Changes in the psychoanalyst during the psychoanalytic process

Paper presented at the XIX Brazilian Congress of Psychoanalysis, 1-4 October 2004, Recife, PE.

Training and Teaching Analyst of Rio de Janeiro State Psychoanalytical Association - Rio-4.

Who am I and who will I be, I, who don’t know who I am?

To be what do I think? But I think so many things?

And there are many who think to be the same thing that there cannot be so many!

At this moment, am I a mystic?

A hundred thousand minds conceive dreams of genius as I do,

And history will not notice, who knows? Not one,

And will not be without the fertilizer of so many future conquests.

No, I don’t believe in myself.

In all the asylums there are crazy madmen with so much certainty!

I, who do not have any certainty, am I crazier or less mad?

Tabacaria, Fernando Pessoa

The difficulties of the theme may begin with a lack of specificity of its proposition: what are those changes and what is the psychoanalytic process?

The answer appears to be less difficult for the second part of the question: the psychoanalytic process is in first place and before anything else, the unwinding of analysis: since Freud, the investigation of what he calls the psychic reality, centrally, its unconscious dimension. At the same time, it is the joint activity of the analyst and the analysand by means of this investigation (transference being its main instrument), in order to arrive at a certain change in the latter, change which Freud called the “end of analysis”.

However, Freud himself recognized that the analyst is not immune to changes, and described them in a direction parallel to the analysand, under the generic title of counter-transference: a phenomenon that carries the unequivocal mark of the unconscious. In addition to this, to complicate the problem, the analyst always has to face the most remarkable fact of his practice: the unconscious cannot be reached by Knowledge. Therefore, the unconscious is the theory of the unconscious used by the analyst a fact which create a problem much more ethical than of Knowledge. Thus, the changes in the analyst are always reflected in the theories used to carry out his work.

Such changes, after Freud, became increasingly complicated in their evaluation, for it is sufficient to remember the multiplicity of psychoanalytical “schools” that, because of the different theoretical understandings of the phenomenon, embark on reciprocal denigration in respect of certain changes that the analyst may realize throughout the process, saying something as “this isn’t psychoanalysis”.

If we compare any other human activity that deals with subjectivity, for example, philosophy, no one ever will say when reading Kant that “this is not philosophy”, simply because there is some change in the philosophical process.

The work of Freud himself shows, in its complexity, in its ambiguities and, above all, in its incessant development, a number of changes that are reflected in the creation of new vertices. It is not difficult to recognize that everything occurs parallel to the changes made during the evolution of clinical practice. Thus, the most adequate is to say that the analytical process is synonymous to changes, or as Bion (1975) said: “what makes the process of analysis difficult is a personality in constant change speaking to another in constant change”.

In any case, as the divergence regarding the conception of the analytical process is inevitable, above all in respect of what would be the changes admitted as part of the process and what are those placed outside it, I must emphasize that I shall speak in the light of my experience of psychoanalysis and of my re-elaboration of the psychoanalytical models predominantly through the application of W. R. Bion’s ideas. I hope that from this I can give an idea of what I understand as changes in the analyst throughout the process. But, before describing this theoretical re-elaboration, I consider it appropriate to mention some clinical material responsible for these changes.

The patient chosen for this illustration was classified by some colleagues, who listened to me previously in an informal way, as at the very least, very unusual. But, I think that it is exactly because of this singularity that he appears to be as any other patient. Of course, care was taken to preserve confidentiality although, at some moments, it is possible to imagine who some of the protagonists would be. I should say, as in cinema, that any similarities with people in real life are entirely coincidental. It cannot be any other way, for what are related of the patient are obviously the product of transformations, as well as those that are of my authorship to include them in a work such as this.

The material refers to a businessman, 47 years of age, who has been in analysis with me for almost 17 years. In this period, there was an interruption of 4 years, because of work he realized in another city. In this interval, whenever he came to Rio de Janeiro, he requested sessions. Before me he apparently went through experiences of treatment that he described as very disappointing. But if they were totally negative as he told me with strong feelings of resentment, he would not have resorted to the method again (But this might be just a type of optimistic logic that you can use to justify a new attempt). However, as analysts we must never abandon prudence, because there are people who will insist on analysis while they have something good and/or truthful to destroy.

The reports of these previous experiences were part of the clinical material of this patient for years, for he revealed them every time he noticed some change in the analyst. In fact, it was a way to express what he felt about those changes and it was very difficult for him to create a new way of expressing it. His reactions illustrate the following thesis: changes in the analyst during the process can also be seen as changes of analyst. We can also translate this by the following quotation of Bion: “No reason at all exists for the analysand to believe that the analyst is the same person as the day before. Such belief is a symptom of the connivance relationship that intends to prevent the appearance of an unknown emptiness, incoherent, formless, and a feeling of persecution associated by the evolved elements of O” (1970).

Before describing such previous psychoanalytic experiences of the patient I think it is appropriate to present a typical session.

