A Clinical Application of Bions Concepts - Volume 2

A CLINICAL APPLICATION
OF BIONS CONCEPTS
Volume 2
A CLINICAL APPLICATION
OF BIONS CONCEPTS
Volume 2
Analytic Function
and the Function of the Analyst
P. C. Sandler
First published in 2011 by

Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road
London NW3 5HT
Copyright 2011 by P. C. Sandler
The right of P. C. Sandler to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
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ISBN-13: 978-1-78049-008-3
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Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
To Ester, Daniela, and Luiz

To the memory of my parents: Dr Jayme Sandler, one of the
first psychoanalysts in Brazil, who introduced me to Freud,
Klein, and Bion, and Mrs Bertha Lerner Sandler, professional
home decorator, who first showed me what Art is all about
Solomon saith, There is no new thing upon the Earth. So that as

Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge was but remembrance;
so Solomon giveth his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.
One of their heirs who gave utility to their wisdom, Freud,
made an observation out of this: out of the creativity of a couple,
claims to originality are but deluded omnipotence.
(Expanded from Bacon, 1625, on account of subsequent progress
due to his contributions.)
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ix
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
xi
PREFACE
by James S. Grotstein
xiii
PART I: EXTENSIONS INTO THE REALM OF MINUS

CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
CHAPTER TWO
The realm of Minus and the negative
13
CHAPTER THREE
Clinical sources
35
CHAPTER FOUR
The hypothesis: a versus link
61
vii
viii
CONTENTS
PART II: HERE AND NOW: A MEMOIR OF THE FUTURE

CHAPTER FIVE
Bions Trilogy and its reception
79
PART III: ANALYTIC FUNCTION

CHAPTER SIX
Bions contributions to the formulation of analytic function
111
CHAPTER SEVEN
An analytic compass and sextant
131
CHAPTER EIGHT
Binocular vision and the practice of psychoanalysis
139
CHAPTER NINE
Geography to detect triadic syndromes
169
CHAPTER TEN
An anti-alpha function
189
REFERENCES
208
INDEX
215
ACKNOWL EDGEMENTS
Due to non-analytic, but equally vital issues, the completion of

this book would not have been possible without the professional
and kind support of Drs Eduardo Berger, Waldemar Ortiz, Luiz
Paulo Kowalski, Marcelo Ferraz Sampaio and Mauricio Ibrahim
Scanavaccaskilled and intuitive surgeons fully able to mix swift
thought with precise action. Back in the psychoanalytic realm, a similar kind of gratitude is due to Drs Jayme Sandler, Ester Hadassa
Sandler, Antonio Sapienza, James Grotstein, Andr Green and, in
a special way, Mrs Francesca Bion. Over four decades, they graciously granted me a seemingly inexhaustible source of wisdom
and a continuous stimulus to my attempts at sharing the many
things I believe I have learned from them. In a similar vein, but in a
parallel way, I am grateful for the insights gained with Mrs Judith
Seixas Teixeira de Carvalho Andreucci and Dr Deocleciano Bendocchi
Alves. Specifically for this second volume, the contrapuntal stimulus from Drs Odilon de Melo Franco Filho, Parthenope Bion Talamo,
Rocco Pisani, Mario Giamp and Giorgio Correnti allowed me to
enlarge the scope of some chapters. Finally, this work could not have
seen the light of day without the forbearing diligence of Mr Oliver
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Rathbone and Mrs Anna Nilsen, who helped its progression from an
impossible manuscript into a real book.
Naming is an almost impossible activity. Paradoxically, there are
good names, in the sense that they convey beautifully the natural
function of the corresponding things, events or facts they identify.
In a book devoted to the analytic function, it is essential to reiterate the previous volumes final acknowledgement, which is paradoxically the first one, the reason for the existence of this writing.
It seems to me that Patient is one of those names which do justice
to their function. For ethical reasons, I cannot name each Patient who
came to see me for helping analysis. I express my gratitude for their
patience, where nature and nurture meetsand, in a special way,
their perennial personal forbearance with my failures. Stemming
from the medical tradition, the analytic couple is a way to make
the best of a bad job: they were able to couple my personal need to
care with their need for helpas well my need to share, both with
them and with analytic colleagues, to whom I wish a nourishing and
hopefully rewarding reading.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paulo Cesar Sandler, MD, MSc, MhFAB, obtained his medical

training at the Universidade de So Paulo; he is a Training Analyst
at the Sociedade Brasileira de Psicanlise de So Paulo. Author of
several books in Portuguese, including an eight-volume series dedicated to transdisciplinary research between psychoanalysis, medical
biology, epistemology, mathematics and physics, he has also written
more than one hundred psychiatric and psychoanalytic papers in
medical and psychoanalytic periodicals, as well as book chapters,
some of which have been published in the English, French, Italian
and Russian languages. He has translated most of Bions books
and papers into Portuguese, including the first ever translation
of A Memoir of the Future, and has organised several international
meetings on the work of Bion. Dr Sandler currently teaches at the
Institute of Psychoanalysis of the SBPSP, giving courses on the work
of Freud, Klein and Bion; he was formerly a professor on a postgraduate course (in the broad sense) at the Instituto de Psicologia da
Universidade de So Paulo, the first one devoted to the work of Bion
in Brazil. He has worked in private psychiatric and psychoanalytic
practice since 1974, having previously worked with psychotics in
a traditional in-patient clinic. He has experience in group-oriented
xi
xii
A B O U T T H E AU T H O R
social and community psychiatry, including the epidemiology of

mental disorders, as a former Manager of the Programa de Sade
Mental, at Faculdade de Sade Pblica da Universidade de So
Paulo, the local Public Health School. He is an Honorary Member of
the Brazilian Air Force, due to voluntary work with group dynamics,
and an Honorary Associate of the Accademia Lancisiana (Rome).
PREFACE
Appreciation of Volume 1 of A Clinical

Application of Bions Concepts
by James S. Grotstein
In this magisterial work Paulo Sandler continues to distinguish

himself as a foremost scholar on the works of Bion. Already well
known for his encyclopedic zeal, this present book continues Sandlers tireless search of Bions contributions by this noteworthy
clinical application of Bions ideas. When one scans Sandlers bibliography on Bions works, one can only be deeply impressed by his
rigour and his far-reaching scholarship. His 853-page dictionary, The
Language of Bion: A Dictionary of Concepts (Karnac, 2005) attests to
that. It was so useful to me that I purchased two copies, one for my
consulting room and another for home. Both have been well used.
Two of the features of his scholarship deserve especial notice. One
has been his frequent checking with other Bion scholars, including
Francesca Bion, about questions he might have. Another stems from
his enormous erudition and scholarship. After the reader immerses
him- or herself in this text, he or she will observe a sizeable number
of languages in which he is fluent and variegated cultures and disciplines with which he is conversant.
A major feature of Sandlers approach to studying Bion has been
to contextualise the background of Bions assumptions. In so doing,
he extensively investigates the cultural and historical antecedents,
xiii
xiv
P R E FA C E
especially including the philosophical and scientific points of view.

From them Sandler selects Romanticism and its dialectical relationship with the Enlightenment. Among the many characteristics of
Romanticism is imagination, at best creative, but also idealisation
and hyperbole. It is its imaginatively creative nature that Sandler
believes applies to Freuds, Bions, and Kleins theories of dreams,
phantasies, and myths. Romanticism can also apply to the preternatural concept of Mother Nature, and derivatively to the numinous
quality Freud assigned to the instinctual (biological) drives. For over
a century since its creation psychoanalysis had been mainly thought
of as a body-rooted psychology, which emphasis was used by its
practitioners to require that analysts should be physicians.
The Enlightenment, on the other hand, was a trend in which man
was gradually developing ideas of certainty, ideas which would
lend scientific calibration, i.e. measurable truth, to the measurement of a vast array of living and non-living objects. Consequently,
even though the origin of the instinctual drives emerged from a
numinous Romantic matrix, the drives became enlisted to become
first cause for all psychological phenomena. Freud (1923) declared
magisterially, It is the destiny of the instinct [drive] to be expended
in the cathexis of its descendants (my addition). Classical Freudian
and its derivative, Kleinian analysis, became associated with
certaintywith the drives as first cause, whereas Bions way of
thinking became associated with uncertainty, which he was to name
O, the Absolute Truth about an Ultimate and Infinite Reality.
Sandler discusses Bions way of being scientific, one notable
aspect of which is his distinctive use of theories, which he distinguishes from models. Theories, Sandler states, are a system of interrelated statements, originally corresponding to their counterparts in
reality and deriving (as representations) from this very same empirically observed reality (p. 2). I (JSG) think Sandler is suggesting that
theory is the condensation of an invariant truth that summarily captures the hidden order of a phenomenon. Justifiable theories are few
and seldom need to be added to. Models, on the other hand, are analogues that exist outside the system they are being applied to. They
are instruments to vicariously approximate, measure, and calibrate
the objects or phenomena to which they are being applied, e.g., the
sphygmomanometer for blood pressure.
P R E FA C E
xv
The Chapter titles, along with their contents, reveal the range and
depth of Sandlers exploration: Chapters One, Two, Four, Five and
Six examine Freuds and Bions theories of dreaming. Chapters One
and Three deal with the cultural and contemporaneous scientific
background settings which helped contextualise and shape each
of their formulations about dreaming. Chapter Seven deals with
observation and communication, followed by Chapters Nine and
Ten, which discuss the container and the contained. Chapter Eleven
deals with catastrophic change. In Chapters Six and Eight Sandler
presents extensive and highly credible clinical illustrations of his
ideas. His discussion of dreaming, the container and the contained,
and especially of invariance is of high order, clear, and inspiring.
Sandler has written another brilliant textbook on Bions thinking that constitutes a highly useful and practical handbook on the
subject.
PA RT I
EXTENSIONS INTO THE REALM
OF MINUS
FAUST What is your name?

MEPHISTOPHELES The question seems absurd / For someone
who despises the mere word, / Who treats appearances as vain
illusion / And seeks the truth in such remote seclusion.
FAUST But with you gentlemen the name / And natures
usually the same, / And we can often recognise / The Liar, the
Destroyer, or the Lord of Flies. / Who are you, then?
MEPHISTOPHELES A part of that same power that would /
Forever work for evil, yet forever creates good.
(Goethe, Faust, Part I Scene iii)
In psychoanalysis it is assumed that a theory is false if it does
not seem to minister to the good of the majority of mankind.
And it is a commonplace idea of good. The whole idea of cure,
of therapeutic activity, remains unscrutinised. It is largely
determined by the expectations of the patient, though this is
questioned in good analysis (as I know it). But in nuclear physics
a theory is considered to be good if it aids the construction of a
bomb that destroys Hiroshima. Too much of the thinking about
psychoanalysis precludes the possibility of regarding as good a

theory that would destroy the individual or the group. Yet there
will never be a scientific scrutiny of analytic theories until it
includes critical appraisal of a theory that by its very soundness
could lead to a destruction of mental stability, e.g. a theory that
increases memory and desire to a point where they rendered
sanity impossible.
(Bion, Cogitations, p. 378)
What psychoanalytic thinking requires is a method of notation
and rules for its employment that will enable work to be done in
the absence of the object, to facilitate further work in the presence
of the object. The barrier to this that is presented by unfettered
play of an analysts phantasies has long been recognised;
pedantic statement on the one hand and verbalisation loaded
with unobserved implications on the other mean that the
potential for understanding and erroneous deduction is so high
as to vitiate the value of the work done with such defective
tools.
(Bion, 1965, p. 44)
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction
gree with the argument or not, it is undeniable that in many

quarters some of the theories proposed by Wilfred Bion are
felt to be obscure. Most of them were intended to help the
analysts observation and improve his or her powers of observation,
like the theories of alpha function, the realm of Minus, transformations and invariance, and finally the theory of links (Bion, 1962,
1965, 1970). As I wrote elsewhere (Sandler, 2005, 2006), Bions contributions to psychoanalytic theory are comparatively few vis--vis his
theories of observation for use by the practising analyst.
I suppose that some of the difficulties are on two accounts: (i) the
integrative, and (ii) the developmental character of Bions work. It
is a system of interdependent theories of both psychoanalysis and
observation of psychoanalysis which function as a wholelike cogs
in a cars transmission. They were not presented in a rough and ready
way. Rather, they were written in a compact form which evolved
through accrued experience. This evolution, like that of Freud or of
any branch of science, sprang from clinical facts which until then
were not observed, but became observable due to the immediately
preceding theoretical achievement.
5
A C L I N I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N O F B I O N S C O N C E P T S
Moreover, Bions compact writing condenses a lot of information

into demanding aphorisms, metaphors and parables. They demand
to be continuously synchronised with each readers spontaneous
recall of his or her experience in analysis. They presuppose a reader
who prefers to think about questions and come up with his or her
own answers rather than being presented with the answers from
the outset. They focus on the same basic issues, stemming from
(a) Freuds and Kleins insights about the lack of a capacity or willingness to tolerate frustration; (b) Oedipus; (c) dreams and free associations; and (d) the defusing of the instincts.
Even though the basic issues are invariant, the focus is changeably adjusted to several different vertices. In this sense Bions theories resemble an analyst at work. The latter must be a synthetic
(compact), terse, vertex-changing but invariant-oriented creature
in order to be able to interpret. These theories are not amenable to
being understoodthe analyst has to be at one with them (Bion,
1970).
This part of the book deals with one of those theories, the realm
of Minusa name I propose in an effort to integrate the concepts
and conceptions scattered throughout Bions works. I will start with
a personal analytic experience, which echoes the experience of other
practising analysts. Between 1974 and 1981, I found that my attempts
to cope with my patients various manifestations of hate and love in
analytic sessions resulted in impasse-creating phenomena. In other
words, some people tend to restrict their appreciation of manifestations of death instincts to judgmental values.1 I was able to see this
phenomenon with the help of Melanie Kleins observations. These
patients could not put up with depressive phenomena that indicated
an appreciation of guilt without colouring them with marked feelings of persecution. They felt judged, or judged themselves harshly.
Because of projective identification, the latter is the begetter of the
former. Whereas with some patients the realisation of guilt was
conducive to more freedom to move towards the depressive position and less fear of its backwards, tandem companion, a renewed
paranoid-schizoid experience, other patients just felt persecuted.
Neither therapeutic nor self awareness ensued; neither atonement
nor becoming ensued. It seemed to me that these patients had a
problem which would not yield readily to treatment using existing
psychoanalytic theories. In 1981 I came across Bions suggestions
INTRODUCTION
about a Minus realm. It seemed to illuminate those issues, but in

a sense that was not very clear to me. Sometimes this realm seemed
to be a purely destructive one; sometimes it seemed to be constitutive. More experience was needed, and it seemed necessary to make
an attempt to unify Bions seemingly different theories. The present
unification, which includes Andr Greens contributions, displays
the result of twenty-five years of analytic practice. This unification
demanded an expansion, which is presented here. I have attempted
to make explicit some implicit issues, and at the same time I have
included clinical examples.
Contradictions, paradoxes and the two principles of mental

functioning
Elsewhere I have distinguished two kinds of relationship between a
pair of opposites: namely, to see them either as contradictions or as
paradoxes (Sandler, 1997b; 2001a, b, c; 2002a, b; 2003, 2006).
Contradiction is a verbal formulation derived from a Latin expression (contra dictum). It may be seen as expressing a war-minded state.
The relationship between the poles is parasitic, bound to destroy
both (Bion, 1970, p. 95).
I shall use the term Paradox, the Greek predecessor of the same
idea (paradoxon), to describe the Platonic realm of the noumena, ultimately unknowable reality as it is, and its phenomenal counterpart
which is apprehensible by the senses. This means two sets of knowledge (doxa) running parallel, like the counterpoint developed by
Bach in music. It was once called dialectics, meaning two languages.
In its primitive forms, as for example among the Sophists, one set
would triumph over the other through rhetoricmore akin to what
I call contradiction. Via Kant this evolved into Hegels dialectics,
which allows for a product from the pair of opposites: namely, the
synthesis. The development of this philosophical root and its application in psychoanalysis as discovered by Freud and extended by
Klein, Winnicott and Bion are researched elsewhere (Sandler, 1997a,
b, c; 2002a, b; 2003).
A sense of truth is achieved when one realises that the object that
is loved and the object that is hated are one and the same object,
observed Bion, in a remarkable integration of Hegel, Freud and
Klein (Bion, 1961b). The sense of truth depends on an ability to deal
with differences, with no single state, person or idea overpowering

or extinguishing a differing state, person or idea. In war, truth is the
first casualty (a statement attributed variously to Aeschylus, Samuel
Johnson and US senator Hiram W. Johnson). In the area of human
thought, there seems to be an evolution from primitive paranoid
states, the warmongers minds phantasising ownership of the absolute truth, towards a sense of dealing with differences.
Contradictions
Contradictions are amenable to being understood and temporarily resolved through the adoption of a set of moral or judgmental
values. One pole of the pair triumphs over the other. There is a
parasitical relationship between the two poles (in the sense of Bion,
1970, p. 95).
Contradictions admit their resolution in terms of right or wrong.
Contradictions are the aftermath of the triumph of desire which
is composed by phantasies of superiority over pain and facts as
they are. Desire, in other words the sensuous counterpart and phenomenal expression of the principle of pleasure-displeasure (Freud,
1911), is an all-powerful phantasised capacity that would extinguish
or prevent the existence of pain. Rationally (in terms of formal logic),
resolved contradictions offer the beholder feelings of a blissful
state of mind, with phantasies of absolute fulfilment of desire and
knowledge. Contradictions are under the aegis of a defusing of the
life and death instincts (Freud, 1920). They are conducive to a state
of inanimate immobility. The war between the poles admits a winner and a loser; a friend and a foe.
If a contradiction matures, through repeated surrender to reality
testing, or bowing to facts, it may develop itself. The person who
learns from experience tolerates gaps, experiences of non-fulfilment.
Conversely, the person who inhabits the paranoid-schizoid position
as committed to an exclusive activity considers that he (or she) must
bow to reality; he or she feels that this bowing constitutes an offence
to his or her infantile hallucinated omnipotence. Moreover, he or
she confuses respect for reality with conformism; the un-bowing
is always regarded as heroism. Perception of temerity is blurred;
survival is permanently menaced. The earliest basis of maturation
seems to be the experience of the no-breast; the actual breast never
fulfils the infants preconception of the ideal breast (Bion, 1961b).
INTRODUCTION
One must not confuse the first realisation of a breastthe meeting of

a preconception with a real breastwith fulfilment. The fulfilment
here is epistemological, in the sense of finding a real breast. Therefore its realisation is fulfilled. Sooner or later, the negative experience
of realising that what is felt as a satisfactory resolution of a given
contradiction is a fallacy asserts itself. Anyway, in some people the
splitting of the ego is so efficient that attacks on the perception of
the frustration are successful. Therefore, most attempts to achieve
a sense of reality are put at bay. Self-righteousness, religiosity and
authoritarian solutions win the day.
Paradoxes
From Contradictions, a personality who tolerates frustration may
evolve to Paradoxes. These do not admit resolution; they demand
tolerance of the pain and living tension involved in not knowing a
final and absolute answer to whatever the question may be. There
are no feelings of fulfilment of desire; no complete understanding is
pursued. The lack of resolution of a paradox is an experience to be
suffered. Paradox is the stuff that real life is made of. It is a factor in
the development of common sense (I use the term after Locke, 1690,
and Bion, 19581979).
From time to time, because of oscillations of the paranoid-schizoid
and depressive positions, desire may prevail again. This means that
a defusing of the instincts has occurred. Either death or life instincts
prevail; it is not important which, in terms of the return from a paradox to a contradiction. A compromise is achieved; but there is not a
complete defusing. There is always a degree of splitting of the ego,
but this degree is minimally good enough. One of the paradoxical or
antithetical poles is denied existence.
Paradoxes are antithetical pairs, which relate through symbiosis
and lead to a synthesis. Lifes basic invariant, the difference, can be
tolerated. Paradoxes compose the basic ethos of living systems when
they evolve from opposing pairs to creative couples. Biologically,
they are married couples; in the realm of thought, they are dialectical couples. In both we study their relationship and outcomethe
sibship and the syntheses respectively.
The implications and consequences of this approach reach the
most basic scientific disciplines hitherto known, and offer a rich field
of transdisciplinary research. Modern-day information theory and
10
computer practice (in the last century called cybernetics) is based on

a fundamental paradox, that of the bit (which can hold one of two
values, 0 or 1). Genetics was revolutionised with the discovery of
switch genes; what is now called neuroscience was revolutionised
with the discovery of the importance (until then neglected) of
facilitators and inhibitors of enzymatic reactions: paradoxical pairs
which function in tandem. I cannot dwell on this promising integrative study here, but it may suffice to indicate its existence.
Fundamentals of psychoanalysis: paradoxes to be binocularly

tolerated, not resolved
A sense of truth is achieved with the realisation that the object that
is loved and the object that is hated are one and the same (Bion,
1961b, p. 119). When the object is seen as either loved or hated, it
is apprehended monocularly. Binocular vision allows for perception of the whole object. Outstanding fundamental discoveries both
in science and in psychoanalysis are couched in paradoxical terms,
which are the verbal counterparts of reality. Each term and the reality it tries to depict is the negative of the other, for example (i) conscious and unconscious; (ii) the pleasure/displeasure principle and
the reality principle; (iii) in other fields, such as physics: matter and
energy. Of special relevance to our issue is the paradox of container
and contained.
Container and contained

The overwhelming majority of Bions contributions to psychoanalysis were theories of observation (Sandler, 2005). One of the very few
contributions he made to psychoanalytic theory marks a paradox.
It is couched in an antithetical verbal formulation: container and
contained. Not or but and: something contains and something is
contained. Both perform the functions of containing and being contained vis--vis each other.
This principle defines both a function of the personality and an
element of psychoanalysis (Bion, 1963). A quasi-mathematical
symbol derived from genetics denotes the evolving relationship
. It is a representation of
between container and contained:
an element that could be called a dynamic relationship between
INTRODUCTION
11
container and contained the essential feature of Melanie Kleins

conception of projective identification (Bion, 1963, p. 3).
is a form of relationship from the inception of life that allows
for emotional growth; it is the very process through which accruing
of meaning is obtained. Growing
provides the basis of an
apparatus for learning from experience (Bion, 1962, p. 92). It is the
most improved form of Bions theory of thinking:
is equated to
thinking itself.
Initially (19567) Bion used the term to depict a direct empirical
situation found in the psychoanalytic clinic. It dealt with the fact
that expelled fragments of personality perform a function of containment. The patient feels able to expel parts of his ego that were
attacked because they would make him aware of the reality he
hates. This reality comprises his fear, pain and sadism. Infantile
omnipotence abhors the human conditionand a mind that apprehends it. One phantasises being able to expel such a state of mind.
In his book Transformations (1965), Bion describes the annihilating
fear as nameless dread; in the Key to A Memoir of the Future (19759)
he calls it thalamic fear. The mind struggles to find an adequate
container. Originally the breast provides such containment; it can
either accept or refuse to receive those phantasies. Bion observed in
his clinical studies in the 1950s that the lack of capacity to contain
those ego fragments jeopardises at the outset all the features of the
personality which should one day provide the foundation for intuitive understanding of him and others. It is not just unwanted parts
of the ego that are expelled, but also those functions of the ego that
provide contact with reality: consciousness of sense impressions,
attention, memory, judgment, thought. They have brought against
them, in such inchoate forms as they may possess at the outset of
life, the sadistic eviscerating attacks that lead to their being minutely
fragmented and then expelled from the personality to penetrate, or
encyst, the objects (all quotations from Bion, 1956, p. 47).
Melanie Klein has described an aspect of projective identification concerned with the modification of infantile fears; the
infant projects a part of its psyche, namely its bad feelings,
into a good breast. Thence in due course they are removed and
re-introjected. During their sojourn in the good breast they are
felt to have been modified in such a way that the object that
12
is re-introjected has become tolerable to the infants psyche.

From the above theory I shall abstract for use as a model the
idea of a container into which an object is projected, and the
object that can be projected into the container: the latter I shall
designate by the term contained. The unsatisfactory nature of
both terms points at the need for further abstraction. Container
and contained are susceptible of conjunction and permeation
by emotions. Thus conjoined or permeated or both, they change
in a manner usually described as growth. When disjoined or
denuded of emotion they diminish in vitality, that is approximate to inanimate objects. Both container and contained are
models of abstract representations of psychoanalytic realisations. [Bion, 1962, p. 90]
Note
1. The psychoanalytic movement, formed by people who intend to
perform psychoanalysis, is pervaded and infiltrated by judgmental
values, which are alien to psychoanalysis itself (or real psychoanalysis). Judgmental values transform this scientific activity into a broad
range which encompasses other tasks, from pedagogy to social control, justice and politics. Bion studied this fact a great deal, as we
shall soon see, linking it to the psychotic personality. He developed
his examination in A Theory of Thinking, Learning from Experience,
Transformations, Attention and Interpretation and A Memoir of the
Future.
CHAPTER TWO
The realm of Minus and the negative
inus in Bions parlance is by definition a non-concrete,

immaterial realm that complements the positive
senseable realm of the material reality.
Mathematics serves as a model: the negative numbers expanded
the perception that the universe of the natural numbers was not the
only one that existed. The latter are easily apprehended through
the basic senses. In Western civilisation, Parmenides and mainly
Plato seem to have been the first to adumbrate this realm in written form. Neo-platonic Hebrew and Christian Cabala dwelt on it.
Kants revival of Platos numinous realm defines it as a negative,
a limiting concept (Kant, 1781). No serious research about the
Minus realm could omit a reference, even just a passing one, to
the work of Gottlob Frege. He finally resolved Kants ambivalence
(pointed out by Hamann and scrutinised from a psychoanalytical viewpoint in Sandler, 2000a), as seen in the Antinomy of Pure
Reason, and Hegels pregnant hints and ambivalent confusion that
elicited a transcendent synthesis (in the movement from thesis to
antithesis which is usually called dialectical; again, first pointed
out and scrutinised under a psychoanalytic vertex in Sandler, 2003).
In brief, Frege seemed to demonstrate (in philosophical terms) that
13
14
what I call the realm of Minus (or no) cannot be equated to

denial; in other words, it contemplates the possibilities of impossibility and its propositional content cannot be seen on the same
level becauseas I suggestit does not have the same nature as the
Plus realm, what is affirmative; in other words, what occupies a
position in space-time. Therefore, since it indicates what is not (an
anti-positivism, so to say), it cannot have the properties assigned
to what would be the opposite of what is. It is ineffable. To my
mind, the best way to indicate its nature can be found in music, with
what was discovered by some Italian composers and perfected into
a climax by Bach: what is known as counterpoint.1 Art furnishes
a further model:
BION I dont understand.
MYSELF Perhaps I can illustrate by an example from something
you do know. Imagine a piece of sculpture which is easier to
comprehend if the structure is intended to act as a trap for light.
The meaning is revealed by the pattern formed by the light thus
trappednot by the structure, the carved work itself. I suggest
that if I could learn how to talk to you in such a way that my
words trapped the meaning which they neither do nor could
express, I could communicate it to you in a way that is not at
present possible.
BION Like the rests in a musical composition?
MYSELF A musician would certainly not deny the importance
of those parts of a composition in which no notes were sounding, but more has to be done than can be achieved in existent
art and its well-established procedure of silences, pauses, blank
spaces, rests. The art of conversation, as carried on as part of
the conversational intercourse of psychoanalysis, requires and
demands an extension into the realm of non-conversation
BION Is there anything new in this? You must often have heard,
as I have, people say they dont know what you are talking
about and that you are being deliberately obscure.
MYSELF They are flattering me. I am suggesting an aim, an
ambition, which, if I could achieve it, would enable me to be
deliberately and precisely obscure: in which I could use certain
words which could activate precisely and instantaneously, in
the mind of the listener, a thought or train of thought that came
T H E R E A L M O F M I N U S A N D T H E N E G AT I V E
15
between him and the thoughts and ideas already accessible and
available to him. [Bion, 1975, pp. 189191]
One may add that pauses are not only as important as the positive,
sound-producing notes, but they differentiate it from noise. Pauses are
what make rhythm, lifes pulsing, dynamic inner mystery, feasible at
all. Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds us that literature elicits truth in
the reader through the evocation of powerful emotions. With verbal
formulations such as exhorting the lips to shape nothing, Hopkins
suggested that Elected silence is the music one cares to hear (1918).
In the shaping of nothing, or better, using Bions expression, no-thing,
truth emerges. Parthenope Bion Talamo recommended paying intense
attention to nothing in particularin other words, free associations.
The same invariant appears in a model furnished by Biology:
with its collapsible walls, the uterus is a virtual, negative space.
Free associations obtrude from the realm of Minus. I suppose
that this realm is the true numinous realm of the unconscious, or
unbewut (literally: not conscious; or better: not known). It is immaterial and un-thought, but existent. Hegel took a new step in naming
it the negative (Hegel, 181720). Even though he was somewhat
ambivalent in attributing to it the same nature as the positive (in
other words, putting antithesis on the same level as thesis), he furnished a way to go beyond. Many faulty or untruthful explanations
have some limited practical applications within the human range of
perception and needs beyond perception, but demand to be identified to allow growth in knowledge. The existence of the negative,
for practical applications as they are needed in psychoanalysis, lies
before and beyond the material reality. Its apprehension is before and
beyond the range encompassed by the sensuous apparatus. Freud
did not invent the term unconscious; he just formulated it more
precisely as psychic reality (Freud, 1900, pp. 613; 696). It is the
negative, immaterial counterpoint of material reality. Conversely,
material reality is the positive, material counterpoint of psychic reality. They are two forms of the same (monistic) ultimately unknowable existence (Freud, 1900). Please notice that I resortin an attempt
to communicate in more precise termsto the idea that they are
counterpoints, as in music, rather than counterparts. Their nature differs, as we will see, under the prevalent aegis of life and death, when
it occurs. In biological terms the counterpoint emerges as a creation
16
of nature in what one may surmise or intuit as the transition of the

inanimate towards the animate, a hitherto unknown realm.
The issue is not a philosophical one, even though philosophers
were once very interested in it; it concerns Kants numinous realm,
which was a negative limit concept. Freud endowed the concept
with practical utility; resorting to the romantic term unbewut to
construe a concept derived from practice, from empirical raw data
obtained by clinical experience.
The domain of thought may be conceived of as a space occupied
by no-things (Bion, 1965, p. 106). Bion elicited the contrapuntal
value of Minus in his theory of thinking: the baby that tolerates the
no-breast may think the breast (Bion, 1961b). The physical absence is
the condition for thinking.
Dualism and splitting: philosophy and its discontents

