In his discussion of The Idiot , Rowan Williams makes this profound psychological and pastoral observation: “To see the truth in someone is not only to penetrate behind appearances to some hidden static reality. It also has to be, if it is not to be destructive, a grasp of the processes and motors of concealment, a listening to the specific language of a person hiding himself. It is perhaps the difference between ‘seeing through’ someone and understanding him.”
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