Always on time, he entered my office opening the door harshly. Sometimes he did it so aggressively that I thought he had broken it. At the beginning I wonder why he appeared not to notice this, even when I indicated the fact. Thus, I suppose I was dealing with behavior that remained unchanged, like much more [1]. His facial expression did not denote great emotion, only appearing anxious and hurried. When entering he always avoided looking at me, he rarely says a good morning and goes straight to the couch, quickly lying down and places his forearm over his eyes. There is a small pause, than his way of communicating begins without ever reminding anything of a common conversation, which he certainly was able to maintain in when in other situations. He began to speak like this: “it appears that now I am thinking about...” a kind of sign that he is not sure if he is actually thinking, but, perhaps “seeing” or “listening” something. Thus he speaks, for example, of the car, of his work, of his house, of time, and returned to the sequence, although not necessarily in the same order. I perceived that he is trying in some way to recover, with visible effort, the “reasoning” (as he described the themes) interrupted by what appeared to be a violent dissociation. When he didn’t succeed, he became manifestly anxious and made a type of grumble as though he was sucking something. It is a kind of hallucination. On one occasion, I suggested that the whole situation: his broken way of communication plus the guttural noise, could be a reminiscence of a past situation, an experience that happened long way down in his infancy, when his brothers used to interrupt him while his mother was breast-feeding him. The mother stopped to watch the brothers and returned to him, but anxious with the tumult. But when she didn’t return as fast as he needed, he remained sucking emptiness. He appeared to be very comforted with this reconstruction, which registered a perception of a failure of the mother’s function (reverie) reverberating always within him. This type of failure was transported to other relationships mainly intimate ones. He agreed with me, something that isn’t frequent, for in general he didn’t express himself regarding the interpretations, and when he surprisingly returned to speak of this failure referred to it as “that thing with my mother”.

Still, regarding his form of communication, I think that the previous reconstruction was a consequence of observing the presence of a certain rhythm in the “associations”. The rhythm was lost at certain moments, in a sudden way, returned again and it was this that makes him feel very anxious and sometimes deeply scared. He felt relieved when he succeeded in describing a sequence of problems that were implicit in “associations”, that is, managed to establish the rhythm in which they were placed, for when this occurred is when he opened what I will call a “psychic window”. But when he did not succeed, the suffering appeared in body language or complaints of headaches, torticollis, flatulence, tears in the eyes, nasal congestion, and back pain.

Also, the descriptive interpretations of the actual mental state, relating his “associations” to a present emotion, generally anxiety, appeared to help him more than the clarification of any content of his communication.

When I need to make questions in order to clarify something regarding the material, he becomes desolated. He appears to believe that I would be capable of knowing more than I could. I said this to him in a variety of ways. So far I continue to create new ways of interpreting this strong belief, which appears to be there to counterbalance his intense feeling of abandonment. Generally, faced with a situation of permanent dissociation, in which he reacts to interpretations in a way very similar to an autistic child, that is, as if nothing has been said, many times it occurred to me that there was no reason to think that the process could arrive anywhere. On the other hand, the question is whether I should be worried about this, and what other reason was there for discontinuing.

After many months of work, I succeeded in uniting the fragments of his history in a kind of operational myth, more or less like this: He was born in a rich and traditional family in a poor province of the country, always involved with disputes for real state and political power, where his tyrannical father, politically influential, always tried to guide the destinies of his children. One was supposed to be a priest, another a politician, another a doctor, etc. The patient was supposed to become an engineer; during childhood he was informed that in the future he would become the Secretary of public works for the state. He did become an engineer. After finishing school due to his father’s political pressure over the board of scholarships, he was sent, against his will (which he never dared express to his father), to take a doctorate in a European country, at an important center of technology in engineering, without speaking the local language properly. The technical level usually difficult to anyone was even harder for him, and in addition to feelings of loneliness and longings for a hot climate and for his girlfriend in Brazil; he was unable to relate to his colleagues. He felt very isolated, excluded, persecuted, for no one understood what he said correctly, and didn’t worry that he didn’t make an effort to improve his difficulties of communication. On this vertex, it could be said that he was increasingly approaching a psychotic situation. At this time, his girlfriend committed suicide, with a bullet to the head, in front of the political office of the patient’s father, a fact that shocked his town, appeared in all news papers and terribly aggravated his persecution state (Years later, the patient discovered that the girl had been sexually harassed by his father, was pregnant of him and that is why she committed suicide). After that tragedy he became persecuted with repeated thoughts that he would be obliged, sooner or later, to do the same.

Visibly confused, he attracted the attention of one of the professors, who had the compassion to suggest that he urgently seek psychotherapeutic help or return to Brazil. He preferred the second hypothesis. Upon communicating this to his mother by telephone, he received the short, dry reply from his father: you little urchin, before completing the doctorate, you can only come back to Brazil dead”. At this point, desperate and persecuted for not being able to convince his father, he followed the advice of the professor [2] who told him the following: “I know a very good and famous analyst who is also a foreigner, and for this reason, knowing the cultural affinities, will understand them better than a local analyst”.

