On Foresight

Abstract

Examples of our interest in the future are drawn from poetry, religion, general medicine, and from the aims of psychoanalysis. The concept of foresight is taken as a focus for questions regarding the relative inattention to a psychology of the future in psychoanalytic thought. This inquiry leads to consideration of the varying constraints and potentials that are determined by the formal properties of verbal language and mental images, which are briefly compared and contrasted in regard to their usefulness in understanding complex dynamic systems such as psychoanalysis. The paper concludes with questions regarding the qualities of conscious and unconscious, and secondary and primary process thought, and with comments on technique.