Paper presented at Congresso Internazionale Bion 2008, Roma, Italia, January, 31st, 2008.
I will discuss some of the consequences of Bion’s psychoanalytic object, for in my understanding this concept created a new paradigm in the evolution of theory and practice of psychoanalysis, which I recognize it very present in my work and experience.
The Psychoanalytical Object: searching a mind of its own
The psychoanalytical object was expressed initially by the quasi-mathematical formula: {ψ(ξ) (±U) (M)}, which I translate as: pre-conception ψ(ξ) realizes in the spectrum of development narcissism⇔social-ism (±U) under the shield of the complexity (M) inherent in a biological organism [1].
The pre-conception can be understood as the root of the unconscious. It can be described as a kind of constant mental expectation that in the future there exists a psychically gratifying and grandiose object of welcoming characteristics, capable to fulfill human incompleteness. It is because of these characteristics that beliefs are the conceptions that easily satisfy the primary realizations of pre-conception, and result in the rigid and rooted aspect of the first experiences in life. Also explains why the religious beliefs and myths of immortality have so much success and importance throughout life. I try to handle with them in my practice from this vertex.
This expectation I understand as a primary innocence and its frustration as primary guilt such as is described, for example, in Genesis book and all the myths of origin from diverse cultures. But on the other hand, pre-conception is the basis of all the other thoughts, learning from experience and creativity.
In terms of the experience of the baby, one can say that preconception begins operating in synchrony with the qualities of the intra-uterine environment by analogical language, “preparing” to meet after birth a welcoming breast expected to be ready and able to attend in the same way the uterus did: love, feed, protect, make development possible, relief pain and, all this, in a perfect way, without failure. This expectation is simultaneous with the expectation that behind the breast there exist sexually united parents guaranteeing the function of the breast, and behind them a supporting society and behind the society a genial creative mind generating solutions for all kind of problems and frustrations that might occur.
That is, if all that arrives in the primitive mind establishes itself immediately as thought-belief (with the value of truth), only by thinking the thoughts it will be possible to learn from experience, and from experience it would be possible to exercise creativity. It is also worth noting that the more the mental space is occupied by larger and rigid beliefs (religious, scientific, aesthetics), the smaller the mental space for other levels becomes.
It must be also emphasized that the more the tendency of the realization is toward the narcissism pole, the greater the difficulties of thinking will be, the contrary occurring when the realization tends more to the social-ist pole.
The psychoanalytical object has applications in three domains, through which it is perceived and has the possibility to be thought and interpreted: senses (body), myths (theories) and passions (sentiments).
The psychoanalytical interpretation is by definition the one which integrates the three domains through a language that it is hoped to produce psychoanalytical transformations (Language of Achievement, 1970) able to generate transformations in O [2]:
Nevertheless, for the analyst to be able to obtain psychoanalytic interpretations, it is necessary to have in his work a special matrix that one might call a love for the truth (a condition that also implies extensive discussion). In the lack of such singularity the analyst will quickly be dissatisfied with the innumerous restrictions that the profession brings, and it will be very difficult for him to work. He could easily at this point, for instance, resort to rational theories that are translations of his personal myths (symptoms translated by pre-constructed knowledge and diagnosis).
At other times, if very primitive material is contacted only through the domain of senses (the body), it generates all kind of vague physical discomfort that the analyst can simply ignore or interpret as a diffuse anxiety.
If the analyst contacts the material brought by the analysand only with feelings (domain of passions) it will inhibit the interpretative work with acting-outs or he could resort to megalomaniac or grandiose interpretations, which means to say personal things of the analyst as they were from the patient (Chuster, 2005).
Transference as a Dream: listening to all material as a dream
In my understanding, according to Bion’s ideas, the finality of analytical work is much more concentrated on the function of the dream than in the content of the dreams. In this sense, one can say that for Bion to think is to dream, the fundamental form of psychic processing, and it is this aspect that differentiates his way of working.
Bion explained the fundamental participation of the analyst in dreaming the dreams not dreamt by the analysand and also to dream the interrupted dreams. The analyst leads with the fact that the capacity to dream depends on the ability to not allow the perturbing and turbulent nature of what is being dreamt to supplant the dream. It is a matter of a successful container/contained link: transference is a dream conjoint.
