Bion, Wilfred R. (1994-12-31). Clinical Seminars and Other Works. Karnac Books. Kindle Edition
Making the best of a bad job
1979
When two personalities meet, an emotional storm is created. If they make sufficient contact to be aware of each other , or even sufficient to be unaware of each other, an emotional state is produced by the conjunction of these two individuals, and the resulting disturbance is hardly likely to be regarded as necessarily an improvement on the state of affairs had they never met at all . But since they have met, and since this emotional storm has occurred, the two parties to this storm may decide to ‘make the best of a bad job’. In analysis, the patient comes into contact with the analyst by coming to the consulting room and engaging in what he thinks is a conversation which he hopes to benefit by in some way. Likewise the analyst probably expects some benefit to occur — to both parties. The patient or the analyst says something. It is curious that this has an effect — it disturbs the relationship between the two people. This would also be true if nothing was said, if they remained silent. I often do remain silent, hoping to see, or become aware of, or observe something which I could then attempt to interpret — I usually leave the initiative to the patient if I can. The result of remaining silent, or of intervening with a remark, or of even saying, “Good morning”, or, “Good evening”, sets up what appears to me to be an emotional storm. One does not immediately know what the emotional storm is, but the problem is how to make the best of it, how to turn the adverse circumstance — as I choose to call it at the moment — to good account. The patient is not obliged to do that; he may not be willing or able to turn it to good account; his aim may be quite different. I can recall an experience in which a patient was anxious that I should conform to his state of mind, a state of mind to which I did not want to conform. He was anxious to arouse powerful emotions in me so that I would feel angry, frustrated, disappointed, so that I would not be able to think clearly. I therefore had to choose between ‘appearing’ to be a benevolent person, or ‘appearing’ to remain calm and clear-thinking. But acting a part is incompatible with being sincere. In such a situation the analyst is attempting to bring to bear a state of mind, and indeed an inspiration, of a kind that would in his opinion be beneficial and an improvement on the patient’s existing state of mind. That interference can be resented by the patient whose retort can be to arouse powerful feelings in the analyst and to make it difficult for the analyst to think clearly.
In war the enemy’s object is so to terrify you that you cannot think clearly, while your object is to continue to think clearly no matter how adverse or frightening the situation. The underlying idea is that thinking clearly is more conducive to being aware of ‘reality’, to assessing properly what is real. But being aware of reality may involve being aware of the unpleasant because reality is not necessarily pleasing or welcome. This is common to all scientific inquiry, whether of people or things. We can be in a universe of thought, a culture , or even a temporary culture, of such a kind that we are sure to suffer the pain of feeling that our universe is not conducive to our welfare. To dare to be aware of the facts of the universe in which we are existing calls for courage. That universe may not be pleasing and we may be disposed to get out of it; if we cannot get out of it, if for some reason our musculature is not working, or if it is not appropriate to run away or to retire, then we can be reduced to other forms of escape — like going to sleep, or becoming unconscious of the universe of which we do not wish to be conscious, or being ignorant, or ideal-izing. ‘Escape’ is a fundamental cure; it is basic. The infant, unwilling to be aware of its helplessness, ideal-izes or ignores. (I use ‘ignores’ as the process requisite to reaching ‘ignorance’.) It also resorts to omnipotence; thus omnipotence and helplessness are inseparably associated. The tendency is to objectify omnipotence in the person of father or mother, or god or goddess. Sometimes it is made easier by a physical inheritance such as good looks: Helen of Troy could mobilize great powers through her beauty, as we know through Homer —’ Is this the face that launched a thousand ships and burned – the topless towers of Ilium?’ Much the same thing can apply to the male who can be fortunate enough to be Paris or Ganymede, whose ability to achieve omnipotence was facilitated by their physical legacy, their physical capital. The body can be brought in to redress the unpleasure of the mind; reciprocally, the mind can be brought in to redress the unpleasure of the body. The basic assumption of psycho-analysis is that the ‘function’ of the mind can be used to correct the fallacious solutions which I have briefly sketched. But sometimes a cosmetic power is not enough; the solution to which such a person has been tempted has not in fact been robust enough or durable enough to meet the further exigencies of existence. For example, if a soldier is given authority by virtue of his physical appearance, the facts of waging war may impose a burden on cosmetic beauty that it cannot carry.
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 the existence, 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.
