The term 'screen' traverses the depth-psychology corpus along several distinct axes, each illuminating a different aspect of the mind's relation to concealment, mediation, and protection. Damasio's formulation — adopted prominently by Peter Levine — presents the screen as a psychophysiological veil the mind draws over the body's interior life, hiding somatic reality from conscious awareness; this constitutes perhaps the most theoretically loaded use of the term in the somatic and trauma traditions. A separate but allied therapeutic usage appears in trauma treatment literature, where the 'screen technique' designates a specific clinical intervention in which a distressing memory is imaginally projected onto a video screen, thereby creating manageable distance from overwhelming arousal. Edward Edinger, reading Jung's letters, introduces the screen as a protective religious image — Nicholas of Flüe literally requiring a symbolic screen between himself and the terrifying God-image in order to assimilate it — rendering the screen a figure for the ego's need to buffer numinous encounter. In physics-inflected discourse, Simondon deploys the screen in its literal optical sense to illustrate quantum diffraction, though the image resonates with the Jungian vocabulary of mediation between energies. Finally, in psychoanalytic theory proper, the blank-screen model of analytic neutrality is critically interrogated, notably by Cooper, who argues — drawing on Hui-neng — that no such screen exists or can be maintained. Across these registers, the screen figures the ambivalent boundary between exposure and protection, revelation and concealment.
In the library
10 passages
One of the things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body
Levine quotes Damasio to argue that the mind's screening function operates primarily as a concealment of bodily interiority, suppressing somatic awareness through a veil-like mechanism central to understanding trauma.
Levine, Peter A., In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, 2010thesis
The screen technique is a way of helping the patient to distance from a difficult memory by 'putting the experience on a video screen.' It can reduce overwhelming arousal levels
This passage defines the screen technique as a clinical tool in trauma-focused psychotherapy, using imaginal projection onto a virtual screen to regulate dissociation and emotional flooding.
Lanius, edited by Ruth A, The impact of early life trauma on health and disease the, 2010thesis
only then by constructing a screen between himself and that image. The screen was the image of the Trinity. When he got that screen over the image, then he had assimilated it.
Edinger uses Nicholas of Flüe's visionary experience to show that a protective symbolic screen — the Trinity image — was necessary for the ego to survive and integrate a direct encounter with the numinous God-image.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996thesis
It would be naive to suggest that the analyst maintains a blank screen or that some version of meditation can facilitate a stable blank screen... there is no blank screen to dust with vipassana or any other meditative technique.
Cooper challenges the classical psychoanalytic blank-screen model of the analyst, drawing on Zen patriarch Hui-neng to argue that no neutral reflective surface is achievable or even conceptually coherent.
Cooper, Seiso Paul, Zen Insight, Psychoanalytic Action: Two Arrows Meeting, 2019thesis
the diffraction of light by the edge of a screen can be interpreted by saying that the corpuscle of light is subject to an action of the screen's edge and is thereby diverted from its rectilinear route
Simondon uses the physical screen as a literal diffraction boundary to illustrate the quantum-wave mediation between a corpuscle-singularity and its environment, offering an analogy for how form emerges through boundary interaction.
Simondon, Gilbert, Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information, 2020supporting
There was nothing on the screen; it was the film that seemed to stain it with color and characters alike. Similarly, the Katha Upanishad asks, when the Self leaves the body, what remains? Nothing but inert matter.
Easwaran employs the cinema screen as a Vedantic metaphor for the pure substratum of the Self upon which the illusion of separate individual identity is projected and then dissolved.
Easwaran, Eknath, The Bhagavad Gita for Daily Living: A Verse-by-Verse Commentary, 1975supporting
the subject is then able to search out an eraser from among a collection of objects behind a screen using only the left hand. If the subject is then asked what the item is behind the screen after it has been selected correctly, 'he' in the left hemisphere cannot say
Jaynes uses the physical screen as an experimental partition to demonstrate hemispheric dissociation, showing that what one cerebral hemisphere knows is screened from the verbal consciousness of the other.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
one's abundance is covered by a screen as in a solar eclipse: the polestar can be seen although the sun is at noon. This is a bad situation. One's intelligence is overshadowed by another's ignorance.
In the I Ching commentary, the screen figures as an eclipse-like obstruction that darkens inherent brilliance, symbolizing how superior intelligence can be occluded by surrounding ignorance.
Alfred Huang, The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, 1998supporting
I go into the house and it is on the screen, but gradually I realize it has worked its way through the screen and is on the inside. I realize I should have set it on fire when it was going through the screen
In a dream reported by Hillman, the screen serves as a permeable boundary between outer and inner psychic worlds, with the intrusive insect figure gradually breaching it — illustrating the failure of protective barriers to contain autonomous psychic content.
my primary contact with family, friends, and students worldwide has been via a computer screen. Most of us living through the COVID-19 crisis have newfound appreciation for how technology can promote community
Maté uses the digital screen as a contemporary mediating surface that both enables connection and encodes developmental harm, situating modern screen culture within a broader critique of technological environments.
Maté, Gabor, The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture, 2022aside