I – The dance of words
The patient from whom I took the above title is a forty-four year old man, a very busy and successful physician, but he complains of a very disastrous and unhappy emotional life. All his intimate relationships went wrong for many years leaving on him what he described as a deep feeling of emptiness. Apparently this splitting up was his reason for seeking analysis. But I could perceive at this point a kind of mental state of exhaustion, which meant to me that he was dangerously close to a breakdown. In fact, when I mentioned this hypothesis to him he reported feelings of being terrified by a forthcoming disaster: he had frequent thoughts that while driving he would be killed in a crash caused by an uncontrolled car coming in the opposite direction. So intense were those thoughts that many times he desisted from driving. But when he did that he became terrified that his colleagues would think that he was insane. After those “crises” he used to have intense headaches and trembling eyelids. He was taking tranquilizers for those symptoms. During the weekends he used to drink a lot. He had frequently alcoholic amnesias sarcastically described by him as an “ excess of beer, sweat and tears”.
Nowadays, after years of much analytical work he acquired some distance from a breakdown and is coming closer to some breakthrough. The physical symptoms disappeared. He is no longer in use of self-prescribed tranquilizers, but he is so far drinking although not so heavily.
In the beginning of analysis he used to be late almost every session saying he was feeling sorry for having less time for so many things he had to say. I told him that such apparently non-sense might have a kind of logic: the same logic as the fears he reported to me. Fear coming from the absence of truth. He might be feeling some danger in coming on time and at the same time a danger in not coming at all. Therefore, he was having a “more or less” analytic relationship like any other intimate relations he has been describing to me so far. Then, he reported a frequent nightmare. He dreamt of two guys disputing a run, when suddenly they came to a cliff. One of the guys stopped but the other fell over the cliff. He said that he used to wake up very anguished, not knowing what happened with the guy who fell over. He associated the nightmare with his increasing hostility towards his colleagues at the hospital. He wished repeatedly that they would drop dead. Many of them were complaining that this hostility was occurring because of the analysis.
I supposed at this point that this patient was expressing deep rivalry to “O” and also moral cruelty, two elements that are part of a transformation in hallucinosis. Also I supposed that something really happened with him in some point of his past: a serious breakdown after his father death when he was 5yrs old. Lots of evidences of other breakdown in teenage years came out during analysis, leaving on him a main false premise: the sense that loss of the bad parts of his personality was inseparable from loss of that part in which all his mental health resides. This creates his acute fears and at the same time showed the essential point to work. As Bion said: Is the patient going to repeat the former error by becoming confirmed in his adherence to transformation in hallucinosis or will turn to transformation in psychoanalysis?
It is quite possible that the transformations in hallucinosis remained as one of the consequences of those breakdowns. It is worth saying that he somehow recovered from those breakdowns but it remained a sort of “agreement” between the psychotic and non-psychotic part of personality, which was to split his emotional life from the professional life. He was constantly choosing “bad” partners, which represents his bad parts that he could dispose of.
For some reason this split was becoming worst as time was passing by, maybe because of his perception of increasingly painful feelings of loneliness and the simultaneous emotional dependence on people. The worsening of the splitting brought confusion between internal and external reality with resulting feeling of getting mad.
Regarding the dream, I thought of the hypothesis that while the emotional part was delayed in its development, bringing emotional immaturity, the professional part was marching well, but when the emotional tries to follow the professional he runs a risk of “falling down”. The crucial point came out again: is he falling down in a disaster of his personality (breakdown) or falling down into himself (transformation in O)?
At the present he manages to arrive on time for the sessions but complains of his rush to make this possible. He started by saying “the traffic was terrible I couldn’t believe I was going to arrive on time. When I reached the elevator lobby I found out that the elevators were all in use. I felt like punching someone. Then a line started to form behind me. All the elevators came but I didn’t take the first one because I knew everybody was taking this one. I knew it was going to stop on every floor. I decided to let everybody pass by and to wait for the next one and came up alone much faster…”
I said to him: I think you are trying to do your best to get an analysis. In fact we already know you are always trying to do your best in everything you do. But have you ever noticed that you are ending all alone because you are excluding people in order to be successful, or being successful also means avoiding frustrations that they may cause you. I wonder if this is a picture of your life showing success face to face with a kind of failure, and we don’t know where that failure came from.
