Bion, W.R., Cogitations. Edited by Francesca Bion. London: Karnac Books (1992), p. 327-32
July 1971
Predictive psycho-analysis and predictive psychopathology
A Fable for Our Time
In the year 30070 a revolutionary discovery took place. It is from that event, and in honour of it, that our present timescale originates. It is difficult at this time – 300 n-years later – to be sure of the events; even something as simple as the fabular meaning of n.y. tends to be obscured in the minds of the vulgar by still older fables and associated locutions. The present writer has met with lower orders who believe the letters to stand for ‘new years’ or ‘nuclear years’, under the impression that our time-scale derives from a supposed atomic disaster occurring in year 1 of our era. In so far as it is possible to reconstitute the past from the scanty remains, something resembling the following account took place.
A man, whose name is lost but who must have been a genius of outstanding proportions for that age, made a discovery of an exceedingly simple kind. In those days there still existed a rudimentary science called, ‘psycho-analysis’. The term was made up of two parts: ‘psyche’, which referred to an undeveloped mind or personality, which was believed to have given rise to the so-called ‘psyche’; and ‘anal’, derived from an anatomical structure, notably that part of it concerned with the evacuation of the waste products from ‘eating’ – a habit very similar to that which can be observed in the ‘domesticated’ forms that we have derived from them. As far as we can now tell – or even conjecture from certain archaic vestigial survivals of our domestic forms – the psycho-analysts, for so I shall call them for short, connected their excretions – quite correctly – with what they ‘ate’, and developed elaborate rituals as part of the religion of cleanliness, which were supposed to placate, or render harmless, the remains of what they had devoured. If the destructive rituals failed, as was supposed to have happened on those occasions when disease wiped out a few thousands of them, redoubled efforts were made to increase the efficiency of the cleansing rituals by sometimes using various difficult-to-obtain metals in the form of representations of the excretions. This ritualistic manufacture completed, the product was called Money and was set up for worship.
For a time the new religion flourished – reinforced and improved by the psycho-analysts – but greed led some elements to substitute inferior substances like paper for the hard-to-obtain metals such as gold. This development – associated in mythology with names such as Lord Jesus (nicknamed, The Christ), Lord Keynes, and even some dissident psycho-analysts such as Lenin and his associated ‘Communists’ – led to the undermining of the religion of Money, which was finally devalued. This anti-religious attitude did great harm to the hierarchy and certain areas like Russia, America, China and Africa. Groups found themselves virtually without authority which had formerly been provided by the hierarchy whose skilful manipulation of a mental characteristic of these creatures, called ‘idealization’, had led to their being regarded with reverence; it was an attribute of their personalities which approximated them to the deities in whom they could see and admire themselves.
These creatures, remote ancestors of the animals we use as new material for certain parts of our machinery, used this ‘science’ as a means for investigating the past of each single individual and, later, the past of the groups or hordes in which these creatures moved. This whole ‘science’ was believed to be superior to the earlier activity known as ‘religion’.
About religion we have been able to discover little, partly because the study excites scant interest amongst us, partly because the remoteness of the past is such that it is doubtful whether the investigation could be carried out without an enormous and unrewarding expenditure of even our resources. It is known, however, that the practice of religion was regulated by a special hierarchy. This organization was taken over, elaborated, but otherwise hardly changed, by the new religion, which was called a science. Ritual, an essential feature of the religious observances, was likewise taken over, and even now evidence is being discovered showing how elaborate these rituals were, and how much time and money were devoted to their proliferation. The new religion had to establish its superiority to the old, and exhaustive steps were taken to stamp out all evidence of the past. Even the rituals had to be disguised; the word, ‘ritual’, was replaced by the term, ‘scientific’. In those times it was the habit of the hierarchy to hunt out and destroy all evidence of potential growth. In this it must not be supposed that they were without ingenuity and even a kind of rudimentary foresight. ‘Brainwashing’ was, for example, immensely improved and brought to a very considerable and meritorious degree of efficiency. The expression derived from the same sources from which Money had sprung – namely, the anus.
Up to this point all seemed to be going well; the new religion had triumphed and was established as the ‘science of psychoanalysis’, with its hierarchy firmly in control and its ritual ‘scientific method’ codified and recognized as the hallmark of the New Era.
Again we are hampered by a period of obscurity and ambiguous evidence. As far as the remains that have come down to us can be pieced together, the rules of psycho-analytic investigation – which were rigidly enforced so that there could be no breach in the solid foundation of what was already known and described as ‘history’ – began to be assailed by ominous and inexplicable attacks. One trouble-maker, called Smith, seems to have caused the authorities much difficulty. (Smith was a common name, usually associated with welding.) The evidence is scanty but enough for us to assume with plausibility the existence of an Ur Smith.
