, to
underscore the importance of psychoanalysis as well as that of system and family
therapy in the present context [11]. Two clinical cases are illustrated.
Key words: blind eye, reality testing, transitional space, therapy.
INTRODUCTION
Literature, the theatre and psychoanalysis have dealt extensively with the human impulse to
ignore disturbing reality and resist facing the truth. Jose Saramago [10], illustrates blindness in
his book on the “white epidemic” that spreads throughout every city and country. The epidemic
causes blindness, and quarantine is imposed for all infected people in an abandoned insane
asylum. The disease spreads nonetheless. One woman, the wife of a local ophthalmologist, is
infected but retains her sight. She joins her husband in a derelict house where a gang of
hooligans, all blind, have taken charge and are physically abusing the inmates there, robbing,
raping and killing them. The woman can no longer resign herself to the situation and she
murders the gang leader, following which she, her husband and a few other sympathizers
escape from the house. Though soldiers were posted to guard the house, they too have
absconded, allowing the group to go free. On returning to the city, they try to impose order
through the total chaos that has taken over, without much success. In the end, sight returns to
all the city's inhabitants, with the cause of the blindness remaining unexplained.
The book refers to a contemporary society in which the injustice and moral depravity to which
its members are subjected, cries out for redress. The story has profound symbolism, inviting a
number of questions:
What is blindness? What does it symbolize?
Is blindness an internal mental state? Or is it existential and universal?
Do we accept blindness in our lives on a daily basis?
Is it up to us to choose what we see and what disregard?
Page 2 of 9
454
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 9, Issue 8, August-2022
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
It is not difficult to find a parallel between Saramago's story and criticism of the society in which
he lives, or Western society in general.
To return to the examination of blindness, or turning a blind eye, from the psychoanalytic, and
system and family therapy points of view, in a well-known article, Steiner [12] describes our
connections with reality as if there were no "all or nothing". Psychoanalysis has always been
interested in human situations in which individuals choose to ignore reality and dismiss facts,
to the extent of distorting and falsifying them. This state is one in which they are aware of reality
but prefer to disregard it, it being too harsh and unbearable. Steiner refers to this mechanism
as "turning a blind eye" and in his view it contains the correct dose of ambiguity in terms of the
extent to which the facts are essential or non-essential.
On the one hand, there is deception, plain and simple: The facts are known and the conclusions
have been drawn, but we prefer to ignore them. On the other, we are in many cases only vaguely
aware of having chosen not to look reality in the eye, without quite knowing what we are
avoiding. It is well known, claims Steiner, that our sense of awareness comprises different
levels, and that different defense mechanisms affect our feelings of contact with reality. In any
event, turning a blind eye appears to be inordinately complex and tricky, even involving
multiple mechanisms.
As clinicians we often encounter patients who present false situations. At times they refer to
themselves, their achievements and their true condition in grandiose terms. There are times
when they choose to ignore the insights that have been acquired during the course of therapy.
These attitudes appear to be in keeping with a particular mental state that is intolerable for
them, making them choose to sidestep the facts. Some know that the situation they recount to
themselves or to the therapist is a false one but hold on to the faintest prospect of its
materializing, in the hope of turning the fantasy into a reality. Such individuals live in a world
that is indeed severe, insulating and isolating, making it important for them to come up with a
means to sugar-coated reality.
Steiner goes on to address the case of Oedipus Rex [11], the play by Sophocles. He suggests that
readers realize that Oedipus is not necessarily innocent, ensnared in a destiny that offers him
no mercy. On unmasking the Oedipus complex, Freud too [9] thought that it involved moral
conflicts as well as subliminal intellectual forces dictated by a supreme power. He even states
that analysis is a process of seeking the truth, one in which the unknown is revealed to the
patient in a slow and gradual manner – just like Oedipus Rex the play, in which the truth is
known only at the tragic end.
Is it possible that Oedipus is aware all the time of the real blood relationship between himself
and his father, King Laius, and his mother, Jocasta, whom he marries? Steiner states that most
of the key characters in the play have turned a blind eye to the tragic fact that Oedipus himself
has murdered his father since it is one that is too horrific to live with.
Vignette
Yuri: "I don't understand or have an explanation for the fact that I am on edge every time Iris
[his wife] approaches me".
Page 3 of 9
455
Keini, N., & Zerem-Ulman, V. (2022). Turning a Blind Eye and Unformulated Knowledge in the Family. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal,
9(8). 453-461.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.98.12918
Iris: "I feel as though you are trying to avoid me. You suddenly lose your temper, then cut off. I
always remain hurt".
Yuri: "Yes, I already understood in the one-on-one counselling I had that I am in fact re-enacting
the aloof relationship my parents had. But my wife does not in any way resemble my mother. I
do not understand or have an explanation. I simply choke up when she nears me".
The insights gained by Yuri from the individual therapy he underwent were not enough to
change the pattern of his relationship with his wife. Even in the couple counselling they had,
they learned to recognize the kind of vicious circle in which they were trapped in terms of the
pattern of communication between them. They still find it difficult to recognize what the other
is going through in those situations in order to respond empathetically to each other.
In therapy oriented to unformulated family knowledge an effort would be made to discover
blind spots that Yuri and Iris possess with respect to both themselves and each other. Yuri
activates blind spots with Iris, and vice versa. These mutual effects create in both of them
patterns that are replete with elements of unformulated family knowledge, from which there
appears to be no way out.
"Wherever there is unformulated family knowledge there will be transitional space"[7], this, in
my opinion is a maxim that best serves us in the present context, being in my mind also an apt
paraphrase of Freud's well-known statement: "Where id was ego shall be".
According to Winnicott [16] it is possible to integrate systemic perspectives with a range of
psychoanalytical concepts.
CLINICAL CASE 1
Tamar, a young woman of about 30 and a computer programmer, seeks therapy, claiming that
she is an innocent victim of circumstances in her difficult life. Tamar has no life partner and no
social connections, while suffering chronically from penury despite the high salary she earns.
Tamar arrives at several insights during the course of therapy, and looks as though she
understands how she contributes to her current situation. However, this understanding does
nothing to stop her from reverting to her old ways, time and time again – ways that predictably
result in her remaining stuck in the same rut.
It is not difficult to see that Tamar deliberately ignores the insights and realizations that she
has reached in therapy. She insists on portraying herself as successful, and someone who will
soon achieve a surprising technological breakthrough by means of the start-up towards which
she is directing her energies. But nothing develops. She experiences herself as in the doldrums
in her career, feels terribly burnt out, and is advances nowhere. A highly intelligent girl, Tamar
nonetheless spends most of her life alone and destitute.
At times Tamar lords over her therapist, treating her even with disdain. The therapist clearly
sees that Tamar is being deceitful about herself and her accomplishments.