He told that my question like others I have made seems too wide and awakes a sad feeling inside him. “They are like a dance of words that I have to carry on”. He said that a little angrily.
At that moment it came to my mind that some sessions ago he told me about being in a ballroom inviting an ex-girlfriend to dance. She accepted but he became very anxious expecting that while dancing she might say something about his past bad behavior (secluded and self-centered) that caused the relationship to break up. She didn’t say anything but he was so anxious about hearing some nasty things (to be punched) that he just made unusual compliments to her without carry on a conversation afterwards. Finally, she said jokingly that he was becoming quite a gentleman.
I said that he seemed to be sad for being anxious and seemed to be anxious for becoming sad. In those situations, being only sad or being only anxious (angry) he could watch the world in a certain way, but joining those visions he may see a different person. I told him: “That is what I think you did when you used the expression dance of words, dance it is a way of harmoniously meeting people, although so far, hard for you to do”.
He told me I was probably right because he was feeling in recent days that he could be more attentive to his patients, listening to them more, although he was feeling insecure perceiving he was being a different person. It was like being quite more vulnerable, having fears to work with patients, many times feeling sorry for them. Some of his colleagues complained about this because he was taking more time with the patients. One of the doctors in the hospital, who is very close to him, said he might be going mad again because of the “goddamned analysis”.
I completed my opinion saying that he was becoming more a doctor than he was before; this “becoming” also meaning to become more human and not the kind of God he used to think he should be. That was a kind of transformation that he may never recover from … therefore at that point there is mourning for his old Self.
Now I would like to focus on the subject of our meeting, which I tried to illustrate with this simple piece of clinical material. I hope you can see in it some features of a transformation in O as an evolution of a process that could lead to a catastrophic change. Both concepts mentioned by Bion in the book Transformations (1965). I would say that a catastrophic change in a positive way is taking place when a transition to transformation in O is proceeding.
I choose mainly to consider the link between the two concepts through the problem of the interpretative work by Bion’s vertex, therefore the title “Interpreting with Bion”.
One of the difficulties of this theme is the supposition, easily inferred from the main title itself that differences in the analytical interpretation derived from the ideas of Bion do exist. Perhaps, for this reason, it is necessary to begin emphasizing what is in evidence when focusing on analytical interpretation, in order to try to clarify whether such differences exist. For if, on the one hand, it is well accepted generically that the practice of psychoanalysis is a work of investigation of the psychic reality, essentially of its unconscious dimension, conducted by the interpretative work, on the other hand, the question reaches another perspective when one focuses on the multiplicity of psychoanalytical “schools” and of their reciprocal denigration of their fine points. That is, a relativistic physicist would never say to a quantum physicist: this is not physics; or a Kantian philosopher would never say to an adept of Spinoza: this is not philosophy. But to say “this is not psychoanalysis” is current language in the polemics and backstages of psychoanalysis.
I believe that listeners do not ignore how often this phrase was directed to Bion. In some psychoanalytic institutions his books were even included in the “index proibitorum” in training. But, in a general way, what most frequently occurred was the refusal of his new ideas that were outside the traditional Kleinian scheme. This antagonism may be resumed under the flaw attributed to him of “exotic Kleinian” who, because of this, ended his life going to work in California, an ideal land for exotic persons. On the other hand, in California, there was a large group who considered “Kleinian” as not being psychoanalytical. And it was not relevant to say that all psychoanalysis comes from Freud, for credit was not given to objections to the decrees of the Establishment.
Despite this, Bion differentiated, sometimes gradually and, at other times drastically, as well as often conserving something of what is know as a Kleinian form of interpretation (Grotstein, 2007 [1]). We must not forget to mention that Bion also had the experience of a Freudian analysis with John Rickman.
