Turning a Blind Eye: Psychic Retreat and the Work of John Steiner

In the clinical landscape of contemporary psychoanalysis, few concepts have captured the intricacies of defensive mental functioning as acutely as John Steiner’s notion of „turning a blind eye.“ Introduced in his influential book Psychic Retreats (1993), this concept provides a nuanced account of how the mind can evade psychic pain not by not knowing, but by choosing not to know — a form of defensive blindness that borders on collusion with the very reality it seeks to disavow.

From Repression to Retreat
Where classical psychoanalytic theory — from Freud to the early Kleinians — emphasized mechanisms such as repression and projection, Steiner sought to describe a more complex structure of defense, one that entailed a systematic withdrawal from psychic reality. This was not merely about pushing thoughts out of consciousness; rather, it involved the active construction of mental spaces where painful truths could be ignored, if not entirely erased.

This psychic operation, Steiner argued, is best understood as a retreat into internal structures that offer safety at the cost of engagement with emotional truth. “Turning a blind eye” becomes a microcosm of this larger retreat — a moment in which the subject is implicitly aware of a truth but engages in a subtle, often unconscious act of not seeing it.

The Internal Organization of Denial
In Steiner’s model, psychic retreats are maintained through specific internal organizations of the mind — what he calls “pathological organizations” (Steiner, 1993). These are not simply clusters of defenses, but semi-stable mental systems designed to shield the self from anxiety, guilt, and depressive pain, particularly the pain associated with the depressive position as described by Melanie Klein.

“Turning a blind eye” represents a pivot point between internal truth and psychic survival. It is most often observed in clinical work when patients momentarily glimpse a psychic reality — perhaps a repressed feeling of hatred, or the recognition of a dependency — only to immediately look away. As Steiner (1993) notes, this is not a failure of intellect or insight but a failure of integration. The mind, faced with unbearable anxiety, erects a structure of blindness.

Clinical Implications
In analytic practice, Steiner’s work reminds us to look not only at what the patient avoids but how they avoid it. “Turning a blind eye” is not simply a lapse in awareness; it is an active defense, and it often carries a moral or ethical dimension, particularly when linked to guilt or complicity.

For example, in working with patients who have histories of trauma, therapists may observe a quasi-conscious avoidance of emotional insight, often under the guise of compliance or intellectualization. Here, the analyst must delicately trace how the patient’s internal world has come to exclude painful truths — not because they are inaccessible, but because they threaten the very cohesion of the self.

Steiner’s ideas also challenge the analyst to consider their own blind spots — the ways in which countertransference may reflect a shared tendency to „not know.“ Therapeutic progress often depends on the restoration of seeing — on the courage to help the patient bear what was previously unbearable.

A Defense with Consequences
Unlike more rudimentary defenses, turning a blind eye implies a kind of moral ambivalence: the subject knows, but elects not to know. This has profound implications for psychic development. In choosing blindness, the individual forfeits contact with emotional truth, often at the cost of intimacy, spontaneity, and internal richness.

The price of psychic retreat is a narrowing of internal life, and perhaps more poignantly, the quiet maintenance of false selves — compliant, defended personas that obscure the vulnerability beneath.

Conclusion
John Steiner’s contribution to psychoanalytic theory lies in his articulation of the mind’s strategic retreat from psychic reality. “Turning a blind eye” is not a failure of the unconscious to bring material to light — it is a failure of the self to tolerate what has already been glimpsed. It is, in short, a kind of betrayal — not of others, but of one’s own truth.

Understanding this mechanism is not only clinically essential; it is a deeply human concern. We all, at times, choose not to see. And in the space between seeing and not-seeing, the analytic task begins.

References
Steiner, J. (1993). Psychic Retreats: Pathological Organizations in Psychotic, Neurotic and Borderline Patients. London: Routledge.
Klein, M. (1946). Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 27:99–110.
Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann.
Ogden, T. H. (1992). The Primitive Edge of Experience. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.
Meltzer, D. (1975). Adhesive Identification. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 11(2):289–310.