Arnaldo Chuster[1]
Different vertices are an unavoidable consequence of any dialogue about links, which elude any easy definition or even description; such are the links between psychoanalysis and poetry.
Therefore, my paper starts with a slightly different vertex from Meg Harris Williams, which could be just complementary to her view, or to Bion, as she affirmed that he considered the romantic poets as the first psychoanalysts.
Meg Harris Williams also affirms that “Bion was echoing Freud but more emphatically”. I think it is not “more emphatically” but echoing Freud from different vertices.
In order to justify my hypothesis, I thought of subtle differences between English romanticism and German romanticism. I understand that German romanticism inspired the most poetical, artistically; emotional and remembered of Freud’s quotes such are, for instance, “the shadow of the object overcast the Ego”; “Dreams are the Via Regia to unconscious”, “Wo es War, sol lch werden”.
Nevertheless, Freud (1926), in an interview to NY Times, firmly considered Nietzsche as the first psychoanalyst. He said that nobody was capable like the philosopher to understand the problem of the two principles of mental functioning. After asserting this, Freud quotes Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Pain shout Go! However, pleasure wants pure eternity, deep eternity.
The journalist[2] instantly replied: you too are a poet. Freud did not deny it. He took such comment as a compliment, yet highlighting the rich interchange between psychoanalysis, poetry and literature.
In face of the stated thoughts ad differences, I asked to myself: Is the origin of psychoanalysis, philosophy or poetry?
Alternatively, I simultaneously do felt up to ask, as a counterpoint, taking out such splitting, and considering just an unconscious common origin: does psychoanalysis works with a point[3] where both disciplines are not splitted off.
The philosophical root of psychoanalysis_ which Freud acknowledged_ has an original development in Bion’s Theory of Thinking (1962). He affirmed that psychoanalysis is a practical response to philosophical questions, that is, questions of life, which philosophers know how to ask very nicely, however, they cannot gave them a proper singularity that track the sovereign influence of the unconscious mind.
Simultaneously, Bion (1962) said that such relation between philosophy and psychoanalysis must follow the same order that exist between pure mathematics and applied mathematics, that is, psychoanalysis must have a field defined by limits and possibilities, ruled by epistemological principles capable to prevent practice from beliefs and empty habits ( Chuster, 2014, 2018).
The part of pure mathematics, which Bion is denoting, are the fundamentals of mathematics, which I mainly characterize by the epistemological questions raised by Kurt Gödel about undecidable propositions and undecidable origins ( Chuster, 2014, 2018). Those ideas are complemented by the theorem of the third excluded, which means dealing with an empty point to be fulfilled with transient interpretative decisions, derived from careful observation of details and matching imaginative conjectures with rational conjectures.
In science, Werner Heisenberg applied those ideas to create his Uncertainty Principle in Quantic Mechanics[4]., while allowing an expansion of the creation of open systems, which Poincaré already described as a characteristic of living and dynamic systems.
The open systems are spectral, nonlinear, non-deterministic, non-hermeneutics, non-diagnostic, whose existence the Complexity Theory (Morin) clarifies as an ethical universal way of thinking, to be followed in case we would like to have a future for humankind.
There are many examples of open systems in Bion’s work; the theory of Thinking; the psychoanalytic object (1962), The Grid (1963, 1965, 1977), emotional turbulence (1976), and mainly the caesura observational model (1975, 1977).
At this point on, I will try to discuss how Bion’s work evolve using open systems into a complex model of psychoanalytic technique, which requires an adequate interpretative language, whose inspiration came from poetic language (a deep example of an open system).
As this model of technique creates a confluence of the philosophical, epistemological and aesthetic questions raised by the Theory of Thinking(1962), I must emphasize that the usage of a poetic system goes far beyond a mere literature stile. It is about an expansion of intuition in the creation of many concepts that came out by means of psychoanalytical practice.
At this point, maybe one can discuss poetic as a container and poiesis as a contained; having as a counterpoint intuition as a contained and imagination as a container (Chuster, 2020).