In The Grid (1977), some of these singularities are well established through an original development he made of Freudian constructions as well as his preference for them, especially when Bion mentions the use of analogy in the demonstration of what he called symmetry. He says: “A sensuous component of this apparatus is the visual image. The C elements (dreams, myths, oniric thoughts) sketched out differ from the interpretation, which is generally monovalent, whereas the construction (element C) is polyvalent and is faster than the formulations F (conceptions) or G (concept) although they may not be faster than the formulations H (scientific deductive system) if and when they can be discovered”.
One can expand the concept in various ways. I would like in the first place to emphasize that it conveys the principle of Uncertainty because symmetry brings real life to evidence, therefore it brings infinity and the dimension of what Bion named “O”. To begin to illustrate it I extracted the following of Bion’s quotations:
1) “Which story is one to tell? Which interpretation? Freud said that it is not a simply matter of interpretation of words, but “constructions”. This is where the analyst has to be an artist – he has to make constructions of what is going on”. (Clinical Seminars and Four papers, pg. 76)
2) “If you had been practicing analysis as long as I have, you wouldn’t bother about an inadequate interpretation- I have never given any other kind. That is real life – not psychoanalytic fiction. The belief in the existence of an analyst who gives certain and correct and adequate interpretations is part of the mythology of psychoanalysis. I certainly would not be inclined to bother if you felt your interpretation was inadequate. I would be rather bothered if you felt it was adequate. The practice of analysis is an extremely difficult occupation and one which hardly provides for dogmatic statements“. (Clinical Seminars and Four Papers, pg. 43)
Grotstein [2] (2005), in a review of the way to interpret, suggests that we should “impugn” the analytical language that speaks of impulses and of the objects with which we handle object relations or when we translate them in terms of a game of impulses. When we follow this language, which I understand he describes as obsolete, the inner context from which we make the interpretations is uni-dimensional. Bion proposes a binocular vision and the reversible perspective to in fact capture the testimony of the object, its point of view, and with this give it a two-way language. He mentions, as an example, an episode from his own analysis with Bion. He says that when a question of omnipotence appeared, Bion said to him, several times: “You are reduced to attempts of using omnipotence to deal with your own helplessness”. That is, omnipotence has always been placed vis-à-vis, symmetrically, as a defense against its opposite, helplessness. The interpretation is two-way, the terms omnipotence and helplessness circulate favoring the development of thought. Grotstein (2005) says: “It was not only an affirmation, but the loving understanding that makes the difference. The interpretation of Bion appeared to persuade me, in a spontaneous and unconscious way, to desist from my omnipotent resistance at that moment. Did it dissolve itself? Did it return to my internal hard disk for future encounters? Now I ask myself how I felt it was obsolete, at least at that moment. In remembering, I speak as if each part of me was holographically alive with their subjective and objective instances of life”. I dare to say how modern and wonderfully poetic Grotstein is when dealing with Uncertainty.
In The Grid (1977), Bion also speaks of the use of analogy as a disguise (revelation) for a silent metaphor. He says that the metaphor sometimes becomes destroyed by its use as if it was “dead”, but we can bring it back to life by juxtaposition with another metaphor, whose inconvenience and non-homogeneity functions as a kind of galvanic discharge. However, the principal problem arises when attention is not given to what is most important, that is the relation between the two metaphoric images.
“Freud spoke of this contribution in “The Future of an Illusion”. Bringing to bear the construction, the polyvalent weapon of symmetry, I would suggest that we need to consider the future of an analogy, the future of an “illusion”, the future of “transference”, which is the name given by analysts to a particular and potent form of relationship. If one could arrange the term spectrumwise in ascending power of emotional drive it could be: generation ⇒ analogy ⇒ transference ⇒ delusion ⇒ illusion ⇒ group illusion ⇒ hallucination ⇒ asymmetry ⇒ degeneration.
The elements C (dreams, myths, oniric thoughts) are used to provide anchorage for the relationship – mouth is one anchor, breast is another. Both the terms have been treated as if they were essential features of the analogy. It is exactly this that marks the divergence of the path of growth from the path of decay. The mouth and the breast are only important in so far as they serve to define the bridge between the two. When the anchors usurp the importance which belongs to the qualities which they should be imparting to the bridge, growth is impaired...”.