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. (Romans,
1:22)
Lack of tolerance of paradoxes results in dualism, an issue as old as

humanitys attempts to know. Its first form was a splitting of mind
and matter. Since them, with exceedingly few but remarkable exceptions, the philosopher falls back defeated when the factor of emotional impulses obtrudes. This will, I am sure, be very ably denied.
That is my point: it is the function of philosophy to deny it (Bion,
1947, p. 341).
Philosophers err in partisanship, a point that seems to pass unobserved and may be part of the cause of some recent miseries of philosophy. I expanded this point elsewhere (Sandler, 2000, 2001a, b,
2003, 2006). Nave realism and nave idealism/relativism alternate
cyclically as prevailing fashions. This occurred in Philosophy and
reverberates, unnoticed, in the psychoanalytic movement.
The nave realist thinks that he can apprehend reality through the
exclusive use of his senses or mechanical devices that augment the
power of those senses. In doing so, he enthrones material reality and
as a consequence he denies psychic reality. The nave idealist thinks
that reality is just the product of his mind; he also splits, and denies
material reality.
Both the nave realist and the nave idealist despise reality and
mind. Each of them negativates (the work of the negative,
17
according to Andr Green) one pole of a dialectical pair that cannot

be split in reality, though it can be split, denied and negativated in
hallucination. They fall into the same impoverishmentone which
Freud, Planck and Einstein (who grasped the nature of relativity and
accepted it as paradoxical) did not fall.
This is due, in part, to the failure to grasp the nature of relativity, in particular the fact that it includes paradox. The restriction
imposed by the limitation of thought to thoughts with thinkers
implies the polarisation truth and falsehood, complicated
further by morals. [Bion, 1975, p. 80]
The epistemologically and psychologically significant function

of the Minus realm as counterpoint was not missed by Freud, and
this enabled him not to lose sight of reality as it is. After Goethe,
Hegel and Nietzsche, dialectical pairs came to be seen as matching
pairs; this perception was improved when Freud enlightened their
naturalness (see the description of paradoxes given on p. 9).
Hegels and Goethes dialectics illuminated the importance of the
product of a dialectical pair: namely, synthesisa third element,
a product of both poles of the antinomy that is neither of its forebears but resembles them both. This is a basic paradox of life and
living; can one cope with it? We can know with absolute certainty
that we were born (an analysis helps to acquire this perception), but
we know nothing about it and shall never know. Oedipus, in brief.
Losing their former mutually destructive nature, the thesis and the
antithesis are a matching creative pair: the supremely creative couple, as Klein called it, which creatively engenders the son or daughter. Philosophically it is the synthesis. It is true in the biological sense
with DNA reproduction.
A clinical source for the theory

As in Goethes Faust and in Freuds quoting of it, let as add to the
grey of theory the green of practicean antithetical pair, by the way.2
A clinical example may illustrate the contrapuntal value of Minus.
A patient, after one year of analysis, gave birth to her second son.
She never mentioned either a wish for a female baby or any fondness
for little girls. The analysts tolerance of the no-thing made him
smell an ardent wish that was hinted by the very lack of explicit
18
claimsa remarkable fact in view of her evident tenderness in many

issues. He conveyed his idea to the patient. She became remarkably
alleviated and recalled a dream about a boy with a feminine name.
The realm of Minus is the nest where psychoanalysis is nurtured,
in a practical sense: What we want to hear from our patient is not
only what he knows and conceals from other people; he is to tell us
too what he does not know (Freud, 1940, p. 174). Nothing is to be
gained from telling the patient what he already knows (Bion, 1965,
p. 167). The dominant feature of a session is the unknown personality and not what the analysand or analyst thinks he knows (Bion,
1970, p. 87).
We must utter to our patients that which both of us do not know:
thoughts without a thinker (Bion, 1961b, p. 111; 1962, pp. 836; 1963,
p. 35). The underlying, unspoken, immaterial, and non-sensuously
apprehensible emotions demand that the analyst puts at the analysands disposal his analytically trained intuition (Bion, 1965). In a
flash between two long nights the analytic couple compresses all
its life experience, its affects, passion, and concern for truth. It is the
mental counterpart of the big bang theory that tries to depict the
great universe. When the negative realm obtrudes, there is an intermingling of dangerous destruction with sublime creativity, entailing
the mystery of life and death instincts. In the psychoanalytic session
the insight is a kind of progeny of this creative immaterial act.
Minus K
The first explicit mention of a Minus realm came with Bions first theory of links. Clinically he had already displayed the realm through
his unique ability to deal with non-verbal modes of communication
as used by so-called psychotics.
The first theory of links consists of a model depicting three basic
links between people, and between people and things. Bion used
lettered, quasi-mathematical symbols to represent them: L = love;
H = hate; K = knowledge. It is a commonly overlooked fact that it
is possible to regard these links as manifestations of the three basic
human instinctslife, death, and epistemophilicin the realm of
human relations. In other words, Bion describes something that
belongs to the realm of the phenomena; Freud described some (no)
thing that belongs to the realm of noumena.
19
As in the third quotation at the beginning of this part of the

book, Bion observed a kind of destructive, negative activity, that of
unknowing, an active movement to denude meaning. He resorted
to the theory of numbers as a method of notation to depict this
fact. His quasi-mathematical notation was Minus K (K). This
denotes a forceful attempt to prove that misunderstanding is superior to understanding. He illustrates K: a baby feels fear it is dying.
It splits off and projects such feelings into a breast; envy and hate
go together to the extent that the breast remains undisturbed. Taking into account that envy precludes a commensal relationship the
breast cannot be felt as a moderator of the dreadful and annihilating feelings. It cannot allow a re-introjection that could stimulate
growth.
I would add: it does not cease to be a breast; it is a Minus breast
in the K domain. It is felt enviously to remove the good and valuable element in the fear of dying and force the worthless residue
back into the infant. Paranoid violence of emotions, of the present,
affects the projective processes so that far more than the fear of
dying is projected. The denudation of meaning obtrudes when the
process of denudation is seen under the vertex of K (knowledge).
The seriousness is best conveyed by saying that the will to live, that
is necessary before there can be a fear of dying, is a part of the goodness that the envious breast has removed (quotations from Bion,
1962, pp. 967).
.
K allows the eliciting of a Minus container/contained:
It creates a sense of without-ness which differs from nothingness.
The latter can be represented mathematically as zero. In clinical practice it appears as an envious assertion of moral superiority without
any morals (ibid, p. 97). The Minus container/contained
shows itself as a superior object asserting its superiority by
finding fault with everything. The most important characteristic is its hatred of any new development in the personality as if
the new development were a rival to be destroyed. The emergence therefore of any tendency to search for truth, to establish contact with reality and in short to be scientific is met
by destructive attacks on the tendency and the reassertion of
moral superiority in K; the climate is conducive to mental
health. In K neither group nor idea can survive partly because
20
of the destruction incident to the stripping and partly because

of the product of the stripping process. [ibid, p. 98]
This product would be better studied in his book Transformations

(1965).
The ultimate misunderstanding: a temporary destruction

of truth
K is not lack of knowledge. It has a meaning which is abstracted,
leaving a denuded representation (Bion, 1962, p. 75). It is knowledge
at the service of pleasure. Its aftermath is a temporary destruction of
truth. Or better, a destruction of the apprehension of truth, both in
the individual and, a fortiori, in the group.
K is the medium of a characteristic group of unlawful lawyers,
advocates and propagandists. It is destined to convince people of
all things that are not. K is expressed by uses of truth devoid of
truthful intentions. Truth is untruthfully uttered and thus perverted.
It is not intended to lead to accretions of knowledge, but rather to
extinguish the evolution of knowledge. A Brazilian politician widely
acknowledged by supporters and foes alike as corrupt was standing
for election as a state governor. He used truthful data to denounce
his competitors corruption. His real purpose was to win an election.
His use of truth debased it into an untruth. Some marketing specialists say that genuinely good goods do not need propaganda.
From link to transformation

Some patients are concerned to prove their superiority to the analyst
by defeating his attempts at interpretation. They can be
shown to be misunderstanding the interpretations to demonstrate that an ability to mis-understand is superior to an ability
to understand there is a moral superiority and superiority in
potency of UN-learning. [Bion, 1962, pp. 95 and 98]
This opened up the path to Bions observations of hallucinosis which

in 1965 improved on his formulation of K.
21
That which seemed to function just as a link also performs a

further function. Bion was able to elicit it with the aid of the theory
of transformations and invariance (discussed in Volume 1). With
K, invariants are lost. Bion provides a finer description of the negative realm: a raging inferno of greedy nothingness (1965). The
patient feels that there is a superiority of the method of hallucinosis over the analytic method. The realm of the destructive Minus
can be glimpsed through analogies: anti-matter, or the neutron
bomb that destroys living matter and leaves intact inanimate, concrete buildings. Lest one thinks that this is a judgmental view, one
must be reminded that all living beings are made of inanimate basic
components.
Bion defines a K space, the space of hallucination:
Hallucination may be more profitably seen as a dimension of
the analytic situation in which, together with the remaining
dimensions, these objects are sense-able (if we include analytic intuition or consciousness, taking a lead from Freud, as
a sense-organ of psychic quality). To make a step towards the
definition of this space we shall consider it to be a K space
and contrast it with K spacethe space in which what is
normally regarded as classical analysis takes place and classical
transference manifestations become sense-able. Using once
more the analogies I have already employed, K space
may be described as the place where space used to be. It is
filled with no-objects which are violently and enviously greedy
of any and every quality, thing, or object, for its possession
(so to speak) of existence. I do not propose to carry my analogies further than to indicate that K space is the material in
which, with which, on which (etc.) the artist in projective
transformations works. As an analogy with space may easily
distort I propose to drop the term and speak of transformations
in K. [1965, p. 115]
Therefore the concept of Minus K evolved in Bions work from

having the function of a link to having also the nature of a transformation. The two concepts are interdependent. K is a factor of
transformations in hallucinosis.
22
Bions theory of links evolves

Five years later, Bion suggested a second theory of links. In addition
to K, L and H, there would be links of parasitism, commensalism
and symbiosis. These new links depict relationships between container and contained. This shows that he did not regard his theoretical suggestions concerning links as finished. The second theory does
not supersede the first.
Taking into account that Minus K is dependent on the relationships between container and contained, as we have just seen, it
is theoretically advisable to take this amendment from Bion into
consideration when we talk about Minus K. The practical problems I personally found in the clinic also demanded the integration
of the evolving theories of links, transformations and invariance.
The final development of the theory of links focuses on the nature
(or quality) of the link between container and contained and stems
from something that was first adumbrated in 1962:
By commensal I mean and are dependent on each other for
mutual benefit and without harm to either. In terms of a model
the mother derives benefit and achieves mental growth from
experience: the infant likewise abstracts benefit and achieves
growth. [1962, p. 91]
Eight years later, the definition was presented in a more developed form: By commensal I mean a relationship in which two
objects share a third to the advantage of all three (1970, p. 95). To
the commensal Bion now adds two further links: symbiotic and
parasitic.
By symbiotic I understand a relationship in which one
depends on another to mutual advantage. By parasitic I mean
to represent a relationship in which one depends on another to
produce a third, which is destructive to all three. [ibid.]
The parasitic relationship furnishes us the main invariant present

when Minus K functions as a transformation.
Is it possible for Minus K to function simultaneously as a link
and as a transformation? Or, conversely, are the two functions,
23
of Minus K as a link and Minus K as a transformation, mutually

exclusive? I think that at the theoretical level, their interdependence
does not hamper the separate study of each. Conversely, the latter
does not preclude the former. It will depend if one is functioning as
a factor or as a function.
But in the clinical session, as we shall see, it may be useful to
regard Minus K either as a link or as a transformation. If this were
true, what would be the link when the transformations in Minus K
are at work? A transformation always has its accompanying paradoxical counterpart, the invariant (Bion, 1965; Sandler, 2005). If it can
be hypothesised at all, this new link would furnish this invariant.
The contributions of Andr Green

Since 1973 Andr Green alone has been reconsidering one of Bions
models of Minus: namely, Minus as a raging generator of nothingness, first adumbrated by Bion in 1962. We think that what Green
calls the work of the negative, after Hegel, sharpens up our apprehension of this realm in the clinic. In his characteristically independent way, devoid of idolatry or imitation, Green expanded our
insights on how patients feel a negativation. At the same time, this
negativation seemed to me to belong to the realm of hallucinosis.
Dr Green observes people who nourish a sensation of harbouring
a hole. It is a perverse negative object. There is an affective vacuum, a hole made of nothingness. Analysis features mainly emptied
concrete wording, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing; the
patient cannot introject; he seems only able to excorporate (Green,
1997a, b).
We propose that one sees Greens work of the negative as a
concretised manifestation of the prevalence of the Minus realm due
to an imbalance in relation to its positive counterparts. According to Green, the patient cannot stand the double limit, and does
not transform messages from the unconscious in a way that would
render those messages suitable for verbalisation. I would add:
suitable for pictographic imagery and finally verbalisation. This
process was described by Ferro as the narrative counterparts of
alpha-elements (Ferro, 2005).
Due to what Green calls the hole, which is an aftermath of
the work of the negative, these patients bypass the pre-conscious.
24
This is an important part of Greens theory and it seems to me to

match Bions theory about problems with the contact barrier, and
its debasing into a beta-screen. Bions theory extends Freuds theory of the pre-conscious (Bion, 1962, pp. 167; Sandler, 2005). The
definition of contact barrier is couched in paradoxical terms: it is an
active and living filter that regulates the relationship between the
conscious and unconscious. It both links and separates the conscious
and the unconscious.
The nothingness is enhanced due to the lack of pictographs.
Binocular vision is unavailable to a concretised primordial mind
which is capable just of monocular prejudices. Many years later
Dr Green would describe minutely a clinical case where disturbances
of thought resulted in a phobia of thinking (2000). This phobia precludes the obtrusion of free associations. He thinks that the work of
the negative is responsible for this deficiency.
Provisional summary: two kinds of Minus

From clinical practice, it became clear that the terms Negative and
Minus indicate the following counterparts in reality: (i) the nature
of the no-thing that is inseparable from the thing, which I shall call the
contrapuntal Minus; and (ii) a realm created out of greed that cannot
tolerate the no-thing. This greedy state of mind disables ones capacity
to abstract the breast from its sensuously based concreteness.
Nothing replaces the no-thing; without-ness replaces real
lack of something. To analyse, and to live, demands tolerance of a
paradoxical balance ( ) between positive (material, sensuously
apprehensible) and negative (immaterial, psychic, ultra- and
infra-sensuous). Not tolerating Minus leads to a destructive, greedy
prevalence of the Realm of Minus. This intolerance of Minus I propose to denote, after Green, as the realm of negative. Therefore,
our attempt at a unifying theory leaves to the negative the expression of an imbalance of the contrapuntal Minus and what is real.
Defining L and H
The realm of Minus, and in particular the model of L and H,
seems to cast a better light on problems in the psychoanalytic clinic
hitherto seen as manifestations of Hate. My clinical experience and
25
many years reading and listening to reports of clinical data seem to

support this hypothesis. Approaching those manifestations in terms
of Hate has been unsuccessful, both therapeutically and psychoanalytically. The manifestations encompass difficulties in forming creative couples, sadism, and homosexual phantasies. The last of these
deny the survival of the species, the existence of a breast, of a creative couple.
I suppose that any scientists work must make allowances for further work or at least for furthering avenues opened by their discoveries. Sometimes those avenues are just hints. Freuds work opened
many avenues. Melanie Klein furthered one of them, the final theory
of instincts; Bion furthered the theory of the two principles of mental
functioning, thinking processes as well as dream theory.
Bion left just a few hints about Minus Love and Minus Hate.
I regard them as some of his avenues to be explored. For example, he
warns that L is not the same as hate; and H is not the same as love.
Bion did not define L and H explicitly as he defined K. I propose
to define them in order to cope with some clinical issues.
It seems to me that the imbalances of the L/H relationship, or the
defusing of instincts of death and life, are still an uncharted field.
The persistent objections to Freuds observations that supported
his speculations about life and death instincts seem to be partially
linked to difficulties in realising the monistic nature of the two
instincts. Consequently the antithetical pair is more often than not
seen in a split form. That is, the practising analyst risks regarding
the pair in the same way the patient regards it. The defusing of the
instincts of love and hate is a Freudian term. Klein extended it after
observing the difficulties of achieving a sense of a whole object. The
problemboth in patients and in refractory analystsis seeing the
two groups of instincts as simply opposed, rather than complementary and ever-moving poles, one being conditional on the other.
As a kind of fringe benefit stemming from focusing on L/H,
it seemed to me that considering the L/H pair together with the
L/H pair helps in realising the wholeness implied in the functioning of the former. The division between Minus Love and Minus
Hate is artificial. It does not occur in practice in a pure, complete
form. The division is made here for reasons of presenting the issue.
Blaise Pascal observed that a single thought is enough to occupy
us: we cannot think of two things at once, which is just as well for us,
26
according to the world, not according God (1670).3 If we resort to

Freuds observations about immaterial facts within psychic reality
and Bions analogies about mind and the Godhead, we conform to
the impossibility of uttering two things (or paradoxes, as I see them)
at the same time. While keeping in mind that the two happen to be at
the same time, and trying to intuit, apprehend and use them as they
are, they are ultimately ineffable. Their simultaneous utterance is
not feasible at all. This difficulty seems to be one of the consequences
of not keeping in mind the realm of Minus. Which, if grasped, seems
to mean that perhaps anything in life is composed of pairs.
Bowing to this difficulty of verbal apprehension and formulation,
I will try to define Minus L and Minus K as well as furnish examples of both, first resorting to examining each one by its own vertex,
as a preparation for apprehending both simultaneously. I define
L and K strictly within the confines of Bions patterns when he
defined K. This equates to a disclaimer: I think I am not proposing
anything new, but just an extension to make explicit something
implicit in Bions writings.
Defining Minus L
Applying Bions definition of Minus K to Minus L, one may safely
state that Minus L is an attempt to prove that to un-love is superior
to love. Does that bring with it hate? No. Hate is the most primitive
form of love and a condition of it. In Minus Love, Hate is not the
primary impulse. Perhaps this is where the problem lies.
In Minus Love there is an added violence of feelings and emotions, as described by Klein: hate is not just denied and projected;
it cannot be even minimally experienced. It is subjected to continuous denial. Unceasing denial or negation of Hate has the impossible
goal of destroying the qualities Bion attributed to the indestructible
point, when he resorted to a quasi-mathematical analogy. This
mathematical achievement, the point, is regarded by Bion as the
graphic representation of tolerance of the no-breast. It depends on
humanitys tolerance of frustration. It is an early attempt to deal with
psychosis. The point is both a representative and a representation.
Later it may represent the thought whose inception was marked by
tolerance of the no-breast.
27
The thought, represented by a word or other sign, may, when

it is significant as a no-thing, be represented by a point (.). The
point may then represent the position where the breast was, or
may even be the no-breast. [Bion, 1965, p. 82]
The point may be the most irreducible representation of truth hitherto available. Namely, the truth of frustration:
The fragmentation of point and line cannot go beyond the point;
though the line may be annihilated, having been transformed
into a series of points, to a single point, to the place where the
point was, this last is still a point. The point is thus indestructible. [ibid, p. 95]
The point is indestructible because it is not sensible to the minds

attempts at evasion and subservience to the principle of pleasure/
displeasure. It is indestructible to the same extent that reality itself is
indestructible. The perception of it can be obliterated, damaged and
even extinguished during a human beings lifetime. This is what
I referred to earlier as the temporary destruction of truth.
This is the foundation of the negative; if tolerated, it results in
tolerance of the realm of Minus. This tolerance is a precondition of
becoming less unsuccessful at dealing with it. Reality itself is not
destroyed; what can be destroyed is the perception of it. Truth is
robust and shall prevail (Bion, 1979, p. 499).
The origins of Bions work, as well as that of Klein and Winnicott,
are always to be found in Freud. The apprehension of the other, the
not-me, was observed in many of Freuds works, as, for example,
in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921). There,
the counterpoint-value of the relationship of me and not-me was
taken not as a sociological model, which presumes in an oversimplified way that both counterpoints belong to the same level or
have the same nature; nor as a philosophical one, at least until Frege.
The relationship observed by Freudwhich also cannot be taken as
a reality-in-itself (anthropomorphised), but just as a model, an analogy,
a scaffold that contributes, albeit in a flawed way, to turning our human
blindness into intuition and sometimes apprehension of partial aspects of
the truth4referred to the individuals vertex: he first apprehends
28
the not-me: Mother, in the first place, as an Object of libidinal

cathexis of love and hate. Proceeding from there, if violence of emotions and the genetic fetters of primary narcissism and primary envy
are not too strong, and a good enough Mother is available, the individual vertex (sociologists and philosophers may remember, the title
of the paper includes analysis of the Ego) apprehends an Ancillary
being: again Mother, but going to Father or sibs, if the good enough
Mother is linked through love to the Father and helps the baby to
perceive and apprehend what Father is all about. Tolerance of paradoxes is called into action in those two steps as well as in the third:
Fatheror Mother, if the baby is a femaleare then seen as Rivals.
Reactive formation is called to help him or her in the next phase,
Identificationwhich was seen, at least by one acute observer, as
Imitation (Philips, 1989). Some commentators, like Octave Mannoni,
could see in this a search for truth; namely, the human truth of a
situation of helplessnesseven though they were sometimes caught
by the sirens of idealisation and eclectic fashion which characterises
and dates some schools of thinking (Mannoni, 1968, p. 19).
To be more specific, and hoping not to be seen as a partisan
attacker, by idealisation I mean attributing to Freud not the function of a scientist, and as such an observer of truth, but the role of an
inventor. The eclecticism which was especially remarkable in Latin
authors, particularly the French school, and which one third of a
century later arrived in America via post-modernism and literary
critics, mixed psychoanalysis with literature, as happened in Freuds
time with surrealism. It is no wonder that from this narrowed vertex
there sprouted, as an obvious consequence, a newfangled form of
literature. The old recipe, a mix of immiscible stuff, Frankensteinlike (in other words: heavy use of conscious, brainy manipulations
of symbols, stemming from the conscious secondary process), construed a fashionable pseudo-literature, devoid of the transcendent
ethos of literature. To a specific audience, the self-styled intelligentsia, more often than not, these works are endowed with a seductive attraction. Flame is substituted by fame. Anyway, fame is no
plant that grows on mortal soil, according John Milton; the famous
of today are usually the infamous of tomorrow.
In contrast, real Kantian criticism coexists with this idealistic,
authoritarian leaning: this constitutes a second, alternative tendency. If we use Giambattista Vicos and Isaiah Berlins hints about
29
the history of ideas coupled with psychoanalytic achievements,

we may regard this alternative tendency as corresponding to the
movement from PS to D in the human mind through the history of
thinking and ideas in Western civilisation. Psychoanalysis seems to
be a modern form of exercising Kantian criticism directed to psychic reality, giving substance and form to what Kant previewed
(dreamed?) asfor want of a better nameanthropology (Kant,
1781; Sandler, 2000a). Perhaps less popular, but deeper in its truthvalue, the second tendency has a long history. It modern times
it was probably initiated by Herder in Germany. Heir of Martin
Luthers protestant warning, Herder (as far as my own research,
published elsewhere, has found) seemed to be the first to describe
the Old Testament as a depository of humankinds achievements
rather than inserting it into a dogmatic straitjacket in order to convince people. This second or alternative tendency found fertile soil
in Britain, with John Ruskin and then, in the 20th century, Frank
Kermode, Adrian Stokes and many others. They managed words
without propagandistic intentionswhich are attentive to reality
but display no respect for truth. Kantian criticism and psychoanalysis look for truth (or truth-O, if we use Bions notation) which
comes from it, developed useful tissue to the apprehension of mind
and truth, and therefore, of works of science and art. Conversely,
the first tendency circumvents truth, in order to avoid stumbling
into it inadvertently. Resorting to rationalised constructs could be
left to advertising professionals, barristers and politicians. From literary commentators who arent by themselves artists (or scientific
commentators who are not scientists) one may only expect personal
opinionswhich flow into authoritarian postures to convince people, through the use of personal fame and political powers. In the
end personal opinions do not matter to the ways and the truth that
specific artistic work or scientific research attains, as artists such as
Vladimir Horowitz and scientists such as Albert Einstein and Max
Planck (1949, pp. 745), among hundreds of others, have pointed
out.5 Freud, as he proceeded in his observations, practically stumbled onto the discoveryas distinct from inventionof psychoanalysis, as Bion observed. In Cogitations (19581979), Bion reminds
us that Freud did not invent Oedipus, but in looking for the
solution to a problem he found in a patient, he used Oedipus and
discovered psychoanalysis.
30
It is not only Hate that destroys the object, but also the violence of
Love (Klein, 1934). I suppose this violence stems from intolerance of
frustration. Bion dwells on this issue in his unfinished papers published posthumously (19581979). Hating hate turns hate into a forbidden area to the baby.
Minus L seems to be primarily moved by greed (see Minus H,
below). One cannot split the self-feeding, circular conundrum greedenvy, so greed cannot be separated from envy. Perhaps this is another
inseparable pair, separated by our limited ability to make successful
verbal formulations to deal with the ultimate reality of emotions and
feelings. Once envy is installed, the two function as a feedback system, in a cancerous growth which functions in tandem (Klein, 1957).
There is some clinical evidence (which I shall display elsewhere), at
least in some patients, that greed may profitably be seen as a kind of
preconception of envy. After Klein and Bion the analyst was able to
see that when greed meets a realisationa good breastit may turn
into envy. What will define this is the paranoid-schizoid and narcissistic make-up of a given personality, described by Freud as primary
narcissism and by Klein as primary envy. Therefore, clinically, if a
paranoid endowment is too high, probably due to genetic factors,
greed is more easily seen as a kind of precursor to envy. It is a precursor not in the causal sense, but in the sense of being a begetter.
Bion extends this in A Theory of Thinking (1961b) through focusing on intolerance of frustration. In patients without such a marked
paranoid trait, greed can be linked to unfortunate environmental
conditions, such as hunger and famine.
What is at stake is an issue of quantity transmuting itself into quality. Violent emotions express an excessive quantity of narcissism and
paranoid-schizoid stuff. Love overwhelms hate, and without hate,
the precursor of love, love itself becomes impossible. The alternative
to suicide or homicide is Minus love, L.
But a kind of absolute denial of frustration brushes aside real
love. Mental death ensues. Real love demands an integrative, binocular tolerance.6 It demands toleration of the paradox that the
object that is loved and the object that is hated are one and the same
object. A sense of truth (Bion, 1961b) is impossible to get when hate
is denied.
Accordingly, if a breast in the Minus K realm does not cease to
be a breast, as we have seen, but is a Minus breast, what would this
31
Minus breast be in the L realm? It is also felt enviously to remove

the good and valuable element in the fear of dying and force the
worthless residue back into the infant (Bion, 1962). The difference
between the breast in the K domain and in the L domain is not
and cannot be a difference of quality. A breast is Breast, an invariant,
and a constant of Nature itself.
If envy is something that lay waiting, single-celled, to become
malignant (Bion, 1975, p. 10), the issue of L being dependent on
violent (narcissistic paranoid-schizoid) emotions may be stated in
terms of mounting, ever-heightening and raging envious impulses.
Love emotions are taken to their utmost consequences. The defusing of life and death instincts is unavoidable, and hate is denied,
put into abeyance. In the mind of the beholder, it is felt as if it were
extinguished.
In Minus Love, Love out-loves love; or beats love at its own
game. So love is inhibited by love (Bion, 19581979, p. 125); in the
long run love is felt to be extinguished by love; un-love is the only
aftermath after the feeling of the final extinction of love. The rivalry
with the breast reaches its apex.
Since denudation is the chief feature of envy, this situation of
quasi-absolute envy in L is felt to remove the bad and worthless
element in the fear of dying. The same forcing back into the infant
which Bion describes in K is done with such violence that the infant
loves a worthless object. It cannot distinguish this worthless object
from the worthy and not-yet-dead, living object. Such confusion
seems to be the basis of idealisation. It must be differentiated from
hate and sadism, even though the latter can function as a tool in this
confusion. The worthless residue is then an un-lovable one, felt as
loved. Due to its very nature, it cannot be loved without imperilling
the ego; to un-love is the last resort in order to preserve life.
A pause to give a brief clinical illustration: idealisation and idealisation of the analyst may be seen as an effect of Minus Love. Collusion would be synonymous with a Minus Analysis. Sensuously
apprehensible appearances would indicate a happy and successful
analysis. A kind of mutual admiration societies may ensue.
If one denies the pain involved in the un-loving part-object, one
replaces Love with Minus Love. Let us return to Bions observations about K. Applying them to L, the un-loved object becomes
the object of something that is felt as love. The denudation of love
32
obtrudes when the process of denudation is seen under the vertex

of L (Love).
These processes are unconscious, therefore the un-loved breast
is unknown and unknowing. The unknown and unknowingly unloved breast increases the seriousness of the predicament that is
best conveyed by saying that the will to live, that is necessary before
there can be a fear of dying, is a part of the goodness that the envious breast has removed (Bion, 1962, pp. 967). The fear of dying is
wholly denied. Denial usually dictates that the denied part gains the
upper hand in the persons behaviour. Perhaps the clinical examples
given later may help to illustrate the situation.
Therefore there is no lack of Love in -Love. This perverted love
denies the concrete part of the breast to the extent that it is perforce
always frustrating. In the person who tolerates frustration, the preconception of the breast finds a realisation (a real external breast)
that never fulfils the preconception. Minus L deprives the breast of
its reality. The difficulties of abstracting the non-concrete function of
the breast are known since Bion and Winnicott. One remains blind
to solace, warmth, and care.
The forced splitting as described by Bion (1962, p. 10) is reversed;
the preconception denies the reality of the breast that is offered. The
breast, like knowledge in K, remains abstracted in a hallucinated
all-fulfilling form (Bion, 1962, p. 75). Split off from material reality,
it exists only in the mind of the self-styled lover. To split off material from psychic reality impoverishes both. Nevertheless, denying
material reality can be as noxious as denying psychic reality (Sandler,
1997). To denude a formerly loved object, when denudation itself is
the last resort in preserving the object, turns the object into an unloved one.
Minus Love is Love at the service of pleasure, from which it
derives the destruction of beauty and truth. The person who hammered Michelangelos Piet or stained Vincis Mona Lisa with ink
did not hate art. He kept a Minus Love parasitical link with art. The
idealistic revolutionaries from the Marxists to the Nazis are destructive not from the hate they entail, but from the violence of Minus
Love.
Minus L is expressed by narcissistic uses of love that lack loving intentions. Spoiling, pampering and seducing are presented as
33
expressions of love. They are not intended to lead to accretions of

love, but rather to immobilise a feeling of love in a concrete way. The
ownership of human beings concretises the pseudo-love. The concretisation precludes movement, the stuff of life, and perpetuates
the turning of Love into Minus Love. It is not conducive to evolution, matching and creation. It is homo-, self-sufficient.
Some patients are concerned to prove the superiority of hallucinosis to the analytic method and try to turn the analytic session into
an activity to extract love at all costs. The premature, thin, tenuous,
instantaneously made transference is immersed in a sense of idealisation (Bion, 1956). It means that the patient un-loves the analyst as he or
she is. The defeat of the analysts attempts at interpretation as indicated in Minus K (above) has a specific form. The misunderstanding
of interpretations tends to turn them into emotional statements monochromatically conveying claims of mutual love. The moral superiority and superior potency of un-loving is easily demonstrated because
real love is always the most difficult and painful alternative. Real love
demands abstinence and renunciation. Minus Love abhors abstinence.
Real love implies an eternal suffering about the prospect of loss and if
loss occurs. Minus Love imagines alleviation before a future loss and
is against progeny: why put more children in this damned, wretched
world? could be its motto (Bion, 1962, pp. 95, 98).
Defining Minus H
There is a forceful attempt to prove that un-hating is superior to hating. The same considerations about envy precluding anything other
than a parasitic relationship are valid here. The breast cannot be felt
as a moderator of the dreadful and annihilating feelings; the breast
that is felt as bad is, so to say, co-opted. It is turned into a false
good breast. If the babys envy is excessive, a Minus loving Mother
nourishes Minus Hate sibs.
Minus H is not lack of hate. It is the triumph of hate through an
absolute splitting of love from hate. There is a moral superiority
and superiority in potency of un-hating. The instinct that prevails
is an excessively violent, greedy, object-damaging Love. It produces something that Freud adumbrated in 1920 as the defusing of
instincts. It is excessive morality lacking any ethics.
34
Notes
1. Readers interested in the transdisciplinary links between music and
psychoanalysis may see Turbulncia e Urgncia (Imago Editora, 2000),
and many other papers published since then by many authors who,
with no knowledge of each others work, have drawn attention to
this issue in many parts of the world.
2. My worthy friend, grey is all theory, / And green alone Lifes
golden tree (Mephistopheles in Goethes Faust, quoted in Freud,
1924, p. 149).
3. See Chapter Eight on binocular vision.
4. The difference between (Kantian) models, analogies and theories
will be discussed in Volume 3 of this work; see also Bion, 1962, 1963,
and Sandler, 19972003.
5. In listening to critics, perhaps a warning from ironies of history
(Deutscher, 1966) may be useful. The immanent temporal fashion
they carry inflicted injustice, lack of apprehension and difficulties
into the lives and even survival of people like Van Gogh, Glenn
Gould, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Freudto quote just a few
in a universe that proves to be infinitetheir names are legion.
The work of the universal authors such as Machado de Assis, now
revived by foreign translators (not critics), was hampered by such
ideology-ridden critics on whom groups conferred authority.
This proved to be a mistake and displayed a lack of perception: the
immanent authority conferred by groups, with its violence of feelings and enthusiasm (see Beauvoir, 1946), which does not stand the
transcendent test of time, proved to be just an authoritarian, groupattributed, messianic leadership. Bions contributions on groups
and some extensions of them will be discussed in the next volume.
6. This is not a theoretical, but a practical issue (see Chapter Eight).
CHAPTER THREE
Clinical sources
suppose that more clinical examples must be given in order

to enable one, according ones own experience, to give meaning to the contrapuntal realm of Minus, and of L and H. The
examples are also intended to show that the Minus realm, and especially Minus L and Minus K, is begotten by Greed and Envy. I will
start with some examples seen from the vertex of Minus L and then
proceed to examples seen from the vertex of Minus H because that
is more suited to a written exposition. I stress that this schematic
approach does not mean that they appear separated in practice.
The non-motherly mother

