Bion, W.R., Cogitations. Edited by Francesca Bion. London: Karnac Books (1992), pp. 304-5
The failure of a function should excite suspicion. It may be due to a natural lack; or it may be a Category 2 element. What is that? The maintenance of a theory known to be false in order either to keep another out, or because there is no better. Is this a field on which a pattern can be traced?
The capacity of the mind depends on the capacity of the unconscious – negative capability. Inability to tolerate empty space limits the amount of space available. Curiosity should be part of the dependent group, but it can share fight-flight qualities when the wish is to avoid impending discovery (Category 2). Is any impulse one way only? No. What then are the poles? Are there poles, or is there some better scheme?
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The paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions are related to a part of the domain of thought, that part of it in which there exist thinkers corresponding to the thoughts awaiting someone or something to think them. The thinkers might be likened to objects sensitive to certain wave-lengths of thought, as the eye or radio telescope is sensitive to a particular range of electromagnetic waves. Such thinkers can be impinged upon by thoughts that are too powerful in relation to the sensitivity of the receiving apparatus. Or they may be unmatched by a reciprocating thinker.
The human being, despite similarities to other human beings, may not, through over- or under-sensitivity, have an apparatus adequate to thinking the thoughts. He becomes aware of these thoughts usually through the medium of what is ordinarily known to him as religious awe, and is variously expressed as incarnation, evolution of godhead, platonic forms, Krishna, mystic experience, inspiration, and the like. Thus the source of emission of the received or evolved thoughts is felt as external, Godgiven, derived from a particular person or occasion, phrase, book, painting, awareness of a constant conjunction. The fate of the thought and the thinker is to follow one of the paths I have indicated as peculiar to ♂♀, or some variation. In some circumstances the impact is incandescent, growth-producing, and then the individual thinker becomes an emitter or intermittant. A chain reaction is set up, as I have already described it in terms of the messianic thought, mystic, etc. The problem is whether one is to regard this model, ♂♀ as a model for a configuration that underlies certain groups of particular instances, or is it simply a way of regarding meaningless, incoherent, unrelated phenomena, and making them appear to have coherence and a meaningful pattern? Does it in fact matter which it is? Do facts arrange themselves in this pattern, or is it a peculiarity in the individual that he finds it necessary to discern this or similar patterns in the facts he observes? The craving for validation may then be a wish to localize the emitter in God, universe, person, conscious and unconscious, by instruments that are micro- or macro-scopic and appear to confer authoritatively the guerdon of truth.