The Dictionary of the Work of W.R. Bion

Rafael E. Lopez-Corvo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429920486
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

This impressive work constitutes an important and timely addition to existing dictionaries of psychoanalytic ideas. It is not intended to replace the reading of Bion's original texts nor is it a biography of W.R. Bion, the man. A brief history of Bion's life is offered in the introduction to illuminate the conscious and unconscious factors that may have been an influence on his work, but the aim of this volume is to serve as an insightful and comprehensive guide to the often obscure meanings and terms explored and created by Bion throughout his many years, first as a psychiatrist and later as a psychoanalyst. It is an essential companion to the works of Bion that brings clarity and understanding to his absorbing concepts and is a vital addition to the library of anyone who has read and wondered over the writings of W.R. Bion.

A

Aberrant forms of change: Extraneous changes that take place within a group dominated by one of the three basic assumptions, when a new idea that demands development takes place but the active basic assumption is unable to tolerate it. Bion (1948b) states:

If the dependent group is active, and is threatened by pressure of the pairing-group leader, particularly perhaps in the form of an idea which is suffused with Messianic hope, then if methods such as resorting to bible-making prove inadequate, the threat is countered by provoking influx of another group. If the fight–flight group is active, the tendency is to absorb another group. If the pairing-group is active the tendency is to schism. [p. 156]

Abstraction: From the Latin abstrahere, meaning to “take out”, to “bring”, to separate mentally from a particular object; or discretely to consider a specific property; in simpler words, to discriminate the universal from the individual (Foulquié, 1967). Bion (1962) summarizes abstraction as the capacity of alpha-function to change an emotional experience into an alpha-element [p. 56). Psychotics and philosophers of science, adds Bion, present a similar problem because they both try to change something abstract into something concrete. The former use what Segal (1957) described as “symbolic equation”, while the philosopher in a similar fashion, attempts to concretize abstractions creating as Aristotle did, the “mathematical objects” or, as Bion did, the “psychoanalytical objects” (Bion, 1962, p. 68)

A theory could be abstracted from a model, similar to Bion’s theory of thinking, which was based on the digestive model. Abstraction could reach such a level, that a simple word might condense, by means of a constant conjunction, a limitless number of emotions, to the point that Bion for instance, considers “daddy”, “breast” or “penis”, true hypotheses (1962, pp. 66–67; 1992, pp. 252–254). Abstraction, on the other hand, represents a mechanism by which the Grid’s vertical axis progresses.

One of the reasons why psychoanalysis is not considered scientific, says Bion (1992), is because theories often used by psychoanalysts represent a combination of material from observation plus abstractions derived from them. In other words, empirical information is not satisfactory because it usually searches to create a theory instead of providing veridical information about what has been observed, while at the same time, the theory presented lacks the rigorous requirements of scientific investigation (pp. 152–154). Existing psychoanalytical theories would be similar to ideo-graphs, representing an idea condensed in one word, or to abstractions with particularizations as opposite to generalizations (ibid., pp. 256–257). It is essential, Bion concludes (1963), to formulate abstractions that allow generalizations similar to letters that when combined, could create thousands of words. “Similarly the elements I seek are to be such that relatively few are required to express, by changes in combination, nearly all the theories essential to the working psycho-analyst” (p. 2).

Accommodation: see Assimilation

Acting-out: Bion says little about this subject. He mentioned it in passing in relation to the theory of container–contained (♀ ♂), stating that when acting-out takes place during the analysis, the analysis is also part of acting-out because it is contained by it.

When a patient can be said to be acting-out the analysis is “in” a situation of which the boundaries are unknown. If the behaviour characterized as “acting-out” is brought to the analysis it can be accompanied by claustrophobic symptoms in the patient. [Bion, 1970, p. 110]

Although Bion gave no explanation about the relationship between acting-out and claustrophobia, it can be inferred according to the container–contained theory, that if analysis is contained by the acting-out, the patient could end up feeling trapped. He also referred to the attack made by psychotic patients on reality as a form of “anti-social acting-out”, in order to get rid of the rest of common sense (reality) that still remains. “In analysis it contributes to the danger of murderous attacks on the analyst. The analyst’s common-sense interpretations are attacked by being seen and felt [for instance] as sexual assaults” (Bion 1992, p. 31). “Anti-social” could be interpreted as a tendency towards narcissism, in the sense explained by Freud as “secondary narcissism”, exactly opposite to socialism (social-ism).

Bion also states that failure to interpret patient’s dreams, represents the greatest contribution an analyst could make towards production of acting-out, whereas the patient’s greatest contribution would be the incapacity to dream (ibid., p. 232).

Action: According to Freud (1911), it represents, together with attention, notation, judgement, and thought, one of the functions used by the ego to reach consciousness of reality.