One observes mothers whose behaviour moves from insensitivity to
callousness. In short, the session usually degenerates into a situation
of persecutory guilt which is not the manifestation of a real attainment of the depressive position but rather a depression coloured by
paranoid feelings. That continues unabated. The analyst is invariably seen as a judge, with the qualities of a wrathful God. In minus
Hate, Hate is not the dominant instinct.
35
36
Through a reversion of perspective (Bion, 1965) this kind of

mother abuses the childs capacity for self-containment and tries to
use it as a depository for her anxieties. Instead of a bidet-breast, one
has a bidet-infant. The child becomes the breast, in hallucination, to
both baby and mother. The child seems to demand no care at all; if
the child cannot hate, or learns to un-hate, the mothers deficiencies
and outdistancing are denied and felt as not important.
A mother often resorted to lies and disguises in order to evade
some situations. For example, if something was broken at home or
if the mother had relatives visiting her she would hide the fact. The
father usually became enraged with the lies and threatened to leave
her. One of her sons, a kind of negatively chosen son, was the one
to whom she would cry and lament, on whom she relied for support, and whom she would ask to bring Dad back home. The son
grew up feeling that he was responsible for his mothers well-being
and for the health of the marriage in a twisted Oedipal sense.
The well-behaved baby

There is a Brazilian saying: babies who do not cry do not suck the
breast. While Minus Love seems to be primarily moved by greed,
Minus Hate would be primarily moved by envy. Envy is denigration;
usually one does not long for a denigrated breast. But if the envious
attacks were what mattered, a denigrated breast would be preferred.
It is a safeguard of life-consuming envy as well as the object of an
easy-going love. Sadism is one of its manifestations. The breasts
uselessness begets phantasies of self-sufficiency.
These are the outwardly well-behaved children who allow their
mother plenty of time to take care of herself. Mother is pleased
because the child gives no trouble at all; she cannot observe the
extent of the babys predicament. The child seems to demand no care
at all. It hallucinates a breast and develops a preference for inventing
a false imagined all-fulfilling breast in its mind. As in Minus L,
this state does not allow a re-introjection that could stimulate growth
because the re-introjection is felt as not necessary. If coupled with a
greedy infant, it facilitates or paves the way to hallucinosis; because
in this state one feels entitled to provide for all ones needs oneself
(Bion, 1965, pp. 1323).
Paranoid traits, often familial, either genetically conditioned or
learned through nurture, are evident because the mother makes
C L I N I CA L S O U R C E S
37
herself a more important person than her progeny. In my experience,

the non-motherly mother is more often than not successful in finding or producing well-behaved babies. Who, in order to be such a
baby, must perpetuate the same paranoid traits which produce feelings of self-sufficiency.
I emphasise that the insensitive and demanding breast, which
reverses the perspective of feeding and demands to be fed, does not
cease to be a breast. It is a Minus breast that allows just a Minus H
link. The introjected breast is an object that forces the individual to
be eternally in debt and arrogantly hallucinating that it can be the
breast of the breast.
A common manifestation of this is that the child feels responsible
for uniting the parents, as in the case quoted above. Again, the breast
is felt as enviously removing the good and valuable element in the
fear of dying and forcing the worthless residue back into the infant.
The worthless residue is felt as worthy due to its worthlessness; if
seen realistically, it is equivalent to starvation and dictates suicide or
homicide. The breast is un-loved as a question of survival, and what
was felt as bad is now forcibly seenbut not experiencedas good.
This seems to underlie sadistic tendenciesand sadism is seen as a
source of well-being to anyone who is awarded it. The babys paranoid, narcissistic sense of superiority makes him choose the easiest
way, namely the one that avoids the pain involved in hating. Real
love cannot ensue. Love is not the dominant instinct.
The hypercritical hypocrite

An otherwise good-humoured, funny, intelligent and able person
used much of his efforts to criticise anybody and everybody in any
situation. His intention was sincere; he wanted to be helpful. Professionally, he practised a kind of caring activity. But his tendency
to hypercriticism was self-perpetuating. No triviality was left aside.
He quickly became hypercritical with friends, who were supposed
to be honoured by his criticisms. Once he was watching a film made
in the 1950s. In one scene there appeared on the screen a huge Le
Corbusier-inspired dwelling on the outskirts of Paris, in which
working class people lived. It was an irrelevant part of an irrelevant
film (which was just a thriller, a piece of entertainment). Since he
had a little knowledge of architecture, this person made a complete
critical appraisal of what he felt was an inhuman, crime-provoking
38
environment, a profit-seeking building that would turn into a slum.

To prove his point, he quoted the recent disturbances in France,
involving people who had lived in such areas since the time when
the film was made and the dwellings were a novelty.
His comments were truthful and apt, but devoid of real love and
of interest in either the conditions in which the people lived or the
social inequality that created them at least in part. They served just to
glorify himself and his capacity to analyse. As a result, he perversely
(and with overtones of sadism) damaged the living situationthe
enjoyment of watching a film with his family. He could not enjoy
the film, and he prevented his wife and children from enjoying it.
The whole point of the comment was to prove how clever he was.
In Brazil, there is a common saying: One loses ones friend but does
not lose the joke. His good humour and easy ability to make friends
was soon debased into mordacity and sarcasm. This man lost a
great many of his friends but did not lose his feelings of superiority.
People liked him but paradoxically avoided contact with him, as a
way of protecting themselves. Being with him was an exhausting
task, because he would do anything to extract unconditional proofs
of love from his friends. Malignant narcissism, as some American
authors call it, seems to be a factor of Minus Hate.
The denudation of meaning as seen in Minus K has an added difficulty. Fair is foul, and foul is fair, the Witches say in Macbeth: the
profound human value is stripped away to leave a debased sadism.
The will to live that is necessary before there can be a fear of dying
becomes hallucinated because the goodness that the envious breast
should remove (as in Minus K and Minus L) had never existed, or
was so feeble that in practice it amounted to nothing. The person
feels that aggression, exploitation (rather than use) of the object, as
described by Winnicott (1971), are good and could be called love.
A capacity to love, if it exists, cannot be developed into love, but
rather into un-love, and no regard for truth ensues.
The hypercritical hypocrite may mimic love. Soon un-hate makes
its appearance. In the end there is neither love nor hate, but just a case
of confused stupor and stupefied confusion. The infant tries to anger
the breastand if the breast should become angry, at least it could be
felt as alive and could be loved or not, and hated or not. This exploitative pattern, a projective identification of the exploitative breast,
becomes a pattern throughout the persons life. This person cannot
39
learn by experience; his or her acts of aggression and acrid criticism

are felt in a raging way to be deserving of welcome, applause and
admiration. Obviously, such a person can find a suitable mate and
the cycle turns into a never-ending route to impoverishment.
The persons demeanour and posture are of compliance and outward adaptation to social climates, sometimes bordering on servility. This behaviour appears to the attentive eye as a false kindness,
and this is what it is in fact. The person who chooses the H relationship will always insist that he or she is a superior being. They assert
their superiority by finding fault in people who are able to hate, or
able to complain when a complaint is a realistic and just reaction. In
the end, neither hate nor love is left, in the same proportion that real
love or realistic hate are denied existence.
The person tries to evoke hating and loving emotions in any person with whom he or she relates. In analysis, this patient abhors
the K link and tries accordingly to evoke Love and/or Hate in the
analyst.
The tragedy is that at the same time this is a desperate attempt to
learn how to have real, rather than imitative emotional experiences.
But how can they do it when they keep any real emotional experience
at bay? The apparatus for perception of reality itself is increasingly
damaged. The person becomes persecuted and increasingly isolated,
resorting to hallucinosis in a raging, logarithmic scale. I think this
amounts to what Bion once described as the apparatus that should
be used to achieve conscious awareness of internal and external reality being treated as an undesired fragment. Therefore it is fantastically expelled from the personality. The apparatus is felt as if it were
an expellable fragment, and as such its fate is to be lodged outside. Deprived of conscious awareness, the patient achieves a state
which is felt to be neither alive nor dead (Bion, 1956, p. 38).
As far as my clinical experience goes, apprehending those facts
under the light of Minus H and Minus L seems to be a useful
extension to explanations already acknowledged as useful: Kleins
descriptions of attacks on the breast, and Bions descriptions of
attacks on the perceptual apparatus up to its ejection and the ensuing mental confusion about death and life. Minus H and Minus L create a tendency to deal with the animate with methods that could be
more successfulthough in some instances are notwhen applied
to the inanimate.
40
The hypercritical hypocritical type hates K, and favours L, H,

L and H. His tendency to the inanimate can be seen in analysis
through the erection of the beta-screen. This replaces the contactbarrier in a living process (Bion, 1962, p. 24). Thanks to the betascreen the psychotic patient has a capacity for evoking emotions in
the analyst; his associations evoke interpretations which are
less related to his need for psychoanalytic interpretation than to his
need to produce an emotional involvement (ibid). A K link turns
out to be impossible; the analytic approach is severely impaired.
Let us examine in more detail some cases that cover the mechanisms described above.
The Joan of Arc all-giving syndrome

The mother who serves as an example gladly considered the idea
of becoming a Catholic nun. This situation became clear in the sessions with no verbal communicationshe would dress in a way that
made her resemble a nun. Or she would wear bizarre combinations
of sportswear even though she was not a sportswoman; it seemed
that she was someone who wore clothes which were second-hand or
showing signs of wear. As it happened, another person had given her
the sportswear. She avoided using any make-up. She was a frequent
churchgoer and came to analysis after hearing a comment of mine
about a paper of a colleague who had been a theologian. Her opinion
of herself was rosy: she was good and well-intentioned, devoid of
any trace of evil feelings, hate or aggression. She advertised herself
as serious, competent and successful in her profession. She stated
that people always cheered her. She claimed, as a kind of propaganda, to love her husband, the analysis, her son and her brothers.
At the same time, in a remarkably split form, she underwent deep
distress without ever really noticing it. One who observed her could
see that which she apparently could not. There was a functional lack
of Love, but Hate was not the dominant instinct.
As analysis progressed, many things seemed to go wrong. She
once stated that she had made an irrecoverable error in life: namely,
that she had married, become pregnant and had a son. The statement was duly forgotten, and she resumed the idea of being the personification of goodness, doing everything they expected her to do.
Here and there, in subdued form, there were references to being ill
at ease in some contexts, professional and familial.
41
After a few months of analysis, she displayed her haughty,

self-righteous, contemptuous attitude in the session. She would correct any interpretation that she disliked. She knew just two polarised
alternatives: if it was not praise, it only could be criticism.
She seemed to lack a capacity to converse: she either agreed or
disagreed. The agreements were shallow and misleading. They were
made when I stated something that she could fit to her previous
ideas and beliefs. She gradually heightened her complaints about
life, about any real fact, in an endless attempt to extract from me
reassurances that she was right in both her ideas and her posture.
She enforced an analysis whose medium was the Love link rather
than the Knowledge link. I had to reassure her, unfailingly support her and unceasingly praise her excellence and goodness.
Anything different from this was abhorred.
In her characteristically subdued form, she would indicate that
she had trouble with her pupils. But she seemed not to be aware
that she flourished in the ocean of complaints. Slowly I realised
that she derived pleasure from them. She seemed not to be able to
become aware that she was complaining, and much less that she
invariably put herself above anyone or anything else. Her very elderly and rather ill mother took care of the home, including cooking,
thus allowing her to work. Even though she claimed to acknowledge her mothers helping attitude, she seemed to have no inkling
of the reality of this help, for she was often demanding more. The
only notice she took of her mothers presence was to complain bitterly about the future: If my Mother dies, I love her so much that I
will die too.
Gradually the complaints reached a higher pitch in the here and
now of the session. She would easily resort to cries and accusations,
delivered in a loud voice; she became aggressive and rude, without
becoming aware of this. When a flash of perception of her rudeness
occurred, she would state that she was a victim of my aggression and
that she had to defend herself. I found myself constantly accused
of being too insensitive, or too critical, or too silent. She began to
complain that I deceived her; that I was like her family, her brother,
who despised her and did not profit from her teaching about how
they had to behave. If I said something, that was not the thing she
wanted to hear; if I stayed silent, she would cry that she was not
there for silence. Invariably she transformed my appreciations and
descriptions into judgments.
42
This process lasted five years. She was always punctual and
would not miss a single session. This did not mean a willingness to
undergo an analysis. It seemed to be more a complex mix of many
factors. Some of these were a religious attitude coupled with a sadistic profiting from the appointments, as well as a reassurance of her
good intentions and extraordinary resilience to self-torture.
Her free associations and dreams strongly suggested that she
had an ardent wish for a female child and suffered deeply at not
having one. She duly denied this, but it seemed that she profited
from the observation: gradually it emerged that she maintained an
aggressive relationship with her only son. The relationship seemed
to be the acting out of her desire to have a girl. The son had to be
guilty every time he wanted to go on a school trip, or swim, or do
whatever it might be that could endanger his life. To this she added
her opposition to any activity he might do that did not include her.
The gradual inception of strong arguments with her son emerged
as a frequent and deep source of suffering as the son grew up. She
was haunted by the idea that her son might die. She would take
measures to imprison him. She would take him to hospitals suddenly, over-exaggerating simple symptoms of flu and the like. She
tried to create a pet, a fussy creature, perhaps a hysterical being.
She did all this in the name of love and denied any form of hate.
She would seductively blackmail him, putting herself in the role of
mater dolorosa. Sometimes she resorted to physical coercion to prevent him going away with schoolmates or with relatives. Sometimes
she would beat him violently for minor offences. He was 10 when
she began analysis; now he is a teenager of 16. At 14 he began to hit
her back. Only then did she say openly what had happened. But
her denial and splitting was so deep that in the session following
the report, she would deny that there was any problem at all in her
life. Her problems were restricted to analysis and to that which she
regarded as me.
After five years, a remarkable event was openly stated: a longstanding friend whom she used to praise had betrayed her. It
seemed that the crime which provoked the patients wrath was
that the friend did not behave as the patient expected. I had had
many hints about these external events, which were linked to resentment and violence, from slips and fragmentary half-mentions or contradictions here and there, en passant. They were coherent with my
43
living experience of her in the sessions. Nevertheless, my attempts

to talk with her about them were met with violence. Once she began
a session crying and sobbing. She was sure that she would be dismissed because she had misspelled a word in a way that would
show her humble and ignorant origins in a presentation she had
given to the university directors and other professors. However, in
subsequent sessions she would forget or deny the report, resuming
her self-praising manner.
The sessions were now wholly occupied with complaints
against her husband, her son, me (as her deficient analyst), life as
it was, alleged illnesses, doctors, bosses and colleagues. The invective seemed tireless; she was always raging, raising her voice and
cryingyet she seemed to have no inkling of this.
She refused to take allopathic drugs, allegedly because she was
allergic to almost everything. But she would willingly take homeopathic remediesprovided that they were prescribed by her and
by a compliant homeopath. Mainstream medical doctors were
just a stupid bunch, all incompetents. Once she had a urinary
tract infection. She refused to take antibiotics, but visited a doctor;
when he prescribed them, she left his surgery with acerbic complaints. The infection lasted for two months with painful symptoms.
It ended in what seemed to be a spontaneous remission, but she
believed that the cure was due to her taking homeopathic drugs.
The pain, urgent need to urinate and taking homeopathic drugs
were intra-session events: she would interrupt the session, rise
from the couch, take some drops and accuse me of being an allopathic doctor. It seemed that she was not genuinely worried about
these facts but rather that she in fact enjoyed the sheer pleasure of
complaining-in-itself. It seemed an intoxicating, masturbatory activity, always in a crescendo.
As a typical pampering-spoiling mother, this patient displays a
prevalence of Minus Love and Minus Hate. They seemed to be experienced vividly in the sessions; embedded in violence, the complaints
were multi-functional. They tended to test her analysts love for her;
they were a way to feel loved. She demanded that people should be
grateful for her complaints and demandswhich are the embodiment of Minus Love. After all, as a Brazilian saying goes, one who
disdains is one who wants to buy. The denial, or negativation,
of violence results in its gaining the upper hand. In extreme forms
44
such mothers are known variously as schizophrenogenic mothers

(Rosen, 1953; Bateson, 1956; Jackson, 1961), or mothers of people
who feel themselves to be homosexual. Once I could show her, and
she was able to see, that she was trying to bear a girl and forcing
her son to behave like one. She realised that she was looking after
me when correcting my analytic postures or warning me about
my allopathic tendencies. It was one of the rare moments amid
the verbal turbulence and noise when she seemed to have a genuine insight and experience some features of the depressive position.
A few sessions later she entered into a false depression: a flow of mea
culpa persecuted feelings. From then on she seemed to change, at
least quantitatively, her posture towards her son.
Even though this woman is overtly hypercritical of her husband,
she contradictorily gives indications of behaving as the pampering
Mate. In its extreme form, this can be seen in the typical alcoholics
wife. She would fill dozens of sessions complaining about her husbands behaviour. This could not be illuminated by transference
theories; she was engaged in a pleasurable activity that precluded
the barest notion that there was another person in the room. At the
beginning of the analysis she presented him as a highly qualified
professional. But she reported that her husband phoned her from
a distant city, sobbing like a child: I will fail, I cant do this job.
Her reaction was to compliantly offer him multiple solutions.
I hypothesised that the two had a kind of collusion about his alleged
incompetence. The husband was effectively dismissed from his job.
She seemed to flourish in his difficulty. Her previous understanding offer of solutions turned into an attempt to force them on him
bitterly and vociferously. She seemed to bully him. She would offer
him multiple and often contradictory solutions. In the session, it
became clear that she felt it would suffice to simply invent and tell
him these solutions. She revelled in them as proofs of her own
intelligence. She was adamant that these solutions would succeed, without ever having tried them and without any experience
in her husbands profession.
A metaphor: the internal Hitler

The Hitler invariantnowadays overshadowed by its new guise,
mainly in the Middle East, but also in the Balkans and Africa
continues to be puzzling for even the most astute and scholarly
45
observers. Perhaps because of the sheer horror in its purest form

that this mishap of the human species inflicted on humanity, which
established a record of destruction hitherto unsurpassed, it is usually easy to overlook the fact that perhaps he was not an abominable
exception. There is evidence that the Hitler phenomenon may
emerge in any single human being, at any given time. Was it just
more visible and developed in this historical-hysterical figure? To
look for ones internal Hitler may be fruitful. The internal Hitler
maintains a self-profiting contact with reality, but displays contempt
for truth. Contact with reality is used just to avoid to stumbling over
truth by accident.
One may spot the presence of Love, as an absolute value, and
the presence of Life instincts, just due to the fact that there is contact with reality. It is Minus L, to the extent that there is disregarded
truth. Therefore, cleverness, pleasure in imposing indignity on
others, in order to gain self-dignity at the cost of another persons
indignity, delinquency, lying, cheating, blackmailing, inhumanity,
Machiavellianism, bullying and destructive behaviour are both
manifestations and tools of L.
It is commonplace to state that this man Hitler declared hatred
of the so-called Jews, Slavs, Poles, Czechs, Communists,
Gypsies (nowadays called Roma), Black and mixed race
people, and homosxuals. After all, he openly stated this; he would
be the first witness to confirm it. Nevertheless, common sense, and,
a fortiori, psychoanalytic achievements show us that the conscious
idea one makes of oneself is not at all perfect. Either we accept that
Hitler was a thoroughly analysed person who knew himself to the
extent of issuing reliable opinions about himself, or we may cast
doubt on hisoften opinionatedideas on any theme, including
his opinions of his personality and deeds.
To begin with, one may see that in the long run, Hitlers statements about his hateful feelings towards some groups were not independent of what he felt about those who were called the Germans.
Initially, hate against Jews was coupled to love for Germans: in
order to protect what in his hallucinated mind he named Germans
he had to exterminate (vernichten) the Jews, Roma, Communists,
and homosexuals. In 1945 he came to the conclusion that his formerly beloved Germans had to be exterminated too.
As an example, let us quote the hitherto most studied phenomenon:
the chief accusation against the Jews, world domination through
46
Money. This can well be seen as at least a Nazi characteristic too. Just
one death-camp commandant was jailed: the Austrian former policeman Franz Paul Stangl, who lived in Brazil for many years after the
war without concealing his identity. He had been commandant of Treblinka, the second largest death camp. In 1970 he gave an interview
to the author and investigative journalist Gitta Serenythe first and
last to furnish real data about his murdering work. When asked what
the Nazis wanted from the Jews, this insider said with no doubt or
second thoughts: The Nazis wanted the Jews money. One may
observe to what extent Hitler and his acolytes were inspiredto
put it mildlyby the chosen people ideology, and as a result by
ideas of superiority, something which is typical of many people and
nationalities around the world. Such ideas are found at least as far
back as the ancient Romans, who saw their conquests as authorised
by their gods on the basis of their superiority over all other peoples.
An offshoot of it remained alive in the Roman Apostolic branch of the
Christian confession and its military arms; those priests were guardians of the temple and of Jerusalem, and sprayed catecheses across
South American and African colonies. Hitlers Lebensraum policies
had more than a passing similarity to Zionism; although it is not
easy to state which began first, one may see that they began in the
same nest: pre-World War I Central Europe. Both movements arose
and struggled for the idea of obtaining a safe place, hailed as a Godgiven paradise, in which to live. Both became all-conquering. Today,
the use people have made of post-Soviet freedom is that Serbians
feel superior to Bosnians, who feel superior to Croatians, who feel
superior to Slovenians, who feel superior to Albanians; as Russians
feel superior to Georgians, who feel superior to Russians, and so on
ad infinitum. Certainly both stem from the romantic nationalisms that
were a reaction to the enlightened universal man. Perhaps it was
not a coincidence that the Nazi officials, at Hitlers behest, were on
good terms and did business (in the commodity of human beings)
with Zionist officials, a fact emphasised by a person who could never
be accused of anti-Semitism: Hannah Arendt. The same applies to
CommunismHitler was inspired by a kind of unkind Sozialismus.
Hitler wanted to outdo real socialism. His architectural projects contemplated ready-made ruins; this betrays their destructive and unloving nature. Similarly, the same Roma (then called Gypsy) people
he killed so mercilessly gave the Germans a great deal of musical
47
inspiration, fully profiting from Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms,

which Hitler liked very much. Hate against breast and Mother was
visible under the guise of L: Hitler vowed to love Geli Raubal and
Eva Braun in the same sense that he vowed to love the Germans. The
British, whom he consciously praised many times, were subjected
to his murderous fury. Moreover, he claimed that he was doing the
right thing to those to whom he was linked through Minus Love.
In the end he decided to kill the Germans too, through his scorched
earth and destruction of industry policy. Not unlike, but much worse
than, the policies advocated by Henry Morgenthau Jr., a minister in
Roosevelts administration, who wanted to forbid just the industrialisation of Germany, but not farming. His demands and orders to
preclude Germans from any way of living were reported by close
collaborators and military commanders (see Fest, 1999; Goldensohn,
2004; Sereny, 1974; Speer, 1969).
Let us examine the issue with the help of hard-core, observable
facts under the vertex of Minus. It is not possible to carry on stating that Hitler loved the Germans. He may well have destroyed
this people; it has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and
Germany has never again provided the world with achievements
in art and philosophy even remotely comparable to the pre-Hitler
era. This man and his collaborators dedicated a lot of initial effort,
work, and unimaginable resources to taking care of both Germans
and Jews. Loving the German came in tandem with hating the Jew.
They were interdependent. This cannot be fitted into the established
psychoanalytic view about love and hate which is currently available. Let us say that one regards the issue under the vertex of the
whole object. In other words, states of mind devoid of splitting: that
had had to do with each one of the two ethnic groups. Both would
be loved and hated at the same time. Conversely, if the issue is seen
under the vertex of splitting, the Germans could at best be openly
loved and implicitly hated. This is not what happened: one people
had absolute love, and the other absolute hate. The measures taken
in the name of Love killed the loved object. The measures taken in
the name of Hate provided a lease of life to the hated object, the
Jewish group which earlier had been dissolving into assimilation.
At the end of the English translation of Isaac Bashevis Singers
novel The Family Moskat, Asa Heschel is told: Death is the Messiah. Singer was able to capture the paradox and the mystery
48
that characterises human life; he opens a door to this paradox, that

hope and redemption are possible in death. A syllogistic interpretation might be: Death is the Messiah. Hitler is Death. Hitler is the
Messiah.
I suggested in the clinical case that it was not simply that the
patient had a problem of love and hate with her husband, son and
analyst, but of L and H. She tried to prove that un-love (the violence and superiority implicit in over-protection) was superior
to love, and that un-hate (denying the hate, feeling that she is an
all-accepting and good person) was superior to hate. Using Bions
parlance in the metaphor, Hitler nourished L towards Germans
and H towards Jews.
Girolamo Savonarola exemplifies the same link: in the name of
Love he was tortured and killed; and there is more of the same in
Ingmar Bergmanns Calvinist bishop in Fanny and Alexander. The
suicidal vengeful terrorist is another telling example. In the psychoanalytic establishment it is the zealot supervisor. Once invested with
this function (by him- or herself or by others), he or she attempts to
destroy the apprentices efforts to see patients or the apprentices
analysis (competing with the supervisor) for the sake of protecting
psychoanalysis. Criticism of others produces rhetoric; self-criticism
produces poetry (T. S. Eliot). Criticism of others contrasts with selfcriticism. In the former case, one thinks that it is possible to preserve
a scientific or artistic field through admonishing other peoples
errors to the point of forbidding them to try their hand and to err.
Such critics prefer to do this instead of observing their own mistakes. A typical case is that of some scientists who could not be scientists and replaced that activity with epistemology or philosophy of
science, like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Similarly, art critics do
love art but cannot be artists. Many of them cannot do a Kantian or
Herderian kind of appreciation, following the example set by Frank
Kermode in our times; instead they attack artists. It is a Minus Love
relationship under the aegis of envy and greed. It does not matter
whether it appears as destructive criticism or constructive criticism. Both are omnipotent, omniscient and destructive to the extent
that they resort to judgmental values of good or bad. Judgmental
values regard envy and greed as philistine feelings (as in Meltzer,
1989); these feelings seem to me to relate to disciplines with a moral
Weltanschauung, such as theology, pedagogy and justice.
49
If intolerance of frustration is not so great as to activate the

mechanisms of evasion and yet is too great to bear dominance
of the reality principle, the personality develops omnipotence as
a substitute for the mating of the pre-conception, or conception,
with the negative realisation. This involves the assumption of
omniscience as a substitute for learning from experience by aid
of thoughts and thinking. There is therefore no psychic activity
to discriminate between true and false. Omniscience substitutes
for the discrimination between true and false a dictatorial affirmation that one thing is morally right and the other wrong. The
assumption of omniscience that denies reality ensures that the
morality thus engendered is a function of psychosis There is
thus potentially a conflict between assertion of truth and assertion of moral ascendancy. The extremism of the one infects the
other. [Bion, 1961b, p. 114]
The kidnapping father

There are fathers who imagine that they can deal better with progeny than mothers. A Father whose paranoid traits were fuelled by his
success as a businessman phantasised that he should steal Mothers
babies. Mother, who for her part was also prone to establish Minus
L links, took the plunge and in fact abandoned the progeny. She did
this twice: she had been married before and also left her first husband, leaving the care of the children in his hands. It seems that
Fathers Minus Love was the primary link in this case.
The progeny completed the cycle, nourishing Minus hate against
Mother. They pretended to take care of her. Contradictorily, both
tended to idealise her and at the same time could not gather any real
patience to care for her. They colluded in a sense of victimisation,
denying the aggression contained in her attitude. The older sought
analysis and acquired a more balanced view of both. The younger
was a drug addict who unfortunately found a delinquent psychoanalyst and developed a strong aversion to psychoanalysis.
The older son still carried deep scars that expressed a homosexual
link with Father and a visceral hate against women. With Father, he
kept a prohibited love affairbrushed aside by denial and reaction
formationthat survived in the guise of Minus Love. It expressed
itself with a remarkable imitation of Father; a pattern of permanent
50
quarrelling, mutual criticism and demands, and misunderstandings.