Applying those container/contained relationship in most of his papers, Bion was able to use what is more profound in poetic action, poiesis, being such hypothesis the one I shall develop from this point on, transiently defining psychoanalysis as a practical-poietical activity( Chuster, 1997,2003, 2014, 2018, 2020).
In order to proceed, I quote what I shall call Bion’s psychoanalytical poetry, focusing it with the help of two poets of XX Century, Paul Valéry and Mario Quintana, plus an excerpt from a Brazilian writer, Guimarães Rosa. Eventually I will add Fernando Pessoa.
Bion’s poetry (1970): “Is Mathematics a language of realization or restoration? What is needed is not a diminishing of inhibition, but the lessening of the inhibition impulse; being the impulse to inhibit fundamentally the envy of growth–producing objects. One shall seek an activity that can be either a restoration of God (the mother) and an evolution of God (the formless, infinite, ineffable, inexistent), which can only be found in the state in which there is no memory, no desire and no need for comprehension”.
Guimarães Rosa said: language is an open door to infinity.
Paul Valery alleged that starting from a delusional position, a night extravagant person; he could evolve until becoming an algebraist, almost a cold mathematician, serving a refined dreamer.
Mario Quintana whispered that to dream is to awake to inside world.
I will try to rely those quotes specifically on some psychoanalytic concepts put forth by Bion, in Transformations (1965), Attention and Interpretation (1970), and Caesura (1977). Those concepts produced an important intuitive and epistemological shift that take us from the two Freudian principles of mental functioning to the three principles of living (Bion, 1979). Those three principles are a powerful example of a poieticalopen system: 1) feelings 2) anticipatory thinking 3) feelings plus thinking plus Thinking (Prudence or foresight in action).
Those three principles while representing psychoanalytical poiesis and its ethical-aesthetical expression (Chuster, 1999, 2003, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2020) is a final product of Bion’s propositions about an adequate state of mind to psychoanalytical work.
The first proposition came from T.S.Elliot (Four Quartets): to work without memory and desire (Bion, 1967).
The second proposal Keats described as one state of mind needed to achieve literary performance: negative capability (Bion, 1970)[5].
Bion (1975) said that Keats’ negative capability discovered an Uncertainty Principle.
The early discovery by a poet of a Quantic Mechanics principle, which he philosophical expressed about it, long before a physicist, led me back to one of my initial questions, thinking of Bion’s descriptions ( with a little help from Valéry) about a point of poiesis, which I will try to clarify ahead.
The psychoanalyst face to face this point has an emotional experience that aims at achieving the patient’s singularity. If the psychoanalyst could work with the three principles of living, he may find a meeting a road of words one should be taken (interpretation).
The words could come from many disciplines, following a psychoanalytical criterion of integrating three areas, myths, senses and passions (Bion, 1962, 1963). In many papers, I tried to show that such integration is always ethical-aesthetical (Chuster, 1999, 2003, 2011, 2014, 2018, 2020, 2021). They think of the world in an intuitive mode, non-discursive mode, opposed to the concept of narratives, which I will add ahead.
I found in Hölderlin a poetical a kinship to what I just said, the poet trying to underline the infinitude vertex of language (in the same way Guimarães Rosa did) describes a “ triple nature of poetical Self, by which is possible to operate the transition from a determined infinite to a general one”.
Keats’ negative capability was referring to the ability to achieve a point where we face something we do not have, something that require a capacity to tolerate a triple nature: mysteries, uncertainties and half-truths, without being anxious to understand or find a meaning. The decisions made at this point, by means of words and language, result is a Man of Achievement in Literature, which Keats exemplified by the work of Shakespeare.
Bion (1970) changed the expression Man of Achievement by Language of Achievement, and affirmed that Freud’s work is an example. Therefore, shouldn’t we call it Language of psychoanalytical scope?
Bion (1970) also added to his ideas a complementary expression, act of Faith, which means that Language of Achievement has as its first intention the search for truth, not to find it, but for an act of creation (poiesis) become available.