I tried to show in a recent paper [3] that in Bion, the possibility of focusing human links through a theory of Thinking creates a base for non-formalized and not formalizable analytical interpretation, and leads to the admission that it is the function of thinking that makes intuition, imagination and feelings work simultaneously. These are the three basic elements, which compose the bionian analytical basis from where interpretations should originate. Therefore, the words employed should seek to integrate these elements transcending the common vertex that they tend to present. Such change is noted, for example, in the quality of the words in an interpretation suggested by Bion (1987) to a patient; “Sometimes you feel that you control your envy, sometimes you are the envy that is being controlled”. Namely, envy is presented inside the patient simultaneously as a feeling and as the patient himself. Symmetry improves the quality of the words and creates circularity between Self and the object. The interpretation is functioning as a bridge between the two words. They are common words, daring to be uncommon [4].
One may add, using another of Bion’s expressions, that the interpretation should be something like a “circular argument”, which I understand as something comparable to a magnifying glass, whose focus amplifies with its increase in diameter. Increasing the range of the argument, more objects will be perceptible. This is why I think it is important to give interpretations like a portrait of life, like the one my patient complained about as being too ample.
However, the range of the interpretation depends on two factors beyond the words:
1) The emotional experience produced in the relationship
2) The oscillation PS⇔D: “I believe that no analyst is authorized to believe that he realized the work necessary to give an interpretation, if he has not passed through the two phases of “patience and security”. The passage from one to the other can be very short as in advanced stages of analysis, or can be very long. Few psychoanalysts, if not none, should believe that they could escape the feelings of persecution and depression, commonly associated with the pathological states known as schizo-paranoid and depressive positions. Finally, a feeling of depression will almost immediately follow a feeling of realization of an interpretation. I consider the oscillation between “patience” and “security”, as the indication that a valuable work is being realized (1970)”.
In Cogitations [5] (1992), Bion says that Martin Buber, the German thinker of Jewish origins, was who came closest to recognizing the reality of this situation in which human speech is resorted to: “The attitude of man is twofold, according to the two basic words that he may speak. The basic words are not single words but pairs of words. One basic word is the word I-You (...). This is different from the basic word I-it”. When one talks about “I-You”, the significant thing is not the objects related but the relationship– that is, an open-ended reality, in which there is no termination (in the sense that this is understood by ordinary human beings). The language of ordinary human beings is only appropriate to the rational, can only be rational, can only make affirmations in terms of rationality.
In conclusion, there should not be isolated words as a general direction to psychoanalytical interpretations. But to achieve which words we should employ is not that simple. They need to be contained on”timing” and attend criteria of “how much” to interpret in order that the patient could tolerate it. It cannot be premature or post mature. This “dosing” depends not only on the two mentioned factors beyond the words but also on the paradigm which is being employed. It makes a difference if this “dosing” is provided by the loving understanding (loving matrix) mentioned by Grotstein, yet it constitutes, in my understanding, one of the important advances of the theory of Bion: the Language of Achievement (1970), which is obtained from the “negative capability”: the capacity to tolerate mysteries, uncertainties, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason (or a mental state without memory, desire and the need for comprehension).
Bion also adds that the myth of Babel is adequate to be applied to situations in which words that should be united are separated. The origins of the splitting can be sought in an envy factor of the capacity to grow. But to create circularity the interpretation must add the term gratitude.
For instance, going back to my patient material one can see his “divinity part” (omnipotence), expressed through the speech of the close friend, enviously cursing and attacking his aspirations to grow and becoming mature. In past similar circumstances, the patient usually jumped from one subject to another, anxiously flooding the session with many doubts. He was answering a question with another question without stopping to think of the answer. In fact, the questions were not exactly questions, but a way to blame himself for seeking knowledge. His arrogant adult part while asking “why?” was in fact blaming the inner child: “you shouldn’t know it”. But in the reported session some transience to a different mental state started to come about. The question remained open.