Father was over-demanding. He followed his Fathers business
career at the cost of leaving aside for twenty years a promising path
in the field of music. He felt he was a total failure in life. But he
displayed a rare, real talent in playing an instrument and was a selftaught erudite in the history of music, harmony and composition.
This expressed his utter dependence, together with refusal to get
on more tender terms with Father, refraining from contact except
with regard to demands which in the end were just one underlying
demand: Be my mother!1
This was a trend, a pattern to which the Father unconsciously
tried to correspond and which at the same time he seemed to initiate. The patient seemed to maintain a provocative, stubborn effort
to keep Fathers phantasies alive, as well as both giving Father the
chance to see the failure of the whole project of being Mothers
replacement and projecting his (the patients) own feelings of failure. Each seemed to use the other as the container for their feelings
of failureFather as a Father and hallucinated Mother: trying to be
both, he ended up being neither. The brothers failure to earn a living and to get married was a reminder of the Fathers hallucinated,
paranoid phantasies that he could out-mother Mother.
The kidnapping father has a female counterpart. These mothers
cannot love their babies because this love is not linked to love for the
man who fathered them.
Let us see some clinical examples from the vertex of Minus K.
The kind un-hating baby and its aloof mother

A baby would not cry to be breastfed. Either Mother or another
adult had to wake him. This suggested an exaggerated and violent
denial of the frustration and pain involved in feeling hunger and
leaving aside the activity of hallucinating the breast, a phantasy of
self-feeding and self-sufficiency. Mother refrained from any deep
emotional contact. She became awfully upset when bathing this male
baby. She was horrified when the baby had an erection. She refused
to touch the baby afterwards, leaving its care to a babysitter.
Father, a very affectionate being, noticing Mothers difficulties,
tried to perform part of her function: not in the fashion of replacing
her, as in the previous case, but out of the need to help the baby and
Mother too. Father was a kind of love-it-or-leave-it personality, very
51
amiable but able to explode in some situations which he perceived as

unjust or unfair. He was a remarkably truth-loving man who could
be as intensely loved by friends as hated by enemies.
Once, the non-demanding baby slipped under the blanket, issuing
no cry of distress. The family was watching TV in an adjacent room.
Father suddenly jumped up and went to the babys cot. He could
not explain his act, or himself. He sensed in some unknown way that
the baby was in danger. Mother was surprised and could not believe
that. Father had gone to the cot and could not see the baby. He looked
under the cot, at the sidesthe baby seemed to have vanished into
thin air. Mother, who grudgingly followed him, became desperate
and guilty, because she also realised that no one could see where her
baby was. Father then realised that the baby was under the blanket;
he could barely breathe. Father took him out and observed that he
was bluish, cyanotic. It was remarkable that Mother had no inkling
of the impending disaster. Usually we see this in Mothers.
The baby grew and developed a Minus Love relationship with
Mother, who nourished him with this kind of mental un-food.
She was prone to lie and was falsely submissive to the strong-willed
Father (see the Amelia syndrome below). Every time he realised
she was lying he would become enraged and complain bitterly on
the spot, but to no avail. She encircled him with false caresses, and
would surreptitiously brush aside her children, sending them out of
the dining room when he was eating. It was a covert criticism of his
explosive character. She used this feature of Father to terrorise the
progeny when they misbehaved: Ill tell Dad about that as soon as
he gets home.
The children, in due time, became especially attached to Father
despite his explosiveness, for he seemed to provide the human
warmthor capacity to love and regard for the truththat Mother
seemed to lack. Father had a very severe myocardial infarction at the
age of 48, at a time when the specific heart surgery was impossible;
Mother used his illness to heighten her seemingly caring attitude
towards him. This would have been quite acceptable if she had not done
it at the expense of caring for her then adolescent sons and daughters.
Father died prematurely a few years later. The family fell into
disarray, fractured by internal fights. Mother had two dicta which
she repeated throughout her life: I am more of a Wife than a
Mother; and: One must never love because if one loses the loved
one, one suffers greatly. It seemed that those phrases were uttered
52
unwittingly and in a split-off way. Inner conflict was denoted by

laughter; she had an ironic attitude all the time, and sometimes sarcastic, disguised as a sense of humour. She seemed to be a person
who could scarcely be in touch with herself. Resorting to the hypotheses of the four links, L, H and their Minus counterparts, it seems
that Father was able to love and hate. Mother resorted to un-love
as a better alternative to love, and to Minus H to the extent that she
could not express and experience her hate towards the father and
the children she had with him. In the end she un-hated all of them
and un-loved all of them, sowing dissension and rivalry, with no
possibility of becoming aware and thus of facing up to this.2
Not hating ones enemies seems to be the acme of Minus Hate.
One of the sons in the family just discussed displayed a very helping posture from his childhood. He was a gifted, intelligent person,
but displayed a remarkable clumsiness and lack of observation that
was an expression of his un-loving posture towards himself. At the
same time, it displayed his lack of concern for life, truth and other
people.
He was still a very young teenager when he tried through a kind
of reaction formation, but also as a desperate thrust, to have an alternative to what could throw him into the darkest loneliness conceivable. He put himself at the disposal of some cousins to help them
when they moved home. He worked hard and seemed to gain their
acknowledgement and a niche to be loved. Also, he began to protect his greedy brothers and sisters. This was sheer indiscrimination:
the sibs were not able to use his genuine help without increasing
their own greed. This pattern moulded a great deal of his mature
life. He was always trying to help people who could not be helped
without exploiting him. This pattern was seen in transference. From
childhood he could be seen trying to feed dying small animals such
as cats and birds. He had chosen a caring profession in the medical field despite conscious inclinations towards art or pure science.
When he was in the university, he was adamant in refusing to kill
animals such as dogs, frogs, pigs and cats used in experiments in the
classroom. He also took some pains to bring antibiotics to those animals which underwent surgery, trying to avoid their certain death.
His caring and seemingly interested posture indicated that his life
instincts turned to the group: social-ism, in Bions parlance. In this
case, death instincts turn to the ego. In his teens he took an interest
53
in social movements to take care of economically disadvantaged

people. Living under a military dictatorship in an underdeveloped
country whose hallmark was an outrageous social inequality, he felt
that communist propaganda was a highly stimulating alternative.
As a result he was once jailed by mistake, having trusted a police
informant. He seemed to have a knack for mistaking foes for friends.
He would lend money, procure jobs, and do favours for people. This
would invariably be repaid with contempt at best, or with aggression and attempts to harm him seriously, often causing real losses.
He was easy prey for profiteers and delinquent people in his own
profession. When he generously arranged some jobs for four of
them, in order to have three good workmates, all of them tried to displace him from the same job. Another friend did not pay him back
some money as agreed and openly advertised to common acquaintances how smart he was at making a fool of him. In other words, he
would link himself to envious enemies or sheer psychopaths. Two
of the latter tried to subject him to extortion; they were unsuccessful,
but in the meantime caused deep trouble.
Projective identification theories applied, but they did not seem
to adequately help the patient. To his own family, he seemed to be
prodigal, and in a concrete way he was. But often he would support
them financially in a lavish way more to fuel his self-image than anything else. In the rare moments that real generosity existed, he would
debase it through a transformation into a source of external approval.
Nevertheless, he was shy and self-critical about a kind of fame he
won due to his professional work, which was generally appreciated.
To sum up, he always tried to elicit proofs of unrestricted love
from the group. His demonstrations of love were often a kind of
teaching. He displayed through his behaviour how the person
should behave with him. Consequently, he construed pseudo-relationships where the person would learn to love him in an unrestricted way. His ensuing aggressive, hypercritical behaviour should
be seen as an honour, a gift.
I suppose that in the same sense that he dedicated Minus Hate
to his enemies, he created a rather complex mix of Love and Minus
Love for his friends. The simulation of love, seduction (which was
a strong identification with Mother), was just an attempt to evade
frustration; to un-hate his enemies through appeasement seemed to
this person to be a viable alternative.
54
He seemed unable to learn from experience. Truth, being robust,

finally emerged to him after four decades of life. His intelligence
and drive helped him to be a fairly successful professional. But he
developed phobic ideas about committing suicide which emerged
as a paroxysm.
The predicament of such people is that the capacity to love, if any,
is seriously impaired. Suicidal ideas became more frequent, as analysis proceeded. There was Love in some hidden place, for his wife
and sons tried to protect him, and kept a relationship despite his
frequent aloofness and lying. He began to provoke people to harm
him, becoming aggressive. He would often beat his head against
walls and mirrors in a somewhat hysterical fashion. It seemed that
he thought he was invulnerable. After some years of having traffic
quarrels, he stopped with them. But once he involved himself in a
serious traffic accident when he did not stop at a red light at a busy
junction.
Minus Love and Minus Hate sometimes reached their peak
through a whirlwind of self-aggression. Even though he seemed to
nourish real love for his wife when they met, as soon as the children
were born he became aggressive towards her. He became utterly
dependent on her; she was a kind, insightful and brave woman.
He seemed to keep a weird love in a confused way. He was particularly fond of her during the intervals in his attacks of fury; in this
way he resembled his father, but as an imitative process.
Analysis helped him in some self-perceptionwhich was
impaired due to an attack on any perception that was painfuland
in making him domesticate himself in some respects. But analysis
could not restore to him something he had never had: namely, a true
capacity to love. One of his two analysts became tired of his unfailing, unceasing and insidious criticisms.
He would find fault in everything they did, just like the female
patient who was described earlier. Many of his criticisms were to the
point, with the stereotactic precision that only psychotics are able
to achieve: a non-neurotic part of the personality being driven by
the psychotic part. The well-placed criticisms turned into misplaced
ones because they were made in a non-benevolent, odious way.
The analyst has to be especially aware of projective identification
with such patients: he must not collude with it and make it successful. It requires a special tendency to be patient and attentive.
55
The analysis is short of real free associations and the analyst must
help, offering the patient his free-floating attention and stimuli akin
to play in the analysis of children. This must not be confused with
patients dwelling in flights of imagination, or use of the analysts
feelings to interpret patients. Perhaps those analysts who believe in
uses of countertransference, or that countertransference can be
dealt with outside their own analysis, cannot see the point I am raising. Freedom is necessary: from known theories, from normal ways
of symbolisation. Above all, patience and forbearance are required,
to the point of exhaustion, in order not to resort to a judgmental
posture.
These cases display a common event: the seemingly good people
who avoid quarrelling in an overt way but are prone to explode as a
result of an accumulation of Minus Love and Minus Hate.
The familial benefactor

A patient accommodates her exploitative relatives; they steal her
underwear, smoke in her toilet, ask for gifts, and borrow money
without ever paying it back. The patient, a female, is utterly displeased but keeps looking for them, giving them shoddy gifts, delivering half-hearted favours. She uses them to prove her non-existent
generosityMinus Hatethat is observable in analysis. Through
self-envy, the patient is exploitatively linked to bad objects through
projective identification of her greed.
The Amelia syndrome, or the untamed shrews husband

Minus Hate can be seen in false compliance. A popular Brazilian
Carnival tune depicts a fictional character, Amelia, a kind woman
devoid of any vanity. She never failed to comply and tolerate her
husbands rather frequent misdeeds, and never complained.3
A wife who does not complain if her husband is late seductively
omits her own opinion in order to avoid suffering pain. Collusion is
cement for one who finds a suitable lying mate. It results in happy
marriages: quarrel-free and outwardly calm, they constitute Minusmarriages. A man dies; then the wife meets her husbands other
family when they turn up at the funeral. This kind of liar hates the
fact that living brings pain with it.
56
The same applies to a common type of man who acts as the

untamed shrews husband. In both cases, Minus L and Minus H are
linked to homosexual phantasies. The man cannot exert his potency
and prodigality and the woman cannot be really caring. Instead, he
appears feeble and she assumes a false potency. She can imitate and
feign tenderness; they refuse to perform a feminine surrender or to
prodigally offer a potent contribution. Both display abhorrence of
the penis. Such pairs cannot form a real creative couple and form a
Minus container and contained (see below).
In all cases, when Minus Love installs itself, love is felt as absolute. Egoism replaces self-love, hate is denied. Self-interest is always
the priority. A motherly or feminine attempt to take care and to care
is not possible. A fictional version of this may be John Fowles novel
The Collector (1963; film version 1965)a faithful description of a
type often found in real life.
False analysts driven by Minus Hate and Minus Love shrink from
telling the truth to a patient, fearing that the patient would abandon
analysis. I must be cruel to be kind expresses L and K: Hamlet
must try to find what Queen Gertrude really did. Beethoven, who
loved truth above anything else, left as an epigraph to his String
Quartet opus 135: Must it be so? It must be so. (Mu es sein? Es
mu sein.) In analysis and in real life the issue is not to love or to hate
but the imbalance. In both cases, denial of hate results in hate taking
the upper hand. Denying hate creates a violent love, which equates
to love; denying love facilitates hate itself.
Refusing to pay for analysis

Is there any analyst who has never undergone the experience of
dealing with patients who claim a lack of means to pay for analysis? They usually provide proof that they have no money, backed
by acted-out concrete measures in the external material reality. One
provoked his bosses in order to be fired; another argued with the
relatives who financed his analysis in order to force them to give up
paying.
They build a superior argument that would give them moral
superiority; they resort to the reversible perspective to reduce the
analyst to an envious, greedy being that wants to suck out the
57
patients assets. The fact is that the patient feels the analysis is
helpful to him (or her). The process of denudation continues till
Minus contained Minus container represent hardly more than an
empty superiority-inferiority that in turn degenerates to nullity
(Bion, 1962, p. 97). The amiable and helpful contact turns into a contest of superior arguments. There is a raging mutually hallucinated
anger when the analyst has difficulties in realising the phantastic
nature of projective identification. He becomes a Minus analyst.
Therefore, one maintains those links, like any link, within oneself
and with persons and things. The link between the analyst and the
patient may be described as both Minus L and Minus H. The analytic
pair, unable to become a creative couple, marches resolutely to K.
Abortion replaces Conception. Both behave as if receiving is better
than giving (one of the rules of transformations in hallucinosis; Bion,
1965, p. 130). Is there any way to indicate this synthetically?
Another patient, whom I described elsewhere (Sandler, 1997),
lied about her family name. She surmised that I would guess she
was well off if I had known it. During analysis she created serious
fusses about paying; in fact she gained from the experience and in
her innermost, unconscious emotions was willing to pay what she
owed and was able to pay. The quarrel was an attempt to not become
aware and take responsibility for this. She resorted to violent acted
out, quasi-hysterical postures. Once she refused to lie down; on
another occasion, she suddenly rose from the couch and took the
shoe from my left foot. In my earlier paper I supposed that she was
simply refraining from displaying love, hate being the only impulse
she could manifest. She left analysis and looked for a compliant
and seductive analyst after that. She decided to pursue a career in
analysis. She liked to tell people that her analysis with the first analyst was very good but at the same time awful and unbearable; and
she would loudly state that her second analysis was just a means of
obtaining permission to be a candidate of the local Institutea none
too subtle way of denigrating her second analyst. It seems to me
that what underlies her lack of gratitude and lack of developing
a fuller loving experience was the prevalence of Minus Hate and
Minus Love towards analysis itself, rather than towards the analyst.
The un-loving attitude was expressed in her not continuing or looking for the best analysis she could have, under her own patterns
58
of judgment. The un-hating attitude was expressed in looking for a

compliant training analyst.
The adamant self-pamperer

A patient quarrelled with the director of the institute where he
teaches. He refused to give classes, favouring the supervising of
small groups. He would not make himself responsible for his option,
pressing the director to give in. He spent a great deal of time in analytic sessions complaining about an awful backache because he
had to stand on his feet for hours in the classroom. From previous
experience with this patient, it became clear that he was trying to
drag the analyst into a conversation in which the analyst was to
prove the superiority of his medical knowledgehe knew that the
analyst had medical training and was utterly uncomfortable, due to
rivalry. The analyst realised that the issue was not a Talmudic discussion about medical issues.
He could not accept reality as it is. But this was a hallucinated situation. If he behaved in everyday life as he behaved in the session,
he would be a person unable to perform the most trivial activities.
For example, he would never be able to cross a street without being
run over. In the session, he tried to dictate how it should be, what
the analyst should say, and how he should convey his meaning.
He did this with all sorts of rationalisations and logical arguments
including the quoting of psychoanalytic theories that had previously been offered by the analyst in very different contexts, which
the patient had learned by heart, and others which would back his
own ideas. When the analyst tried to make an analogy between the
patients impositions in the session and the overriding superiority
of his backaches to convince the director, he said, in an apparently
illogical way: The first lesson a good professor learns is not to lie
down when lecturing. The analyst asked: Lie down? The patient
noticed the slip. Hmm sit down. One must not sit down when
giving classes. The students will not respect you.
In doing this, he was lecturing the analyst and not lying/sitting
down, which meant: submitting himself to something. His attitude
was to be omnipotent and omniscient in the here and now of the
session. His arguments were superior to anything else. He felt he
was a loving, serious professional: I cannot do less than the best.
59
He was successfully turning analysis into a dispute of right versus

wrong. The analyst was invited to feel hate; or to be pedagogical.
The analysts comments were felt as highlighting the defect of this
patient (Bion, 1965, p. 134). Rational arguments destroy free associations; logic replaces intuition; understanding replaces insight. Final
answers replace evolution and openness to the unknown.
PS D and
We have already studied the definitions of the Minus phenomenon, and Minus container/contained. Bion adds to them that of
Minus PS D: disintegration, total loss, and depressive stupor, or
intense impaction and degenerate stuporous violence. The living
movement, symbolised by the double arrow, is denied. Bion states
that the descriptions of
and PS D are incomplete (Bion,
1963, pp. 523), adding that he will use them until further experience is forthcoming.
One may apprehend Minus container/contained ( ) as the
belief that infertility is superior to fertility. Does it have any contrapuntal function? I suggest that an imbalance between
and
results in attacking the supreme creativity of the parental couple
(after Klein).
Too much fertility would be a prevalence of
. Too much infertility would be a prevalence of . They seem to have the same
destructive outcome. Drawing an analogy from present-day societies, are both overpopulation and the destruction of the environment
(nuclear bombs and plants, destruction of the ozone layer and rain
forests, and so on), which leads to the extinction of species, linked to
homosexual phantasies? I start from the supposition that it is psychoanalytically irrelevant if these homosexual phantasies are coupled
with sexual choices approved by the group, or sub-groups within the
encircling group, as Freud emphasised. Homosexual here means the
negativation of the difference, which precludes a creative couple.
The adherence to certain sexual choices is just a phenomenal form.
It is no more relevant than any sensuously apprehensible fact. It has
a seminal function as a first step, a port-of-entry to be later metabolised in psychic terms. The latter has psychoanalytic interest. There
is no passing of moral judgment to state that homosexual phantasies are un-creative from the biological vertex; moreover, because of
60
human bisexuality, these phantasies exist in any human being.

is conducive to Minus Life. Minus Life is not Death; it is a sterile and
solitary life.
The various experiences we depicted clinically and with the help
of social analogies seemed to become more visible and more amenable to being dealt with because of Bions suggestions about the
Minus Realm: K, L, H, PS D and .
The sessions with the patients are marked by verbal violence,
acting out, emptiness, non-pregnant silences, favouring of worldly
issues or desire-ridden pseudo-free associations. The issues to be
talked about are imperiously imposed; this act usually provides
sadistic pleasure.
The patients maintain interest in coming for many reasons. Not all
include an interest in analysis, a point that merits attention. Sadistic
collusion and a fear that still some traces of truth can exist (Bion,
19581979, p. 248) are among them. Provided the analyst is capable
enough of not entering into mounting projective identifications, he
will be able to extricate himself from the shared hallucinosis which
the patient is constantly inviting him to enter.
Notes
1. This case will be reviewed in more detail, under the vertex of the
analysts personal factor, in the next volume.
2. The same case was seen under the vertex of catastrophic change
in Part IV of the first volume. In practice, the two approaches are
intertwined.
3. Amelia que era mulher de verdade / No tinha a menor vaidade (Amelia was of the true female race / Of vanity she had not a
trace).
CHAPTER FOUR
The hypothesis: a versus link
ur question posed above was: what would be the link when

Minus K is at work with the function of a transformation?
If this link can be posited at all, is there any way to indicate in a synthetic way the simultaneous presence of both positive
K, L, H, PS
D,
and their negative counterparts? Adding this
to the incompleteness of Bions original descriptions, acknowledged by himself in his characteristically scientific posture, we see
that his theory allows or even begs for a fuller comprehension and
expansion.
When Minus K is functioning as a transformation, is it useful
to carry on regarding it as also functioning as a link? I suppose it
may be confusing both theoretically and practically to regard it as
functioning both as a link and as a transformation, at least simultaneously. This leaves our earlier question unanswered: if it is
true that one cannot manage some clinical situations with the aid
of the theories that depict just Love and Hate, what would be the
link when Minus K is at work as a transformation? Or, conversely,
when Minus K is functioning as a transformation, I found it useful
61
62
to hypothesise that a destructive link other than Hate may underlie

the situation.
The attempt to answer this question led us to hypothesise a fourth
link. I suggest the existence of a continuously destructive link or a paradoxically anti-connective link between thoughts, destined to destroy
thinking itself. It is a case not just of introjecting a bad breast, but also
of introjecting nothingness with its accompanying incessant attempt
to find an object, good or bad. The link would perform the same
contrapuntal role that Penelopes constructions and deconstructions
performed in Homers Odyssey. In other words, the Plus (+), Positive
realm is not possible at all if dissociated from the Minus realm.
Bions quasi-mathematical notation of the interplay between PS
and D, the double arrow , represents a to-and-fro movement, a
living dialectical paradox. Taking into account that Bions sign
is compact and useful in conveying his meaning, I tried to find a
graphically a Minus counterpart of . Always trying to expand
Bions notation within his own terms, one may use the sign ; but
in order to make its dynamic warring nature graphically clearer,
I shall replace with another sign:
. Thus
symbolises the
negative of .
A review to justify the proposal

Bion describes three basic links (L, H, and K). These links function
in the person with his or her internal objects; they describe how
the mind functions within itself and its objects; they describe links
between persons (interpersonal links) and links between persons
and inanimate objects.
Bion uses the vertex of emotional experiences and relationships
to describe the three basic links (1962, p. 42). They seem to me to
express in the realm of phenomena the basic instincts (love, death,
and epistemophilic) adumbrated by Freud, which belong to the
realm of noumena. As we have seen, Bion defines the K link as a
forceful activity destined to prove that misunderstanding is superior to understanding. This expansion adumbrates a Minus L, a
Minus H, and a Minus container/contained ( ).
Bions second theory of links draws from biology to construe an
analogy to deal with the links between container and contained.
T H E H Y P OT H E S I S
63
It seemed that his first theory of links needed an amendment. Hence

the parasitic, commensal, and symbiotic links.
One may apply the definition of Minus K to L and H, producing
Minus L and Minus H.
There seems to be a need to expand Bions theory to cover facts
made visible by his descriptions as well as to unify the two theories
of links regarding some aspects of the relationships between container, , and contained, .
We suggest that Bions double arrow
is a graphic representation of an ability to tolerate paradoxes. It is a living to-and-fro movement. It is an expression of the supremely creative act: the sexual
intercourse that perpetuates life. It would be the living ethos of sexuality itself. The double arrow is the most basic mode of linking; it
allows for the existence of a real link. Our proposal explores possible
consequences of a conjunction of Bions theories of PS D stemming
from Klein.
We propose the name versus or V link for the negative link that
is defined as a link which opposes that which exists.
represents
the negative of anything linked by links. V is an anti-link link. V provides the continuous, dynamic denial of emotional experiences and
gives the impression to the beholder that no relationships exist. The
V link expresses lack of compassion and disregard for truth. It forms
a dialectical pair with
. It may offer an alternative to unify Bions
theories of links.
Intuition and V
Intuition is, in Kants definition, an apprehension of reality without the intermediation of rational thinking. It may be regarded as
a Geiger counter of the numinous realm, truth-O (Bion, 1970,
p. 29). Nevertheless, Andr Green has pointed out that in the
limited sphere of our chosen subject our intuition may be un il en
trop; we are able to grasp a meaning so unwelcome that we cannot
tolerate what our own perception reveals (Bion, 1979, p. 101).
We propose to regard this as the exercising of the Versus link,
under the aegis of intolerance of frustration, paradoxes or any
lack of knowledge. If the clinical examples depicted earlier did
demonstrate the need for the concept of a Versus Link (V), some
64
of its phenomenal manifestations may be put into theoretical

terms:
Mind
Body
Desire
Necessity
Matter
Energy
Analysis
Feeling
Thinking
Form
Thinking
Theory
Doing
Practice
Rationalism
Psychic reality
Irrationalism
Material reality
Synthesis
Content
Conscious
Unconscious
Life
Death
Reality
Phantasy
Health
Illness
Love
Hate
Id
Superego
Normal
PS
Understanding
Mind
Matter
Right
Abnormal
Experiencing
Wrong
There is a continuous denial of continuums and of real tension

and movement, the synonyms of life. One sets out to immobilise that
which is pure movement, which is a synonym of life and is inextricable from suffering. Bions model is a man living in a pigeon cote, the
character named Robin in the first volume of A Memoir of the Future;
it was based on his experience as a soldier under bombardment in a
false shelter in World War I (Bion, 19171919; Sandler, 2002c). Paranoid ideas of owning the absolute truth prevail.
The Versus link would be the medium through which reversible perspective actuates. There is a denial of the two-faced
possibilities of O, the numinous realm. Take a hand, for instance.
The dorsal side is very different from the ventral side if one relies
just on the macroscopic appearances. On the dorsal side one finds
nails, hairs, the articulations; the ventral side displays lines that
make a fortune-teller happy. O, hand-in-itself, is neither one nor
the other. (On reversible perspective, see Bion, 1963; Sandler, 2005.)
V generates dualism. There is a lack of integration of a whole
) is not restricted to the intrapsychic non-integration of
object. V (
those aspects of the object that are felt as good with those felt as bad.
This characterises an object that is split and damaged. I think that
Melanie Kleins description of this situation is good enough. The
prevalence of the envious Versus link impairs not just the persons
relation with his or her objects but the object-relationship-in-itself.
The objects are kept in permanent intrapsychic opposition. It is
toiling-in-itself, in contrast with real work.
Melanie Klein described a single real effect of projective
identification: the splitting of thought processes (Klein, 1946, p. 298).
65
Bion suggested (in his New York and Brazilian seminars) that more
events beyond phantasies actually might happen in an analytic session. The Versus link may provide a clue to Bions question. The
persons relation with reality is made by a quasi-permanent evasion
of reality. He does not abandon this relation, as for example in pure
autism or in Freuds description of psychosis; but he hallucinates
that he has abandoned it. The un-relationship is the form that the
relationship assumes; the continuous, unceasing destruction of the
relationship becomes a way of non-life, devoted to mere survival.
Disregard for truth is seen as superior to regard for truth. This is a
doomed project right from its inception; the person feels compelled
to keep his maladjustment in constant repair (Bion, 19581979,
p. 100). The situation perversely apes a central feature of life as it
is: life also must be kept fit. Talking is used as an end-in-itself. No
communication ensues; entertainment replaces living. The basic
reality (truth) to be denied (negativated) is that of the supremely
creative couple. The infant phantasises that it is born through
parthenogenesisan unconscious phantasy in Freuds and Kleins
sense (Isaacs, 1948).
Hate of truth
The possibility for a functioning mind to couple the Minus realm
with its obverse, tolerance of frustration,
, is perennially replaced
by a negativation of whatever it is. Platos and Kants awareness
that there is a human inability to grasp the truth wholly, ultimately
and permanently is mischievously mistaken for denial of the existence of truth.
In physics, Einsteins theory of relativity is replaced by a free-forall relativism; Heisenbergs principle of uncertainty by a principle
of ignorance. Denial of truth has a long history. For example, Kant
perceived the risks involved in idealism. His perception did not prevent Fichte, Heidegger, and many others returning to it. Its practical
consequence was expressed by the phrase Imagination forms the
basis of knowledge. It pleases the post-modernist. Perhaps he dismisses or ignores the fact that this phrase was uttered by Hitler as
his motto (Bracher, 1969; Cohen, 1989). Therefore a formerly German
tendency resurfaced in unexpected French quarters. Thinkers such
as Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour and (to an extent)
66
Michel Foucault denied the existence of a reality out there. That

which is called truth would, according to certain members of the
intelligentsia (the post-modernists), be the belief of simpletons, for
truth would be the product of an isolated mind. A cooked version of
it is Rortys statement that truth is not a philosophical problem.
Psychoanalytically, I believe that the posture of those philosophers can be seen as an excorporation, to use Andr Greens
term. In practical examples it is either suicide or homicide. Is it a
mere coincidence that some of the outstanding post-modernist philosophers, echoing their German predecessors, committed self- or
hetero-murder, in factually concrete terms? One may wonder what
would have happened if these authors had been able to find a real
analysis. It is not certain that this could have helped them. Provided
that they could avoid taking the path of hating the analyst or analysis, it could. They were highly intelligent and sophisticated scholars.
Perhaps they would have had a chance to realise that
The patient who has no regard for truth, for himself, or for his
analyst achieves a kind of freedom arising from the fact that so
much destructivity is open to him for so long. He can behave in
a way that destroys his respect for himself and his analyst, provided he always retains enough contact with reality to feel that
there is some respect to destroy; and this he can always assume
if his analyst continues to see him. If his analyst does not continue, then he has destroyed the analysis. But destruction of the
analysis is to be avoided, for it entails loss of freedomat least
till a new object is foundthus introducing a need for moderation that is apparent at other points in the closed system that the
patient strives to produce. An obvious instance of this is the need
to avoid successful suicide or murder. [Bion, 19581979, p. 249]
Good object
Bad object, greed and ambivalence
Good and bad jump erratically from one object to another.