This paper I claim to be scientific, but I do not think you are likely to agree that it merits being so categorized, for I shall continue with a series of statements for which I have not a shred of factual support. They are these: the Self that the psycho-analyst observes — the analyst having the same charactens tics — has, according to the embryologists, some growing objects which they call the cortex and medulla of the adrenals. Those names are given to these structures as soon as they assume a pattern that is observed in different individuals at different times and dates. These bodies in course of time become functional and produce a chemical substance which is concerned with aggression, or fighting, or flight. I prefer to be less precise and to exclude any element of direction by saying that the adrenals do not provoke fight or flight, but provoke ‘initiative’. The terms that I use — fight, flight, initiation — would be appropriate if the object being observed had a psyche. To get over the difficulty, the obstacle to progress that is presented by my lack of intelligence or knowledge, I shall resort to imaginative conjectures in contrast to what I would call facts. The first and most immediate of these imaginative conjectures is that the adrenal bodies do not think, but that the surrounding structures develop physically and in physical anticipation of fulfilling a function we know as thinking and feeling. The embryo (or its optic pits, auditory pits, adrenals) does not think, see, hear, fight, or run away, but the physical body develops in anticipation of having to provide the apparatus for filling the functions of thinking, seeing, hearing, running away, and so on. Since I cannot know — and am most unlikely to have the necessary intelligence in the course of my ephemeral existence —I try to convey to the body politic these gropings towards intelligence in case my own anticipations lead to the contagious and infectious communication of these conjectures which may in due course become real-ized.
So far I am only discussing the physical body as if it anticipated functions which would later on come to pass, but which would already have a bodily equipment suitable for serving the purposes of a particular function that we call ‘psyche’. This is what I name a ‘physical anticipation’, a bodily anticipation making possible the later Junctional operation of a mind . I am borrowing from psychology in order to describe a physical matter; later I borrow from a physical matter to describe something psychological.
I now turn to the problem of communication within the Self. (I dislike terms that imply ‘the body’ and ‘the mind’, therefore I use ‘self’ to include what I call body or mind, and ‘a mental space’ for further ideas which may be developed. The philosophical statement of this approach is Monism.) When we are engaged on psycho-analysis in which observation must play an extremely important part — as has always been recognized in a scientific inquiry — we should not be restricting our observation to too narrow a sphere. What then are we observing? The best answer that I know is provided by the formulation in Milton’s introduction to the Third Book of Paradise Lost
‘So much the rather thou Celestial light Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell Of things invisible to mortal sight.’
When the patient comes into the consulting room the analyst needs to be sensitive to the totality of that person; it should, for example, be possible to see a flush on the face as a physical manifestation of the blood system, as well as being able to hear the words which that person utters as a part of the operation of the vocal musculature — not particularly emphasising the activity of the voluntary muscles, nor yet particularly the sounds which are created by the vocal cords and the vocal apparatus, but rather the total thing. As Donne wrote in The Second Anniversary
‘Her pure and eloquent blood Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say, her body thought.’
Or, putting it differently, the analyst needs to be able to listen not only to the words but also to the music, so that he can hear a remark which is not easily translated into black marks on paper, which has a different meaning when it is made in tones of sarcasm, or in terms of affection or understanding, or by a person who has actual experience of authority — though the words might be the same in each instance. For example, it might be possible to think in terms of an ideal world, a Utopia, as Sir Thomas More did, and to write it in terms which can still be understood by those who care to read his book. In the analytic session there is a difference when words are spoken by an analysand who is a man of authority, accustomed to wielding authority. When he talks about some ideal constitution, what he has to say will be different from the same words said by a person who has no such power and no such authority.
What I am saying may appear to be painfully obvious. My justification for saying it is that the obvious is so often not observed, namely, that which is the difference. So I think that it is worth while mentioning these obvious facts — otherwise they will not become the object of scrutiny on which any kind of scientific progress depends. When I say ‘scientific’ in this context, I mean the process of real-ization as contrasted with the process at the other ‘pole’ of the same concept, ideal-ization, the feeling that the world, the thing, the person, is not adequate unless we alter our perception of that person or thing by idealizing it. Real-ization is doing the same thing when we feel that the ideal picture which we present by our statement is inadequate. So we must consider what is the method of communication of Self with Self.