This analyst had his office at home, a beautiful apartment, with many pieces of art in the lounge, mostly in oriental style. A butler attended the door, very refined, dressed in clothes typical of his country of origin.

When he was waiting it occurred to him: “a masculine man doesn’t live in a place like this, full of drag queen objects” – this kind of prejudice (a belief) is one of the typically dissociated thoughts of this “analysand”. When the analyst who was wearing typical pink clothes, as well as a choice of rings, received him, the patient became very frightened, for this seemed to confirm his belief: this guy with these strange clothes, with a butler like this, seems to be a drag queen”. After listening to him, the analyst told him that he spoke the local idiom very badly. As nothing could be done about this, the analyst was available for an experimental period of one month, five times per week. In this period he would try to understand him, but if he didn’t succeed he would send him to another analyst. The patient, even being doubtful, accepted the offer, but internally he left feeling persecuted, imagining that “that threat to send him away was typical of a gay”. (At a given moment of his analysis with me I made an interpretation about his feelings of persecution for fear of being seduced homosexually by the analyst, and that this was due to the prejudice of this nature inspired by his infancy when the adults used to warn him of the dangers of being seduced and, above all, aggravated by a major difficulty to manage new situations and handle differences – that would include any person who did not fit into the pattern of the elite of his region).

He spoke with strong resentment (an emotion that always made him stutter) that in the sessions with the “oriental gay analyst”, on the few occasions when he spoke, insisted that the patient had two persons within him :one false and one true, and that he should make an effort to be sincere in order to overcome the falsity. The depression-persecution cycles got worse, and he felt revolted when “he left the sessions, feeling deceived by the gay who only said the same damn things”. (In one of these reports, I tried to make a type of interpretation that he always considered foolish. I mentioned the possibility of an analogy between what had happened and what was happening for, up to now; I also might be saying always the same things, because I was using a lot the language of the listener. He retorted that he felt comfortable due to the fact that at least I spoke Portuguese. I said to him that it was possible that we were speaking another language, the language of the unconscious, and that is why he felt more comfortable. But this had no apparent repercussion in what one may call the tower of Babel.

About this time the patient tried to make a new contact with his father, as he was very depressed, with suicidal thoughts, and that although he had sought treatment, he still needed to return, it was a question of life or death. The father responded again in the same tone: “that he would only return in a coffin, and that this thing about depression was a thing of homosexuals”. Perplexed, he described the conversation to his analyst, who answered ironically: “congratulations, little boy now you can grow up and improve”. Offended by the reply, he said that his situation was not a childhood game, and that he was seriously thinking about killing himself. The analyst became furious and shouted: I don’t go to patient’s funerals, much less of a hypocritical catholic, but as I so far have never seen anyone commit suicide I would like to know when, how and where you are going to do it, in order to appreciate it. At that moment the patient said that he had confirmation that the analyst was “in fact a homosexual, for only a homosexual could speak like that, and told him challengingly: I will jump from bridge X, at Y hours. And he left the session harshly disposed never to return. Which in fact happened. At the time he fixed to commit suicide, he was at the place “disguised”, to verify if the “drag queen” would be there. “I didn’t kill myself in order not to give him this pleasure”. But no one came at the stipulated hour.

All these reported experiences, for more “strange” they were, produced an effect, because the patient put into action ideas that he had in mind and sought an easier course in another country, whose language was more familiar to him. However, the cycles of persecution-depression persisted, the fear of imminent annihilation represented by thoughts of suicide returned and intensified, and again, by indication of a colleague he looked for a local analyst.

At the same time he went to a psychiatrist that prescribed antidepressive drug treatment and criticized the choice of analyst. The analyst, in fact a very famous one, worked in the lacanian model, following the logical time technique, therefore interrupting the sessions in a way that left the patient furious and confused. His feelings of persecution, derived from hatred in submission to something he didn’t agree with, returned and intensified, and he identified the new analyst as a “mercenary big brush”, because “he charged highly for little session time” and, “what was worse”, had a ‘nice” secretary who wouldn’t “fuck” him.

He said that this analyst, often used to read a newspaper during the sessions, he knew that because he listened to the pages unfolding while lying on the couch. When I suggested, on this report, that the fact of having someone only to listen to him, even if bored, had a result and caused him to remain for six months because he was dealing with a failure that he was familiar with, the patient made a assumption that “I was protecting the class of analysts”. I pointed out that he believed that all analysts were equal, and plus they were not sincere or honest, and that they formed a caste like the politicians. His reaction was of alarm, as he felt my intervention bold and challenging for the connection with his reverentially feared father.

The psychiatrist who attended him continued to insist that he should change his analyst. The psychiatrist insisted that the office of the analyst had many people in the waiting room talking non-sense (which probably was a fact), and that analysis was not that. He ended by acceding, accepting another indication of this psychiatrist. The new analyst was born in a South America country worked in regular sessions of 50 minutes, understood a little Portuguese, but the patient said that the analyst didn’t succeed in understanding anything he said, and vice-versa. When he sought some clarification he didn’t receive a reply, the analyst usually remained silent. The patient came to think that the analyst was deaf (later, there arose material that permitted connection with a deaf grandmother who helped take care of the many children).