Bion amplified the concept of reverie, giving it a constant status of incognito with intention to follow the analytical material without pre-conceived ideas due to optimism or excess of confidence or pessimism. He created the term alpha-function, following the distribution of this function within the mind with the help of other functions, such as intuition, the social function and the body. The main idea is to keep in mind that there is always something more to be discovered.
Alpha-function, indetermination and emotional experiences
The understanding provided by the alpha-function theory opened the possibility to observe that something new and unknown is always emerging in the analytical process; therefore it was possible to observe the evolution of the natural history of the analytical process as spiraled arguments with variable diameter, which comes to be the emotional experience.
The emotional experience with its three links (L) Love, (H) Hate and (K) the thirst for Knowledge expanded psychoanalytic understanding of feelings. For example, the feeling of love as not always being contrary to hate, but often one can see that where love ends indifference or Puritanism (-L) begins. In the same way, where hate ends one may find hypocrisy (-H), whose most noisy expression is political and religious Manichaeism, the support for fundamentalists of all kinds. Just as the negative (-K) of the thirst for knowledge is not ignorance, but Pharisianism, the stronghold of obtuse conservatism so much to the liking of the scientific and religious Establishment.
The evolution of this understanding is manifold and always has a prominent ethical dimension, making us perceive and understand that emotional experiences are not linear and ethics exist as the real human condition and for this reason cannot be taken to the vertex of any elementary dialectics, nor permit the use of psychoanalysis to justify fanaticisms from all natures, including institutional fidelity to psychoanalytical theories. As psychoanalysts it is necessary to oppose any predominance of action on thinking, for if thinking loses its predominant position, we become easy prey for the political Establishment or institutional procedures founded on the efficacy of violence and lies.
The Analytical Process and the Technique: Without memory and desire, Negative Capability and Act of Faith
At the same time that the vertex of a Theory of Thinking gave to the analytical process its own history, it gave also a characteristic autonomous evolution not especially dependent on any configurations of fantasy or related to objects of the past. Such complexity can be illustrated by the search for the adequate analytical mental state. When attempting to go deeper into the main technical standard of Freud, the free-floating attention, Bion proposed the work without memory and desire, and later also used as synonyms the expressions negative capability (which would be the necessity to tolerate uncertainties, half-truths and mysteries without an anxious attempt to arrive at the fact to reach understanding) and “act of faith”. Both expressions conveying what can be called a metapsychology of “O”.
The “act of faith” as well as “negative capability” announces that the place of the analyst is a void and formless infinite, his function is to be at-one-ment with the profound convivence with such absence, – “O” – which does not mean that the analyst, is not there, as a person, in the experience. The technical problem is precise: the analyst should he feel the necessity to identify himself as a analyst-authority, (possessor of knowledge) in the course of the session, will use memories, desires and the need for comprehension and, thus, making the perception of the reality (psychoanalytic object) of the analytical session opaque.
The effect of the indeterminism in listening to the patients.
All who follow the non-deterministic spectral model indicated by Bion approach listening to patients and talking to them in a different way. An increase in anxiety is immediately perceived as well as persecutory feelings, perceptions of dangers, possibility of violent emotions, oniric images in search of a dream. Sometimes the way of talking is so different that persons who come to a “bionian” referenced analysis, after being experienced the classic form, frequently complain of the lack of transferential routine interpretations, and some complain that the analyst is conversing with them about subjects that these patients think have nothing to do with analysis, and unexpectedly when the analyst offers an interpretation one can easily see the turbulence.
The perception of turbulence implies that to the extent that mental states unfold and develop, the dynamic changes requiring other interpretative possibilities; and the analyst sees himself following the patient in a situation without past and without future, only referring to the development of thinking.
It also becomes clear that, to the extent that the patient’s history evolves in terms of cycles of different transformations, the history changes. If the patient can achieve “transformations in O” than he would acquire the liberty and the maturity that is needed to live his own life. That is, the acquirement of autonomy makes the interpretations of the infantile history give place to an entirely different history, a history of life, which naturally conduces to a new vision, no longer referring to the conflict between the principle of pleasure versus the principle of reality, but in terms of three principles of life: a) feelings b) anticipatory thinking c) feelings + thinking + Thinking (foresight or prudence in actions) (Bion, 1979).