A new function was now allotted to motor discharge, which, under the dominance of the pleasure principle, had served as a means of unburdening the mental apparatus of accretions of stimuli, and which had carried out this task by sending innervations into the interior of the body (leading to expressive movements and the play of features and to manifestations of affect). Motor discharge was now employed in the appropriate alteration of reality; it was converted into action. [p. 221, original emphasis)

Bion has used this concept, together with those mentioned above, as part of the horizontal axis of the Grid, in order to structure particular qualities and functions of the mind. Attempting to explain the importance of projective identification in this function, Bion states:

Freud distinguishes between a stage where muscular action is taken to alter the environment and a stage when a capacity for thought exists. I propose to include in the category presented by the term “action” phantasies that the mind, acting as if it were a muscle and a muscle acting as a muscle, can disburden the psyche of accretions of stimuli. I include the Kleinian concept of the phantasy known as projective identification in the category of “action”. [1965, p. 36]

See Attention, Notation, Judgement, Thought, Horizontal axis, Grid.

Act of faith (F): Represents the capacity to have faith in certain ideas, hunches or intuitions that suddenly spurt while listening during the analytical hour. It implies the capacity to accept the absolute truth, the existence of O as an ultimate reality, in order to structure the interpretation. Being able to reach such an attitude will depend on the analyst’s discipline of listening while avoiding using any memory or desire. Bion (1970) states:

Through F [act of faith] one can ‘see’, ‘hear’, and ‘feel’ the mental phenomena of whose reality no practising psycho-analyst has any doubt though he cannot with any accuracy represent them by existing formulations. [pp. 57–58]

It is very important that Bion also considers F as an essential component of a rigorous scientific procedure, that has no relation with the ± K system, but belongs to the O system. Although F can not be represented in the Grid, it could be close to column 6 [ibid., pp. 43–44).

Trying to explain the concept of F, Bion (1970) remembers what Freud once said in a letter to Andreas-Salomé, where he mentioned his method of achieving a state of mind that would provide clarity when the subject of investigation was particularly obscure. “He speaks [Freud] of blinding himself artificially. As a method of achieving this artificial blinding I have indicated the importance of eschewing memory and desire” (p. 43).

A thought has a no-thing as its realization, meaning that any thought is the consequence of the absence of the object. The act of faith, on the other hand, has as its background something that is unconscious and unknown because it has not happened yet, and it is associated with a state of hallucinosis, something more obvious in psychotic patients. The act of faith (F), says Bion, (1970) is

essential to the operation of psycho-analysis and other scientific proceedings. It is essential for experiencing hallucinations or the state of hallucinosis. This state I do not regard as an exaggeration of a pathological or even natural condition: I consider it rather to be a state always present, but overlaid by other phenomena, which screen it. If these other elements can be moderated or suspended hallucinosis becomes demonstrable; its full depth and richness are accessible only to “acts of faith”. [p. 36]

For Bion the act of faith represents a scientific state of mind only if it is free of any element of memory or desire; in other words, the act of faith allows a spontaneous thought, phantasy or hallucinosis to appear only if this procedure takes place without any memory or desire. He alerts us to the danger of connecting F with the supernatural or with undesirable aspects of the mind, and thus saturating it. He gave an example of a psychotic patient who during analysis felt that the analyst’s words during the interpretation, flew over his head and could be detected by what Bion felt were the patterns on a cushion, and then travelled through his eyes back to him. In order for the patient to be able to experience things in this manner and in order for Bion to be able to grasp them, both the patient and analyst must have been, according to him, in a state of hallucinosis (ibid., p. 36).

The “meaning” of a statement in hallucinosis is not, however, the same as its meaning in the domain of rational thought… In the domain of hallucinosis the mental event is transformed into a sense impression and sense impressions in this domain do not have meaning; they provide pleasure or pain. [ibid., pp. 36–37]

A state of hallucinosis means that the analyst is trying to place him/herself in a condition of no saturation, without memory or desire, where any fantasy, idea or gut feeling that takes place should be approached with an act of faith, regardless of how absurd it might appear to be, and then be used to understand what is happening. The main difficulty for the analyst is in the domain of countertransference, in the capacity to “contain” painful memories or unresolved desires, or to abandon any narcissistic need. This is why Bion states that

In the domain of hallucinosis the mental event is transformed into a sense impression and sense impressions in this domain do not have meaning; they provide pleasure or pain. [ibid., p. 37, my italics]

It might have been possible that the concept of F was already in Bion’s mind by the time of his experience with groups:

There are times when I think that the group has an attitude to me, and that I can state in words what the attitude is; there are times when another individual acts as if he also thought the group had an attitude to him, and I believe I can deduce what his belief is; there are times when I think that the group has an attitude to an individual, and that I can say what it is. These occasions provide the raw material on which the interpretations are based… [1948b, pp. 142–143]

Later on, while referring to the treatment of schizophrenic patients, he states that countertransference must play an important part in the analysis of these patients, but he then proposes to leave the discussion for later on. (1967, p. 24). Bion only refers explicitly to this concept in his book Attention and Interpretation, and never mentions it again. We could argue, perhaps applying also his notion of F, that there could be a relationship between this concept and Zen Buddhism.

Agglomeration: Bion defines it in contrast to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations and Signs
• Author’s Foreword
• Introduction
• The Dictionary of the Work of W. R. Bion
• Bibliography