Groundless decisions taken on the spur of the moment are determined by the quanta of frustration of desire at a given instant. Greed
is the dominant affect.
Clinically, this illuminates some of the cases which exhibit overt
manifestations of ambivalence, an inability to make choices. Dealing
67
with them as if they were a weakness of the ego or irresponsibility

does not produce the expected results. Dealing with such cases as
idealisation does not produce results either. But dealing with greed
and idealisation as a search for a wholly satisfying object, idea or
person seems to help some of those patients who tolerate analysis,
and find an analyst who tolerates frustration at a low enough level
for that patient. The psychoanalytic fact seems to be greed nourished
by Minus L and Minus H relationships towards the object. This may
be the basic functioning of the opportunistic liar and the profiteer (as
the false friend or our example of the good person above).
Putting this in terms of the internal creative couple, the bad object
(or the object felt as bad) and the good object may be the Father,
and then again the Mother. There is a whirling, endless jumping to
and fro. It forms an eternal doubt, a disorientation that is chaos-producing and is increased by the chaos thus produced. This situation
differs from the philosophical or the scientific doubt that leads to
transient knowledge and builds up processes of knowing (K).
One jumps to conclusive absolute truths which are evanescent and
as tenuous as they are tenacious. The basic idea is first and foremost
that truth does not exist outside ones mind. Hence the authoritarian personality described by Hannah Arendt among others. Its social
manifestation is partisanship. After all, the Janus or Vicar of Bray personality is highly successful in institutional politics, in the same way
that an honest politician is doomed to be abhorred.
The basic psychic constellation is an ongoing internal immaterial
vicious cycle that may be represented graphically by
Good object (Mother)
Good object (Father)
Bad object (Father)

Bad object (Mother)
The concept stemming from a creative parental couple is not allowed

to survive. The pair produces destruction, a metaphor for which may
be the idea of the politician, engineer or physicist who prefers to
develop an atom bomb instead of a nuclear plant. The same problem
occurred before with the mastering of fire.
The preconception in the negative and versus realm

The preconception is not of a breast or of Oedipus, but rather of parthenogenesis. There is no realisation that can match it in the human
68
sphere. This preconception dictates that the world is a subjective

idea, that the mind construes reality. The preconception of the breast
is a self-nourishing independent individual mind equated to the
breast.
Dependence is denied; all the rules of hallucinosis (Bion, 1965,
pp. 131133) are present. The superior object is the object that
the individual mind creates in order to get rid of frustration. The
supreme creativity of the couple cannot be tolerated; masturbation
is enshrined.
Oedipus in the light of Versus: from pair to couple

In trying to integrate Bions and Greens contributions, we came to
state that the empowerment of the negative is an aftermath of the
attempts to dismiss the existence of truth. Simultaneously, there is the
denial of the Minus realm, of frustration, of the no-breast. As experiencing hallucination seems to be necessary to know what reality
is all about; and experiencing falsehood is needed to meet truth, the
Minus realm cannot be denied; it is the necessary counterpoint to
the existence of truth. Its denial produces the imbalance.
We now re-state this in terms of a link, the Versus link, which
belongs to the realm of the raging, destructive negative. It is not a
disturbance or pathology: it is an active situation. It is all-powerful
because of its exclusively conscious character, that of an intention. What does not happen is the transit between conscious and
unconscious. What is unconscious is the destruction of which it is
made and to which it contributes. If it gains the realm of the unconscious, as happened in our clinical example where the man looked
for a woman and she had a loving disposition demonstrated by the
presence of loving children, some of its effects can be obliterated.
A symptom and sign that the negative gained access to the realm of
the Minus unconscious realm is its presence in dreams.
V corresponds to a state of mind that perennially harbours Mother
Father. An external source of life is denied. More likely than not,
primary envy and primary narcissism are at the origin; but V further
fuels primary narcissism. The introjected parental couple is extremely
unstable; in the end, there is no parental couple left and no coupling at
all. There are pairs, which are barely formed before they suffer a skew
and schism. This fact was described in the 1950s by group- and familyoriented therapists such as Theodore Lidz, Gregory Bateson et al.
69
These pairs are homo-. They impose no-life. Mutual adoration

replaces love. Adoration is an expression of Minus L (L). Denial
of Minus L occurs in the so-called homosexual partners that are
against procreation. The Minus loses its contrapuntal value; it prevails and disruption wins the game. The rule of the superiority of an
idea, object or person forms homosexual phantasies: the idea of ones
superiority over the breast and the parental couple. These phantasies
are not the privilege of overt, self-declared or environment-declared
homosexuals. They appear in seemingly socially adapted persons
and families, and are observable in analysis.
A non-family is built in these cases, or a Minus-family. Like any
group under the basic assumption of pairing (Bion, 1961a) it proceeds into disruption: paranoid-schizoid pairs prevail in the family
dis-organisation.
As in the example of the explosive loving father and his good
person son, once the source of love dies, the family which until
then was tenuously maintained disintegrates into warring parties
especially if the source is the father rather than the mother. The
fratricidal war to gain control of inherited goods of a material
nature assumes the form of a fight for survivaland to a certain
extent it is.
These pairs are in constant mutual persecution and war. There
is no working through of the Oedipus triangle; it is not allowed
to gain its nature of three-ness. The natural love mothers entertain for sons, and fathers for daughters, is replaced by a hateful
attack against the progenitor of the opposite sex. Sexual relationship is replaced by satisfaction of lust. Perhaps one should restrict
the use of the otherwise popular phrase opposite sex just to these
cases.
In contrast, biologically and psychically, when V does not prevail,
the sexes complement rather than oppose each other. A dynamic
(Versus) with the positive realm ( ) is expressed
balance of
by married couples. Their main feature is mutual collaboration;
in contrast, pairs cling together through collusion. Movement and
newness typical of creation and life is replaced by unsteadiness. The
progeny is involved in the demonisation of the matching pair; disrupted homes have the members of pairs glued to each other in a
confused mle. A physical separation usually ensues. This is done
in order to give verisimilitude to the situation. But how can one put
asunder that which was never united?
70
In Elective Affinities [Die Wahlverwandtschaften], Goethe, one of the

forebears of Freud and of psychoanalysis, presents marriage with
the aid of the formulation of a paradox. It is a synthesis of impossibilities, but despite this it is the beginning and the end of all civilisation (Goethe, 1809). Goethe, a man, recognises the womanas
did Homer with Penelope; William Shakespeare with Desdemona,
Cordelia and Cressida; and Ronsard with too many names to
mentionwith no envious or greedy attacks.
Elective Affinities tells us about the paradox whereby people constantly search for happiness despite the fact that it is impossible to
attain; but above all, inaugurating the Romantic discovery of the
woman, it tells us about the phallic firmness of a woman who does
not fear her masculinity and tolerates frustration.
This discovery was acquired through painful learning from experience. In an earlier work, Die Leiden des Jungen Werther [The Sorrows
of Young Werther], Goethe tells us of the fragility of a pseudo-man,
of hate for a parental couple, of the envious and ungrateful person,
of parents uncaring posture with their progeny, of the long way
from manipulation stemming from vested interests to the obtruding of real love that demands renouncement. Goethes path to maturity is described in Wilhelm Meisters journeys. Finally, the Chorus
Mysticus utters the last lines of Part II of Faust: Eternal womanhood
draws us all on, synthesising Goethes tolerance of the same paradox that nourished Freud: respect for a woman. This demands desire
and renunciation of it. In sharp contrast, Carl Schmitt, a Nazi lawyer
famous for his two-faced attitude, fumed at Novaliss and Schlegels
feminine exaltation ( feminine Schwrmerei) (Lwy & Sayre, 1992,
p. 10; see also Bracher, 1969).
Individually speaking, this means the maturation of a whole
human life. A whole process of analysis is required for some people to achieve this. Hundreds of millennia seemed necessary for
humanity to perceive and recognise paternity (Dupuis, 1987). It is a
yet unfinished history.
Regard and concern for the woman and the creative couple
requires an acknowledgement of the woman as the source of a propitiatory environment for the man. What does she propitiate? The
development of the mans capacity to be potent. Fausts history
ends when he recognises the woman. In Melanie Kleins terms, this
acknowledgement occurs when the man is able to move towards the
71
depressive position, falling from self-attributed places on pedestals

where a state of hallucinosis makes for feelings of superiority and
worldly importanceexpressions of contempt for the breast.
Fausts real life is about to begin when he gives up his projects to
move heaven and Earth, to wage wars, to make epics full of Sturm
und Drang. The tale begins with a known project but leads to the
unfolding unknown; it is ineffable and therefore cannot be described.
It may be livable.
The necessity for a woman to exert her masculinityto be potent
and prodigalis seen in the need a human female (as well as the
female of other mammals) has to protect her progeny from the
father. Another illustration might be the myth of Cronus and Rhea.
It describes the mother both non-protecting and protecting her progeny. Cronus swallowed Rheas babies as soon as they were born,
apart from Zeus, whom Rhea replaced with a stone wrapped in
swaddling clothes. When Zeus grew up, he made his father disgorge
his siblings, who were still alive in their fathers stomach. Zeus and
his two brothers, Poseidon and Hades, were destined to dominate
the world, becoming the gods respectively of the air and sky, the
seas, and the underworldthus replacing their father in an early
version of Oedipus. This example can be seen in the clinical case of
the loving father and the aloof mother described earlier.
Minus Love links and Minus Hate links are not necessarily conor
ducive to destruction per se; only intolerance of them is.
Versus allows for expressions of L, H, and . It is the modus
faciendi, the medium through which greed, envy, murder, rivalry
and triumph are made feasible when an imbalance between Minus
and its positive counterparts obtrudes. Ideal egos make for expectations, by nature embedded in desire; the real son or daughter, the
would-be synthesis is dead at birth and is damned, considered as a
burden.
Container and contained revisited: The creative product

Bions last representation for
was
72
In our view this indicates more effectively the functional

monism of PS D. This monism can be restated graphically in each
of the split pairs of the table above.
One should distinguish two dialectical phases. Phase One is
thesis and antithesis; Phase Two is thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
Applying this to constructions in analysis (form and content) and to
Oedipus, we would have a dynamic movement that is depicted in
the two diagrams below.
Form
Content
Mother
Function
Father
Son or Daughter
In short, Oedipus = Non-Versus. All paradoxes that call for toleration in analysis and in life may flow into a creative product, the
synthesis. It is unknown, like any son or daughter. In an analytic session, it becomes and may be experienced at the decisive
moment. This event can be likened to Andr Greens thirdness.1
Verbal silence and Versus

Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of a Versus link resides in
some kinds of verbal silence. The quality of verbal silencerather
than the sensuous fact in itselfis what matters. Some silences are
pregnant; some are linked to omission. Shame usually indicates the
luxury of omnipotence. Silence may harbour hallucination; some
silences are linked to sheer anxiety. There are persistent conundrums
in the psychoanalytic movement, which we may call theory versus
practice, and philosophy versus psychoanalysis.
Form and content in the analytic session

One of the pairs in the table is the formula Form
Content. In
the psychoanalytic movement, many tried to use Bions contributions to wage a rational war of words. Those whom I might call the
experientialists claim to favour the form taken by the experience
in the session; they are set against those who may be called
contentists, who argue for interpretations of symbols. If in any
73
war the first victim is truth, in wars between psychoanalysts the first
Content conunvictim is the patients truth. Perhaps the Form
drum, which we see as false, is best illuminated by Louis Sullivans
aphorism form follows function. The thesis (form) and the
antithesis (content) would be followed by their synthesis, an immaterial fact, intuitable, that we may call function. Both warring parties are wrong.
Versus, the negative link, may be regarded as a
perversion of PS D.
Versus, Science and Art

Taking both the realm of Minus (or the negative) and Versus into
account determines a way of working in analysis. It is not positive
and rational. At the same time, it does not abhor the positive; perhaps because of this Bion resorts to the doctrine of Incarnation to
deal with the relationship of a true idea, the thinker (or mystic)
and the Establishment. (Bion, 1970).
It contributes to a subtlety that catches the unconscious while
avoiding explanative rationalism. The positivistic, conscious,
rational trend may be likened to films with scenes of explicit sex
vis--vis films with no sex scenes at all. The latter evoke something
without making it banal through sensuous bombardment; they may
exhale real sex and love that can be scented by the onlookers mind.
The conscious intention of throwing light just spreads darkness.
Explanations and understanding are paradox-dampers. The paradox is not extinguished but it disappears from consciousness, and
free exchange between the analysts conscious and unconscious is
hampered, or even precluded.
Morals appear, replacing the analytic task with pedagogy and religion. All of these are at the service of intolerance of a paradox: light/
darkness. In contrast, Bion suggested an aim, an ambition, which,
if I could achieve, would enable me to be deliberately and precisely
obscure; in which I could use certain words which could activate
precisely and instantaneously, in the mind of listener, a thought or
train of thought that came between him and the thoughts and ideas
already accessible and available to him (1975, p. 204). Knowledge
evolves as a living, dynamic fact, and a creative marriage.
In this sense, the contrapuntal Minus must not be dissociated
from plus to allow for truthful, transient, intuitive glimpses of O.
74
It is the insight referred to by Freud. This state may be represented,

albeit cumbersomely, by { } {
}. This notation is to preclude the
demonisation of {
} and stresses its contrapuntal function in the
apprehension of reality.
The Versus link seeks the Positive, the Yes, the split absolute
truth. Positivism (belief in causes and effects, concrete locations in
time or space, denial of intuition, split between mind and matter,
nave realism) is the work of the Negative (in Greens sense) that
negativates Science. Looking for the positive leads to a versus
link with truth.
The greatest writers did not intend to depict the Yes, the positive realisation that would satisfy a preconception, and the noumenon. They are skilled in hinting at its existence; it must be born and
realised in the audiences mind. Gabriel Garca Mrquez encircles it
in Love in the Time of Cholera. A boat with a loving couple has gone
adrift. The loving couple is absolutely devoid of sensuous endowments that would account for mutual attraction. They will, at last,
live a real life after half a century of illusions, hallucinosis and
fulfilment. The author indicates something that can be lived but cannot be told.
It seems that it was too late for King Lear to profit from his clear
perception of a woman. This perception never came to Othello
(please see Part IV of the first volume on catastrophic change); it
existed in Romeo but could not come to fruition. It slips through
human fingers as if one were trying to hold liquid in ones hands.
It bathes ones hands but it cannot assuage thirst; it seems to be, as
in the popular film Scent of a Woman (first starring Vittorio Gassman
and remade with Al Pacino), just a scent. Another popular work,
Patrick Sskinds novel Perfume, depicted one who could construe
scents but had no sense of smell himself. For the true lovers in Elective
Affinities the perception of a woman, Charlotte, obtrudes when the
neglected son meets his death while in the care of the envious, lustful, immature niece (the false woman). The impotent male flees to
war in a corny, stupid attempt to prove his false masculinity in a
typically pseudo-male way: concretising that which he lacks psychically. Versus,
, precludes the inception of Oedipus.
Destruction and death are not necessarily badness or evil,
even though they can be used to those ends; even love (turned
into Minus L) can be used for destruction. And it is not only the
75
vehemence of the subjects uncontrollable hatred but that of his love

too which imperils the object (Klein, 1934, p. 286). Being good as
Hitler and Stalin were, and as their modern (but still unrecognised)
heirs are, Bin Laden and those like him who feel they are the incarnation of Goodness.
Rationalism
Is the resilient tendency to rationalise a threat to the survival of the
psychoanalytic movement? It allows one to learn about analysis
while remaining virgin of analysis. This is the difference between
becoming and knowing about (Bion, 1965, p. 153). The Versus
link offers opportunities for rationalisation and positivistic explanatory schemata. It contributes to the silencing of instincts referred to
by Freud. It contributes to the consistent human failure to grasp
the nature of relativity the fact that it includes paradox (Bion,
1975, p. 80). In analysis, the Versus link engenders a blindness to
the dreamy nature of free associations, a frozen clinging to manifest
contents. It allows us to take the patients utterances at face value, to
be bewildered and deny the paradox that symbols mean something
that is not themselves (Gombrich, 1960).
Note
1. Please see Chapter Eight for an expansion of the outcome and aftermath of potentially creative elemental couples psychoanalytically
described.
PART II
HERE AND NOW: A MEMOIR
OF THE FUTURE
CHAPTER FIVE
Bions Trilogy and its reception
you may be accused of insanity. Should I then be tough and

resilient enough to be regarded and treated as insane while
being sane? If so, it is not surprising that psychoanalysts are,
almost as a function of being analysts, supposed to qualify for
being insane and called such. It is part of the price they have to
pay for being psychoanalysts.
(Bion, 1975, p. 113)
An analyst is not doing his job if he investigates something
because it is pleasurable or profitable anyone who is not
afraid when he is engaged on psychoanalysis is either not doing
his job or is unfitted for it.
(Bion, 1979, p. 5167)
SHERLOCK You heard that fellow Bion? Nobody has ever
heard of him or of Psychoanalysis. He thinks it is real, but that
his colleagues are engaged in an activity which is a more or less
ingenious manipulation of symbols. There is something in what
79
80
he says. There is a failure to understand that any definition

must deny a previous truth as well as carry an unsaturated
component.
(Bion, 1975, p. 92)
uring the final years of his life (19751979) Bion gathered

three collections of writings into a trilogy entitled A Memoir
of the Future. They were written in a seemingly new form. His
first draft of it, still untitled, is linked to his war experience and dates
from 1972. The Trilogy constantly conjoins a number of styles found
in the writings of some philosophers, poets, mystics, psychoanalysts
and mathematicians. To deal satisfactorily with the Trilogy requires
a book, which would contain many quotations that can organise the
various mental facts scattered all over the Trilogy. This introduction
to the work can serve as an invitation to something irreplaceable:
namely, reading the books. In any case, a few quotations are included
in order to give hard facts (Bions writings) to back up statements that
otherwise may sound arbitrary and ill-founded, or, what is worse,
may appear to the hostile reader as an exercise in eulogy.
I would include as indispensable companions to the Trilogy
Bions War Memoirs and the two volumes entitled The Long WeekEnd and All My Sins Remembered. These are wholly autobiographical, in contrast to the Trilogy, which uses autobiographical data just
as containers to convey scientific and psychoanalytic issues. These
volumes illuminate some parts of the Trilogy, especially with regard
to childhood and war experiences; they also illuminate the roots of
some concepts, such as passionate love.
Increasingly, albeit slowly, the late Bion becomes less late
meaning deadand more Bion. His works since Transformations
are read more than ever, following formidable reactions against
them. He continuously stresses the need to abandon formal logic,
teleological answers, forced memory, contrived understanding, and
perhaps the main enemy of intuition: allegiance to desire, under the
aegis of the principle of pleasure/displeasure. La rponse est le malheur de la question, a quotation from Maurice Blanchot given to him
by Dr Andr Green, became his motto. A Memoir of the Future contains much material from his conferences, mainly in Brazil, Italy and
Argentina, given during the late 1960s and the 1970s up to his death
in 1979. They make public a host of previously unpublished ideas
BIONS TRILOGY AND ITS RECEPTION
81
and give them new formal presentations, displaying forms tested

since 1972. I suppose that the designation late Bion could well be
amended to most free Bion. His misgivings about authoritarian
views were widely known, and could be seen from his early teens.
A Memoir of the Future is an indefatigable whirlwind of negatives,
paradoxes and antitheses in the pursuit of underlying psychic truth
won from the void and formless infinite. With these books, Bion
puts a void and formless infinite at the disposal of the reader, who
has a chance to win something or some no-thing from the frustration of not understanding.
Formal description
Bion chose a dialogical, quasi-theatrical form to present a development and complement of the whole of his work and experience. This
form was successfully used before by philosophers such as Socrates,
Diderot and Goethe, and by epistemologists such as Lakatos.
The essays were entitled The Dream, The Past Presented and The
Dawn of Oblivion. In all the world only one editor, Dr Jayme Salomo,
became interested in publishing the first two volumes during Bions
lifetime. Dr Salomo ran a publishing house in Brazil, and his publications were predominantly translations into Portuguese. Having
pioneered the translation of Bions books from 1974 (with the
Brazilian Lectures), he decided to publish the Trilogy in the English
languagefor the simple reason that no suitable and willing translator could be found. As far as I know, Dr Bion was glad to see those
off-beat books published at all. A bumpy path awaited them; their
form and content and serious problems with misprints, conjoined
with problems of distribution, resulted in dismal sales. The third
volume was published posthumously in Scotland by Clunie Press.
It was the first product of Mrs Francesca Bions lovingly dedicated
effort. Later, she reunited the three volumes and re-issued them in a
revamped version (the idea of another Brazilian editor). In the ensuing years, Mrs Bion, a skilled copy-editor of Bions earlier books, was
to release six new books containing previously unpublished data.
A memoir? Of the future?

Right from the start the paradoxical title challenges the readers
proneness to resort to rational thinking, if it exists. This varies from
82
one individual to another, as well as in the same person with regard

to time and space.
The Trilogy calls to be intuitively perceived, rather than understood. The text is written in such a way that it provides an experience of reading which embodies the outstanding features of mind
and life: namely, paradoxes, disconnection, causeless love and hate,
sudden loss of meanings barely won, doubts, disquiet, phases of
not-understanding, and persecution. Briefly, one may experience
those aspects typical of the paranoid-schizoid position as one proceeds with reading. Conversely, one may experience, respectively,
evolving meanings throughout life, the sense of being found or of
finding whatever it is in truth, acquiring sudden moments of a sense
of reality, as Isaiah Berlin puts it, or a sense of truth, as Bion puts its
(Berlin, 1996; Bion, 1961b, p. 119). The reader can try not to resolve
paradoxes, but instead, finding a synthesis between the poles, he or
she can find constellations and connections of relationships between
factors and intervening factors and functions; love and hate springing not from external causes but from the unexpected, unknown
parts of the mind; tolerance of doubts; serenity; lessening of persecution and a clearer sight of due guilt in whatever it is. In other
words, the reader can experience a movement towards the depressive position.
As in a Beethoven symphony, the serenity is suddenly replaced
from one page to the next, to the disquiet of the first set of sensations.
The writing characterises the living tandem movement between the
paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions.
Bion always tried to show that the psychotic personality (Bion,
1957a, 1962, 1965) clothed itself with a neurotic appearance. Rationality has nothing to do with the functioning of the unconscious.
According to Freud, rationality is typical of secondary processes
(1900; 1915a, b; 1920). He warned about rationalisation, with the
help of Ernest Jones. Rationalisation was to remain an unclassified
concept, not gaining the status of a defence mechanism (Jones, 1936;
Laplanche & Pontalis, 1967). Perhaps its links with the unconscious
were suspected. Bion studied as perhaps no other author the vicissitudes of cognitive processes. They are linked to the prevalence
of psychotic featuresin other words, traits under the sway of the
principle of pleasure/displeasure.
83
ROBIN The whole of psychoanalytic theory seems to be

vitiated by favouring only those phenomena which appear
to conform to classical logic, the sort of logic with which we are
already familiar.
PAUL Timidity is a fact of our nature. We cling to anything
which gives us the chance of saying Thus far and no further.
Any discovery is followed by a closure. The remainder of our
thoughts and endeavours is devoted to consolidating the system to prevent the intrusion of yet another thought. Even any
roughness of our system that might facilitate the lodgement
of the germ of another idea is smoothed and polished. [Bion,
1977b, p. 265]
Dreams offer a good challenge to rationalisation. During the day,

dream activity remains unseen, unless one pays attention to free
associations. Both have kinship with hallucinations, such as their
appeal to visual manifestations. Due to hallucinosis (presence of
delusion and hallucination in a personality otherwise conserved)
hallucinations also remain unseen, passing for normal. The consequent thought and linguistic disturbances are disguised by rationality. Nevertheless, what remains and governs things is the underlying,
albeit unconscious and unseen, prevalence of psychosis. That which
is underlyingthat is, not given directly to the senses but demanding to be intuitedis decisive. Clothed with the overt appearance
of rationality, it was perceived by Humes refutation of pure reason, later expanded by Kant (Hume, 1748; Kant, 1781, 1783). Humes
discovery is implicit in Freuds description of free associations and
dream work. It was brought to the awareness of psychoanalysts
by Bion: reason is the slave of passions. It is psycho-logically necessary,
but has nothing to do with truth (Bion, 1965, p. 73). This theoretical
formulation is expressed in a living, practical way throughout the
book.
Truth is a term that here, in this text, after Freud, Klein and
Bion, is understood as both internal truth (the truth about oneself)
and truth about the external world, ranging from the quantum
micro-environment to the great universe. Summing up, the title can
serve as a warning; it embodies centuries of development in human
knowledgethe impressive array of scientists, philosophers, thinkers,
84
musicians, mystics, poets, psychoanalysts that populate the book

elicited underlying, governing non-rational facts (not to be confused
with irrationality). They are compacted in this very title, and give the
canon of the three books.
Rationality and reason are slaves of the passions, and we can illustrate their function in brushing truth aside (especially an unwanted
truth) by paraphrasing the well-known saying usually attributed to
Abraham Lincoln: you can fool yourself about unimportant things
for quite some time; you can fool yourself about important things
briefly; but you cant fool yourself about important things for long.
Even in mathematics (from where the word ratio was drawn)
there was an impression that the mathematician knew the barest
elemental truth of numbers. Nevertheless, the realm of numbers was
expanded by infinite, irrational, and imaginary numbers; Euclidean
logic was expanded by Riemanns and Lobachevskys non-Euclidean
and Da Costas paraconsistent logic; Descartes causality was shown
to be false by Hume (1748) and Kant (1781); Newtonian physics was
amended by relativistic and quantum contributions. Just like psychoanalysis, which displayed the timelessness and non-rationality of
the unconscious, all of them moved beyond the senses and beyond
rationality. Again, all of this is displayed in the three volumes of the
Trilogy and I suppose that the title points toor, as I said before,
warns ofthis feature.
Rationality, being a reassuring weapon, is always resurfacing, as
the positivist movement, which believes in predictions and linear
causal chains, easily shows. One cannot glimpse truth and life as it
is, facts as they areto quote two of Bions favourites, Sir Francis
Bacon and Dr Samuel Johnson.
A Memoir of the Future is a phrase that harbours no rationality or understanding, and gives little chance to desire. What does it
mean? Someone who asks this and tries to irritably extract a meaning has usually given up trying to read the Trilogy. Few ask the obvious previous questionbut the obvious is always the most difficult
to seedoes it mean something?
Sources
Bion stated that an analyst needs few theories provided that he
knows them well (1962, p. 42; 1963, p. 2). None of his quotations, either
85
from analysts or from thinkers, is in the usual standardised scientific

presentation (which he defended before: 1962, p. 38). Consistently, he
quotes comparatively few analysts in this work. Freud and Klein are
the most quoted; Andr Green is quoted twice and Roger Money-Kyrle
once. He mentions Elliott Jaques and Hanna Segal in connection with a
criticism of Melanie Kleins surprise at and opposition to people who
called themselves Kleinians (1977, p. 259), as well as paying a compliment to James Strachey for his outstanding achievement with the
translation of Freud. In contrast, the ide-mre generators of the past are
extensively quoted: Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Milton, Shakespeare,
Leonardo, Ruskin, Locke, Hume, Pascal, Poincar, Bacon, Meister
Eckhart, Saint John of the Cross, Isaac Luria, Joyce, Pound, Carroll,
Heisenberg, Einstein, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Ruskin, Browning,
Hopkins, Rimbaud
Finer descriptions
The first volume is entitled The Dream, or: a way that human
beings have to display and paradoxically not display to themselves
their inner psychic reality, pain, fear and aggression (for example,
1975, p. 41, 161), truths and lies; and to continuously work through
the path from lies to truth and vice versa, in precisely the fashion of
the quasi-mathematical double arrow sign with which Bion represented the to and fro intercourse between Kleins positions ( , first
introduced in 1963, p. 4; Klein, 1946). The second volume is entitled The Past Presented, and furnishes further hints about the
books together with a host of technical hints for the practising
psychoanalyst. The third volume brings a quasi-poetical formulation: The Dawn of Oblivion, or the way one deals with ones fear,
guilt, reasonless aggression, primary envy and primary narcissism,
and glimpses of truth. Talking about the poetical inspirations and
quotations that pervade the Trilogy, one may state that it contains a
host of analogies and metaphors. Milton, Shakespeare and Goethe;
outstanding British romantics such as Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley,
Blake and Ruskin; later poets usually regarded as obscure, such as
Gerard Manley Hopkins and Robert Browning; French authors such
as Ronsard are all present in the flow of the writing.
Even though I will try to show some of the forms that Bion used
to hint at these facts, releasing some hunch-triggering analogies,
86
metaphors, and quotations that cover almost the entire body of

knowledge of our civilisation, it must be clearly stated that nothing
can replace a careful reading of the books. Bions style and content
is inimitable. How many of us will loathe it, as the vast majority of
the psychoanalytic and academic establishment has loathed it up to
now? How many of us will use it as a blind mans stick to guide us
on an adventure into the unknown, the very functioning of primary
processes, a kind of informal schooling full of rich psychoanalytic
and real-life experience?
P.A. Mystery is real life; real life is the concern of real analysis. Jargon passes for psychoanalysis, as sound is substituted
for music, verbal facility for literature and poetry, trompe loeil
representations for painting. [Bion, 1977, p. 307]
The trilogy: transformations in O, unconscious

and transcendence
P.A. Indeed, Melanie Klein discovered that primitive, infantile
omnipotence was characterised by fantasies of splitting off
undesired features and then evacuating them.
ROLAND I am sure you dont mean that children think like
that?
P.A. It would be inaccurate and misleading to say so. That is
why Melanie Klein called them omnipotent phantasies. But
although I found her verbalisations illuminating, with the passage of time and further investigations which her discoveries
made possible, her formulations were debased and became
inadequate. These primitive elements of thought are difficult
to represent by any verbal formulation, because we have to rely
on language which was elaborated later for other purposes.
When I tried to employ meaningless termsalpha and beta
were typicalI found that concepts without intuition which
are empty and intuitions without concepts which are blind
rapidly became black holes into which turbulence had seeped
and empty concepts flooded with riotous meaning.
ROBIN Reallydo you blame us if we dont know what you
are talking about?
87
P.A. No. I am not surprised at your protest; in extenuation