The myth of Babel, according to Bion, translates the destruction of the alfa function. The first point is the hostility of Divinity to human aspirations, which wished to construct a city and a tower to reach the sky, and wanted to be famous, to avoid that they dispersed [Genesis XI 1-9]. The people are reunited by the work of manufacturing bricks and mortar. The tower to be erected appears an artificial breast-penis. And what to say of the word that impedes dispersion? Would it be the word that, hypothetically, reunited the dispersed objects and maintained them? Who opposed the hypothesis (the word) is God and it is as if the people who joined together had to be dispersed; the hypothesis of the selected fact that is predestined to be destroyed, the fragments, scattered over the face of the whole Earth. The attack on the attempt to reach the Sky is an attack on the link – an attack to the language that made cooperation possible.
The point here is to inquire if the analyst that takes away words from interpretations that should remain united introduces into the analysis the divinity of the tower of Babel that produces dispersion.
II – The complex paradigm
My personal experience with the debate and teaching of Bion’s ideas in many places, has shown me that there exists a point in his work at which the majority begin to stumble, do not advance, and end by desisting. In the preponderance of places, such problems start when the study of Learning from Experience (1962)is reached. As it carries on the trajectory it becomes more difficult and one can see more people moving out from the boat. It gets worse when it comes to the text Elements of psychoanalysis (1963), and even worse when reaching Transformations (1965), which is one of Bion’s most rejected texts.
In trying to understand those difficulties it was very gratifying when I read Cogitations (1992) and came upon the term “Pons Asinorum”, whose translation is “Bridge of Asses” or “Bridge of Fools”. Strictly speaking, it is a type of rustic bridge over a creek, formed by fine tree trunks, cylindrical and adjacent, which can easily be crossed by a person, but not by an ass, whose hoofs would be imprisoned between the trunks. The Latin term was first used for unprepared people that do not succeed in going beyond a certain point in their mathematical studies.
In other words, in all parts of mathematics (as in psychoanalysis) there exist some crucial notions that require more attention and effort than others. They are the challenging notions between students and teachers. Euclid’s fifth proposition is the best-known Pons Asinorum, but, in general, means that to proceed in studies it is necessary to know how to solve some specific problems. The term was also used with the theorem of Pythagoras. In order to advance, the student should try to resolve the theorem in a new or personal form.
The fifth proposition of Euclid says that in an isosceles triangle the angles of the base are equal, and extending the equal sides the angle over the base will also be equal. They represent the invariants that are discovered. No matter the direction whether one is going to the most “closed” angle or to a most open one the invariant angles are always equal. In addition to this, in Ancient Greece, there existed a sexual insinuation related to the isosceles triangle: “a tri-articulated thing with equal legs”, the knees associated with the genitalia, a type of metaphoric allusion to the problem of the “angle” that needs to be open to achieve a sexual intercourse. Perhaps, due to these links with sexuality, Euclid was bashful in using his 5th proposition and avoided it whenever possible. The posterior mathematicians also did not feel comfortable with it, criticizing what was postulated as not sufficiently simple to be demonstrated as a theorem.
Kant mentioned that the Euclidian proposition was “an unavoidable necessity of thinking” [6].
It occurred to me, then, to describe as Pons Asinorum the trajectory that begins in Learning from Experience (1962), going through Elements in Psychoanalysis (1963) and ending in Transformations (1965).
The reason for these difficulties is in my opinion the change of paradigm that came with the theory of the psychoanalytical object (1962) and its epistemological consequences for the interpretation. The concept appears in chapter 22 of Learning from Experience (1962) through a formula {ψ(ξ) ±U M}, meaning: the preconception ψ(ξ) seeks realization in the spectrum of development narcissism⇔social-ism (±U) under the complexity (M) inherent to a biological organism.
For a long time it has been said that the interpretation is the main expression of the analyst, which creates the link between the analysand and the analyst and becomes the central question of analysis. In other words, it is the relation of the analisand with the interpretation on which the analytical process depends. Therefore, we could always establish a triangular relationship, the analisand, the interpretation and the analyst. But in which paradigm this triangle (oedipal configuration) is going to be analyzed makes all the difference.
One can think about this triangle also as a kind of Pons Asinorum, a triangle that joins metaphors, where the problems appear to be solved in some way before being able to go on to other problems (that will reinstate the Pons again). A more simple way of saying this was given by Bion, several times, in distinct forms: “the real problem is: what is to be said to the patient?” (Clinical Seminars, p.21)
“In the practice of psychoanalysis the analyst has to make up his own mind what the situation is; there is nobody to tell him this – only his senses, what he hears and sees for himself in the room.”
