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ongoing evolution of the session as the primary field of contact with and observation of the patient. This field defines both patient and analyst as participant-observers. These considerations underpin Bion’s emphasis of doing analytic work in the “here-and-now” more than those suggested by the concepts of transference and countertransference, which are themselves forms of developed transformations of observed phenomena from the field. Bion wrote that observing as a psychoanalyst (as opposed to observing as a cognitive therapist, for example) requires development of one’s psychoanalytically oriented “intuitive capacity”, which is in part shaped by one’s theoretical perspectives. He wrote that while “O must be available to Ta (α) and Tp (α) ... the analyst must have a view of the psycho-analytic theory of the Oedipus situation. His understanding of that theory can be regarded as a transformation of that theory and in that case all his interpretations, verbalized or not, of what is going on in a session may be seen as transformations of an O that is bi-polar. One pole of O is trained intuitive capacity transformed to effect its juxtaposition with what is going on in the analysis and the other is in the facts of the analytic experience that must be transformed” (Bion 1965, V, p. 170). That is, the analyst must determine to what degree the actual situation corresponds, or does not correspond, to the analyst’s “trained intuitive capacity” as organized by, for example, the Oedipus complex theory. Bion’s last psychoanalytic book, Attention and Interpretation , continued his explorations into the nature of O in psychoanalysis and beyond (Bion 1970, VI). II. Df. Transformations and Emotional Truth The nature of O for psychoanalysis is of emotion and emotional experience. Bion, in two of many examples, wrote: “In our work, O must always be an emotional experience, for the assumption in psychoanalysis is that patients come for help with, and therefore presumably want to talk about an emotional difficulty (Bion 1963b, V, p. 106); and “Psychoanalytic theories, patient’s or analyst’s statements are representations of an emotional experience” (Bion 1965, V, p. 156). For Bion, emotional, and therefore psychic reality was Truth; Grotstein called “truth the invariant, and emotion its vehicle or container” (Grotstein, 2007, p. 218). Truth often presents overwhelming mental and existential conflict — one must either evade or destroy it defensively in order to survive, or accept, bear, and suffer it in order that the mind and personality may survive, grow, and develop. This directly echoes Freud’s (1911) “Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning”, which describes the reality and pleasure principles. The greater the perceived threat from emotional reality, the more likely the pleasure principle will organize active defenses against it. Freud’s theory shapes Bion’s version of mental development. Emotional overwhelm, catastrophe, annihilation, fear of dying, nameless dread, and other similar states of incapacity to tolerate frustration (Bion 1962a, VI, p. 159) drive the mind to destroy or escape this unbearable truth. Bion placed the mental function of opposing the truth at all costs in column 2 of the Grid. Bion described a last resort defense before psychosis, in which the primitive mind attacked its own capacity to think, i.e., attacks on linking (Bion 1959, VI, pp. 138-152). Bion refocused the Oedipus complex to
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