I have found that if I say what I mean it is not English; if I write
English it does not say what I mean.
PAUL Theologians are blamed for being incapable of being religiousyou are as bad as we are!
P.A. Probably for the same reason. Ultimate Truth is ineffable.
[Bion, 1977, p. 229]
Is the Memoir the written formulation that approximates more to

psychoanalysis than any written formulation released before or
since? I think so. According Bion, it does not qualify for a status
higher than a fictitious account of psychoanalysis, that is, a talk
about psychoanalysis (for example: 1975, pp. 8, 132, 201; and especially 1977, p. 303). The same issue was hinted earlier in Learning from
Experience and Transformations. It is a central issue in Bions work, to
be distinguished from psychoanalysis proper.
It seems to me that A Memoir is Bions written vindication, albeit
still doomed to failure due to its sense-based medium of words, of
what he had called the Language of Achievement (1970, Introduction, p. 2). The statements about its failure are made by Bion (just to
quote two illustrations among many: 1975, p. 45 and 1979, p. 429). In
other words, there is no replacement for personal analysis.
With the Trilogy Bion brushes aside almost the entirety of his
former theoretical verbal formulations, despite the fact that it encircles exactly the same issues. Namely: (i) psychic reality; (ii) truth
and the scientific approach in psychoanalysis; (iii) human mental
development and involution; and (iv) disturbances of perception,
Oedipus, dreams and the inception of the principle of reality. For
example, one may see a practical replacement for the very concept of
language of achievement in Volume I, p. 191. Of all his earlier verbal formulations, it seems that just one remains in an explicit form:
transformations (1975, p. 20, and more importantly, pp. 802).
The novel language of the Trilogy seems to use and makes implicit
all of Bions earlier theoretical formulationsor he tries to achieve
and helps the reader to achieve them. It seems to me that Bion was
able to put into print some formulations that present (beyond representation) some of the foundations of psychoanalysis in a novel
way: for example, the dream processes (see Volume I, pp. 35, 44, and
88
especially 53 and 115). Does it convey in a hitherto unheard form the

universal, transcendent ethos of the unconscious? He thought that
this was a domain exclusive to poets and mystics. They did not have
psychoanalytic intentions, whose specificity is Freuds embodiment
of the medical project of the Enlightenment. Psychoanalysis deals
with individual human suffering and development, and specific
ways to deal with it.
Bion called the ultimately unknowablebut intuitablerealm of
the unconscious/conscious system, the stuff of which the noumena
are made, O. (This may be read as zero, origin, or whatever meaning one attributes to the sign O). In short, Bion more often than not
uses it to describe the numinous realm.
The phrase universal, transcendent ethos of the unconscious
merits attention. It relies heavily on terms derived from philosophy
which are more often than not alien to the psychoanalytic lexicon.
By transcendent I mean the realm of the ultimate truth, the noumena. It is unknowable in its entirety, although it can be transiently
glimpsed and intuited; its emanations and effects (the phenomena)
are amenable to be sensed. Psychoanalysis, together with science,
is a method that can approach it, together with the mystic tradition
(Jewish and Christian Cabala: Scholem, 1941; Yates, 1979). Freud,
at the end of his life, linked it specifically to the Id, as regards the
mystic tradition (Freud, 1939); he had hinted at this before (1915a, b,
1916, 1920).
That which is transcendent is underlying, unconscious, timeless.
It is the very foundation and typical of humankind, regardless of
nationality, race or culture. It has inextricable, unknowable links
with biology, making for the instincts in Freuds sense. Ultimately
unknowable, it was earlier approached by the so-called German
Romantics (such as Hamann, c. 1755; Hegel, c. 1817; Goethe, 1832).
Taking into account that this is the conclusion of longer research
stemming wholly from my reading and teaching of A Memoir of the
Future, which enlightened for me the very roots of Freuds work
in Plato, Kant, Goethe and Hegel, I hope the reader can figure out
what that is, and any practising analyst who has glimpsed his own
unconscious and his patients unconscious deals with it every day.
It is embedded in Bions Transformations, Attention and Interpretation
and above all, A Memoir of the Future. I will try to make it explicit
and describe its origins. Putting it in other words: the ultimately
89
unknowable unconscious, the true psychic reality (Freud, 1900,

p. 613) is the timeless store of the transcendent noumena that characterise the human species.
Bion states already in the very introduction of A Memoir of the
Future (p. 6) that the psychoanalysts may wish to confront what
they believe to be facts, as near to the noumena as the human animal is likely to get. As a matter of consequence, psychoanalysis is
also a method of getting as near to the noumena as the human animal is likely to get. Paraphrasing Bion: the Trilogy is intended for,
and may be taken and applied with all seriousness in the practice of
psychoanalysis by, those who wish to get as near to psychoanalysis
as the human animal is likely to get.
I think that it is on a par with works by authors such as Socrates,
Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein and
Klein in its timelessness and universality. I do not think it has artistic or literary value for its own sake, but it is as powerful as many
literary and musical works as regards approaching the truth. They
seem to be scientifically artistic and artistically scientific. One may
say that they demand an intuitive and empirically minded reader.
Did Bion succeed in putting into words the flux of the unconscious, of the psychic functioning? Undoubtedly he puts into words
the paradoxes of psychic reality and life itself. They are composed
of irresolvable opposites and their respective syntheses. The latter
does not mean rational resolution, but rather an evolving into the
unknown, the creative, and the new. Did he succeed in presenting
to us hate, love, Oedipus, the living conflict between the principle
of pleasure/displeasure and the principle of reality, as well as the
living interchange between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive
positions in a less theoretical form?
Those psychoanalytic formulations of the transcendent noumena of the human condition have been challenging analysts
throughout time. Many tried, and many try to understand Oedipus,
the two principles, the two positions, the instincts. There is nothing to be understood here, as there is nothing to be understood in
the paradox of matter and energy as first described by Einstein.
They simply areas they are. They demand to be experienced
and intuited. Come, give us the taste of your quality, says Hamlet to the actors he is about to hire in a plot to unmask his uncle
Claudius.
90
These three volumesand perhaps the three complementary

works, The Long Week-End, All My Sins Remembered and War
Memoirsseem to me to present all of this without resorting to these
labels. In becoming commonplaces, they were debased and lost
much of their power, with many audiences, to communicate what
is common sense.
I suppose that Bion gives the reader the opportunity of the very
experience of the interchange between the paranoid-schizoid and
depressive positions, in its evolving transience, as the reader proceeds
in the task of reading. This feature of the books cannot be overstressed.
Does it account for the precocious oblivion and (in some parts of the
world) abhorrence to which it was and is subjected?
The forms chosen are utterly personal. They correspond to real
life experiences of the author, Bion. I suppose that all great works
in psychoanalysis are drawn from the personal experiences, usually
painful, of the great authors. Freud discovered Oedipus in this way;
the same goes for Klein and envy. They were able to work through
these experiences, perhaps during the actual act of writing. They then
achieved, paradoxically, a kind of universality. The latter allows
them, like a scientific discovery, to be recognised by any reader,
who may identify his own experiences with the authors attempts
to communicate them. I think that a great work of art is one which
communicates the underlying invariance of human life through the
personal. I believe that the Trilogy is successful in doing this. Instead
of photographs of fire, the fire itself is in the writing. It can be seen
and sensed by the psychoanalytically experienced reader. Bion,
like Freud, preferred that readers of his works had solid psychoanalytic experience. This translates into personal analysis first and
foremost, and analysing people as a matter of consequence.
Bion submits the reader to a sensuously apprehensible bombardment whose hallmark is surprise, unexpectedness, novelty. There
appear memories of infancy in a dream-like description, military
experiences in actual warfare, medical and psychoanalytic training, psychiatric experience, the loss of a wife and of friends, and
finally the relative serenity resulting from finding a real wife. All of
this comes, as in a real mind, coupled and uncoupled, intertwined
and split. This work reminds the reader of a reported dream, as it is
being dreamt. This form of writing that Bion found or created can be
seen as his alpha function and the readers alpha function having
91
an opportunity to exercise them. In other words, Bion bombards the

reader with multifarious, chance-driven, sensuously apprehensible
free associations in the purest sense of this expression. He continuously transforms and expands, and sometimes contracts these elements that give way to new elements which are useful for thinking.
The reader must recall his own life experiences to follow this peculiar path. Then, and only then, the reader finds himself in a position
to use those elements to think, to dream, to store or recall from his
own dream-like memories or knowledge. Bion does not use the label
reverie, which he used in Learning from Experience. He does it in the
book.
As noted before, Bion does this with no recourse to his earlier
terminology. Just a few of Freuds and Kleins most fundamental
concepts, such as the two principles, the instincts, Oedipus, transference, and the positions appear explicitly. This is not a criticism
of the concepts, but an acknowledgement of their debasement by
the establishment, and an attempt to fix the situation. During that
time, in his paper Evidence (1976), he wrote explicitly about how
psychoanalytic concepts could form a paramnesia, in part due to
the fact that their value, like the face-value of old coins, disappears
through continuous use. (Bion, 1976, 1977a, b, c).
A Memoir of the Future seems to me a passionate act of love for
truth and concern for life, free from social conventions right from
the start.
Dialogues
In trying to classify the main formal aspect of the Trilogy, one easily
sees that Bion brings to psychoanalysis a kind of dialogic method.
It caused bewilderment. In Transformations Bion observed that if a
practitioner writes a book making no explicit and direct comments
to the average psychoanalytic reader on issues such as transference, Oedipus is ill-received by the establishmentor subjected to
contempt. One might add: worse still, if the work makes no reference to fixation, regression, or any other pseudo-known theory for
being debased and abused, or quote pseudo-transcriptions of sessions, such as the patient said this and the analyst said that,
it is also doomed to fail, under the pressure of an establishment
who tries to understand, who acts out from the groups memory
92
and desire. What surprised me is that this dialogic form reflects the
purest psychoanalytic method. Freud stated that if psychoanalysis
happens to be, one must see that the only thing that really happens
is that two people just converse. It is an open conversation between
freely two freely conversing human beings, openly arrived atto
paraphrase a famous statement by Woodrow Wilson, a man Freud
admired greatly.
In construing dream-like, freely associative dialogues he offers
the reader the opportunity of a dialogue with the book. I cannot
spare the reader, in order to comment in a summarised way Bions
formal choice of a very awkward, tongue-abusing term. I think that
Bion performs a linguistic theatrical-Socratic elaboration endowed
with Shakespearian-Diderotian-Goethian-Carrolian overtones.
The Trilogy closely resembles a theatrical presentation, which it
is not. Those who share, albeit unconsciously, a tendency to apprehend reality based just on external, sensuously grasped appearances
(Kants nave realist) may confuse Bions chosen mode of writing
with just another play or novel badly written, according to
some, like Meltzer. This confusion may arise due to its use of characters. They are paradoxically unknown, new, and at the same time
known, run-of-the-mill personalities who can be found anywhere
and everywhere, as anyones old friends, foes or acquaintances.
There are some unexpected appearances, fictitious characters more
real than sensuously apprehensible, actual people. They are borrowed from mental health enhancing sources, such as Sherlock
Holmes. Or they come from specific interests shareable with any
human being: the dinosaurs of prehistory, the history of religion,
mathematicians, poets.
If it is not theatre, what is it? A novel? Again, the outward appearances may be deceptive, if the reader is too concrete and keeps clinging
to them. The apparent novel is a way to show that the more social
something sounds (that is, a slave of the establishment), the more
it is just pure shared hallucinosis. This is perhaps one of the great
contributions of Bion to psychoanalysis and to humankindthe
discovery of psychosis in the establishment when it denies Truth.
He had already written extensively about this in Experiences in
Groups (1961a) and Transformations (1965, for example, p. 129). This
time, right from the start, Bion gives the reader an opportunity to
93
live this. Any reader with a penchant for self-criticismthat is, any
reader with analytic experiencewill see him- or herself reproduced in the tribulations of the various characters, especially Alice
and Roland. Alices world is pure hallucinosis, as in her first verbal
intercourse with their maid. The issue is: factuality does not guarantee reality. Conversely, reality may dispense with factuality, even
though this is needed as a port-of-entry for any stimulus. Through
the book Bion uses the terms ultra-sensuous and infra-sensuous
(I personally hope those terms will not be subjected to debasement
if used as jargon). There are readers who find it an unbearable reading experience, as we shall see later. Early in Book I, inspired by
Shelleys comment on Shakespeare, Bion writes:
Falstaff, a known artifact, is more real in Shakespeares
verbal formulations than countless millions of people who
are dim, invisible, lifeless, unreal, whose births, deathsalas,
even marriageswe are called upon to believe in, though certification of their existence is vouched for by the said official
certification. Many people are so lifeless that I could stare
in silent admission that I did not believe the evidence of my
senses. [1975, p. 5]
It seems that the first experience Bion had with lifeless people in
shared hallucinosis passing for normal was when he was a young,
albeit perceptive, decorated tank commander (not yet a Captain) in
World War I, going to London on leave from the front. He was subjected to Londons nightlife (War Memoirs, 191719, p. 153). The issue
presents itself again and again. To quote just one more example:
P.A. Figments of imagination are often more powerful than
many real things; men and women are not so powerful as the
idealised figures other men as women have about them. [1977,
p. 120]
Roland and his friend Robin are two infantile grown-ups. They
display contradictory and paradoxical features, like real persons.
Both are simultaneously educated and rude, cowardly and reckless, able to think concretely and ratiocinate, and much more
94
prone to acting out with no thinking at all between the impulse and
action. Alice is the first character to be introduced. She is a typical
woman of the gentry: intelligent and blonde, she functions as
Rolands pseudo-wife and mistress of Rosemary, the second character to appear. The two of them compose the first scene, in which
appearances are deceptive. Social bourgeois life is highly criticised.
A kind of revolution takes place with the help of an invading army.
Rosemary is a strong-willed and physically strong daughter of a
whore. She derives these features from a hard lower-class life and
from suffering. Rosemary is hellishly clever. She is the ablest character as regards perceiving what real life is all about. She displays
much less mindlessness than the other characters. The setting is the
invasion of an English farm (owned by Roland) by Nazi-like personalities. There is an unmitigated and complete defeat of England,
which despite that carries on being eternally itself.
Therefore, the book begins like a novel. It uses abrupt situations
pervaded with projective identification, sudden changes from PS
to D and their obverse. Childhood and war memories, an infantile lack of comprehension, a dreamy state, all implicit in a loss of
ego boundaries, compose the novel. Precocious doubts arise: the
English farm is not an English farm any more; who is the invader?
The characters do not know; the reader does not know either. Do the
characters have surnames? Will these names appear? The reader
must go on and find them (or whether they exist). Who is the mistress and who is the maid? Much like what happens in any household, in fact. Their relationship constantly displays the reversed
perspective, with Rosemary physically and mentally dominating
her former mistress. Roland finds himself under gunfire. He discovers Robin hidden in a pitiful pigeon cote. He is deluding himself
that this ridiculous shelter could protect him forever. War Memoirs
illuminates the origin of this metaphor. It was one of the riskier
moments of Bions life. A victim of ineffable fear, he took a kind
of paranoid-catatonic posture, resulting in stupor under gunfire
in World War I. He states that he survived by sheer luck (Bion,
191719, p. 94).
The novel includes bestiality incarnate in Tom, a lustful lout
who does menial jobs on Rolands farm. A mysterious, contemptuous, heartless heir of the Nazi mentality makes its appearance. Significantly, Bion gives him the name Man. He portrays a kind of
95
cloudy post-Nazi military commander. At first he seems to be the

devil incarnate. He is notbecause two other characters, named Du
(in Volume I) and thereafter simply Devil (in Volume III) will perform this duty. He develops as the true boss of the stage, imposing
his will at gunpoint. Sometimes Man is Bion himself.
It is a mistake to try to find a judgmental value in the construction
of these characters. They are, quite simply, real: Man is a man. He
is competent in some situations. He marries a woman he has chosen. Large numbers of sophisticated psychoanalytic postures, keen
epistemological and social comments are put into Mans mouth.
The novel follows, and he displays some mysteries, featuring the
darkness of authoritarianism, omnipotence and lust. He is helped
by police forces and pseudo-physicians skilled in inflicting unnecessary pain. In Volume II he enlists from among his hosts the services of a character named Priest, who amalgamates deep theological
knowledge, wisdom, callousness, and opportunism. Priest is at first
named Paul, but soon the more general denomination emerges and
lasts until the end.
An astronomer called Edmund also appears briefly. Other characters are a boy, an old woman, Small Mo, Big Bro, Big Sister, Small
Bro, Half Awake, an Arf-arfer, Voice, Somites, Forty-seven and
Twenty-two (as well as other ages). Even PS and D are characters.
Old comrades-in-arms from World War I also obtrude, as Tonks,
Arthur, OConnor, and Ghost of Stokes, to symbolise guilt. More
unexpected characters, such as Adolph Tyrannosaurus and Albert
Stegosaurus, who can be seen as two typical psychoanalysts in a
psychoanalytic meeting, are introduced in Volume I.
A triple character may be named Bion Myself P.A., for
he appears in these three guises. Bion is the less important and
despised of them; Myself is the growing product of something that
is socially known by the name of Bion. P.A. is a professional psychoanalyst, composed mainly of Bion and Myself. But this character,
the author himself, is also composed of Priest, Man, Robin and
Roland. Internal reflections, scientific and psychoanalytic thinking
appear in the guise of conversations between these characters. It also
becomes obvious, as reading proceeds, that Rosemary and Alice also
represent the authors part objects. The character Bion would be a
false self, in Winnicotts sense (Winnicott, 193558). Myself is the
more developed self. Bion and Capt. Bion are younger, plagued
96
initially by a tragic mix of delayed patriotism and self-intoxication

with pseudo-fame, as he puts it on the first page of Volume III.
As one may gather from reading The Long-Week-End and War Memoirs, the tragedy is also composed of a Jewish-Christian idealism and
goodwill. The invariant that is conserved in maturity is love of truth,
compassion and regard for life (see Bion, 19581979, pp. 247 and
125). The professional, named P.A. (from Psychoanalyst), conveys
the more serene and uninvolved beingat work. Pressing technical issues are the goals, limits, misunderstandings, and uses that are
real lights to the practising psychoanalyst (like his very clear views
on transference: Bion, 1975, p. 61; 1977, p. 249; 1979, p. 516, among
others). P.A. seems to be the aftermath or synthesis of the interaction
of two opposites, Bion and Myself: see, for example, Vol. I, p. 130.
New characters obtrude: Doctor, a physician; and Somites and
males of various ages. They are mirrors of a maturing Bion, trying
to learn from experience. In fact, all characters are Bion, especially
Man. This interchangeability and day-residues (or month-, year-,
decade-residues) give the books their dreamy character.
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a real-fictitious character famous worldwide
despite never enjoying (or suffering) concrete existence. Sherlock
is accompanied by his faithful, sometimes foolhardy sidekick,
Dr Watson. Bion borrows the character, as though paying homage
to something that enhanced his mental health in difficult times, in
order to illustrate reality, hallucinosis and thought processes, and
give a hint to the analyst.
In a certain part of the book, the character Bion is infatuated with
his secular titles, pretensions to immortality and self-importance.
He accuses Watson of being unreal. Watson strikes back, denouncing the doctors arguments and demonstrating that he is well known
worldwide whereas Bion and psychoanalysis are not. Sherlock is not
entirely in agreement with this way of dealing with him; he hopes
Watson was not too rough. To which Watson answers:
Real people have to be treated roughly if the universe of
discourse is to be made safe for imaginary people. If you
remember, this problem cropped up before with real numbers.
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Quite impossible for the simplest mathematical problem even

to be formulated till negative numbers destroyed the tyranny
of being confined in the restricted space of additionjust more
real numbers. [1975, p. 92]
Later, Bion calls psychoanalysts gasbags (1977, p. 343).

Analysts since Freud are used to being seen as rough, rude,
dispassionate, or even crazed. This is especially acute when they
elicit the underlying, latent truths from humdrum phrases of their
patients. With this apparent roughness, an intuitive quantum leap
is possible: psychoanalysis itself during the session. Psychoanalysts
are used, since Freud, to being seen as dispassionate, cold people.
A relatively unknown and minor creation of Conan Doyle,
Mycroft Holmes (Sherlocks older brother), also appears. And the
indefectible Moriarty, as a kind of Devil incarnate. Through them
Bion depicts acting out with Dr Watson; pure thought devoid of
action with Mycroft; and a blend of both, a man who inserts thought
between the impulse and action, with Sherlock himself.
The Dream
Volume I encompasses a great deal of post-Kleinian psychoanalysis,
the insertion of psychoanalysis in the scientific field, with statements
of the limitations of the then better known scientific tenets derived
from positivism, and some hints of modern Physics. It deals heavily
with institutional issues. The link threading through all these issues
is an artificially constructed dream. It is of as much interest to epistemologists as to psychoanalysts. I suppose that, when discovered, the
Trilogyand this book in particularwill impact on philosophy in
a way that would remind us of Freuds impact a century ago.
The Past Presented

Volume II follows on with a dreamy context, but at the same time
develops a more serene, mature, and scientifically minded discourse. It includes cutting edge Mathematics, such as Intuitionism,
and an abridged form of number theory. It also describes some parallels between psychoanalysis and mathematics through a history of
the latter. The relative serenity and educated discourse is suddenly
98
replaced by renewed cloudy situations, where the dream and nightmare construed in Volume I is replaced by hallucinosis, hallucination, socially shared hallucinosis, delusion, Evil, and finally death. It
seems to be realistically bitter on poverty, on the limitations of human
existence. It seems, on reading these two volumes, that violence is
unavoidable. The volume has a sophisticated epistemological bent
and contains very many hints to the analyst. Seminal analytic tenets,
such as transference, Oedipus, PS and D, are continuously evolved.
Is a possible aftermath of a Dream an analytic session? If so, Volume
II is an analytic session.
The Dawn of Oblivion

This poetically titled volume is a more serene and mature finale.
It is much more integrated and integrative than Volumes I and II.
It works through many of the same issues introduced in the first two
volumes. A big difference is that it allows a place for a less weak or
foolhardy woman, and the Woman herself. It can be seen as containing islands of less PS suffering. Is it the wisdom of Old Age?
Priest returns much enriched. This gives the reader an opportunity
to scrutinise the interference of religious features in his or her daily
practice and theorisation. At first there is an opposition, albeit not
destructive, between Priest and P.A. In Volume III they have interchanges that are a kind of counterpoint, sometimes good-humoured
and mutually collaborative. The music that springs from their talk
is a reassessment of psychoanalysis and theology. They show that a
more reliable scientific vertex can exist in some people who declare
themselves (and are seen by others as) religious than in some people
who declare themselves (and are seen by others as) psychoanalysts.
Conversely, a more religiously bigoted posture can exist in some
self- and socially designated psychoanalysts than in some people
who say they are religious-minded. This metaphor serves many
purposes. One of them is a serious social criticism of priesthood and
bigotry, as distinct from theology and the mystic tradition. It also
serves to illustrate a point raised in Transformations and Attention and
Interpretation, in a more practical sense, as regards the possibilities of
the mystics concerned with the pursuit of truth. Obviously it points
out the religious aspects and orientations within the psychoanalytic
movement.
99
This third book also does not compromise with lies or half-truths.
Bion seemed to be very worried with the appearance of Bionians
who were closing, debasing, jargonifying his work, throttling
it in a heavy tomb of adoration. In this sense his macro-social
critic turns his eyes to the micro-social cosmos of the psychoanalytic movement, again and again. To illustrate this point: since 1981,
I have been making attempts to share what seemed to me a kind of
hidden treasure for practising psychoanalysts. I suppose that these
attempts over such a span of time, and their outcome, which was
that they suffered the same fate as the books themselves, authorise
me to comment on the prevalent reactions towards them, which are
almost unchanged.
Reactions
Until now, the establishment has reacted adversely to the books.
One may only conjecture, but I would dispense with the easy answer
at hand: the reasons may be found in the books themselves, which
according someare badly written, unintelligible, crazed. I think
that to believe in this kind of explanation is to deny psychoanalysis itself, because it attributes external causes to ones emotions and
behaviour rather than looking for them intrapsychically, within the
reader. Is projective identification the main bearing of such a belief?
In other words, has the reader tried to eject from himself (or herself)
something that is internal?
Does A Memoir of the Future raise on a logarithmic scale a kind of
reaction already felt before with Freuds and Kleins work? Are those
works intelligible? Is not Freuds apparent intelligibilityhe was a
very gifted writer who won the Goethe Prizejust a drawback of
his work? According to Bion, people think they have understood it
but remain deaf and blind to it. The Trilogy definitively cannot be
grasped by the rational powers of the mind.
Some straightforward warnings can be linked to these reactions.
Bion had already warned many times that psychoanalysts occupied
themselves too much with rational meanings, causes and effects.
In doing so, they lost both the ethos of psychoanalysis and themselves in a disordered searching for ad hoc theories. They furnished
too much of too many formulations that addressed the same
underlying facts and psychic structureswhich remained unseen.
100
The formulations and their authors remained lost in the darkness

of ignorance, but believed that they owned the absolute truth. The
formulations were duly clothed, sometimes skilfully, in psychoanalytic jargon, the learned lumber of the bookful blockhead,
to paraphrase Alexander Pope. Sir Thomas Beecham, a most gifted
conductor, once said that a musicologist is one who can read music
but cannot hear it. Or, in Bions own words (probably less sarcastic
but by no means less serious):
The erudite can see that a description is by Freud, or Melanie
Klein, but remain blind to the thing described. Freud said
infants were sexual; this was denied or reburied. [1975, p. 5]
This statement, indeed, forms a seminal part of the introduction to

the Trilogy. In Volume II, Bion raises the tone, hinting at his own
recipe that explains the whole Trilogy:
His Satanic Jargonieur took offence; on some pretence that psychoanalytic jargon was being eroded by eruptions of clarity.
I was compelled to seek asylum in fiction. Disguised as fiction,
the truth occasionally slipped through. [1977, p. 302]
Or, as often occurs, he compacts the two postures into a single one:
ROSEMARY Too olddeafened by years of jargon. Blinded by
facts and concepts and psychoanalysis. I had a friend who was
a marvellous cook until she took a cookery course. After that
she couldnt even boil an egg! [1977, p. 310]
The reader will find that explanations of Bions intentions pervade the books, especially Volume I. One must divest oneself of
ones reading habits to dive into the apparent maze of a hyperNazi invasion of England coupled with a multitude of characters,
thoughts and quotations all over the books. The explanations
are present right from the start. It is not feasible to quote them
exhaustively within the limits of this chapter. The reader may see
for him- or herself on pp. 4, 5, 98, 110, 119, 132, 139, 175 and 180
of Volume I.
101
The fact that remained, and only grew destructively, is that the
whole psychoanalytic movement riskedand despite Bions warnings still risksbeing a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing (Macbeth Vv). Is this, rather than changing social
conditions, the true origin of the so-called crises that analysts all
over the world complain about?
One must not restrict oneself to things visible to mortal sight,
to mention again two of Bions favourite quotations, from the poets
Milton and Wordsworth (Smith, 1921). This is the realm of psychoanalysis, light years beyond ideas of mental health and disease, and
judgemental values with their attendant positivist explanatory schemata. Memoirs of the future which are cast from the past presented
are the ever-present evolving stuff of any psychoanalytic session, if
one allows it to evolve, to become, to exist as it is. Perhaps a synonym could be present. Bion puts it succinctly:
The practical point isno further investigation of psychoanalysis, but the psyche it betrays. That needs to be investigated
through the medium of mental patterns; that which is indicated
is not a symptom; that is not a case of the symptom; that is not a
disease or anything subordinate. Psychoanalysis itself is just a
stripe on the coat of the tiger. Ultimately it may meet the Tiger
The Thing ItselfO. [1975, p. 112]
Are the criticisms in these books of the psychoanalytic establishment

grudges? Or are they the loving, hard act of someone who wrote a
memoir of the future and for the future? Did he see the future casting
its shadow just like a light that comes from behind? Was he trying
to save the nowadays apparently sinking ship of the psychoanalytic
establishment?
The psychoanalytic establishment: wars among

psychoanalysts
Is Bions criticism of -ians and -ists in any guise one of the still
unrecognised sources of abhorrence for the Trilogy? He begins
it with a dialogue between Adolph Tyrannosaurus and Albert
Stegosaurus. He compares the wars among psychoanalysts with the
102
wars between Germans and Britons, mainly World War II. The name
Adolph is evidently drawn from Hitler, and the name Albert from
Queen Victorias husband. Significantly, the houses of Hohenzollern
and Hanover were relatives, asone may seeare the warring
self-styled Freudians, Kleinians, Bionians, Jungians,
Kohutians, Winnicottians; their names are legion. These apostles could not be further from what the authors intended. The criticism continues with Kleins bewilderment and disapproval that
people could call themselves Kleinians. The same occurred with
Freud, according to Jones (195356). One may also consult Cogitations, where previous criticisms openly appear. In this sense, there
can be no Bionians; he encouraged no followers, apostles, ministers or heirs. Parthenope Bion Talamo, who unfortunately left us so
early, reached the point of writing Why We Cannot Call Ourselves
Bionians (1987).
Whiffs of small acceptance are emerging. My attempts are an
expression of the phenomenon of spreading the word about the
Trilogy all these years. I first translated it into my native tongue.
Then I wrote about it in papers and books, mainly in Brazil. I quoted
it extensively in scientific papers delivered at IPA congresses and
published worldwide (Sandler, 1987, 2001b, 2001c, 2003). My efforts
included giving courses on it at the local psychoanalytic institute
(since 1988) and a postgraduate training course at the local state university (1998), also unheard of previously in Brazil or abroad. These
attempts were regarded within a spectrum that ranged from undue
admiration to furious rejection, as was the case with the Trilogy
itself.
A small amount of the encircling environments abhorrence for
these books all over the world befell my attempts too. I think I share,
albeit on a minor scale, Bions fate of an unenviable status in the
pantheon of authors who met with strong, sometimes murderous
resistance during their lifetime. Their work is extensively dislodged
to future generations, just like Wilde, Rimbaud, van Gogh, and even
Bach, who had to wait for a Mendelssohn to rescue him 150 years
later. The caring professions are not socially valued. A great many
people think that it is safe to reject or revile the truth-speakers and
leave them to wait for future generations to rediscover them; this is
a tendency of the herd, or the establishment.
103
Are we prepared to tell our children, and our childrens

children, what price they would pay if they served their fellows? [Bion, 1979, p. 508]
We are all scandalised by bigotry. We are none of us bigotgenerators; that is, we none of us admit being the spring from
whom bigotry flows. As a result we do not recognise those of
our offspring of whose characters we disapprove. [Bion, 1977,
p. 228]
The first quotation refers specifically to Bions experience in World