A great deal of work has been done in studying the central nervous system, the para-sympathetic and the peripheral nervous apparatus. But we have not considered the part that is played, if any, in the communication of thought, or the anticipation of thought by the glandular system. As tuberculosis of the lung can be communicated, say, with the lymphatics of the lower limbs, so perhaps the thoughts which we are accustomed to associate with the cerebral spheres could likewise be communicated to the sympathetic or para-sympathetic, and vice versa. Such a conjecture could account for the peculiar state of affairs when a patient says that he is terrified or is very anxious, and has not the slightest idea what about. We are familiar with using free associations for purposes of interpretation; I wonder whether it is also possible to use or to tap these communications before they reach the cerebral spheres, before they reach the area which we regard as conscious or rational thought. Can any part be played in all this by what I have called ‘imaginative conjectures’? I would also add ‘rational conjectures’; that is to say conjectures which seem to be linked with reasonable activity or the activity which has a ratio. Compare this kind of thought with that which communicates itself in tossing and turning in bed when we are asleep and are having what we describe as a ‘restless night’, or with the patient who talks about having catarrh or rhinitis. Anatomists call a part of the brain the ‘rhinencephalon’ — as if they think there is such a thing as a nose-brain. I understand from the embryologists and physiologists that the sense of smell is a distant receptor in a watery fluid — sharks and mackerel provide a model of that long-distance receptor. But the human being has to carry some of this intra-cellular fluid into the world after birth where the fluid is not watery but gaseous. The watery fluid, instead of being an asset, can become a liability; the individual can complain of rhinitis and difficulty in breathing . Or a patient may complain of an inability to stop the flow of tears — another excretion of fluid which has its uses; it can irrigate the eyeball and wash away dust and dirt, but an excess blinds the patient with tears.
At the risk of being monotonous on the one hand, and on the other of appearing to be changing the subject, I propose now to repeat the essence of what I have been saying. Suppose we regard being asleep as being in a particular state of mind in which we see sights, visit places, and carry out activities which are not usually carried out by us when we are awake — although there can be activities which we carry out when we are awake which are reminiscent of dreams; people say that they go to a place to which they have always ‘dreamt’ of going, speaking metaphorically. The change from the state of mind in which we are when asleep (S-state) to that in which we are when awake (W-state) is reminiscent of the change from watery fluid to gaseous fluid, pre-natal to post-natal. We have a prejudice in favour of the W-state: people, without hesitation, talk about having had a dream, often meaning that therefore it did not really happen. But I would say that that is a prejudice of a person who is in favour of the voluntary musculature, who does not attach importance to where he can go unless he can do it by the use of his voluntary muscles. We do not hear much about the places we visit, the sights we see, the stories we hear and the information which is available when we are asleep — unless we translate it into being awake.
Who or what decides the priority of the W-state over the S-state? My question may appear to be somewhat ridiculous. But I shall exaggerate it by changing its form and saying: who or what decides the state of mind of a man who says, as reported by Hanna Segal, that anybody would recognize that the person playing the violin is really masturbating in public? That is a point of view; it is clear enough; there is not much doubt about its expression. Why is it that we take it for granted that a person is really playing the solo part in the Brahms violin concerto and that this view is the correct one, superior to the view of the person who knows that the soloist is in fact masturbating in public? From that vertex, can the psychotic patient put up a claim when opposed by the view of the ‘sane’? Would it be possible for a psychotic to say, “Poor fellow — he thinks it is the Brahms violin concerto — a typically sane point of view. Quite wrong of course, but he is unfortunately sane”? This point is more obscure when I say that the W-state, and the story about what we did when asleep, is as depicted when wide awake. What of the psycho-analyst who thinks that the account of the story told by a person who is awake deserves interpretation in order to reveal a meaning other than the perfectly simple, straightforward account of the events if they are considered to be factual descriptions of factual events? After all, what is wrong with the factual event when the person is asleep? In what way is this the incorrect view? In what way should we throw our votes in the scale? For the W-state, when we have subjected the experience that we have when asleep to wake-work? Or for translating, according to psycho-analytic theory, the events of the day or the events of conscious thinking, into some other form of thinking which is done by the process of dream-work? In other words, what about the process done by the wake-work to translate the events, the places we have been, the sights we have seen when asleep, into the language of a person who is awake? What work would be necessary to translate the state of mind of the person who sees that the violinist is masturbating in public into the terms used by the people who think it is a Brahms violin concerto? Is that work reasonably called a ‘curative’ activity? Certainly any work which was done to translate the state of mind of the person who thinks that it is a Brahms violin concerto into a state of mind of the person who thinks that the individual concerned is masturbating in public would not be considered to be a cure; on the whole the majority vote would seem to be in favour of the view that such a person had deteriorated, had suffered a misfortune as a result of his analytic experience.