At this time, his eldest brother, in the middle of a family scandal involving illegal high sums of money abroad broke up with his father and came to live in Rio. Encouraged by this act, he left the course and came to live with his brother. He soon obtained work with a company, of which he became a partner in a short time, due to the use of family influence in obtaining large work contracts. His material progress was rapid and accentuated, but as well as maintaining the fear of imminent annihilation (brought by fantasies that someone wished his death- most of the time his father- by suicide), when he approached any woman he lived a situation that was always suffering and emotionally disastrous, for which he urgently sought a remedy. It was clear that this request attested his suffering by the links that only permitted two alternatives: hostile disdain of the sexual desire or fear of persecution of “whitewashing” when he would feel that she was “a girl to marry”. The protagonists in the drama alternated inside him: the patient, any eventual girlfriend with whom he had sex, but disdained; the girlfriend who killed herself and who continued to be present as a cruel ghost, hostile and jealous, demanding the impossible of him. At other moments, the triangle was she, the girlfriend “to marry” who made him “whitewash”, and a vindictive father calling for suicide. Again, he approached a situation of what could be called psychotic disaster. That was when he looked for me by indication of an acquaintance of his partner who had been my patient.

For a long time those previously described triangles, which one could call parasitic, persisted.

The interpretations that pointed out differences between him and the suicidal girl friend, that represented his feminine part submissive to his cruel father, produced a “psychic window”, and reduced his mental confusion. In reality, for a long time the analysis made the difference for him between continuing to live or dying. Perhaps it still makes the difference between having a long life and cutting it short because of a disabling illness. I am not able to go further than this because of my lack of knowledge.

Though I have tried up to this point to make a report of the history of this patient, I don’t consider it satisfactory. When I wrote it I have the impression of one who sees nothing. A text like that of Ulysses, of James Joyce, perhaps can better translate what is to be heard in a history without full stop and without comma, but it is also a version of the history of how Eros relates to Psyche, or better, the history of how preconception seeks a realization to create conceptions (Chuster, 1999). In other words, my capacity to recreate the emotional experience lived with the “analysand” is not in any way reliable. I recommend the poem of Fernando Pessoa, the Tabacaria, mentioned at the beginning of this paper, maybe because it can give a better idea and pay tribute to the stubbornness of the patient, in persisting with an analyst who changed a lot and didn’t tell him any big deal, and who most of the time appears to be only supplying an accompanying rhythm, with no expectation. For this reason I quote Tabacaria again:

I am not anything

I will never be anything

I cannot want to be anything.

Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams of the world.

Without intending to spend more time on other details of the case, which are many, I return to my re-elaboration of Bion’s psychoanalytical model, illustrating it with some hypotheses of work, which modified my way of working during this case and many others:

1) Bion’s model of the mind proposes us a theory of thinking in which psychoanalysis can work how a new way of being can be created, embodied by the movement of the nucleus of the psyche, represented by what he called preconception. The model states that preconception seeks a realization to generate conceptions (thoughts). It is a model of three periods, epistemologically distinct from the Freudian model, which has four periods.

2) The preconception movement has roots in the complexity of human evolution; in fact one might consider it as a representation of such complexity that Bion called “O” (1965). He also spoke about it as the Truth, Ultimate Reality and Reality (1970).

3) This referential link is fundamental to the analytical process. It expresses itself effectively as indetermination (“O”) on transference by the associative process. For example, when a patient tells a dream, nobody can predict where it will lead his associations, and what they will be. Equally, nobody can predict how the changes will be when one shifts from a mental state to another after an interpretation. (An ethical-aesthetical principle of Uncertainty, added to a principle of Incompleteness, applies to this referential link) [3]

4) Another consequence of this link is the infinite character of its unfolding. This allows us to say that the human unconscious necessarily goes beyond what has been described under the term “Freudian Unconscious”. For example, if one speaks of Unconscious it means he is already outside the subject. The unconscious has already expanded and demands a new interpretation. Therefore, is necessary to introduce another term into the discussion: the nearest for Bion is the term inaccessible. In other words, the theory of preconception establishes a level of psychic experience that transcends the notion of Unconscious as a product of repression. Also one is not only dealing with an unconscious that was never conscious, which for Freud is phylogenetic (therefore, deterministic and hyperstructural). We are dealing with an active mental state, a spectrum generator of forms constantly present in any circumstance of life, with roots in a pre-subjective world, a type of chaos (with its complexity) that transcends the conflict between the drives of life and of death. In other words, there is something before the drives that moves the human being in the direction of truth, an ultimate reality (an empty concept), that is, paradoxically, totally inhuman. It is something that is simply a world of pure forms and voids that “urge to exist” ² [4] (Bion, 1965, 1992). And as truth is unreachable and unknowable, all we can do it is to imagine how it would be like if we could reach it.