This is an evolution of theory that passed unperceived by many, but that allows a significant change in analytical work: it generates a more profound focus on the current ethics of thinking of the mental life of the analysand, making possible a wider analysis of the confused values that are revealed by language, instead of the focus in primitive anxieties. In Making the Best of a Bad Job (1979), Bion said: “ I would make a distinction between existence – the capacity to exist – and the ambition or aspiration to have an existence which is worth having – the quality of life, not the quantity, not the length of one’s life, but the quality of that life. There are no scales by which we can weigh quality against quantity, but existence is to be contrasted with the essence of existence. The fact that the patient, like the analyst, is still in existence is not adequate; this inadequacy is inseparable from the drive responsible for the existence of the two people, analyst and analysand, in the same room at the same time”.
Imagination and interpretative ability
The term imagination (Castoriadis, 1999) has an importance and significance in thinking much greater than that normally attributed to it. I will point out two connotations of the term: the connection with image-in-action in the ample, general and unrestricted sense (not simply visual), that is, as a framework for forms; and its connection with what is understood as invention, or better, of creation.
The term creation is always linked to the theory of pre-conception, the central element of the psychoanalytical object. Bion also placed this question through the concept of “embryonic mind”, a metaphor which aims at emphasizing the natural destiny of a constant evolution, and states a psychoanalytical model that understand the past as more than just repetition, that is, something new is always emerging. In addition to this, when operating with such a model, the way of thinking is considered the result of different times of evolution, with distinct systems corresponding to them, and with a coexistent imbricate, source of true complexity, and also, source of disorder [3]
In practical terms, the description of what is perceived only begins when the vision organizes itself within disorder. It is the thinking that does this, being able to de-construct what was seen in order to see another vertex that cannot be seen [4].
However, whatever the interpretation formulated may be, for both, analyst and analysand, it will come much too late in relation to the expansion of the unconscious. As Bion said: the conscious is lumbering after the unconscious. Because of this when we speak of unconscious we are already outside the subject. There is no repetition of experience that leads us to speech. And even if the interpretation provides a new form, the uncertainty and the mystery and the half-truths always will remain requiring the use of our imaginative abilities.
For example, when one are listening to a certain type of seriously disturbed patient, such as those described by Bion in Attention and Interpretation (1970), those that feel, but do not suffer psychic pain, it happens that one can be involved by a dense and thick type of mist, the area of investigation becomes dark, the objects are faintly perceptible, others appear to have no connection at all between them. In this situation any question seems to be duplicated on itself: What is happening to the analysand? Is it the same as is happening to the analyst? There is here a clear “undecidable principle” in the origin of the phenomena. What, then, does Freud’s expression “communication of the unconscious to the unconscious” mean, if with such a situation we come upon a kind of black hole, where we do not come across the unconscious itself, but with a conscious unable to operate. As both participants are human, something makes us suppose that by virtue of such nature a disaster could occur. It is here that the analyst, accepting to face the inaccessible, can surprise himself making imaginative conjectures.
In any event that one are surprised with, or feel uncomfortable with the type of imaginative conjectures that are being made, one should risk continuing; it is not important how strange or dislocated they may be – what is important is to let them flow for the needed time, until it is possible to grasp and analyze their meaning which appears many times among a kind of state of confusion of the patient. Nowadays very present in their values system that is guiding their lives.
One can mention innumerable confusions (that sometimes appear grossly and at other times subtly) such as: Intelligence with sneakiness, guilt with responsibility, error with harm, failure with prejudice, criticism with depreciation, loss of youth with getting old, sincerity with sociability, intimacy with lack of privacy, friendship with social relationship, loving passion with passionate love, thoughts with thinking, envy with jealousy, voracity with efficiency, resolving problems with controlling situations, etc., the list is unending. These confusions always have devastating consequences in the social system of individuals, leading to serious distortions of ethics and of human relationships. In a general sense, they are related to bad-actions and bad-decisions and with intense psychic pain that many times can spread over relatives or even larger groups and for a long time.
Bibliographic References
Bion, W.R. (1960) A Theory of Thinking In Second Thoughts, London, Heinemann, 1967,p.110-119.
_________ (1962) Learning from Experience, London, Heinemann.
__________ (1963) Elements of Psychoanalysis, London, Heinemann.
___________(1965) Transformations: Change from Learning to Growth, London, Heinemann.
___________(1970) Attention and Interpretation, London, Tavistock.
___________(1971) Two papers: The Grid and Caesura, Imago, Rio de Janeiro.
___________(1973) Bion’s Brazilian Lectures, Imago, Rio de Janeiro.
___________(1979) Making the best of a Bad Job in Clinical Seminars and4 papers(1987)
___________(1987) Clinical Seminars and Four Papers, Abington, Fleetwood Press.
___________(1992) Cogitations, Karnac Books, London.
___________(1997) Taming Wild Thoughts, Karnac Books, London.
Castoriadis, C. (1997) As Encruzilhadas do labirinto, Paz e Terra, Rio de Janeiro.
