Lecture XIV

The concept of this kind of phantom-structure inserted by the ego into the human organism is of great importance, as is the realisation of the constant organic defensive reaction against it as a “foreign body,” and its continuous tendency to break up within the physical organisation. You will arrive at a visualisation which helps your judgment if you study psycho-physiologically the organisation of the human eyes. For all that takes place as between the eye itself and the external world, that is to say, between the soul and the external world by means of the eye, represents par excellence the erecting of this scaffold. There is an intimate interaction between the ego-framework proper and the results of the interplay of the eye with the world around it. I have often had occasion to study this interaction of eye and ego, in blind-born persons and in those who had lost their sight. Such cases reveal very plainly the mutual reactions of that phantom—normal to most people—which becomes incorporated in the organism by the mere fact of sight, and the other phantom which is the result of the ego's activity in the organism.