5) A more aesthetical way developed by Bion of speaking about preconception is found in his final texts and conferences in the concept of “embryonic mind”. Synonymous with creative mind, (or creative position - a position beyond the depressive position), this elaboration means that psychoanalytic work is more than to observe a repetition: there is always something new, current, emerging, that the analysis of Freud and, above all, of Lacan, frequently abandoned in relating all phenomena to repetition due to a single hallucinatory source. Bion’s model of the mind is completely prospective and temporal. For example, the mind of the fetus develops in the “prevision” of having to cope with certain situations that will appear in after-birth, but in a certain way have already arrived. In this way, the realization of the preconception is like an apparition, a transitive and creative apparition because it is not repeated: there is a temporal difference (at the time of conception which is formed by realization) and there is a difference of identity (a different form always emerges).

It is appropriate to emphasize that in this pre-subjective world things occur that are not in the realm of Phantasy, a concept that sustains the idea of a common hallucinatory source and repetition, but there is something else that can be called radical [5] imagination – emphasizing that we are not dealing here with visual images, but mostly with kinetic and auditive impressions. I am using this concept as an attempt to understand the roots of the function of Imagination, the only mental activity that can lead us to deal with the inaccessible mental state.

The kinetic and auditive impressions at first compose a rhythm, which is essential for the organization of the mind. There are various rhythms: the rhythm of the baby’s heart, of the mother’s heart, the rhythm of the intestines, of the evacuation of the bladder, of the intestines, the rhythm of impacts and the balance of amniotic liquid – the possibilities are infinite, including the rhythms of the culture and the environment of the mother. And when the rhythm of this pre-subjective world – which can be defined either as void and formless infinite or as an obscure mass, dense and as compact as a black hole, it is lead by a radical imagination, then a “psychic window” comes out, with a type of frame for future landscapes, a frame made of a specific material: time. The time of the rhythm that begins to organize a pre-view of the world over the frames that will be filled with the landscapes after birth. Anyway, it is essential not to ignore the original, embryonic mental medium, where some facts occur that prepare the individual to live in the gaseous “medium”, which is the world of objects such as we know. In this originary medium we don’t have objects properly, because we cannot call a temporal frame an object. Perhaps we can speak of pre-objects [6].

“ That is what seems to me to be one of the fundamental discoveries of psychoanalysis: archaic states of mind, archaic thoughts and ideas, primitive patterns of behavior are all detectable in the most civilized, cultivated people; in more primitive people we would expect them to be less hidden. These archaic elements may turn out to be of some consequences today; supposing, for example, that the remnants of a branquial cleft could develop into a branchial cleft tumor. In this way there can be certain detectable archaic elements in our personalities or minds, which are really survivals and which are capable of proliferating in a beneficent manner, but also in cancerous manner, a pathological manner. That is only reason why it seems to me to be interesting to be seeing a patient today and tomorrow and in the future if he or she will submit to being observed again [7]”.

6) The most important preconception for psychoanalysis is the Oedipical preconception, because it includes all the others. It also proposes and delimits a field of work, which is revealed by its complexity, always more than is believed to exist within the realm of the classic application of the theory of the Oedipus complex. For example, if the analyst makes associations with the myth of Oedipus in different moments of its practice (as mentioned in item (3)) those associations will never be the same, and one can never predict where they will lead. Another important characteristic of preconception is its constant reducibility to the mental. For example, the breast preconception first seeks the mind of the mother, in order to arrive at the physical breast, and not the contrary. It is in the space that the mother’s mind reserves to receive the preconception of the baby where a conception is created. It is in such space of creation where the baby can be fed by the rhythm of the milk with the gentleness and the capacity to love of the mother. It is not difficult to understand, in this model, why some children do not succeed in taking the breast, or why there exists in many people dissociation between the material and the psychic (Bion, 1962). In the same way, the Oedipal preconception seeks the mind of the parents, in order to mate the reality of the family. If this doesn’t occur adequately, the individual may spend life in a state in which he feels things but doesn’t suffer, which means also that he cannot solve his problems because he cannot reach them.