Chuster, A (1989) Um Resgate da Originalidade, Degrau, Rio de Janeiro.
_________ (1996) Diálogos Psicanalíticos sobre W.R. Bion, Tipo e Grafia, Rio de Janeiro.
_________ (1998) Bion cria de fato uma nova psicanálise? Revista da SPPA, vol V. -3
__________ (1999) W.R. Bion - Novas Leituras, vol. I Co. de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.
__________ (2002) An Oedipal Grid, paper presented at the International Conference on the work of W.R.Bion, Los Angeles, California.
___________(2003) W.R. Bion -Novas Leituras, vol.II, Co.de Freud, Rio de Janeiro.
___________(2004) Os princípios ético-estéticos de observação, trabalho apresentado na Conferência Internacional sobre al Obra de Bion em São Paulo, São Paulo.
___________(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.
___________(2005) Interpretações analíticas e princípios ético-estéticos de observação, trabalho apresentado no 44o Congresso da Associação Psicanalítica Internacional, Rio de janeiro, Julho 2005.
Freud, S.(1900) A Interpretação dos Sonhos, ESOPC, Imago ed.,1969.
Imbasciati, A (2001) The Unconscious as symbolopoiesis, Psychoanalytic Review, 88(6) December.
Meltzer, D. (1997) Meltzer in São Paulo, casa do psicólogo, São Paulo.
_________(1997) Sincerity and other works-collected papers of Donald Meltzer-Karnac Ed.
__________(2004) A relação da psicanálise com as ciências e áreas afins, Revist. SPPA, dez 2004.
Rocha Barros, E .M (2000) Affect and pictographic image: the constitution on meaning in mental life International journal Psycho anal, 81:1087-1098.
[1] The notable intuition of the author should be emphasized, anticipating the theory of complexity in 1962/63, which was developed in Physics from the end of the 1980s.
[2] Transformations that permit how to become what one is. The acquired meaning becoming the Being of the subject in question.
[3] Determining factors in the singularity of the pre-conception can be called invariants. They are what guarantee the recognition of the characteristics of a material when a change of environment exists; such as the change from the intra-uterine liquid environment to the extra-uterine gaseous environment. The invariants may be what in mathematics are called “empty objects”, or empty concepts, or “pure forms” without any conceptualization or saturation with the reality of the world. These forms can be compared to windows without landscape to fill them. In other words, they are like “frames” of what in the future, beyond the caesura of birth, will be the landscapes of life seen through a determined vertex. These frames are formed, essentially, by the repetitive rhythms of the intra-uterine environment (heart, bladder, intestines) and by some others of marked functioning bringing to the baby, at an early stage, the social world around it: we therefore have olfactory, auditory and “proprioceptive” frames that are much more important than the visual. What is later called intuition is the variable capacity of individual to individual to capture these rhythms and transform them into an interpretation. Some can create music, others poetry, others psychoanalysis and many can create forms of destruction.
[4] In Quantum Physics this is called the Principle of Uncertainty – a wave and a particle cannot be observed simultaneously. Applied to psychoanalysis, the principle of Uncertainty does not bring about a psychoanalytical mathematization, for it speaks of human thinking in a general way, and is related to act of interpreting the observeAccording to Castoriadis (1999), that is, with the act of providing a meaning, to bring light to something that is enigmatic. The interpretation does not initially modify the object focused – it is much before the interpreter who modifies the object observed with his presence – but, to the extent that it indicates a certain way to see him, the interpretation may modify, if accepted, the organization of vision and this can modify the subject. (a theory of the transformations is fundamental to understand this movement). Also fundamental in this process is the fact selected for the interpretation, for it on this that the vision that is installed depends. The fact is selected by the psychoanalytical function of the personality, which means to be selected by the Oedipus configuration. Each analyst will have “predilections” for certain vertices, or for certain vertices common to a group, or for a “school of psychoanalysis” (this last term clearly indicating submission to a paternal figure and taboos in using and thinking in concepts of other authors).
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