Back to Table of Contents
avoid keeping metapsychological theories at the ready, because applying them directly to the observed material distorts it (thus Bion’s singular methodological injunction to “abandon memory and desire” [Bion 1967a]). Unstated but inferable is that the analyst intuits products of transformations, i.e., Tβ, which are in the domain of psychic reality. The third paragraph of Bion’s classic paper, “Notes on memory and desire”, puts it this way: “Psychoanalytic ‘observation’ is concerned neither with what has happened nor with what is going to happen, but with what is happening. Furthermore, it is not concerned with sense impressions or objects of sense. Any psychoanalyst knows depression, anxiety, fear, and other aspects of psychic reality ... These are the psychoanalyst’s real world. Of its reality he has no doubt. Yet anxiety, to take one example, has no shape, no smell, no taste; awareness of the sensuous accompaniments of emotional experience is a hindrance to the psychoanalyst’s intuition of [psychic] reality” (Bion 1967a, VI, p. 205; emph. by Bion). Bion added signs to the basic mathematical model specifically for psychoanalysis. He proposed that “a” indicate analyst, and “p” indicate patient. The patient’s transformations are noted O ➔ Tp (α) ➔ Tp (β), and those of the analyst are noted O ➔ Ta (α) ➔ Ta (β). This more detailed version of the notation permits more specific definition of its terms. For example, Tp (β), the product of the patient’s transformations of the total analytic situation, may include observable facts about the patient such as behavior, speech, etc., but most importantly may denote psychic reality. The nature of O in the psychoanalytic session has presented many conceptual challenges that remain controversial. Bion’s initial writings on O indicate that the total clinical situation and associated emotional experience serve as realizations, or O, capable of undergoing transformation. Bion wrote, “The patient enters and, following a convention established in the analysis, shakes hands. This is an external fact, what I have called a ‘realization’. In so far as it is useful to regard it as a thing-in-itself and unknowable (in Kant’s sense) it is denoted by the sign O” (Bion 1965, V, pp. 137-138). One may read this passage along the lines of Yun Men’s koan: In walking, just walk; in sitting, just sit; above all, don’t wobble. Analogously, when patient and analyst shake hands, they just shake hands; above all, don’t think about it (until later). From this perspective, the original (O) situation of patient and analyst in and of itself it is devoid of meaning because it exists before meaning has been (co)- created. As a consequence, the situation is not directly interpretable; it is a happening in the world, represented by the sign O. Bion emphasized that the total clinical situation always involves both patient and analyst: “In psycho-analysis any O not common to analyst and analysand alike, and not available therefore for transformation by both, may be ignored as irrelevant to psycho-analysis. Any O not common to both is incapable of psycho-analytic investigation; any appearance to the contrary depends on a failure to understand the nature of psycho-analytic interpretation” (Bion 1965, V, p. 169). Bion’s intention was to privilege the observational vertex of immediate,
822
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online