7) The realization of the Oedipical preconception shows, in the first place, that social-isation is a determinative tendency of the human being, as opposed to the narcissistic tendency. Such tendencies constitute a spectral, non-structural field of work and are also one of the facets of the psychoanalytical object (Bion, 1962). A profound practical aspect of the spectral view is found in the fact that for social-ization to occur it is necessary that the psyche renounces the possibilities that could be embodied in the term omnipotence (narcissistic pole). For example, for an individual to socialize depends on renouncing the belief in a single explanation for facts, for, hypothetically, he reproduces the belief based on the experience of the baby as being the center of the world. There are, clearly, a great number of non-quantifiables beliefs like that which human beings can never successfully renounce, for in addition to the abandonment of the individual before the group, which makes him return to methods of omnipotence (as the religions). Also because of the lines of orientation that emerge from one person (spatial coordinates) which link him to others. Thus, from his earliest experiences, the human being is faced with the necessity to stop believing that the breast is constantly at his disposition, and that because of this constancy he would form an exclusive pair with the mother. Without giving up such belief, which involves tolerating the frustration of incompleteness in not being everything, the baby does not succeed in passing to another level of psychic experience which is thinking: a process which implies recognition that a link exists between two other people apart from him. If this three-dimensional concept is not accepted there will never be social-ization and the individual will not be able to enjoy the benefits of this third person, initially the father, who also possesses a continent that complements the mother’s function in those areas where she cannot or is not capable of functioning in. For example, the anxieties derived from the absence of the complementary parental figure, able to help the mother to deal with aspects that the mother alone isn’t able to cope with, can generate a type of conception that makes the individual think that to control a problem is the same as to resolve it. Thus, in some patients, we observe at certain moments of their analyses, especially those that involve a decision between two objects (which can be a group of persons, beginning, for example, with the idea of forming a family), an increase in anxiety for which they ask for medicine, or generally a material reality to substitute a mental reality (drugs, consumerism, violence) with which they hope to “control” (always omnipotent) the situation.

8) All the statements above express human capacities and, at the same time, its limits. There is a constant interaction between capacity and limits. Within the human capacities constituted by the oedipical preconception, one can find what Bion calls the psychoanalytical function of personality (PFP). The meeting of this function of the analysand with the function of the analyst, plus the means (the minimal conditions necessary- MCN) which organize this meeting, is what constitutes the activity, which we call psychoanalysis.

9) The last statement can also be expressed in the following way: psychoanalysis is not an activity that you supply the patient with, as if it were a kind of medicine or medical treatment [8]. It can only be developed if it is drawn out of individuals. In other words, psychoanalysis is a human ability, an ability of human sensibility to life in general, which the so-called analytical process can bring to the surface in order to evolve it. Some people have this ability more than others. Because of this one can see individuals evolving well with less sessions per week, and others, notwithstanding 4-5 sessions per week, don’t succeed in evolving or evolve very little.

10) The characteristics of oedipical preconception described up to now, allow the suggestion that where Freud speaks about the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, Bion perceived the evolution of the Oedipus complex. That is, in a certain way one can say that Bion put the future of humanity upon the dependence on the evolution of the capacity of man to establish himself socially. Therefore, the future of humanity will depend on a growing ability to cope with the simultaneously growing differences between human beings. I named this an ethical-aesthetical principle of Singularity (Chuster, 2003), in order to observe and emphasize all the clear confrontations in which not only is an impossibility to decide about the origins of the facts, but also shows that a solution between individuals can no longer be purely and simply the elimination of what is different. For example, some patients hold the belief that a group only establishes itself by excluding what is different, to later devaluate the difference and, finally, moving to destroy it; The transferential process, which is a representation of the singularity of the internal group of the individuals, can, in some patients be observed as a seek to involve the analyst in a relationship of connivance, in which the social representation of the individual is not discussed, either for his responsibility for events, or for the fundamental necessity to have more than one vertex to elaborate conflicts.

11) The evolution of the Oedipus complex is a constant crossing of caesuras. Humanity only evolves when it succeeds, crossing one kind of caesura that produces thinking capable of creating history, which diminishes the disrespect of differences and improves the quality of life.

12) The formulation (11) and (12) allows us to say that there is always something more general than the individual, that overcoming is what makes change. This something is the oedipical tridimensionality of thought, expressed by the collectivity and its institutions. Thus, if the individual refuses to change, life will change him and generally, for the worse.

13) Just as one can never place the individual above tridimensionality, so changes occur all the time, as much in the patient as in the analysand, by simple contact (Bion, 1979). The contact is always a generator of emotional turbulence, whether or not a verbal language exists.

14) Changes in the analyst during the process can also be viewed as changing to a new analyst. We can translate this by the following Bion’s formulation: “No reason at all exists for the patient to believe that the analyst is the same person as the day before. Such a belief is a symptom of a conivent relationship which intends to prevent the appearance of an unknown, incoherent, formless void, and of a persecutory feeling associated by the elements of O evolved” (1970).

15) The psychoanalytic object is constituted by four levels in the narcissism ⇔ social-ism spectrum: believing, thinking, learning from experience, and creating. Each level is projected in three domains where it can be felt and perceived: 1) feelings (body), 2) myths (theories) and 3) passions (feelings). The changes pass thus from one level to another (intrapsychically) or pass from one level to another in applications (or areas of domination). Each level is like a type of cylinder (a psychic window open for the realization of the preconception) whose walls are made of time, and contains circular arguments with diameters established by the movement PS⇔D. In this mode, we have oscillations: narrowing of thinking ⇔ multiplicity of vertices; one feeling ⇔ several feelings; unification of hypotheses ⇔ complexity. A practical example of this theory can be seen when we encounter systemized beliefs. It is established that there is no real change if there is not evolution to the level of thinking. In this transition, the analyst as much as the patient will deal with a “controversy” that can be between the analyst today and the analyst of yesterday, which can be represented by any speech about the relationship between the two of them, or any speech in general about conflicts between any individuals. The establishment of controversy allows the decision to be made as to which way to go. But this needs to be a genuine confrontation and not an impotent quarrel between opponents whose differences of vision are not stated. Thus, it becomes necessary to link the divergence to the vertex. Otherwise, there is the risk of taking part in discussions of the type Bion (1970) mentions: an aeronautical engineer wanting to argue that infantile sexuality does not exist because he has not “seen” evidence of such a thing. We can accept that he cannot “see” it; after all, his theories are about the construction of aircrafts, but what cannot be denied is that he affirms such a thing from his vertex, and this is a type of blindness – as, for instance that of Oedipus after facing the truth.