War I; the second to the self-empowered scholastic, apostolic followers, apostles and authorities of Freud, Klein, Bion, etc. Both seem to
echo Kants warning: May God protect me from my friends; from
my enemies I can protect myself. The quotation that heads this part
of the volume expresses the same attempt to help ones fellow men.
Who will protect psychoanalysis from the psychoanalytic establishment? This attempt arouses resistances, envy and rivalry.
At the risk of being regarded as chauvinistic, I am reminded of
a good-humoured, sensitive, sharp and deep observer of human
truth: Machado de Assis. His enlightened, truthful prose makes
him the most complete and important Brazilian writer ever, in the
same league as the greatest writers of all times. Like any great literary works, his books call for a dialogue with the reader. One of his
books is The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas (1881), in which the
deceased Bras Cubas relates his memoirs from beyond the grave.
There are many similarities with the Trilogy, especially as regards
the serious humour.
Meg Harris Williams puts it succinctly: A Memoir of the Future is
Bions most important legacy to mankind. I add: yet to be discovered. It is a paradoxical compacted novel form which synthesises
and expands all his earlier work. It is an advanced post of more than
eighty years of life and more than forty years of practising psychoanalysis. It constitutes a practical lesson, an experiential attempt
to furnish a living experience of psychoanalysis, whilst reading like
music or painting or poetry. In this sense, it is a practical lesson
of his earlier theoretical forms of writingwhich are almost wholly
abandoned. He was free from pseudo-scientific, established fetters.
104
My first attempt was to write a book review. I was surprised that

in 1981 there was none. It was accepted for publication in Brazil. As
is well known, Brazilians were among the first to precociously accept
and use Bions contributions. My next step was to produce the first
ever version of those books in another language. Traduttore, traditore,
goes the Italian adage (the translator is always a traitor). As I wrote
above, the books seemed to me to embody the universal language of
the unconscious; to intuit it would suffice. I knew that the vast majority of analysts worldwide could not read Freud in German, and this
did not lessen their grasp of psychoanalysis. Therefore, my limitations could be compensated by the reader, I calculated, provided he
or she had analytic experience. The task was daunting. I sought out
everyone in Brazil who had personal experience with Bionhe had
died in 1979. With a single exception, a British national, nobody had
read the books. The only reader discussed it with me over a period
of some months, but his interest in and knowledge of the books was
very limited. The English used and the issues raised seemed beyond
the reading capabilities of Brazilian readers. As my own experience
in psychiatry, medicine, psychoanalysis and life obtruded sometimes in an explosive way, I became more and more bewildered by
these reactions. I sought out distinguished British analysts who had
an illustrious history of progressive views in psychoanalysis. They
were acknowledged by Bion himself in the opening notes of his earlier books, so I supposed that they were supporters of Bion.
Their opinion of the Trilogy was even worse: they did not simply
ignore the books. With the sole exception of one, who quoted a small
line from the Trilogy when he delivered a tribute to Bion just after he
died, all of them actually loathed the books. They could not say, as
some of the Brazilians could, I couldnt read it. One of them wrote
me a letter stating that those books had nothing to do with psychoanalysis. Another said that the writings were the frolics of an old man.
As late as 2002, one went as far as to say publicly that Bion had been
gaga since he wrote Transformations, so what could one say about
the Trilogy? I have the letters and the recording of those comments.
They are quoted here just to illustrate the point. They are not to be
taken as a libellous criticism of those colleagues, who do what they
can; they simply display these colleagues human limitations.
Having almost given up my attempt to converse with someone
about the books, I was reminded that Bion dedicated all of his earlier
105
publications to his wife. So I decided to seek her out. A first result of

her generous collaboration was the translation; she helped me with
the seriousness and knowledge of a scholar. I cannot express the
extent of my gratitude to herwe exchanged around 50 letters; she
illuminated more than 300 doubts I submitted to her.
The Brazilian version was prepared at the dawn of 1982; Volume II
in 1983, and Volume III in 1985. Due to a perverse combination of
economic factors in Brazil, which was enduring an annually adjusted
climbing inflation rate from 500% to 3000% (it reached 5000% a few
years later), and the political reaction of the local psychoanalytic
movement against the work of Bion after his death and previously
overwhelming influence, Volume I was published only in 1989 by
Editora Martins Fontes; Volumes II and III had to wait until 1996 for
publication by Imago Editora. A knowledgeable, experienced analyst, a British national living in the US, Dr Albert Mason, famed for
his humour and verve, was known to have enjoyed a close friendship with Bion and his family. When he became acquainted with my
translations (which he could not read), he told me that he thought
it a good idea. Suddenly, he added: Could you please translate it
into English too? This also gives a good indication of the reaction
to the work.
The contempt to which the Trilogy was continuously being subjected acquired a higher pitch after Bions death. For twelve years,
from 1975 to 1988, it was not even mentioned in the international
literature. My perplexity in accepting and understanding this precocious oblivion was such that I decided to write a book as an introduction to it. It was an attempt to display in the known psychoanalytic
lexicon part of the material in the books (Sandler, 1988). I had the
displeasure of seeing my book selling more than the translation
itself in Brazil. I had to conclude that it had failed to invite people
to read the Trilogy, as I had intended. It was well received in Brazil,
where it is used as a primer. After initial interest abroad, two well
known publishers did not proceed with the project. One of them
displayed objections to the Trilogy; the other argued that if Bions
books (especially the Trilogy) did not sell well, there seemed to be
little commercial sense in publishing the first book ever to be written
on this subject.
After more than ten years, that is, in 1998, a few scattered mentions appeared in the literature, like for example Meg Harris Williams
106
(1983), and Parthenope Bion Talamos report in an official panel on

Bion organised by Dr Len Grinberg, at the IPA Congress in San
Francisco (1995). Only now, after more than a quarter of a century,
are more belated mentions heard. A second introductory book was
written in Italy in 2004; another in Argentina. Significantly, neither
was published in non-Latin languages.
Each reader may form his or her own opinion on the possible factors fuelling the hostile reactions. Are Bions warnings about manipulation of symbols and attempts to approach the truth among these
factors?
Teaching Bions work with the help of the Trilogy

In my classes on a post-graduate course which has run at the local
University since 1998, I begin my teaching of Bion with the Trilogy.
By making correlations and pinpointing where such-and-such
occurs in this and that previous work, as well as using a group reading where each pupil performs the role of a character, we achieve
surprising results as regards an earlier, firmer grasp of the ethos of
his whole work.
To finish
Like any desire, mine will remain unfulfilled. I cannot convey the help
this Trilogy has provided, and still provides mefirst and foremost
in my work with patients. The help it provided me in organising my
knowledge of epistemology and psychoanalytic epistemology was
invaluable. It provided me with a kind of informal course on nonacademic realisations of philosophy and the links between analysis
and other scientific disciplines such as biology, physics, and mathematics. The chapters beginning at pages 127 and 138 in Volume I will
illuminate these issues.
Few psychoanalytic books have helped me so much to apprehend
psychic reality as it is. Through faithfully following its own advice,
it contains no further investigation of psychoanalysis; rather, it
helps the reader to elicit by himself, and sometimes in himself, the
psyche it betrays. We will finish this chapter with two excerpts that
may prove revealing (the reader may be reminded that the sign O
stands for the noumena):
P.A. What is truth? said jesting Pilate; Bacon himself did

not wait for an answer because he knew he might be killed if he
did. Physical death is a hard price to payespecially for those
of us who, from training and observation, believe in the obliteration of the body. I believe also in the obliteration of ones respect
for the truth; it is not simply by physical methodsalcohol, for
examplethat one can destroy ones capacity for discerning or
proclaiming the Truth.
PRIEST I believe in moral, religious death. Truth can be
poisoned; it can be allowed to die of neglect or be poisoned by
seductions, cowardice too often repeated. But Truth is robust;
facts cannot be killed even if we do not know what they are.
The fragile human respect for the truth cannot be as easily disposed of as often appears.
P.A. I hope you are right. I cannot, however, say that my knowledge of myself or others provides me food for hope. Religion
itself gives evidence of the great force of power, bigotry, ignorance; and psychoanalysis is shot through with error and the
defects of us humans who try to practise it. [Bion, 1979, p. 499]
MYSELF I have suggested a trick by which one could manipulate things which have no meaning by the use of sounds like
and . These are sounds analogous, as Kant said, to thoughts
without concepts, but the principle, or a reality approximating
to it, is also extensible to words in common use. The realisations
which approximate to words such as memory and desire
are opaque. The thing-in-itself, impregnated with the opacity,
itself becomes opaque; the O, of which memory and desire
is the verbal counterpart, is opaque. I suggest this quality of
opacity inheres in many Os and their verbal counterparts, and
the phenomena which it is usually supposed to express. If, by
experiment, we discovered the verbal forms, we could also discover the thoughts to which the observation applied specifically. Thus we achieve a situation in which these could be used
deliberately to obscure specific thoughts.
BION Is there anything new in this? You must often have heard,
as I have, people say they dont know what you are talking
about and that you are being deliberately obscure.
MYSELF They are flattering me! I am suggesting an aim, an
ambition, which, if I could achieve, would enable me to be
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108
deliberately and precisely obscure; in which I could use certain

words which could activate precisely and instantaneously, in
the mind of the listener, a thought or train of thought that came
between him and the thoughts and ideas already accessible and
available to him.
ROSEMARY Oh, my God! [Bion, 1975, p. 190]
PART III
ANALYTIC FUNCTION
CHAPTER SIX
Bions contributions to the formulation

of analytic function
Form follows function.

(Louis Sullivan, after Schopenhauer; adopted
as a fundamental principle of Modernist architecture)
Psychoanalysis is concerned with love as an aspect of mental
development and the analyst must consider the maturity of
love and greatness in relation to maturity.
(Bion, 1965, p. 74)
We consider the attempt to improve humans both worthwhile
and urgent.
(Bion, 1979, p. 528)
Formulations about positive and negative bearings

of analytic function
Freud dwelt on the biological science of nature which is the foundation of psychoanalysis. Attention to these scientific foundations
111
112
(which gave analysis its fundamental nature, that is, facts as they
are, like any science) dwindled until it reached oblivion after Freuds
death. One manifestation which may serve as a proof of that statement is the quantity of printed communication through books and
papers in specialised periodicals. We live in times where Kuhns
peer groups still rule, with the political leanings of ruling administrative minorities clothed in scientific directions.
Kuhns theory of scientific paradigms offered opportunists a
good opportunity to acquire influence, clothed with words drawn
from a flawed theory of knowledge. Supporters of the theory soon
occupied political and administrative posts in scientific establishments. Popper and Lakatoswho had experience of living under
authoritarian political interference in scientific and artistic matters
warned of this in their public disagreement with Kuhn. They were
not heard. Sokal and Bricmont illuminated it scientifically (through
facts) twenty-seven years later (Sokal & Bricmont, 1998). The difference between animate and inanimate is blurred by psychotic
functioning and a fortiori in groups and institutions. The psychoanalytic movement, that is, the social immanence which becomes
inanimate through bureaucratic prevalence, the previously animate
psychoanalysis, obeys the general rules of institutions, as observed
by Bion in one of his internal dialogues:
ROLAND Institutions wear out; like things, they are inanimate
and obey the laws of all inanimate objects; they are not alive.
Members of institutions are people; they may not subordinate
their developmental qualities to the framework, the structure.
P.A. An idea, it seems, has to submit to the structure if it is to
be communicated Erasmus had to break through a cultural
prison wall are least as limiting as a wheat germ cell, or a pharaohs tomb. Tutankhamens ideas were enclosed within the preservative shells of Thebes.
PRIEST But before we blame the shell for the death of the idea
we should acknowledge the preservative function. [Bion,
1979, p. 68]1
Therefore research into this fundamental, nature and the existence of natural facts, was doomed to oblivion in later years (after
Freuds death), due to the interference of professionals within the
B I O N S C O N T R I B U T I O N S TO T H E F O R M U L AT I O N
113
psychoanalytic movement whose training was in fields other than

medicine.2 This was accompanied by rational, persuasive criticisms
against this fundamental and Freuds data on it. Such persuasive
criticism differs from a display of hard-core, empirical data, creating a difference of methods that cannot be resolved: one belongs to
rational argumentation and rhetoric; the other to the empirical tradition of science.
The scientific perception that allowed scrutiny of the immateriality of the object of study, extending (and therefore adding to) the
already known material domain, was provided, at least to Western
civilisation, by Psychoanalysis (from 1896 to 1905) and Physics
(from 1899 to 1905), in parallel and with no connection between
them. After all, it was common, before the advent of modern-day
communications in real time, for the same discoveries to be made
at the same time by people with different educational backgrounds,
living in different places, within different scientific disciplines, with
no awareness of or information about each others work. Alas, even
today, awareness of this connection between Psychoanalysis and
Physics in terms of the immateriality of the object of study is limited;
there has been a return to the study of what is concrete and material.
This has introduced some confusion, from which those critics have
profited, wittingly or unwittingly. To quote an example: the advocates of subjectivism or intersubjectivism, or of post-modernism.3
Science cannot be convincing, for it is not a matter of beliefas Bion
observed, one does not need to resort to the human capacity for belief
when one has facts at ones disposal (Bion, 1979, p. 294). In more
recent years there have been some reminders on biology and scientific method, but they are still confined to a positivisticand then
non-psychoanalytic or counter-psychoanalyticapproach.4
Nevertheless, there is no hard-core evidence that this fundamental of psychoanalysis is becoming less important if the criteria take
into account refutations linked to empirical bases. One of the biological and scientific fundamentals that Freud used in his discovery
of analysis rests on the scientific concept of function.
It seems that Bion was the first author who, through making the
concept explicit and expanding Freuds findings, allowed the analyst to become aware5 of the concept of function, and function of
function, as an everyday analytic tool. This chapter will summarise
and also try to contribute to a possible further expansion of it.
114
Function was originally a Euclidean-Aristotelian concept which

formulates an early method of studying objects (which Aristotle
also called mathematical objects) and their mutual relationships.
This method allows an observer to apprehend what a function is by
seeing how it defines a relationship between two objects; it allows
him to understand how one object functions in relation to another
object.
This concept of Function belongs to Aristotles realm of metaphysics, and led to remarkable developments in other basic sciences, such as mathematics: for example, the extension of Euclids
realm of sensuously based geometry into the non-sensuously based
algebraic calculus. Function relates (or inter-relates) at least two
invariants and allows for the discovery, from their transformation,
of unknowns. They are an application of couples and their outcome,
or of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. In analysis, the most fundamental function is expressed by Oedipus, or its variables, mother,
father and progeny.
At school we learn about the linear function, represented by a
straight line (Latin linea), expressed for example as f(x) = ax + b, or
y = ax + b, where the equation defines the relationship between the
variables x and y in terms of two invariants (constants), a and b. For
any given value of x, the corresponding y-value is found by multiplying the x-value by the invariant a and then adding the invariant b;
the relationship defined in the equation allows any unknown values
of x or y to be found. Mapping the pairs of x- and y-values found in
this way onto a Euclidean coordinate system (a pair of axes crossing
at 90 where x is the horizontal and y the vertical axis) produces a
straight line.
Therefore, describing function differs from attempting to discover causes and spatial localisations through positivistic oversimplifications. Freuds surpassing of positivist criteria allowed
him to discover some mental functions, and the fact that the mind
itself functions in specific ways. In the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), Freud observed (i) a primary function of the human
nervous system under the inertia principle or constancy principle: energy discharge from endogenous and exogenous stimuli,
through connections from the muscular system and internal organs,
where the human mental apparatus has a tendency towards the
least possible energy; and (ii) a secondary function imposed by life
115
demands: nourishment, respiration and sexuality. In 1910, Freud

observed that both of these functions are subordinated factors in
yet other fundamental functions which make psychic reality work
and operate. He called them principlesthe principles of mental functioning. Namely: the pleasure and displeasure principle
and the reality principle. From them, he discovered yet another cast
of functions, which he observed as the functions of ego: attention,
notation, recording and action. Therefore, all mental functions had
instinctual bases and psychic equivalents, which may be at least partially known through what Freud named the unconscious phantasies.
Freud was working in an as yet uncharted realm, so he had to create
a nomenclature to describe his findings. His observations led him
to expand the description of instincts (life instincts, death instincts
and epistemophilic instincts), to which psychic (or mental) functions
are subordinate. They can be recognised as phenomena; the plural
in each name emphasises its ultimately unknown character. Their
phenomenal expressions are free associations, free-floating attention
(the counterpart of free associations in the analytic function), and
dreaming and dream work occurring both by day and at night. Clinical manifestations of some of these functions are reviewed in other
parts of this work. Few analysts after Freud expanded the discovery
of empirically verifiable mental functions, the notable ones being
Klein and Bion. The latter rescued them from the oblivion imposed
by some ways of the psychoanalytic movement, which had become
an establishment following the functions of the inanimate realm.
Truth function
All natural functions that operate, or are functional, have a leitmotif:
biological truth. This was emphasised right from the beginning by
Freud: And finally we must not forget that the analytic relationship
is based on a love of truththat is, on a recognition of realityand
that it precludes any kind of sham or deceit (Freud, 1937, p. 248).
Due to some historical factors linked to the fashion of his day for
so-called naturalism and to the little learning which debased
Goethes Naturphilosophie, Freud consciously avoided the term
intuition; anyway, it was implicitly included in tact, the term
he used to describe the analysts function, which also encompassed
experience.6
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Bion explicitly described the analytic function and the analytic

function of the mind, as well as the function of the analyst. Like
Freud, he emphasised the truth factor.
Psychoanalytic procedure presupposes that the welfare of the
patient demands a constant supply of truth as inevitably as his
physical survival demands food. It further presupposes that
discovery of the truth about himself is a precondition of an ability to learn the truth, or at least to seek it in his relationship
with himself and others. It is supposed at first that he cannot
discover the truth about himself without assistance from the
analyst and others. [19581979, p. 99]
Healthy mental growth seems to depend on truth as the living
organism depends on food. If it is lacking or deficient the personality deteriorates. [1965, p. 38]
I assume that the permanently therapeutic effect of a psychoanalysis, if any, depends on the extent to which the analysand
has been able to use the experience to see one aspect of his
life, namely himself as he is. It is the function of the psychoanalyst to use the experience of such facilities for contact as the
patient is able to extend to him, to elucidate the truth about the
patients personality and mental characteristics, and to exhibit
them to the patient in a way that makes it possible for him to
entertain a reasonable conviction that the statements (propositions) made about himself represent facts. It follows that a
psychoanalysis is a joint activity of analyst and analysand to
determine the truth; that being so, the two are engagedno
matter how imperfectlyon what is in intention a scientific
activity. [19581979, p. 114]
The analysts main concern must be with the material of which he

has direct evidence, namely, the emotional experience of the analytic
sessions themselves (1965, p. 7); in other words, what is occurring,
which corresponds to Freuds here and now.
The term truth function was formulatedas far as extant writings are availablein Bions first Brazilian Lecture as an existent
activity, a goal, quite independent of whether or not it is achievable
(1973, p. 59). The analytic couple, through a propitiating analysts
posture and example that can be followed or not, looks for truth-O
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(O being the quasi-mathematical symbol created by Bion to signal

the numinous realm). A few years before his Brazilian Lectures, Bion
coined a definition of the analysts task (whose consequence is its
function): a pursuit of truth-O (1970, p. 29). One may conclude that
a part of the functions performed by the central nervous system, by
the mind and by the analyst is one and the same. Because in psychoanalysis, the object which is studied (or the studied subject) and the
methods of studying it (which comprise its tools) are, again, one and
the same: the mind itself. The object studied dictates the function,
which must itself be sufficiently adapted to the objects features and
nature. Analytic function studies real lifenot the purpose of life,
which will remain unknowable if it exists at all, but the many functions that maintain life as an ongoing process. Therefore, many vital
functions correspond to analytic functions. Freud isolated instincts
as a name which encompasses material and immaterial vital functions. The attempt to describe those functions must cope with both
forms, material and immaterial, and not one or the other.
It is easier to nameas Freud did in his various papers on
instinctsthe materialised or materialisable ones: nourishment, to
which we may add the alleviation of thirst and breathing. Unseen
by the physical waking eye, but having a chance to be at least partially seen by the interior sight, there is the dreaming life and the
functioning dream work. The non-material compound (or the immateriality) which occurs in music and, in a more general sense, in all
arts, was called by Bionin what can be seen as a self-mocking, good
humoured verbal formulationinfra- and ultra-sensuous. Trying
to catch this realm, Freud introduced the psychoanalytic analysis
of dreams; Klein developed a play-technique based on the dreamy
nature of childrens play; Winnicott followed the transitional object;
and Bion, with his expansion from Freud, developed the practice of
dreaming the session. Those were some of the tools developed to
make analysis function, trying to catch the truth function of mind.
Truth function allows for a transient and partial grasping of the
underlying psychic realitythe unbewu t, unknown, but reachable
through its relations with and therefore differences from material
realitywhich is apprehensible, albeit imperfectly, by the human
sensuous apparatus. The relationship of the antithetical couple
(material and psychic reality) furnishes a pattern. We emphasised
the presence of a couple in defining the function in its earliest form,
drawn from the history of mathematics. We will expand it now.
118
Mathematical analogies
The underlying pattern defines any mathematical function; in our
example, the linear function, it is given by the equation and its
unknowns (the variables x and y) and invariants (a and b). With
it, the infinite unknown (which corresponds to the psychoanalytic
unbewut) can be turned into the not-unknown, or knowledge, albeit
transiently under one definable vertex (which composes, as a representation, the straight line in the Euclidean system of coordinates).
All of this is discovered by the relationship y = ax + b.
Analytic function is a practical hint, not just theoretical, as it
might seem. In Bions formulation: The interpretation given the
patient is a formulation intended to display an underlying pattern
(1967, p. 131), which forms part of that which is unconscious (not
known, unbewu t); and: The psychoanalyst tries to help the patient
to transform that part of an emotional experience of which he is
unconscious into an emotional experience of which he is conscious
(1965, p, 32). This is a perhaps more precise way to put Freuds formulations of the analytic function (consequent to the analytic task):
turn the unconscious, conscious, or where there was the id, shall
ego be.
I put forward, herewith, a theory of with a recently proliferated sense organ known as the end, in which various functions, usually associated with psychoanalysis (the Oedipus
situation, aggression, rivalry) are supposed to be observed (on
the model of forms of dis-order, dis-ease, sex, fear, love). In reality they are patterns, configurations, insignificant in themselves
but, if delineated, indicative of an underlying reality by their
perturbations, regroupings, shifts in pattern and colour; they
reflect a category and kind that the human mind cannot formulate or conjecture in their presence. [Bion, 1975, p. 112]
A possible detection of those underlying patterns depends on the

analytically trained intuition (Bion, 1965, p. 42). In the ensuing years Bion borrowed from mathematics two terms that can be
seen as indicating two stages in exercising the analytic function:
selected fact and invariance. The former serves as a board for the
latter; it indicates a fact which furnishes an idea of coherence to
119
facts formerly unconnected. The idea comes from the observers

mind. From it, the observer can furnish the selected fact to the
patient or not. If the fact is furnished, the patient can use it as an
interpretation, or an indication, or a hint, or as a trigger for free
association. Any case may serve the evolution of the analysts freefloating attention. Sometimes, in the later stages, the analyst may
identify an invariant which appertains to O, and transiently
glimpse it obtruding from the unknown. The invariant belongs to
the observed fact. The fuel for this function is an ability to tolerate
the lack or absence of a concrete object, or of a resolution to something which cannot be resolved (a paradox). There are degrees in a
range that is wholly individual in attaining the analytic function; it
may be enough to catch something or some part of something which
is real. The earliest learning experience for an analyst may reside in
his own infancy, where a good enough toleration of a post-sensuous
object, mixing pleasure and displeasure, could be worked through.
In other terms, when a concrete and sensuously apprehensible object
dispenses with its substantive form and becomes an unreachable
goal, and assumes the features of a vector, of a sense, of a movement
(analogically, a verb), it can suffer introjections (introjective identification) as a non-concrete internal imago (internal object).
A couple
An analyst functions if a patient is available. There is no such a thing
as an analyst in isolation, to paraphrase Winnicott. Therefore, there
is no analytic function when there is no patient; similarly, there is
no artistic function devoid of an audience or onlookers; no scientific
work without publication.
Analytic function is propitiatory. People come not looking for
analysis, but sometimes may find analysis and be interested in it;
sometimes, if there is a matter of interest (Sanders, 1986) from the
analyst, outbound and oriented to the patient.
It may be convenientunder the vector of interest whose direction, or sense, or tropism, springs from the analyst and is directed
towards the patientto look for the analytic function by asking
why people seek analysis. Experience shows that people are looking not for analysis proper, but for an idea of analysis. Perhaps the
general driving force is linked to inner freedom and truth. Despite
120
the existence of multifarious forms (often called dissidences from

Freud), which may lead to confusion, there is a kind of personal
intuition, found in all social classes and endeavours, that one looks
for one or both goals. A digression must be made about the multifarious forms that analysis has taken. One of the factors leading to
this is probably its fumbling infancy (Bion, 1975, p. 130). One hundred years is comparatively too short a span of time, if we choose as
a parameter the development of knowledge processes through the
history of Western civilisation. The exercise of analytic function also
discovered that the unconscious goal may have some glimpses of
the conscious goal of inner freedom and truth, but it also includes
an unconscious tendency to lack of freedom and untruth7. Returning to the partially conscious motives for seeking analysis, a sizeable number of people look for what they think is analysis in order
to diminish their wholesale sensations of pain, because they hate
to suffer it; to restore their defences and resistances to facing inner
truth (which in most cases have recently proved to be unsuccessful);
to learn how to live, in the hope that the analyst knows this; to learn
analysis in order to be able to analyse other people, which they
think could empower them with some superior strength; to learn
the analysts ideas on life (Weltanschauung) or on any other issue; to
copy or ape the analysts Weltanschauung; to oppose it. In any case,
real suffering of pain or feeling pain is a permanent accompaniment. Analytic function precludes any unnecessary augmentation
of pain. Analytic function allows for the living emotional experience
and its companion, hallucination, as it occurs in the session with
and between two people. There is an express intent that the patient
can apprehend, through insight, at least in part, who he is, through
becoming (himself) in the here and now of the session. Analytic
function has a convenient tool at hand, ready for use: a good enough
knowledge of the analysts states of mind, obtained through the
analysis of the analyst.
Equipping the analytic function

Mental apparatus, mental functioning: the idea that these designations (as used by Freud and Bion) are non-functional is a sign of
our present times. The basis for this is linguistics: to the critics, they
are too physical for such a psychological issue. In other words,
the critics believe in the centuries-old splitting of mind and matter,
121
a belief alien to the scientific studies of Freud. These critics deny the
scientific nature of psychoanalysis, and the general reason is that it
is dmod. Out-of-fashion criteria cannot be the object of discussion
and much less of demonstrationthis is a question of taste and feelings, which are arbitrary criteria within the range of personal issues.
In Physics, a fashionable non-sense was displayed by Sokal. Its
indications could be usefullike other analogies from this scientific
disciplineto the psychoanalytic realm and practice.
Having no qualms about the practical utilities in the use of those
terms, in the belief that fashion is neither a good guide nor a good
counsellor, it is feasible to enumerate positive and negative tools that
enable ones analytic function. The negative tools recommend what
one must not do or perform; the positive tools recommend what one
may do or perform. Adding quantities implies developing analytic
functions. These tools also imply, and comprise, ethical measures.
Negative tools to improve analytic function

1. Absence of judgmental values
One of the tasks of the analytic couple is to apprehend the patients
features. Once they are apprehended by both in their own way,
according to their own individual possibilities, the analysts function comes in: to pave or construct a way to propitiate awareness of
the patients features. The patients task is to decide if this consciousness and the facts linked to it are debits or credits (Bion, 1979, p. 154).
It is not the analysts function and task to shed light on the patients
life; rather, he can help the patient to lead his life under his own
lights, and to discover what his lights are (Bion, 1965, p. 37). Selfknowledge, one of the goals of analysis, is not judgmental (Bion,
1963, p. 91). To sum up: psychoanalysis is an organon (a tool), and not
a canon (ruling pattern).8
2. Disciplined abstinence
Unfortunately, disciplined abstinence from memory, desire and
understanding have become jargon (despite Bions efforts against
this tendency), but merit attention. A form which expands what Bion
has already emphasisedwhich can be reviewed by the reader in his
1967 paper Notes on Memory and Desire (19581979, p. 380) and
in the comments made in the book Second Thoughts (1967)could
122
be a more precise naming of the frequent desires, memories and

understandings. A practical way to do this, if we may name the disciplined behaviour of the analyst, is to get a good enough knowledge
of his (or her) psychotic personality. A developed way to do this is
to get a good enough personal analysis. Then, personal phantasies
of superiority may be fairly controlled, at least during the time span
of an analytic session. Those phantasies are manifested though multiple and variegated forms, such as feelings of self-importance, by
overvaluing personal interests, even in a subtle or disguised form.
Another common manifestation is to insert or infiltrate previously
known theories in analysis, camouflaged as rigid ideas about the
patient (which turn to be pseudo-theories about the patient). All of
this is cloaked in sadistic phantasies intended as authoritarian domination of another person and the unknown present in any lifeand
therefore, psychoanalyticsituation. Discipline of pleasure is also
indicated in the agreeable lucrative goals, which runs counter to analytic apprehension. Memory and pleasure appear together in order to
counter-arrest the perception of Pain. Discipline of understanding can
be seen in being a slave of appearances and the two-tracked factors
of this, formal logic and rationalisation. They compose the appearance of concepts and facts that seemed understood, with the aid of
memory. External material appearances obfuscate the apprehension
of what underlies the appearance, which is immaterial. Patients must
count with a propitiatory environment that allows them to talk about
what they do not know (Freud, 1937); in other words, the discipline
of memory, desire and understanding applies to the patient too. That
which is not known is life itself, in its constantly changing forms,
albeit with conserved or transcendent invariants, which call to be
discovered and well keptif analysis is successful enough.
3. Freedom from authoritarian features

Firstly, from manifest contents: both from the patients speech and
from manifest reports of dreamsthe analyst must be unglued from
words, terms and consciously made allegations, in order not to be
the prey of propaganda. These are pointers to what is not; avoiding
being jailed by them furnishes a hint to that which is. Freedom does
not mean being immune or shielded from something, but facing and
using it. There is a need for a sojourn in this state of nothingness,
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until a truthful hint obtrudes. Secondly, from the unconscious,

to the extent that analysis tries to know its functioning, through its
manifestations. Freedom is at the service of those enslaved by the
refusal to suffer; or enslaved by suffering from nothing real.
Positive tools to improve analytic function