I said “intention” but there is not an intention in the way one can understand as a desire, but as an invariance (Bion, 1965), a direction one may choose based on the perplexity feelings one can have.
In psychoanalytical practice, it means that the analyst listens to several types of narratives in his office. We have everyday narratives about the things of life, scientific discourse about the physical world, historical narratives about events that have occurred, sociological/political discourse about the practical instances of societies. However, it is necessary to take them - with the use of negative capability - to a threshold that approaches what would be the threshold of poetic discourse, where an interpretation might emerge. One hopes the interpretation could be, if not a language of Achievement, at least a Language of psychoanalytical scope.
I think such threshold also is what Bion called a caesura (1977, 1976), another concept coming from poetry. It means a pause inside a verse. A pause, which at the same time divides and links two different mental states, a pause that produces continuity and differences.
However, as we are dealing with psychoanalysis does a criterion must exist to differentiate a language of psychoanalytical scope from the language, which is simply poetic? I will add ahead in such problem the Language of Substitution (1970).
In order to do it I paraphrase Bion (1979) asking how to make the best of our psychoanalytical listening to achieve the poetic threshold (caesura). Could this threshold make us better analysts?
Is there something_ making an analogy with Hölderlin _ one should describe as a Poietic Psychoanalytical Self (Chuster 1996, 1997, 20210, 2021)? the one that works with negative capability inserting intuition in imaginative conjectures while investigating finite/infinite links until its public-action as an interpretation.
I could use, for instance, a myth, a dream, and an oneiric though, to help me in such investigation.
I will use a myth.
For example, I choose John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost (Milton’s version of Oedipus myth) as an example of Language of Psychoanalytical scope to think in a particular kind of transformation, the transformation in O (Bion, 1965). [6] When I do this, I am following Fernando Pessoa’s quote: “The myth is the whole lot that is nothing”
The richness provided by the language of the mythical fall of Satan, shows a character who, given the curiosity about his personality is constantly falling, and, as he falls into an infinite, empty, formless space, he falls into himself.
The expression fall into himself, it is possible to translate as “how to become what one is” (subtitle of Nietzsche book Ecce Homo), or “how to become the Self which we truly are”. There are difficulties in every idioms to find an adequate expression to link Self to becoming. This difficulty is typical of the openness of the words to infinite.
Becoming oneself is a fall, a catastrophic change in the sense that the earlier state can never be reconstituted. However, for all its deconstructive nature, for all the losses and objects that can never be completely restored, the fall is poietic — it is a form of creation. What is created is precisely the advent of a new individual, never given, but painstakingly attained, in the course of a struggle for greater inner freedom[7].
In other words, the function of the myth, while it creates a poetic threshold, can be described as a language that restores our intuition. It is about to think more (evolution) about the Kantian statement: every intuition without a concept is blind and every concept without intuition is empty. It is about the catastrophic change caused by matching them.
Intuition and concept are linked in a time-space of uncertain results. It is in this uncertainty space that one can find an important contribution of Bion. He went beyond Kant letting underlined that intuition and concept are linked by means of imaginative capacity, while accepting uncertainty.
The myth as a model coincides with the definition given by Bion in Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963), as a basic form of preconception and a stage at which the individual’s private knowledge communicates to the group[8].
Pre-conception opens a trail_ by means of realization_ to mental life. Realization is an anticipatory thinking (Bion, 1979), the choice of a direction, a transience, a succession of infinite sets with a combination of signs which never loses its uncertainty nature (Matte Blanco, 1977), creating a futures, allowing a direction to a symbolic pattern. It is represents the complexity of life while it creates a living tension.
That tension or emotional turbulence (Bion, 1987) is common to all creations. However, when we consider the influences of an observer in observations, it quite important to consider that, in fact, only in a step ahead always pointing the step ahead one may find a continuity of thinking, or even thinking in itself. We met with a future that does not happen so far.
It may seem a contradiction if I say that I think that thinking is in the future. Nevertheless, the contradiction is a trouble to deterministic models but not for Complexity, which allow us to welcome the most imaginative and fictional hypothesis, as well not excluding those trivial or commonplace.
