Seeing the Light

Seeing the light is an expression that usually connotes a conceptual grasp of meaning in all its complexity, while the perception of light is not the issue. In this paper, the authors present a patient with an exquisite light sensitivity that disturbs her sleep; she is “seeing the light” in a symptomatic, concrete way. Light itself has become a compliant and collusive element onto which an aspect of conflict is displaced in the service of self-deception. Ironically, the analysis and deconstruction of the symptom eventually led to the kind of insight that the expressionseeing the light conveys.