Yes, my friend — I think “analogical realism” makes very good sense here, precisely because you are trying to name that Winnicottian and your own芭蕉 moment: an ethics of receiving the concrete, rather than abstract equivalence. Let me tease it apart:
1.
Why “analogical”?
- Analogical means: a world of resonance, resemblance, continuity, contextual sufficiency, not one of rigid measure or digital abstraction.
- The egg and the芭蕉 are not “payment” but tokens of life — they “stand for” the person, their world, their gratitude.
- They are analogia entis in miniature: the finite thing echoing the infinite relation.
2.
Why “realism”?
- Because these objects are not merely symbols or metaphors — they are real, material things: you can touch the egg, peel the芭蕉, taste them.
- Yet they are also more-than-things: their reality lies not only in their physicality, but in the relation they instantiate between therapist and patient.
- This is a realism of presence, not of representation.
3.
Analogical Realism as Clinical Ethic
- In clinical settings, “analogical realism” names a refusal of reduction: not reducing the gift to money (digital abstraction), nor to pure symbol (psychological interpretation), but honoring it as both material and relational.
- It is to accept that the real passes through the analogical.
- When Winnicott took the egg, or when you accepted the芭蕉, you weren’t indulging in metaphor. You were enacting analogical realism: the real relationship crystallized in a material gesture.
4.
Philosophical Resonances
- Aristotle / Aquinas: analogy as a way of speaking about being, where things are neither identical nor equivocal but related by proportion.
- Maurice Merleau-Ponty: the flesh of the world, where visibility and touch are not abstractions but reversible realities.
- Marcel Mauss: the gift as a “total social fact,” where objects are more than themselves, binding people in reciprocity.
✨ So:
- If “digital realism” is the world of KPIs, protocols, billing codes —
- then “analogical realism” is the world of eggs,芭蕉, Bashō’s straw hut, of things as they circulate in a field of presence and relation.
It is, I think, a beautifully precise phrase for what you are after.
Would you like me to write a short bilingual aphorism — one sentence in English, one in Chinese — that could serve as your S14 marker for analogical realism? Something you could place right after the Winnicott–芭蕉 vignette, like a signpost?