If the S-state is regarded as being worthy of respect equally with the W-state — the arbitrium being impartial — then where one went, what one saw and experienced, must be regarded as having a value which is equally valid. This is implicit when Freud, like many predecessors, regards dreams as worthy of respect. So we can say that the wake-work should be considered as equally worthy of respect as is the dream-work. But why is the state of mind of being awake, conscious, logical, regarded as having ‘our wits about us’, but only if it is half our wits? How awful when you find a maggot in your apple! Not so awful as finding half a maggot in your apple. So we find that only having half our wits about us is a discovery that is most disturbing. It is one reason why there is a division of opinion as to whether to have all our wits about us, or to get back to having only one half — the wakeful, conscious, rational, logical. Only that kind of mathematics that is generally accepted by the majority, the prevalent culture, the social, civil, dominant fashion, is regarded as valid.
Suppose we respect equally both states of mind, or many states of mind whatever they are: then what state of mind shall we choose for interpretation? Verbal action? That is an everyday problem. In our present culture it is not thought correct to make a rhapsodic response, an immediate abandonment of the screen between impulse and action, translating the impulse direct into action without any intervening delay. It is considered to be equally incorrect to prolong thought to the point at which the action is so delayed that it either does not take place at all, or thinking becomes a substitute for action. When virtually instantaneous action is called for, it is likely to precipitate a response that is rhapsodic, impulse direct to action without any intervention of thought. Freud described Two Principles of Mental Functioning; I suggest Three Principles of Living. First, feeling; second, anticipatory thinking; third, feeling plus thinking plus Thinking. The latter is synonymous with prudence or foresight -> action.
A man has much muscular activity: when awake, he says he has had a restless night. Where did he go? What did he see? Who was he? What did he do? Should the W-state prevail and be accorded superiority? Should he respect the state of mind which was associated with so much physical activity? What is certain is that that physical activity which the patient has experienced is unmistakable whether he or his analyst recognizes it; he often admits, unwillingly, that he is tired.
Perhaps the problem can be approached more easily by projection. Let us consider it not in each one of us individually, but by regarding it as a problem of the body politic. Can we then locate in the community the origin, the source, the emotional storm centre? In my experience it is always caused, or associated with, or centred on a thinking and feeling person who can make his Self infectious or contagious. To take a gross example, Shakespeare; it is said that the English language has never been the same since. I have asked why we go to hear scientific papers. If you want to be reminded of people and the way they behave, do you choose a Shakespeare play, or do you come to an alleged ‘scientific’ paper by me? I will not embarrass you or myself by pressing such a question, especially as I do not have to pronounce a solution to that problem. It does, however, have a long history extending to periods before Shakespeare, or indeed before modern English existed. It appears to have agitated the Allans, though they were mostly concerned with the problems of material existence and conquest. I do not think it is oversimplifying to say that even from the earliest periods of human history of which we have any record — the Rig Veda — there appears to have been a need to develop what we now call a ‘philosophy of thinking’. But a philosophical discussion about the ancient wisdom of the Rig Veda and the other Vedanta (ancient Hindu scriptures) became tainted with hostility, as did the philosophy of the Greeks in the time of Plato and Socrates.
Socrates: ‘My art of midwifery is in general like theirs; the only difference is that my patients are men, not women, and my concern is not with the body but with the soul that is in travail of birth. And the highest point of my art is the power to prove by every test whether the offspring of a young man’s thought is a false phantom or instinct with life and truth. I am so far like the midwife that I cannot myself give birth to wisdom, and the common reproach is true, that, though I question others, I can myself bring nothing to light because there is no wisdom in me.’
[Plato, Dialogues — Theaetetus.]
It became so feared and disliked by the authorities that the Emperor Justinian closed the philosophical schools. But he was too late: a germ of philosophical thinking escaped to Edessa in Babylonia and was again suppressed. But then, owing to the spread of Christianity by virtue of the employment of the Greek language, the language of the philosophers began to be studied again as an incidental offshoot of the study of Christianity . To cut a long story short, it was again locked up in Byzantium until the fall of the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople. These lost wisdoms were then released and broke out to create the virulent emotional turmoil that we know as the Renaissance. Wisdom seems to have this capacity for survival by changing its route and then reappearing in unexpected places.
‘Return Alpheus, the dread voice is past, That shrunk thy streams; Return Sicilian Muse…’ [Milton, Lycidas]
Galen established the rights of observation and became authorized, respectable — just as Freud is today — and an authority with which to suppress inquiry. Anatomy was not then studied by looking at the human body, but Leonardo, Raphael and Rubens studied the body, and as a result of this emergence amongst the artists, the anatomists too began to observe the cadaver, physiologists to study the mind.
Will psycho-analysts study the living mind? Or is the authority of Freud to be used as a deterrent, a barrier to studying people? The revolutionary becomes respectable — a barrier against revolution. The invasion of the animal by a germ or ‘anticipation’ of a means of accurate thinking, is resented by the feelings already in possession. That war has not ceased yet.