16) The analyst must place himself in the session in a mental state susceptible to receive the applications of the psychoanalytical object. For this he needs to rely on his psychoanalytical function of personality. This means that the abilities between analysts vary greatly, as well as in each analyst from one situation to another. The psychoanalytical ability is not stable, because it depends on the interaction with the oedipical configuration and its evolution. What can improve this ability, besides a personal analysis, as complete as possible, (although one cannot, a priori, define what that may be) is: 1) the capacity to reach the point of maximum difference possible in relation to the patient, thanks to a mental state as free as possible of memory, desire and the need for comprehension, 2) the associative exercise with the myth of Oedipus (Chuster, 2002, 2003) to develops the intuition and the capacity to decide an adequate version (language of achievement, Bion, 1970) to be used in the history that unfolds in the analytical process.

17) The discipline described in (16) and (17) was also transcribed by the expression Negative capability (Bion, 1970). I suggest that it can also be translated by the phrase in a note that Nietzsche wrote to his friend George Brande: “After you had discovered me, it was not difficult to find me; the difficulty now is to lose me...” In this note, the philosopher is not talking of Zaratustra, but of Thinking and his extraordinary way of operating, that is, as thinking puts itself in work, it acts and labor according to three verbs: “discover”, “meet” and “lose”. In the analytical process, the same procedure comprises the possibility of change.

18) “To discover” the unconscious in the dream, “to find” the unconscious in the past presented taken from the “dream” of interpretation, and finally to remit all that is found to the dawn of the oblivion and proceed again searching for the new. Those are the three books of A Memory of the Future (Bion, 1975, 1977, 1978), which point to critical thinking that ethically and aesthetically delimits our field of change, and must accompany us in the analytical process. That is to say, faced with the reality of the unconscious, the interpretation, whatever it may be, always arrives too late. About this I quote Baudrillard (2001), who explains: Thinking arrives too late for one day, as the Messiahs of Kafka, or arrives at the end of the day like the owl of Hegel. Everything is no more than a retrospective prophecy, a kind of platonic shadow, a dancing phantom on the wall of facts, in the cavern of History. And more, History doesn’t offer a repeat performance, a new chance – only psychoanalysis does this, permitting some improvement, or if everything goes well it may allow one to transcend oneself: a way to how to become what one is.

19) Bion developed in The Grid a critical instrument where the Theory of thinking was systematized. Although he later disregarded it in favor of a redefinition to the use of aesthetic elements The Grid may be used as a starting point to continue feeding psychoanalytical criticism. Based on this, I presented an Oedipal Grid (Chuster, 2002, 2003), following Bion’s suggestion to redefine it [9]. On the horizontal line, destined to the systematization of the use of formulations, the category “inquiry” is revived in the form originally presented by Bion as an “Oedipus” category (Bion 1962, 1992). It is emphasized that this revival is due to the fact that every time the analyst inquires, and succeeds in generating an interpretation, he does it through its oedipical configuration and there is no other way to do it. In this way, in all interpretation the analyst exhibits his oedipical configuration. (We know that the analyst’s oedipical configuration shows that nothing exists in the unconscious linked to the desire to be an analyst). The real unconscious desire of an individual who becomes an analyst, can be to kill his patient, copulate with him, dissect him, enslave him, feed him, devour him, anything except to analyze it. We also know that for each individual one or more of these desires are more constant than the others, and that signifies unbalance of the oedipical configuration when faced with anxiety situations. Certain patients, peculiarly those who have a more developed psychotic part of the personality, develop an ability to captivate this “desire” of the analyst and can thus serve it. In this way, the analysis will “carry on”, saying the same things in different ways without any real change (rigid transformations). If the analyst perceives such a state of affairs, he will try to move to another vertex. Such a patient will react, forming a barrier of lies (projective transformation). If the analyst perceives and interprets them, the patient will try to prove, in a state of intense rivalry, that lies are morally superior to the truth (transformations in hallucinosis). At this point, perhaps there is little you can do with interpretations. A Negative Grid (Chuster and Conte, 2003) may be useful to develop hypotheses about this situation that the following quotation from Bion (1975) illustrates well: “The likehood of meeting old friends in hell makes its prospect less terrifying than the prospect of heaven, for which life on Earth doesn’t prepare us properly. But this also applies to decisions that are taken repeatedly. One may deplore an unhappy decision; how terrible it would be if we had never taken unhappy decisions or made unhappy interpretations! In analysis, we have to become accustomed to coping with the recuperation of an unhappy decision and with the use of a wrong decision. In the light of these observations, don’t even think of a cure”.