The problem for the analisand is to perceive that it is possible to analyze the psychic reality, encountering in this process the richness of his/her Being, the meaning of his/her Being. It sounds simply, even poetic, but it is extremely complicated. In reality, it is here that we reach the limit of interpretation in psychoanalysis: limit of its direction and of its conditions of development, limit of it as an a posteriori effect of its action as knowledge that may lead to a transient situation.
In other words, the richness of psychoanalysis is exercising the possibility of discovering something about us and becoming ourselves as a result of this knowledge. In what way the different theoretical tendencies solve the possibility of integration between these capacities and the development of the knowledge is another source of divergences between analysts.
I will try in the next part of the paper to mention briefly how this solution was presented in Bion. However, as I can only give a personal and limited vision of this solution, I hope that when I expose it, you will suggest your views, in a field that, for me, still needs investigation for many years.
III – Transformations in interpretations
I will focus now on a singular form of transformation in O: the transformation of someone into a psychoanalyst, taking as an example the transformation of the individual Bion into a psychoanalyst. My intention is to open a discussion on how the mind of the analyst works to reach an interpretation, and how the most varied experiences that constitute the singularity of each analyst enters into this work (his conception of the world, his experiences, his theoretical referential and so on).
We are told by Bion himself through a part of his biography (Bion in New York and Sao Paulo [7]) that when a child he used to be seen by adults as an odd child, who was always asking questions. He was made to recite a poem, The Elephant’s Child [8]:
“I have six honest serving men,
They taught me all I knew;
Their names are; what and why and when
And how and where and who
I send them to East and West
I send them by land and sea
But after they have worked for me
I gave them all a rest”.
He says: It was considered to be so extraordinarily amusing that I had to recite this piece of verse. I could not see the joke myself. I was told I was just like the Elephant’s Child, who asked these questions – and like a fool I asked another one: who was the father of Elephant’s Child? That was not popular. It was not amusing. But I was not making a joke. I decided I had better be careful not to ask too many questions; it took me a long time to dare to start asking questions again. The person who made it easier for me was John Rickman, who was the first psychoanalyst I ever met. I am still at it – I don’t think that asking questions is more popular now than it ever was.
I would like to focus, in the first place, on the work of the personal analysis in a special transformation: the transformation of the infantile Oedipal fantasies, represented by the deep human struggle to answer the questions: who I am? Where do I come from? Where I am going? (Which the servants in Kipling’s poem are expressing) in a mature psychoanalytical thinking. Namely, a transformation K⇔O of the infantile Oedipal fantasies into a psychoanalytic thinking, capable to face with things which are so slight as to be virtually imperceptible but which are so real that they could destroy us almost without our being aware of it.
With this hypothesis, I will return to the question of symmetry to consider the analytical interpretation in Bion as having always two distinct origins in the mind of the analyst. I invoke the terminology that he used to describe the interpretation arising from the encounter of imaginative conjectures with rational conjectures. The conjectures are awakened by the material brought by the analisand that is captured by the analyst in the three areas of application of the psychoanalytic object, myths, feelings and passions. Those conjectures for a while proceed as symmetric, parallel lines, which only meet at the point in which the existence of a pattern is perceived. I will try to explain this as far as I am able.
First of all, the analogy with straight parallel lines meeting in infinity is very important – because this analogy reminds that one is always working with infinity, which is “O”. We have a succession of evolutions of “O”, expressed by the servant-questions that define the field of analysis: What? Followed in sequence by: How? ⇒ When? ⇒ Where? ⇒ Why? ⇒ Who? We can place this sequence in the following graphic, where the servants became part of a psychoanalytical Grid:
I will consider first some features concerning the servant “Who”, because at this point the analyst has to dare to rest, and start everything again. Therefore, in the sequence of servants I think that it is fundamental to focus on the link between the servant “who” and the servant (dare to) Rest. I suggest that the latter could be translated by a phrase from the Ecclesiastes quoted by Bion: “Wisdom cometh to the learned man through the capacity for leisure”.