By legendary repute at about the time now known as 1 NY, one of the priesthood, of eccentric manner and history, was interrogating an individual supposedly even more eccentric than himself. The records, such as they are, indicate that at this period one of the obligatory rituals was supposed to separate the psychotic from the non-psychotic personalities, the whites from the blacks, the candidates for the Establishment from the candidates for the Loony Bin. This ritual, known as Selection, was attended by much anxiety, and it was obligatory for representatives of the various factions to be present to force their candidates onto the Establishment and so save them from being placed in the Loony Bin, or Not Yet category. As the officials and candidates were virtually indistinguishable from each other, almost everything depended on the numbers that could be mobilized in support of, or against, the course to be prescribed for the given candidate.
Apparently, in the instance that has now become the pictorial symbol for the year 1 of our era, NY, Ur Smith’s candidate had not reached the day for selection and would, in the ordinary course, have been destined almost certainly for the Bin.
To understand what follows, it is necessary to explain the incredible barbarity of the customs of those times. See-ers, in common with all others, were subjected to a period of what was known as ‘prolonged and deep analysis’ by one or more of the priesthood employing one or more of the ‘methods of scientific investigation’ (rituals). These investigations were confined to elucidating ‘the facts’. This was a device introduced by the priesthood to exclude any possible risk of controversy, doubt, or exercise of judgement, by limiting the material on which the pronouncement of fitness was to be made to those facts that were deemed to be known for certain. Since, by definition, the material consisted of facts that were known to have happened already, it was an article of dogma that, the foundations being solid and the brains of the judges as undisturbed by doubt or anxiety as they were solid, the outcome would of necessity be scientifically unassailable. To the great admiration and comfort of the hierarchy, a professor of statistics who had previously become one of their number pointed out, at a meeting called to discuss selection, that the method of counting the numbers supporting or opposing the candidate was by a happy chance both democratic and scientific because the introduction of numbers at last introduced ‘mathematics’, and therefore ‘science’, into the constitution of the Society. We need dwell no longer on these reconstructions of legend, but move on to firmer – though still legendary – foundations by considering ‘Smith’.
He claimed to keep an open mind, meaning that he was open to entertain ideas that were new to him. He seems to have been unaware that such a claim was tantamount to an admission of instability and a lack of rigid frame so necessary for disciplined thinking. It is indeed extraordinary how he had escaped from being ‘treated’ by the more sturdy and reliable members of the establishment. His candidate, a woman, thought she was ‘the Virgin and the Duke of Wellington’. It was some time before he realized that she was not referring to the titular heads of one of the many groups of the period, but that she was describing certain voices or people that were interfering with her mind. He continued to listen – his one great weakness – and for a long time sheltered her from the authorities to whom he knew he was legally bound to deliver her. Indeed he was in great danger both for harbouring a person who, in the quaint terminology of the time, was a menace to herself and others, and because he himself had begun to investigate her behaviour on the supposition that the present, future, and unknown were what required scrutiny rather than the past, the known. He also believed that there were thoughts that had no thinker. Had this come out, there is no doubt that he and his woman candidate would have been classed together, and would have had their brains scientifically and humanely destroyed.
Through years of danger Smith managed to carry on his investigation to a point where it was clear that his candidate was really a new type of immature animal and was not suffering from some malformation of character.
There was known to him an ancient legend of a dictator earlier in world history who had decreed the massacre of what were known as ‘The Innocents’. He suddenly suspected that this was an earlier instance of what he was now witnessing – the early embryonic stages of a personality rightly and instinctively, though clumsily, recognized as a menace to the existing order. He realized that he would be a victim of his curiosity either through being disposed of by the group hierarchy for disregarding the rules and well-tried procedures of science, or by being executed by the woman as soon as she had developed sufficiently to know how to rid herself of him. She was developing fast, and had already reached a stage where she openly declared her intention to strangle him at the first opportunity. She often expressed her contempt for ancient legend and all the characters in it, professing her determination to dispose of Smith and all other such mentally ill-formed and monstrous personalities, reserving her scorn particularly for such characteristics as the passionate feelings of love or hate that she considered to be peculiar to the human animal. Her attitude to her genital parents was one of ruthless and icy scorn. They feared her as if aware that she regarded them simply as a matter for calculating assessment.
Smith appears to have been able to tolerate these threats, though fully aware of the conventional view that he risked being murdered or held responsible for murder committed by her. He ignored the warnings that poured in on him both from his own perceptions of danger, and from the lessons of his training. […]