Seeing Through Crossed Eyes: The Psychological Wounding of Infantile Esotropia

Abstract

Eye contact is central to the process of attachment, and hence intrapsychic and interpersonal development. This study shows how strabismus, a congenital eye condition, produces loss of vital eye contact with mother, and consequently loss of emotional connection with her, during the earliest days of life. This loss contributes to a rupture that arrests emotional development at a deep psychic level. The rupture of this connection precipitates a Fusional Complex which defends against psychotic anxieties and its attendant issues resulting from emotional separation. Strabismics have a physical blind spot that may predispose them to a psychic blind spot. This idea was explored through analytic theory and developmental literature. The life history of a strabismic provides the backdrop for an examination of the unconscious, imaginal roots of this disorder that were amplified through dreams and art in a process of analysis. It is recognized that psychological symptoms derive from archetypal constellations; this dimension of the complexes resulting from strabismus was amplified through the myth of Cybele and Attis, which so accurately depicts the collective dynamics of the intrapsychic situation. Healing the psychological wounds of strabismus requires restoring vision, bringing sight to a blind spot that is created by nature of the very condition itself. It is suggested that the alchemical transformation of the psychological blind spot is only possible through the love of another; whether conscious or unconscious, physical or spiritual.