Aristotle emphasized the same thing and probably it was from him that this phrase was taken. He said that for science to exist, it is necessary to have men with availability for leisure. Although it was clear that leisure alone was not enough, for there was the need to satisfy with understanding, which transform into creation of theory. Moreover, it is necessary that such theories (wisdom) has some value in the society in which they emerged, and that this society succeeded in absorbing and bearing the turbulence provoked by the creativity or the modifications brought by the new ideas. It was with such ideas in mind that Aristotle wrote the Poetics, where he exalts the value of laughter and its consequences, so well captured by Umberto Eco in his romance The Name of the Rose [9]. The book’s story runs through a central problem, which was the sentence of death by the poisoning of those who have contact with the prohibited Aristotle’s book. The guardian of the library, Friar Jörg [10] was distressed with the influence that the value of laughter described in Aristotle’s book would have on people. Laughter was powerful enough to free people from the fear of the devil, which means they could end by smiling at God. The fear is, therefore, fundamental to keep control over people, and who laughs tends not to fear. Taking a lesson from this picture: it is important to challenge the stereotyped “seriousness” of the Establishment and be able to laugh and play with ideas. The present paper, for instance, is a form of leisure with Bion’s ideas.
The passing from one servant-question to another occurs naturally through a transformation in K, until one reaches the servant “Why” where to be able to pass to the servant “Who” one depends on what kind of transformation the oedipical configuration is able to accomplish. It is sought-after transformation K⇒O (an analytical transformation) but there is no assurance whether or not it is going to happen. That is, at the meeting point between the imaginative and rational conjectures one has a crossroad of development, which could promote a transformation in O: a passage from knowing about yourself to become what one really is. In an earlier paper [11], I indicated that the interpretations here could be called creative interpretations because they are able to facilitate this process.
The imaginative conjectures arise from analytical intuition (preconception) of the analyst and, as any preconception, follow the road of realization until they cross with the rational conjectures that, in turn, come from any already existing Concepts (theories) of the analyst.
The realization of imaginative conjecture passes through a world that we may call, according to Bion, the embryonic mind, where the subjacent “rhythms” in the patient’s associations (patterns) are captured initially. But when they join the rational conjecture, both must “submerge” in the direction of the Oedipical configuration of the analyst seeking language: it is here that the problem expands, for it will depend on a complexity that I would like to mention briefly.
In the Oedipal configuration one may consider the following Pons Asinorum: there does not exist in the unconscious a desire to be an analyst. All types of desires exist, such as to kill, to copulate, to penetrate, to evacuate, to slaughter, etc., but there does not exist such a thing as a desire to be an analyst. The analyst is someone who presumably worked through these desires in his personal analysis in order to observe the “patterns” that the analisand brings. But once again this is not so simple as saying it is.
As Freud showed, psychoanalysis is a very difficult profession; it is impossible, exactly because of the unbalance that those mentioned desires produce as the analytical process develops. The importance of the work of Bion was to have shown that the unconscious Oedipal desires appear camouflaged as the elements of memories, desires and the need for comprehension. Thus, when the interpretation forms in the mind of the analyst through its Oedipal configuration and gains language obtained from his experiences, various possibilities may occur vis-à-vis such elements. I will briefly mention some of them.
For example, every time the analyst insists rigidly on a kind of understanding, this attitude is a form of providing an outlet for unconscious desires. In the unconscious mind there may be a desire to seduce the patient sexually, which leads to an explicative and tranquilizing interpretation or, perhaps to remain conversing with the patient on trivial matters as in any conversation.
Another very frequent example is the desire to cure, which unconsciously may be the desire to murder the patient, transforming him into a dead-like person, namely, someone without problems and without unpleasant actions.
Another possibility is that the analyst is worried how the analisand will overreact to an interpretation and, because of this, offers a doctrinaire interpretation (an instruction on psychoanalytical theory) that in the unconscious may be a desire to control and dominate the patient.
Another situation is that the analyst becomes irritated with the analisand who enviously attacks him (for example, rejecting all the interpretations) and he may offer ironic interpretations (triumph and scorn), which unconsciously may be retaliation with excrements.