20) Then, what to do? The beginning of any answer, which doesn’t mean that we will arrive at one, suggests that the analyst must always move the vertex, that he must not always interpret in the same direction, nor repeat interpretations, or offer unnecessary inquiries. The constant change of vertex may prevent such types of analysis as those governed by the tyranny of memory and of desire. To always change, more than inevitably, is a responsibility of the analyst during the process. Either the analyst changes, or the process will change him, and always for the worse.

21) The affirmations of (20) and (21) are connected to Bion’s theory of transformations (1965), in which we find the perspective to observe the changes throughout the process in a way that is distinct from classical theories.

Graphic illustration of the Observational Theory of Transformations

Transformations in O

Time

T in knowledge

O

Rigid Transformations

Projective transformations

T in hallucinosis

The hyperboles represent the intensity of the projective identification.

The longer lasting in time and more distant in space the greater the distortion of the object.

The transformations in O occur only on the time axis and without distortion of the “being” of the object.

Transformations in “ O” =How to become what one is.

References

Baudrillard, J. (2001) A ilusão Vital, Civilização Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro.

Bion, W.R(1962) Aprender com a Experiência, Zahar, Rio de Janeiro.

_______ (1963) Elementos da Psicanálise, Zahar, Rio de Janeiro.

_______ (1965) Transformações, Imago, Rio de Janeiro.

_______ (1970) Atenção e Interpretação, Imago, Rio de Janeiro

_______ (1975) The Grid and Caesura, Imago, Rio de Janeiro

_______ (1975) A Memoir of The Future-book I-the Dream, Imago, Rio de Janeiro

Carneiro Leão, E. (1977) Aprendendo a Pensar, Vozes, Petrópolis.

Castoriadis, C. (1999) Feito e a ser Feito, DP & A editora, Rio de Janeiro.

Chuster, A. (1989) Um resgate da Originalidade- as questões essenciais da psicanálise em W.R. Bion, Degrau Cultural, Rio de Janeiro.

_______ (1996) Diálogos Psicanalíticos sobre W.R.Bion, Tipo & Grafia, Rio de Janeiro.

_______ (1999) W.R.Bion -Novas Leituras: a psicanálise dos modelos científicos aos princípios ético-estéticos, Co. de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.

_______ (2002) An Oedipal Grid, trabalho apresentado na III Conferência Internacional sobre a Obra de Bion, Los Angeles, Califórnia.

_______ (2003) W.R.Bion- Novas Leituras: a psicanálise dos princípios ético-estéticos à clínica, Co. de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.

[1] Nowadays, I understand this action as a request that he put to me: that I open for him, even if in a violent form, a psychic “door”. This follows the recognition that in the journey made, a break exists, and that he could organize his internal world in a better way. [2] The reasons for this recommendation are at least tragicomic. When the patient spoke about his father, he tried to attenuate his feelings with humor, and called him of a nobility title used in India, but which in Brazil is synonym of a power obtained from an illegal way. The teacher, without catching the joke, immediately thought about the analyst, who actually had this title, as someone who certainly would understand the problems. [3] (Chuster, A., An Oedipal Grid, paper presented at the International Conference on the work of W.R.Bion, Los Angeles, California, 2002) and in W.R.Bion-Novas Leituras, vol. II, Co.de Freud, Rio de Janeiro, 2003. [4] Nature does not concern itself, for example, with the pain of an antelope attacked by a tiger. It is simply part of the process, a small part of the search for survival within a larger picture, which is evolution. Species appear and disappear, others may emerge, and this has been happening for millions of years. The human being is nothing more than a specie in the middle of this evolution, and sometimes is conscious that, independent of his will, he is induced to reproduce, and the nature behind this is not concerned whether he will become a slave or will be destroyed, as it is not concerned if the baby born may die. Neither is it (nature) concerned if the human being is going to disappear, a fact that is not wholly improbable in the light of what he has been doing against nature. [5] In the originary meaning of radical: root. [6] Even the fetus develops a capacity for what is later called projective identification. In other words, it has feelings and primordial ideas that it tries to deal with it by evacuating them – a primitive mechanism derived maybe from the physical capacity for evacuation… [7] Bion, W.R. Taming Wild Thoughts, p.38, Karnac Books, 1997, London. [8] Nor can you teach psychoanalysis as a function but it can be learned from experience. [9] The object of the Grid is to aid in developing a preconception, in the analyst, that is not directly psychoanalytical so that the observations made are not such that are bound to approximate to a psychoanalytical theory. For if the preconception is psychoanalytical, there is a clearly a risk that the observations made under such a preconception appear to approximate to a psychoanalytical theory because they in fact derive from it. Such condition amounts to a circular argument (Taming Wild Thoughts, p.15, Karnac Books, 1997)