Bion, W.R., Cogitations. Edited by Francesca Bion. London: Karnac Books (1992)
[Undated]
The tropisms
The tropisms may be communicated. In certain circumstances they are too powerful for the modes of communication available to the personality. This, presumably, may be because the personality is too weak or ill-developed if the traumatic situation arrives prematurely. But when this situation does arise, all the future development of the personality depends on whether an object, the breast, exists into which the tropisms can be projected. If it does not, the result is disaster which ultimately takes the form of loss of contact with reality, apathy, or mania. And in this context I include in mania feelings of depression that must be distinguished from the depression of the neuroses. In extreme cases it is an agitated melancholia, but it need not be extreme; the maniacal quality may be so slight as to be recognizable as an obsessive depression, but its essential quality is aggressiveness and hate.
If such an object exists, a breast capable of tolerating projective identifications that are thrust into it (for it is to projective identification in relation to the breast that I have now returned), then the outcome may be supposed to be more favourable, or at least in suspense.
Associated with the strength of the tropisms, but probably secondary to it, is an intolerance of frustration. Psychopathologically this has not the fundamental importance of the tropisms; clinically it presents a grave problem as it jeopardizes the analytic approach since frustration is essential to it – not extrinsic.
The action appropriate to the tropisms is seeking. I have so far considered this activity as it might be thought to relate to murder, parasitism, and creation-the three tropisms. Thus, considered individually, the tropisms are seen to issue in seeking (1) an object to murder or be murdered by, (2) a parasite or a host, (3) an object to create or by which to be created. But taken as a whole, and not individually, the action appropriate to the tropisms in the patient who comes for treatment is a seeking for an object with which projective identification is possible. This is due to the fact that in such a patient the tropism of creation is stronger than the tropism of murder.
Suppose that the search ends in the discovery of the object, but the object, the primitive breast, is found to be intolerant of projective identification. For the sake of simplicity in exposition I shall suppose that this intolerance shows itself in two main forms: anxiety (persecution) and hate, or apathy. It is these two classes of response that contribute the environmental component in the development of the psychotic part of the personality. Ultimately both lead to the rejection of the tropism which, it must always be remembered, is a part of the projecting personality. But there are important differences in the rejection: the persecuted object causes the personality partly to reintroject the tropism, now exacerbated, and wholly to introject a peculiar form of primitive super-ego hostile to projective identification even as a method of communication, and so, by extension, to all forms of communication. But, as I have said, the tropism has only been partly reintrojected. For the most part it is felt to exist, not in the primitive breast which has refused it admission, not in the immature psyche which dare not take it back, but enclosed within the vehicle of communication itself, be that sound, sight, or touch. Thus enclosed, the tropism and its envelope become persecuted and persecuting.
The tropisms are the matrix from which all mental life springs. For maturation to be possible they need to be won from the void and communicated. Just as a breast, or its equivalent, is necessary for the infant life to be sustained, so it is necessary that a mental counterpart, the primitive breast, should exist for mental life to be sustained. The vehicle of communication – the infant’s cry, tactile and visual senses – is engaged in order not only to communicate but also to control the tropism. If all goes well the communication, by projective identification, leads (as Melanie Klein has described) to the deposition in the breast of the tropisms that the infant can neither control, modify, nor develop, but which can be so controlled and developed after they have been modified by the object.
If this breaks down, then the vehicle of communication, the contact with reality, the links of every kind of which I have spoken, suffer a significant fate. This applies particularly to the communicating particles that are felt to lie with their enclosed tropisms, rejected by psyche and object alike.
Pp. 34-6
17 February 1960
Animism, destructive attacks and reality
In the earliest phases of development objects are felt to be alive and to possess character and personality presumably indistinguishable from the infant’s own. In this phase, which may be considered as anterior to the development of the reality principle as Freud describes it, the real and the alive are indistinguishable; if an object is real to the infant, then it is alive; if it is dead, it does not exist. But this ‘it’ that does not exist and is not alive – why is it necessary to talk about it or discuss it? The problem is to give an answer verbally about objects in a pre-verbal state. The difficulty will constantly crop up in what I have to say, and my solution of it will constantly demand indulgent understanding from the reader.
In this instance it is necessary to talk about this object which should be non-existent and therefore impossible to discuss. Its importance lies in the fact that the infant, if enraged, has death wishes, and if the object is wished dead, it is dead. It therefore has become non-existent, and its characteristics are different from those of the real, live, existing object; the existing object is alive, real, and benevolent. (I propose to call the real, alive objects α-elements; the dead, unreal objects I shall call β-elements.) In order to distinguish the distinction between real and unreal that I am making here, from the distinction between real and unreal which is appropriate to Freud’s description of the interplay between pleasure principle and reality principle, I shall call these objects proto-real objects belonging to the domain of proto-reality. The infant, in all the early phases of its life, is dominated by the pleasure principle. It is therefore, in so far as it feels pleasure, surrounded by these proto-real objects felt to be real and alive. But should pain supervene, then it is surrounded by dead objects destroyed by its hate, which, since it cannot tolerate pain, are non-existent. But ordinarily they continue to exist because the sense impressions still operate. Should intolerance of these objects grow beyond a certain point, then the infant commences attacks on the mental apparatus that informs it of the reality of these sense impressions and of some object that is felt to be beyond the sense impressions. The existence of the real objects can be denied, but the sense impressions persist, e.g. after the eyes have been shut. It is therefore felt that the real objects have now forced their way into the personality. The next stage, imposed by yet more powerful intolerance, is the destruction of the apparatus that is responsible for the transformation of the sense impressions into material suitable for waking unconscious thought – a dream-thought. This destruction contributes to the feeling that ‘things’, not words or ideas, are inside.
Excess of death instincts for whatever reason or duration, in addition to contributing to an excess of dead objects – painful and proto-unreal – means that animism (an animistic view) cannot develop. The need to placate contributes to a complex state in which the dead object has to be re-animated and worshipped. These objects are then not so much gods and idols that are believed to be alive and endowed with human attributes, as objects chosen specifically and precisely because they are dead. Contrary to common observation, the essential feature of the adored or worshipped object is that it should be dead so that crime may be expiated by the patient’s dutiful adherence to animation of what is known to be inanimate and impossible to animate. This attitude contributes to the complex of feelings associated with fetishism.
The breakdown in animism affects the capacity of the individual to transform sense impressions into material suitable for use in dream-thoughts. Objects sensed are felt to have life and personality, to be capable of combination and interaction. Thus dream-thoughts and dreams become possible, thereby making it possible to learn from experience.
The dead, non-existent objects are products of murderous hate; guilt invests them with attributes akin to those associated with conscience, omnipotence, omniscience, but not the qualities necessary for employment in dream-thoughts.
Pp. 133-4
28 February 1960
The scientist’s mistrust of human intellectual effort tends to make him look longingly at the machine that can so often be made to appear the ideal recording instrument, a matter of rigid scales, pointers, unchanging weights, and so on. This attitude, which has something to commend it, yields matter for speculation if one considers it as betraying suspicion of anything that possesses life. How are we to find the truth, to gain knowledge, if facts can be recorded only by an object incapable of judgement or anything we regard as thought on the one hand, and on the other if thought is possible only by an object incapable of recording facts?
The difficulty may not be real in any significant way, but seems so because the method of formulation, in terms of knowledge, truth, and reality, leads to fallacious exaggeration of some elements of the problem, to the exclusion of others. Progress is less impeded if we consider ‘know’ to refer to a relationship, and reality and truth to refer to qualities of mental phenomena necessary to sustain mental health.
P. 146