A more extreme situation is when the analyst narcissistically desires to be admired by the analysand; he could get rid of the patient from the session through a pompous and megalomaniac interpretation that only refers to himself and not at all to the analisand.
Presumably, the individual analyst, when analyzed, should become well aware of these desires, which produce disequilibrium and make the task of psychoanalysis, as Freud said, untenable.
However, what one particular analyst feels is obviously not the same as another may feel. One could understand a little more why this happens, looking into the investigations regarding how realization of oedipical preconception transform in a singular oedipical configuration, but this is a subject to another paper.
REFERENCES
Bion, W.R (1957) Differentiation of the psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities. In: Second Thoughts: Selected papers in Psychoanalysis (pp.46-64). London: Heinemann, 1967.
Bion, W.R. (1962a) A Theory of Thinking In: Second Thoughts: Selected papers in Psychoanalysis (pp.110-119). London: Heinemann, 1967.
Bion, W.R. (1962b) Learning from Experience. London. Heinemann (Reprinted London: Karnac, 1984)
Bion, W.R. (1963). Elements of Psychoanalysis. London. Heinemann (Reprinted London: Karnac, 1984)
Bion, W.R. (1965). Transformations. London. Heinemann (Reprinted London: Karnac, 1984)
Bion, W. R. (1970) Attention and Interpretation. London. Tavistock (Reprinted London: Karnac, 1984)
Bion, W. R. (1977) Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura, ed. J. Salomon, Rio de Janeiro, Imago editora (Revised edition London, Karnac, 1989)
Bion, W. R. Bion in New York and Sao Paulo, ed. F. Bion. Strath Tay: Clunie Press
Bion, W. R. (1987) Clinical Seminars and Four Papers, Abingdon: Fleetwood Press.
Bion, W. R. (1992). Cogitations. London. Karnac.
Chuster, A. and col. (1999) W.R. Bion: Novas Leituras: dos modelos científicos aos princípios ético-estéticos, Co. de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.
Chuster, A. and col. (2002) W. R. Bion: Novas Leituras, vol. II: dos princípios ético-estéticos à clínica, Co. de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.
Chuster, A (1989) Um Resgate da Originalidade, Degrau, Rio de Janeiro.
Chuster, A (2005) A brief survey in the difference between fantasy and imagination in the light of Bion’s ideas- paper presented to Minnesota Institute of Psychoanalysis, feb.2005.
[1] A Beam of Intense Darkness – Wilfred Bion’s Legacy to Psychoanalysis, Karnac, London, 2007. [2] Resistance: the pariah of psychoanalytic technique – with special emphasis on the negative therapeutic reaction. Revista da SPPA, vol.12, p.449-486, dez. 2005. [3] Interpretation and its reverse side – paper presented at Brazilian Psychoanalytical Congress, Porto Alegre, 2007. [4] Bion (1970), said: “If envy were to assume an aspect of Self it becomes the envy of the personality capable of maturity and of the object that stimulates the maturity. The stimulating object is the breast or the mouth that substitute one another. The stimulating quality substitutes, in its turn, the stimulating object”. [5] Pg 371. [6] Russell, B. Introduction to Mathematical thought, p.712-718, New York, Dover Publications, 1993. [7] Bion, W.R. (1980) Bion in New York and Sao Paulo, ed. F. Bion. StrathTay: Clunie Press. [8] Just So Verses, Rudyard Kipling. [9] Editora Nova Fronteira, Rio de Janeiro, 1983. [10] FriarJörg represents the guardian of the absolute truth who may not be challenged. To laugh is to challenge, therefore the prohibiting action of the text of Aristotle. As in fiction, the actual “Friars Jörgs” long for the post of guardians of the faith or of knowledge. If they could not prevent laughter of those who did not share their dogmas, given that to laugh is inherent to the human being, they terrorized those who laughed. A very clear example of the Inquisition longing to purify the home of sin, eliminating the sinner.” [11] Analytical Interpretations and the ethical-aesthetical principles of observation, paper presented at the International Congress of IPA, Rio de Janeiro, 2005.
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