I can approach such statement to the “philosophical mysticism” remarkable represented by William Blake, which Meg Harris brilliantly quoted. Blake certainly was not a philosopher, but while a poet he was a foreteller, which rescued a past point where poetry is not dissociated from philosophy. He said; “I wrote this poem, at the same time with no previous reflection and even against my will …I was nothing but a secretary. The authors remain at eternity”.
In a certain way, Blake is getting rid of his memories and desires, and it is clear that the method generates his poetic function.
William Blake affirms in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell that the reason why Milton wrote Paradise Lost was the fact that he was both a real poet and “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” Observe that Blake’s artistic and literary vision sees the process of creation as associated with the fall of the knowledge, which implies another aspect of the transformation in O: it is not knowledge that makes us change, but the enigma that invades us (Chuster, 2020). The enigma is “O” (Bion, 1965). It is “O” as in Onthos, but while an experience it became “O” as in “Opus”, a work in progress that opens possibilities for many caesuras[9].
When we try to find a language to express the enigma, it stimulates thoughts that open our minds to emotions, which are subjective and nothing add to the narratives about the world. Its result does not exactly increase knowledge, although it might do it, indeed, it allows one to enter into the space of Being by means of emotions.
However, suppose, on the other hand, the narrative discourse usurps our observations, substituting what could emerge from our unconscious world. In that case, it becomes a language of substitution (Bion, 1970). It replaces action and is not a prelude to action, that is, the language inhibit the pre-conception creative potential, and may generate beliefs and dogmas. It also inhibits the loving matrix, which breeds prelude and action.
Narratives are a product of memory and desire; they obscure our Self basic roots and endorse a uncritical vision of reality that transforms in a concept that is just an adequate truth, which many ties coincides with the production of falsities ad lies. They produce detachment of psychic reality, distance from our deep roots.
In order to move in an opposite direction from narratives I need poiesis and to expand my statement, I will add, Fernando Pessoa, while using the pseudonym Alberto Caeiro.
If sometimes, I say that flowers smile
And if I say that rivers sing
It is not because I think there are smiles in the flowers
And songs in the flowing rivers...
It is because in this way, I make false men feel more
The real existence of flowers and rivers.
I will take the above poetical description as a model of the transition reverie/alpha function[10] in the psychoanalytical work. When we meet the patient in the waiting room, he/she allows us to feel the smell of his/her movement. The color of the silence, the taste of the presence, the sound of the skin, the noise of the gaze. We do not know what we grasp until we sat down in our chair with such prelude to the session and then with it one moves to the symbolic setting or the psychoanalytical act.
There is nothing scientific in this interpretation of reality; I disagree with myself when I interpret following this way of thinking. I disagree with my common, colloquial logic, however, this non-coincidence, this actual logical inadequacy; it is what makes the psychoanalytic language.
We can follow this non-coincidence in the passages of the Memoir of the Future where there is a distinction between Bion, Myself, and P.A. Myself informs Bion, which for his turn try to publishes it as P.A. We can also talk about the inverse path and the alternation of vertices. Those three constitute the triple nature of Psychoanalytical Poetic Self.
The language of psychoanalytical scope, as well the Language of Achievement, it is a kind of poetics of exactitude because it speaks of feelings. Feelings create a caesura.
The caesura of feelings[11] is like a transcendental difference for a specific moment in the relationship with the analysand that establishes a difference between mental states. I am back to Valéry poem when the mathematician is a server to the refined dreamer.
I suggest that the expression transcendental difference is a synonym to the enigma, or to “O” or to pre-conception. My proposition aims at discussing psychoanalysis in Bion as a transcendence practice, whose poiesis take us out from the dramatic ethics of death, and moves away to freedom of thinking, which can only be done by means of a language that has a loving matrix for truth (Bion, 1970).
Those statements above allowed me to say that psychoanalysis is a practical-poietic activity. I think this is the oldest definition of techné in ancient Greek carried on by Homer[12], all over the Iliad and the Odyssey. It means deciphering as enigma in order to bring something to surface, to becoming oneself.
