This imaginary landscape shows a patient and care giver sitting on top of one of an endless number of ridges: each ridge looks suspiciously like a cancerous tumour. This is an example of psychological projection–how a patient takes a feeling or attitude toward an internal condition and projects it onto the surrounding world. Robert reworked this image considerably to come up with the more positive image, Healing, showing a patient and caregiver on the edge of the ocean.

This is one of Robert’s techniques for getting into the mind of the patient, by protecting thoughts on outward things. This dream, fantasy, and symbolic approach was an important element of Robert’s series which counterbalanced the more documentary and procedural aspects of the hospital images.