"Any situation in this world is only an appearance, and the only reality is a thought!" Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) I want to devote my article to the analysis of the painting by the Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher "Relativity " This picture fascinated me with its illusory ideas, and the fact that the first thought that came to me when looking at it was: “So this is what the inner world of the subject means.” A couple of words about the artist. Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972) was a Dutch graphic artist known for his work in optical illusion and mathematical geometry. He created images that seemed contradictory, such as staircases that seemed to be forever ascending or descending. His work was in demand both in the world of art and in scientific circles. Following Freud’s call “not to draw hasty conclusions, to abandon the interpretation of the general impression and to look at the little things and details that at first glance seem insignificant,” I would like to sanctify psychoanalytic a look at the picture itself, with its magnificent execution. We clearly see three staircases, and an analogy immediately comes to my mind about three topics of the mental apparatus, where each idea is located in space without time and restrictions, and in the picture we also see the absence of clear boundaries , gravity and direction. Each representation is loaded with affect, in the picture most of the characters also have a certain load and strive to find a way to discharge it. I also remember J. Lacan’s Borromean knot, which unites the imaginary, symbolic and real - probably these are the components we can see in the painting “Relativity” .The name itself suggests the relativity of what? Perhaps this is the relativity of our perception of reality - as a kind of illusion, because each subject has his own subjective view of the external and internal manifestation of the world, of the register of the real. Another view of the work is the view of perspective - this work can be considered as a person’s attempt to overcome his internal conflicts and learn to look at problems and the world in general from different angles, using “different” optics. When turning to an analyst, the analysand, as a rule, has a tunnel angle of view on a disturbing situation, Escher’s picture seems to hint to us that we can look not only in one plane, but also shift our viewing angle and see a completely different outcome of the event. The cyclicity of flights of stairs can also say that we often move in circles in life, and in order to interrupt this movement, it is necessary to experience an “awakening experience,” as Irwin Yalom calls it. Stairs in psychoanalysis have a symbolic meaning, for example, this is the movement towards the goal, upward, but at the same time it can also be a downward movement, from our true needs and desires. What may seem most significant to the subject may be what interferes with the achievement of true goals. For example, an imposed profession and the need to improve in it in order to move up the career ladder, while experiencing emptiness and disappointment. In the psyche, as well as in the picture, we see non-linear connections and at first glance, what seems to be chaos has a clear order, just different. At one time, Freud said in metapsychology that the laws of the conscious and unconscious are different, and that the unconscious has its own time (or rather, its absence) and its own rules “another scene.” In the picture, it’s as if we see this scene functioning without obeying ordinary logic, but at the same time possessing its own harmony, interconnection that destroys the patterns of representation. The next plot is faceless characters, who each live their own lives, their own thoughts, although we don’t We see their faces, this allows our imagination to complete these plots and correlate them with what excites us - in the image of how a representation is connected with another representation or is loaded with affect. I would compare these characters to.