It is practical because their operators are an active part of the process, being the analysand the main agent of his/her development of life. It is a poietical movement because it is creative; its outcome must be a self-transformation of the analysand towards a new individual, a new form to relate to the unconscious.
It is poietic because is creative, creation promoted by the aesthetics of emotions to describe the inside world, and it take us to an ethical-aesthetical universe of sincerity and freedom of thought.
As an end, I quote Bion saying that an interpretation must do something else than enlightening by means of knowledge; it must add something to the life of the patient. This something may be improving the quality of psychic life.
However, when I say, “may” it is about not to saying that I did not spoke about uncertainty (or flowers and rivers)
REFERENCES
1- Bion, W.R. (1967) Second Thoughts, Heinemann, London.
2--------------- (1963) Elements of Psychoanalysis, Heinemann, London.
3--------------- (1965) Transformations, heinemann, London.
4--------------- (1966) Catastrophic change,Bull.Brit.Psychoanal.Soc. Nº5
5--------------- (1970) Attention and Interpretation, Tavistock, London.
6--------------- (1977) Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura, Imago, rio de janeiro
7--------------- (1977) Emotional Turbulence, in P.Hartcolis (ed.) Borderline personality Disorders, Int.Univ.Press, New York
8--------------- (1987) Clinical seminars and Four Papers, Fleetwood, Abingdon.
9-Brandão, J.S. (1986) Mitologia Grega, vol.I, Vozes, petrópolis.
10-Carneiro Leão, E. (1977) Aprendendo a Pensar, Vozes, Petrópolis.
11-Castoriadis, C. (1987) As Encruzilhadas do Labirinto, Paz e Terra, Rio de Janeiro.
12-Chuster, A. (1989) Um Resgate da Originalidade, Degrau Cultural, rio de Janeiro.
13___________ (1996) Diálogos Psicanalíticos sobre W.R.Bion, Tipo & Grafia, Rio de Janeiro.
14__________ (1997) “The myth of Satan: an aesthetic view of Bion’s concept of transformation in O” –International Centennial Conference on the work of W.R. Bion, Turin, Italy, July 1997.
15_______ (1997) Cadernos de Bion 1: Seminários com Arnaldo Chuster - Uma teoria do pensar, aprendendo com a experiência. Organizado por Júlio César Conte, editora Escuta, São Paulo, 1997.
16___________ (1999) W.R.Bion: Novas Leituras. Vol.I: a psicanálise dos modelos científicos aos princípios ético-estéticos. Companhia de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.
17------------------(2003) W.R.Bion: Novas Leituras, vol. II: a psicanálise dos princípios ético-estéticos à clínica, Companhia de Freud, Rio de Janeiro
18--------------------(2011) O Objeto Psicanalítico. Edição Instituto W. Bion, Porto Alegre.
19____________ (2012) Cesura e Imaginação Radical: obtendo imagens para a ressignificação da história primitiva no processo analítico. In: Sobre a Linguagem e o Pensar. Org. Jose Renato Avzaradel. Casa do Psicólogo, São Paulo.
20____________ (2013) A importância da imaginação do analista na prática clínica: um ensaio sobre a capacidade de se conectar com o mais primitivo. Trabalho apresentado na X Jornada Científica do Instituto Wilfred Bion, Porto Alegre
21--------------------- (2014) A Lonesome Road: essays on the complexity of W.R.Bion’s work. TrioSudios / Karnac, Rio de Janeiro
22______________ (2017) Simetria e Objeto Psicanalítico; desafiando paradigmas com W.R.Bion. Trio Studio, Rio de Janeiro
23______________ (2018) capacidade negativa; um caminho em busca da luz. Zagodoni editora, São Paulo
24______________(2020) Psychoanalytical Intuition in dream and waking life, trabalho apresentado no Congresso Internacional sobre a obra de Bion, Barcelona, Espanha, fevereiro de 2020.
