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In trying to reach the original psychoanalytic object behind the representations or in the metaphor of the tree, beyond the reflections of the tree, Bion sees that he cannot go further than three or four levels of transformation so to speak and that then one is in the unknowable, unrepresented. The original unrepresented object (the tree in the metaphor) cannot be known. He calls it O, probably from Origin – the unknowable origin from where the transformations start. This unrepresented O cannot be seen, be smelled, be heard as it is beyond the domain of the senses. It is a-sensuous. The constant conjunctions at this level can only be seen by intuition (as a Seer does). The definition that Bion gives of O in the later publication of “Attention and Interpretation” is: “I shall use the sign O to denote that which is the ultimate reality represented by terms such as ultimate reality, absolute truth, the godhead, the infinite, the thing-in- itself. O does not fall in the domain of knowledge or learning save incidentally; it can be ‘become’, but it cannot be ‘known’. It is darkness and formlessness but it enters the domain K when it has evolved to a point where it can be known, through knowledge gained by experience, and formulated in terms derived from sensuous experience; its existence is conjectured phenomenologically” (Bion 1970/1986, p. 25). To ‘the late Bion’ (starting at the end of his book „Transformations”), the analyst should be in this dimension when psychoanalyzing. In this undifferentiated, unrepresented, unknowable dimension, perceiving is actually becoming and at this moment also a transformation in O. In a transformation in O (Bion conceived his transformation in O later than his metaphor of the tree, but following his metaphor), it could be said that there is an intuitive contact with the tree itself and not only with the reflections, representations. The tree at that moment is seen in a way a mystic sees it, meaning not by perception but in an empty space where the tree can appear, where one becomes the tree. Such a Transformation in O is very different from the Transformations in K that Bion described so far. A Transformation in K is a way of representing or mentalizing an experience, a psychoanalytic object. At that level, a transformation in hallucinosis was seen as pathological. In Bion’s later point of view a Transformation in O is a new experience instead of a representation of an experience that already happened. This experience is outside (verbal) representations and therefore in infinity. In a successful analysis two or three such transformations may happen and they make an analysis terminable (Bion, 1970/1986). To facilitate a transformation in O, the analyst must be as close to the infinite as possible in Bion’s words. From there he can intuit the spontaneous movement from O to K. The analyst should wait till a transformation in O happens and spontaneously gets a form in K. The movement is always from O to K, only when this happens the T(O) can get a form. The analyst cannot will such an experience, such a Transformation in O. Bion developed a technique to be susceptible, sensitive to this and to be able to experience, to become O. It boils down to be in a state of Faith with no memory, no desire, no understanding, no coherence. In any circumstance the
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