25------------------------Chuster, A. e Trachtenberg, R. (2009) As Sete Invejas Capitais. Artmed, Porto Alegre.
26-----------------------Chuster, A.; Soares, G., Trachtenberg, R.;(2014) A Obra Complexa, Editora Sulina, Porto Alegre
28--------------------Cormican, L.A. (1982) Milton’s religious Verse in:The New Guide to English Literature, ed. By Ford, B., Middlesex.
29 -----------------------Freud (1926) Entrevista ao jornalista George Viereck, New York Times.
30 ----------------------Hawking, S. (1988) A Brief history of Time, Doubleday, New York.
31---------------------- Lacroix, J. (1979) Kant e o Kantismo, Rés editora, porto.
32-------------------------Laplanche, J. (1993) La Interpretación entre el determinismo y lahermenêutica, reenunciando el problema in: Libro Anual de psicoanálisis, escuta, são Paulo.
33------------------- Matte-Blanco, I. (1975) The Unconscious as Infinite Sets: an essay in Bi-Logic, Duckworth, London.
34----------------------Meltzer, D. (1989) “Notas sobre o processo Introjetivo”. Rev.Bras. Psicanal.vol23, no3
35-------------(1992) “Além da Consciência” Rev.Bras. Psicanal. Vol.26, no3.
36--------------------Paz, O. (1993) A Outra Voz, Siciliano, São Paulo.
37--------------------Ray, C. (1994) Tempo, Espaço e Filosofia. papirus, campinas.
38---------------------Robson, W.W. (1982) Paradise Lost: Changing Interpretations and controversy in: the New Guide to English literature, ed.By Ford, B., Midlessex.
NOTES
[1]-Membro Efetivo e Didata da Sociedade Psicanalítica do Rio de Janeiro (SPRJ), filiada a IPA, Membro do Newport Psychoanalytical Institute (NIP), Califórnia, membro Honorário do Instituto W.Bion, Porto Alegre.
[2]- Journalist George Viereck.
[3]- I could say that such point is an unconscious root that evolves in creativity.
[4]-We also have unfoldings of Gödel theorems in computational systems, Chaos Theory, Fractal theory, Catastrophe theory and Complexity Theory. [5] The expression negative is inspired in Chemistry´s negative pole as a receptor to the positive pole. It is about creating a stream of electrifying words that can bring life to our dialogues. [6] [7] We can understand such mythical-poetic movement in Bion’s language as a transformation in K->O (Bion, 1965), the psychoanalytical transformation that may have a consequence such as a transformation in O (Bion, 1965) (Chuster, 1997, 2006, 2011, 2018)[7].
[8] Notice that I am once more working at the same time with ontology (evolution) and epistemology (restoration). [9] The subject of transformation in O is that which embodies this enigma — as in dreams, in myths, and in poems. He is a subject who speaks another language, and for this reason needs another voice. One can say he is not exactly the speaker: rather, he is spoken; not a dreamer, but one who is dreamed of. “O” it is an enigma. When Bion introduced it at first seems an epistemological requirement arising from the Kantian use of an empty concept, a concept not saturated with meanings, open to the experience of the interlocutor. In other words, “O” as in Onthos is a threshold of psychoanalysis’ characteristic challenge: the unconscious taken as an infinite reality indicated by the terms truth, absolute truth, ultimate reality, a thought without a thinker (Bion 1970, 1975, 1979). [10]- Alpha-function is Bion’s poetical translation of the mathematical instrument of functions. That is, the mathematical basis are functions, but when it becomes a psychoanalytical instrument, due uncertainty principle, it becomes a poetry to observe. [11]- If the emotions aroused allow crossing the caesura, this movement is what produce accuracy of language. Emotions are not just subjective but are modalities of our relation to a non-saturated world, a world of enigmas, unexhausted by narratives, memories, and intentions to understand. [12]-Poetry in Homer, as a childhood of humankind, points to a disjunction. Homer, as a poet, took a sip of the sober water stolen from Juno’s vase, while overwhelmed by Apollo’s fire. Such disjunction create contradictions, but they promote freedom.
留言