4. Compassion
This factor of analytic function, which was first named by Bion as an
element of psychoanalysis (1963), may be expressed by an antithetical
pair linked by a tandem movement based in PS D: caring tolerating
pain. To care may be the best verbal expression hitherto devised to
indicate the presence of the basic instincts love and death. To tolerate pain without hasty measures to extinguish it (unless it is a case
of survival) can be seen as the most primitive aspect of tolerating paradoxes. This posture is a positive movement; to expect is not passive,
but an active and potent arresting and counter-arresting of desire and
pleasure. This is the basic stage of penetrating into the unknown, or
unconscious. Compassion expresses itself by caring; its consequence
is the toleration of pain. It is opposed to explanation, which aims to
reach final, teleological answers. Compassion leads to comprehension of descriptionsthe obverse of explanation, misunderstanding
and rationalisation. Moreover, compassion leads to surrendering pretensions to final answers. Therefore, one becomes more able to tolerate what may be totally unknown. Explanation, understanding and
final answers are a nourishing trio of illusion (in the way physical
misunderstandings are always conducive to rational explanations),
hallucination (where a priori and ad hoc understanding are based on
objectless perceptions) and delusion (final answers: the final triumph
of a rationalised link of hallucinations). Compassion, or keeping a
passion together (con), a quantum leap from loneliness, is a tool for
the apprehension of reality; in early life it is best expressed by reverie
(Bion, 1962; Sandler, 2005). We consider the attempt to improve
humans both worthwhile and urgent (Bion, 1979, p. 528).
5. Truth
Truth is the leitmotif of any natural (biological) function; see the
discussion of functions earlier in this chapter. A special analytic
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instrument of the analytic function is Myth, and Personal Myth,

which demands to be found in any session. Bion thought of myths
as a fact finding-tool (1963, p. 66; extensively reviewed in Sandler,
2005). He also observed that for the psychoanalyst, being aware of
facts has, I am sure, had an effect on me analogous to that of food on
my physique (1977b, p. 330).
6. Capacity to work and the (eventually and variably)

accompanying pain
Capacity to work is both a factor in analytic function and, in itself,
a function of it (for analysis is work). To face what is unknown
and the frustration of desire involves gradesindividually
accordedof pain, proportional to primary narcissism and dedication to the paranoid-schizoid position (primary envy and greed).
The development of each ones capacity to work and to tolerate pain
develops with analytic worka benefit intended for the patient but
also a fringe benefit for the analyst (as in any work). Psychopathic
personalities, who represent a special case of delinquency (prevalence of desire, and pleasure in inflicting pain on others), neurosis
(prevalence of memory) and psychosis (prevalence of omnipotence,
omniscience, splitting and other aspects of the paranoid-schizoid
position), fortified by self-feeding cycles of envy and greed, hate this
special function.
7. Tolerance of paradoxes
I proposed elsewhere that an attitude moving towards a tolerance
of paradoxes without a hasty attempt to solve them is a hallmark
of the analytic posture and is both a factor of analytic function and
an analytic-function-in-itself, like allegiance to the unconscious
and discovering the Oedipus complex in each analysand (Freuds
criteria). The most primitive paradox demanding to be coped with
was discovered by Melanie Klein, and its explicit verbal formulation was made by Bion and Winnicott: the apprehension that the
object that is felt to be loved and the object that is felt to be hated
are one and the same object. This is a paradox which must be tolerated, not resolved. Winnicott focused the same observation on the
breast, but it seems that Bion and Winnicott pointed to the same
fact, expressed by the verb rather than by the sensuous substantive
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(mother, breast), which forms part of what has to be tolerated (as a

sensuous counterpart) but does not tell the whole story. Since reality is material and immaterial, or psychic and material (as Freud
observed), or psychic and sensuous (as Bion said in Attention and
Interpretation), always emphasising and rather than or, the paradox
is tolerated as a movement. The same tolerance seems to have been
extended to the realm of knowledge: the object that is known and
the object that is not-known are one and the same object. This extension was made by myself; it seemed to be justified by practice. In
theoretical or metapsychological terms, since the K link is a function and factor of the L and H links, the conclusion is obvious (Bion,
1962). In Freuds terms, the epistemophilic instinct is a function of
the death and life instincts, despite being discovered firstnot only
by Freud, but by the infant as well.
P.A. Psychoanalysts have to be cautious about their claims
of scientific truth. The nearest that the psychoanalytic couple
comes to a fact is when one or the other has a feeling. Communicating that fact to some other person is a task which has
baffled scientists, saints, poets and philosophers as long as the
race has existed. [1979, p. 536]
8. Communication
Verbal thought (Bion, 1957) may be seriously considered to form part
of analytic function. If the psychoanalytical situation is accurately
intuitedI prefer this term to observed or heard or seen as it does
not carry the penumbra of sensuous associationthe psychoanalyst
finds that ordinary conversational English is surprisingly adequate
for the formulation of his interpretation (Bion, 1967, p. 134).
Functioning analysis and risks; unattainable goals

and attainable possibilities
Considering as an ideal that the analysts analytic function and the
patients analytic function (which are shared values but not coincidental except as values) work, we may have some ideal goals.
Firstly, the patient can be enabled to know and have a developed
and variable degree of awareness (and idea) of the consequence
of his or her own theories, systems of thinking, and beliefs about
126
him- or herself, about life and about other people. They can also be
helped to improve the way they deal with the pitfalls of splitting in
thought processes; and to increase their capacity to love and regard
for truth, measured against the capacity to become depressed in
the awareness of damage inflicted on the object (understood in
Freuds, Kleins, and partly in Winnicotts terms). This object is,
in its primitive form, Mother, and the damage is inflicted by innate
greed and envy.
Secondly, the analysand has a possibility to become, in variable
individual degrees as in any human endeavour, reconciled with himself as he is or herself as she is. That is, reconciled enough to carry
on living inside, and not outside, his or her biologically determined
developable abilities coupled with social possibilities (complementary series, as observed by Freud). In Bions formulation, which in
my view is more precise, the patient has an opportunity to become
(as a transitive movement) him- or herself, at-one with him- or herself (Bion, 1970; reviewed in Sandler, 2005).
Thirdly, psychoanalysis seems to be the most powerful method
hitherto at our disposal to launch into consciousness (albeit in a
partial and incomplete form) thoughts, actions, emotions, as well
as affects and inner unconscious drives leading to feelings of
which the person had no previous idea. They were unconscious,
and as such, they led the patient unseen and inaudible. The term
unconscious means unknown (unbewut); they are synonyms.
As I have already stated, the latter term, despite meaning the same
thing, could be used when one notices the widespread hallucinosis
of anthropomorphism which has sensified and concretised the
term unconscious in the minds of many readers. The term is still,
and will continue to be, valid, but seems to have temporarily lost,
in some quarters and for some readers, its communicative strength
to evoke its counterpart in reality. Some readers can see what it is
about; they will be spared from rescuing attempts at synonyms
and even from the term itself; reality (as it is) is unfathomable and
ineffable. If the patient can, like a flash of lightning which lasts for
milliseconds, momentarily illuminate what has to be illuminated,
he or she will make the unconscious conscious and then send it
back to the unconscious as a learned ability. This posture gives
flesh and life to the theoretical formulation coined by Freud, which
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is now a psychoanalytic adage: where there was id there is now

ego. In this case, the patient will be able to decide, consciously or
not, through the contact barrier but not through the beta screen,
what alternatives he or she has. Even if the range of alternatives is
reduced to Yes or No (like a computer bit), the patient will have at
least one alternative: not doing what he or she was doing before.9
This is obtained by using the analytic function of both components
of the analytic pair. But the personal function of each differs. The
task of doing all this is propitiated by analysis and by the analyst,
but it belongs to the patient. Not just for ethical reasonsnot providing the patient with lights, but discovering the patients own
lights that flow in his or her mind unconsciously, their counterparts
emanating in the session through free associations, as thoughts
without a thinker, waiting for the analytic couple to think them.
This allows us to see that unethical postures belong to the realm of
hallucionosis. We will not dwell on this now, but just note it. This is
not an analysts task because it is individual and non-transferable,
except as a feeling in hallucinosis. Patients who suffer from transference (used as Freud used it) or who have only ever inhabited the
paranoid-schizoid position, construing everything around them
through projective identification (as shown by Klein in The Origins
of Transference, 1952) may claim that it can be transferable. But this
is biologically individualas with the sensuous apparatus and in
any human organtheir products can and must be experienced in
solitude.
Finally, the attempt to show the patient to himself, who he is in
reality, may help him to marry himself. The person who nourishes
a good enough interest in this will become reconciled to the fact that
he is the one and only person from whom he can never separate as
long as he carries on living. From all other people, dear to him or
not, unless there is a deep bond of love and hate, he can perform this
task of separation. If analysis has been successful in restoring the
personality of the patient he will approximate to being the person
he was when his development became compromised (Bion, 1965,
p. 143).
If the reader takes the terms ideal and ideal goals seriously,
he or she will constantly have in mind that this is an unattainable
state. Nevertheless, the fact that it is unreachable does not mean
128
that it cannot be pursued. The extent of proximity or approach to

it depends on individual endowments of sensibility, intelligence,
capacity to care (the best expression of love, as already emphasised)
and the possibility of conception of nothing and nothingness (death);
and on the negative side, the lack of psychopathic traits.10 With this
warning kept effective and adequately maintained in good fitness,
one may consider:
Risks in the exercise of analytic function

When the patient lacksin realitya capacity to love and a
regard for truth and life (Bion, 19581979, p. 195), a successful
analysis increments projective identification of his non-existent
self-responsibility and unethical resource of nothingness into the
analyst; he develops unending (infinite as the unconscious) hate
towards psychoanalysis. This makes the psychopathic patient inimical to analysis, especially when he tries to be an analyst; usually his
way tends to develop establishment-backed actions, which are per
se inanimate. Personally, the person must decide between self- or
hetero-murder, and usually prefers the latter. The first murdered
entity is analysis itself; the second the analyst, in his social repute.
If the process goes on, there is a physical threat to his survival. If
analytic function is properly exercised, even in its good enough
form, it will work against analysis. The analyst finds himself in the
position of the postman who has to deliver a letter containing unwelcome news, or a bill, having no idea of its content a priori. Sometimes
intuition, or premonition learned by experience can prevent this;
maturity brings an end to analysis before it can really begin. The
alternative is real attacks while he works.
Analysis means respect for and consideration of individuals. This
usually puts the analyst in a dangerous place with regard to the
developments of the horde. In other words, the analyst is opposed
to the avalanche of fashion, an in-built feature in the survival of
the herd. Either the individual perishes, or the herd perishes; both
perish when there is no space for the individual. Witness Stalinism,
Nazism, and religious fundamentalism; the issue is expanded by
Freud in Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) and Bion in The
Dawn of Oblivion (1979, p. 461).
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Symptoms of failing analytic function

1. The analysts talk displays an infiltration of both a priori and ad
hoc theorising, indistinguishable from a vast paramnesia to
fill the void of our ignorance (Bion, 1976);
2. When the analyst loses sight of the hallucinatory nature of the
transference phenomena (Freud, 1912; Bion, 1965);
3. As a consequence of (2), when the analyst cannot discern that
projective identification is a phantasy leading to the loss of
personal responsibility (with a mind of ones own), with the
resulting hallucinated belief that psychoanalysis is a variant of
telepathy and mesmerised states (as in the so-called psychosomatic
causes), and feelings are symbolically equated to contagious
illnesses;
4. As a consequence of (2) and (3) above, when the analyst cannot
recognise hallucination as it occurs in the analytic session,
measured by the extent to which the analyst glues himself in the
manifest contents, clothing them in words which seem seductive
and giving final answers, precluding the intuition and observation
of the embedded latent content that begs to be formulated.
Notes
1. Both Kuhns contributions and his expansions on groups will be
discussed in the next volume.
2. The issue of Epistemology and Truth will be discussed in the next
volume.
3. As authors such as Paul Ricoeur and Harold Bloom can exemplify.
The latters statement (quoted just as an example to illustrate the
statement in the main text) that Shakespeare invented human
personality can be taken as a clever verbal boutade which cannot be
proved or disproved empirically.
4. Like advocating an advertised new neuro-psychoanalysis,
neuroscience, or research in psychoanalysis, whose main exponents have been Dr Mark Solms and Dr Peter Fonagy. This chapter is
not focused on criticising them; they are quoted just as an example.
5. Through one of his many theories of observation in psychoanalysis
(see Sandler, 2005).
6. The personal factor will be discussed in the next volume.
7. The realm of Minus, Part I.
130
8. Adherents of some authors, who can be exemplified by Thomas

Kuhns and Harold Blooms philosophy of scientific and literary
vertices, see psychoanalysis as a canon. Deprived of clinical practice, this may be the only alternative left.
9. Please see Part I.
10. Melanie Klein said to Bion than no liar could be analysed. In the
same sense, persons with psychopathic traits cannot be analysed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
An analytic compass and sextant
P.A. I find it useful to make a distinction between meaning

and fact. Facts are the name we give to any collection of
constantly conjoined experiences which we felt temporarily
have a meaning; then we consider we have discovered a fact.
(Bion, 1979, p. 2356)
P.A. Being aware of facts has, I am sure, had an effect on me
analogous to that of food on my physique.
(Bion, 1979, p. 330)
Psychoanalysis tells you nothing; it is an instrument, like the
blind mans stick, that extends the power to gather information.
The analyst uses it to gather a selected kind of information:
the analysand uses it to gather material that he can use (1) for
purposes of imitation, (2) to learn the analysts philosophy,
(3) to learn how to conduct his life in a socially acceptable
manner, and (4) to become acquainted with his Self. Although
it is true that it is not his intention to satisfy (1), (2) and (3),
or any other desire other than (4), it is impossible to make any
131
132
statement that gratifies only (4) because the lack of precision of

spontaneous English speech. The analyst can try not to pollute
his interpretation on the one hand, or to speak as if he were
a living computer, stranger to human heartedness, or the life
that the rest of our human companions are familiar with as
members of our universe. Certain words and phrases appear to
be necessary for the communication of happenings recurring
in that part of human experience with which I am most familiar,
and which happens also to be that part of my life that is my
professionwhat, for the lack of power to describe adequately,
I call mental suffering.
(Bion, 19581979, p. 361)
hat might have been the state of affairs in both art and science (two most powerful methods devised by humankind
to approach reality and truth), as well as in their earlier
form, mysticism, when the discipline was one hundred years old?
The most probable situation was determined by the small population
of that time, when communication between practitioners was almost
none, but one had to orient oneself into the ways of the discipline.
I owe the inspiration and use of the concept orientation, as brought
to the attention of the practising analyst, to Green (Green, 2002).
One of the earliest attempts to report an orientation may be seen
in the Ancient Greeks reference to the Muses in the artistic field.
In science, orientation was first done with manifestations from
nature such as the stars or rhythmic (time-dependent) events with
other natural entities such as plants, or corporeal needs.
Needs in fluid drive

This led to some inventions for the nautical explorerfor the first
wider exploration in an unknown, fluid environment. Freud knew
he was not a positivist scientist, and preferred to compare himself to an explorer like Marco Polo. This allows one to compare the
psychoanalytic function of the mind with a Marco Polo function of
the mind. This makes for many activities, such as psychoanalysis
and voyaging, a kind of prospective and curiosity-generated action
bound to make discoveries, devoid of the destructive warmonger
A N A N A LY T I C C O M PA S S A N D S E X TA N T
133
instinct of the conqueror. Also, the march into an unknown realm

which is more than fluid supports comparison with the nautical
explorer.
This kind of explorer, who is at one with the human beings fishy
love affair with water and the sea, is phylogenetically (naturally)
originated. So exploration may fulfil a primitive, natural vertex.
In the same way we human beings augmented our limited sensuous
range of reach through devices which enhance this range, such as telescopes, microscopes and loudspeakers, the discovery and construction of the compass and the astrolabe, later replaced by the sextant,
allowed the voyager to know his orientation, his becoming. The
first device made use of natural gravitational forces and magnetism.
These were unknown at the time, but could be intuited, experimented with and used; a kind of lesson for todays analysts who
do not know a sizeable number of realities but can nevertheless
intuit and use them. The second device profited from mathematical developments, which freed still more thought from its fumbling
infancy, dependent on the sensuous apparatus. With the astrolabe
and its more modern form, the sextant, the explorer could measure the height of distant stars above the imaginary line called the
horizon.
In the fluid mental environment (materially composed mostly of
water and fat) Bion resorted to Kiplings seven servants as well
as to the binocular view and emphasis on discipline of memory,
desire and knowledge as kinds of analytic tools. Meanwhile, he
also tinkered with another attempt, The Grid, as a development of
other fact-finding analytic tools: elements of psychoanalysis and
myths.
Disclaimer: just an analogy

The use of models and analogies in psychoanalysis is the same as
in science. They are introduced to represent in the meta presentations (which began with metaphysics, by an editor of Aristotle,
and was followed by Freud with his metapsychology) their counterparts in reality, as a helping hand in thought processes which have
extensions in the field of visual form. They may emphasise, indicate, or even present (rather than represent) to intuitive audiences
134
or onlookers aspects (or in some very few cases, the whole) of their
counterparts in reality. Therefore, the following analogy or model
(as in Kants definition of model, also used by Bion; see Sandler, 1997
and 2005) must be taken as only a model and is not to be used as if
it were the thing-in-itself. The problem with models is that they are
too often mistaken for the ultimately unknowable and unfathomable counterparts in reality that they purport to emphasise, indicate,
represent or present. Models, even the most successful ones such
as Oedipus or the theory of relativity, are not real except as models
and analogies; their counterparts in reality are real. Myths were perhaps the first models devised by Western thinking; too often they
were taken into a reductionist anthropomorphic fashion or regarded
as things-in-themselves, which detracts both from the myths themselves and from peoples apprehension of the reality they were
intended to display.
With this disclaimer and examples in mind, and taking the relative youth of psychoanalytic research in the history of ideas and
science, one may, as analogy, construe an analytic compass and
sextant. Despite seeming old, the compass and sextant still work
and are used. The comparison is with an early and transcendent
all real ideas which have counterparts in reality are transcendent
tool that is still valid. Resorting to Freuds two modes or forms
(transformations) of existence, psychic and material, one may try to
see what the patient is doing in a specific moment of the session.
Freud spoke about the here and now, or moments. Life as a
living experience knows nothing about the past, unless as an introjected experience of what-not-doing1, because it is dead; the future
is not yet born; it is made by moments. The analyst must attempt to
carpe diem.
Reading the compass: if, how, who, whom (like any compass,
it does not indicate why, where or when)
First Step
Material
North
Psychic
South
The two principles of mental functioning:

principle of pleasure-displeasure
principle of reality
135
One must first determine where one is. In the timelessness of

non-space, but living realm of the unconscious, to be is to become.
So one may see what prevails in a single personality in a single
moment: subservience to the principle of pleasure and its opposite; or
abeyance to the principle of reality? The comparison does not allow
an order of precedence, even though, historically and ontogenetically, the first principle seems to be the first one to make its appearance. For example, the principle of pleasure and displeasure has been
known since Hobbes and Locke, but the instinct of reality could only
be discovered with Freud. The originators of the Greek myths, and
Shakespeare and Goethe were also well aware of it, but did not use
it for individual goals. Freud saw a historical precedence of pleasure
over reality, but Melanie Klein seemed to out-Freud Freud, staying
faithful to his own theoretical and practical framework. According
to the timelessness of the unconscious, Mrs Klein (in The Origins of
Transference, 1952) implicitly observes the inception of the principle
of realitywith Oedipus and Superego manifestationsfrom birth.
Bion extended the observation in the same framework: today we may
say that there is an early, crude adult in any newborn child, who looks
for his survival due to an inborn, phylogenetic pre-conception of
being aerobic and mammal. In other words, Bions theory of a preconception of a nourishing breast; the aerobic post-natal condition
already included a pre-natal, much more fulfilling overbreast
which provided already digested oxygen and nourishment. Therefore, the analyst must determine practically what the primary vertex
of the patient is at a specific moment of the session, under the north
or south principles of mental functioning.
Reading the compass: finding out and confirming if, how,

who and with whom the patient is running after pleasure
and abhorring displeasure (or not)
Second Step
Material
Psychic
East
The Positions: paranoid schizoid
West
depressive
With North-South momentarily established, an inhabiting of one

position can be looked for. Persecution or omnipotence seems easier
136
to discern, since Freud (narcissistic states); envy and greed are less
visible due to the peculiarities (disguised as theoretical allegiances)
of each analysts analysis; the same applies to false depression
(depression too coloured by persecution), as well as to hallucinosis, which demands the living participation (as an enzyme) of the
analyst in the process. Anyway, establishing its transient status furnishes the spot where the patient is being and becoming.
An analytic sextant
Thousands of years after the discovery of the compass, through
mathematical developments, the primitive sextant, which was then
called the astrolabe, could measure the height of stars above the
horizon. An optical device which enlarged the human visual apparatus, the telescope, improved the astrolabe into the sextant. In this
proposed analogy elaborating an orientation tool for analysts,
the importance of this optical device will become clear in the next
chapter on binocular vision.
The three basic instincts, death, life and epistemophilic (a kind of
specialised instinct which springs from the first two, despite having
been described by Freud before he elucidated those), can be likened,
as an analogy, to the act of defining stars from whose influence both
north and south (or, in my proposed analogy of an analytic compass, the two principles of mental functioning) and west and east
(the two positions) draw their respective courses. In our imaginary
analytic sextant, this device can bealways as an analogylikened
to another pair:
Necessity
Possibility
This pair can be linked, in its opposite form, to Pleasure. Therefore,

Pleasure (or Desire) is the obverse of considerations where Necessity
and Possibility are relevant. In Bions parlance, Pleasure is the negative of Necessity and, much less, of Possibility.
Reading the sextant

After having confirmed through the here-and-now analytic experience the prevalence of one of the two instincts, and the position
occupied by the patient, the aegis determined by a prevalent group
137
of instincts seems to be useful to refine our research. The original

posture, and hence the model, was introduced by Freud and Bion.
They did it in relation to the instincts that defined the narcissistic and
what Bion called socialistic. That is, they detected the direction
and height offor examplethe death instinct, as a star above the
horizon (that could be seen as a behaviour). If the death instincts are
more social-istic, the life instincts are more narcissistic. Conversely,
if the life instincts are bound to social-ism (directed to the interests
of the environment), narcissism receives the full weight of the death
instincts (Bion, 19581979, pp. 133, 262; Sandler, 2005, p. 518).
Other psychoanalytic expansions made by Bion of the paranoiddepressive position that merit attention and form part of the proposed sextant reading are firstly, reversal of perspectivewhich
stays static in the here-and-now moment of the session which is in
fact dynamic, a situation which precludes the pursuit of truth-O;
secondly, collusion or sharing of social views, a factor of shared
hallucinosis (those views include judgmental values on profession,
gender or external appearancesgood or bad); and thirdly, obstacles to finding a selected fact and its development, invariance. All
these parameters are dwelt on elsewhere in this work. The reading
must take into account the Necessity and Possibility, considered as
a pair, of any statement made and deed done by the patient. Both
measuring tools can be used, consciously and unconsciously, in any
analytic session.
Another device can be used together with the analytic compass
and the analytic sextant, as an improving aidin the sense that
a telescope aids the use of a nautical sextant. This is Bions Binocular Vision, which serves to trace the whereabouts of invariance and
other elementals of psychoanalysis. It will constitute the subject of
the next chapter.
Note
1. Experience must be learned, but there is a limitation. If it is stuck in
the past, it acts like a stern lantern on a ship, illuminating past things
with no serviceable action to their present, fresh and new forms.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Binocular vision and the practice

of psychoanalysis
One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things

at the same time. This is lucky for us according to the world, not
according to God.
(Pascal, Penses, p. 145)1
P.A. Certainty is a part of life as is uncertainty. We cannot
avoid either; they are opposite poles of the same feeling. I do
not know what name to give to the same feelingthat is, the
feeling of which they are opposite poles. Perhaps if I were a
poet or philosopher I could. It does not help that I am thought
to be a psychoanalyst because that is my profession.
(Bion, 1979, p. 513)
he previous chapter suggested a metaphor and an analogy

with a compass and a sextant to contribute to the one and only
practical application of psychoanalysis: attempts towards the
apprehension of both mental functioning and its entropic disturbances. This apprehension, which right from its start includes the
discipline of treating formal appearances as just a provisional (and
139
140
then disposable) step towards attaining underlying truths, resorts to

intuition and, as such, empirical practice. It has some similarities to
learning to play a musical instrument. It includes initial disorientation and lack of knowledge; one may find it useful to use orientation tools. These are the purpose of this chapter and its analogies
and metaphors, drawn from experience.
Metaphors, formulations and analogies come from, and tend to
induce, evoke and therefore include their non-verbal counterparts.
They can be subsumed by a still more developed concept, that of
models (Kant, 1781; Bion, 1962, 1963; Sandler, 1997, 2005). More
developed models dispense with visual (therefore, sensuous)
imagery; an example of this freedom is found in mathematical and
musical models.
The belief is that apprehension can be enhanced by resorting to
developed or more sophisticated models. Their empirical grounding may constitute a safeguard or at least a warning on flights
of fantasy and imagination, to use Bacons verbal formulation.
Nevertheless, imagination in its strictest sense,2 imaging + action,
must be present as a necessary, but not exclusive, step of thinking.
It must be nearer to dreaming and far from hallucination. Even
though the observational formulation bears on the correspondence
of those models with their counterparts in reality (illuminated after
Spinozas and Kants observations), all will depend on the strength
of the models, in terms of their capacity for raising particular cases
to a general level (after Bacon). In this case, models attain the status
of a theory. There are no bad or weak theories; as in life, they are or
are not. There are no intermediate degrees or grey tones. From that
strength flows the lending of scientific legitimacy to these models
and theories. In psychoanalysis, some of the models (or metaphors
and analogies in their less developed modes) are drawn from psychiatry while others stem from poetry and mythology. In this case,
they may be endowed with a capacity to evoke imagery in the minds
of the audience, which can be powerful or not. As I said in the disclaimer in the previous chapter, there is a risk of concretisation of
models in proportion to their evocative imagery, which is non-verbal
and usually, as in dreams, visual.
These aspects are explored in more detail, up to a point, in other
parts of this work. I suppose that the analogies and metaphors with
the compass and sextant can evoke images towards direction or
B I N O C U L A R V I S I O N A N D T H E P R AC T I C E O F P S Y C H OA N A LY S I S
141
sense, leading to orientation. This kind of aid to the human

sensuous apparatus extrapolates the technical or scientific parlance.
It wins the field of commonsense, plain discourse; the models are
widely known. Many verbally formulated models are doomed to
turn into technical jargon. As such they hamper the meaning of the
authors apprehensions by deteriorating into pompous phraseology, psychobabble which nourishes formalistic habits. They
badly damaged poetry and mathematics, as was shown by William
Wordsworth and Alfred North Whitehead in their respective disciplines. Precisely to avoid such an after-effect, Bion formulated his
models in commonsense parlance.
I suppose that compass and sextant may qualify as analogies
of this latter kind: plain, colloquial speech. This would also apply
to binocular vision, but it has the status of a theory, resembling
an instrument based on optical representations which simulate and
augment human sight. The nautical sextant is aided by a telescope;
the psychoanalytic sextant is aided by binoculars.
Definition
Although the model of binocular vision pervades the whole of Bions
work from 1944 (a groups basic assumptions are binoculars),
its first explicit definition was published in Learning from Experience
(Bion, 1962, p. 54), linked to Bions clinical observation of psychotics
with thought disturbance. The observations were published posthumously by his dedicated wife in Cogitations, with intra-session
data obtained from at least 1959 up to 1960. For example, the obese
patient who harboured a greedy, skinny inner self; or the shy, pale
patient who was unable to blush sensuously. The clinical data suggested to Bion the need to amend, rather than reject, a specific aspect
of Freuds theory of consciousness as a sensuous organ for the perception of psychic quality. He found that the pleasure/displeasure
principle and the reality principle were to be regarded as genetically
non-sequential, simultaneous events:
The conscious and the unconscious thus constantly produced together do function as if they were binocular, therefore
capable of correlation and self-regard. Because of the manner of its genesis, impartial register of psychic quality of the
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self is precluded: the view of one part by the other is, as it were,
monocular. [Bion, 1962, p. 54; my italics]
The model is formed by the exercise of a capacity similar to that
which is in evidence when the two eyes operate in binocular
vision to correlate two views of the same object. The use in psychoanalysis of conscious and unconscious in viewing a psychoanalytical object is analogous to the use of the two eyes in ocular
observation of an object sensible to sight. [ibid., p. 86]
The analyst is therefore in the position of one who, thanks to the
power of binocular perception and consequent correlation that
possession of capacity for conscious and unconscious thought confer,
is able to form models and abstractions that serve in elucidating
the patients inability to do the same. [ibid., p. 104, n. 19.2.1]
Binocular is a model with two main bearings, which respects both

forms of existence, material and psychic, as illuminated by Freud.
This model, perhaps theory, can be seen both in humans (and other
species) and in inanimate optical systems. It refers to obtaining a discrete image through the constant conjunction (in David Humes sense) of
two images, both by the two human eyes and by two sets of physical
lenses, along a longitudinal imaginary axis.
Lockes concept of common sense (Locke, 1690) is a
fundamental epistemological method of apprehension of reality
brought to psychoanalysis by Freud and Bion. It is constructed
from pairs, or counterpoints. For example, in a dark room one has
the tactile impression of fur. A second sense, hearing, informs us
that a meow is present too (Bion, 19581979, p. 10). The overall perception, and consequently the apprehension of reality, is
enhanced.3
Psychoanalytic roots
In an innovative way Bion integrated Kleins extensions on splitting processes, one of the multiple inroads made by Freud on the
functioning of mental apparatus, into Freuds theory of the unconscious, specifically concerning their effect in the area of perception
(both analysts and analysands) and of thinkingwhich takes care
of human apprehension of reality. Bion disclosed what was already
prefigured by Freud himself: the coexistence of the conscious with
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the unconscious through a dynamic functional in-between layer, the

contact barrier, the term Freud used in the Project for a Scientific
Psychology. If my idea of Bions use of Freuds and Kleins concepts of splitting and the unconscious is right, it confirms something
Bion often stressed, that he did not create new psychoanalytic theoretical concepts. Its psychoanalytic roots also include Rickmanns
two-body psychology (Rickmann, 1950).
Like any model in analysis, it is an epistemological tool to be
used in the psychoanalytic session. It provides a way of enlightening previously existing, but hitherto unobserved clinical facts. In my
experience it sheds light on some general epistemological issues, to
the extent that it can constitute a step forward from what is called
dialectics in philosophy. Rather than dealing with a pair of competing opposites as in pre-Hegelian philosophy, it allows for a creative couple, taking into account the product of the antithetical pair
(Oedipus).
Regarding correlation and self-regard, binocular vision is an
unattainable ideal mode of functioning that makes allowances for neither conscious nor unconscious predominance, and for no material
(sense-based) or immaterial (psychic) prevalencetwo tendencies
often found in disturbances of thought. Monocular, in contrast,
refers to the view that one system, either conscious or unconscious, holds of the other. It comes from splitting, as described by
Freud in the ego processes and Klein in the unconscious thinking
processes, leading to a psychotic idea of property about a delusion,
the pretension of owning absolute truth. Binocular thus applies
to integration, in Freuds original conceptions about the ontogenesis
of sexuality, expanded by Kleins observations on degrees of dealing
with and development of perception about internal objects.
In clinical practice this model helps to elicit the latent content
from the unfolding conscious material, not unlike a musical counterpoint. In this sense, it is one of the possible ways (rather than the
way) to trace the whereabouts of the underlying invariant, through
conjoining two or more transformations, as advanced in Part II of
Volume 1.
Being next to O, and using a model to approach the numinous
realm, this model operates in the negative or minus realm (Part
I of this volume). By way of correlation and contrast, it highlights
the patients inability to bring to bear his or her own binocular
vision.
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The model of binocular vision generated further clarifications of

notions which had been lurking in Freuds original insights: nothing can be conscious without having been unconscious (Bion, 19581979,
p. 71; 1962, p. 8).
Parts I and II in Volume 1 of this work focused on this feature:
any analytic session displays a dream-like nature, so far unobserved; through binocular vision the analyst may dream the session (Bion, 19581979, pp. 38, 39, 43). This does not exclude other
ways to do itbut it seems that binocular vision, as a technical tool,
enhances this posture and can be learned. Because the patients consciously verbalised material is akin to what Freud discovered was
the manifest dream content, and can be dealt with as such.
I suppose that binocular vision helps the analyst to tolerate
paradoxes without rushing into an attempt to solve them (Sandler,
1997b). In the psychic reality it expresses a basic fact of human life
as it is: the fundamental supremely creative couple (Klein, 1932;
Money-Kyrle, 1968).
A baby is monocularly hungry; a breast provides a second
view. A good (or bad) breast is the experiential binocular outcome
of a matching non-sensuous pair, i.e. mother and baby. Binocular
vision provides two points of view susceptible to be integrated,
through common sense, into a kind of son or daughter. This is a
transient act dependent on the data then available; a living process,
bound to develop. A bad breast can be seen as the former binocular
outcome of the matching of a mouth and a nipple. Now it is the
monocular component on standby, waiting to be matched with yet
another counterpoint provided by a further experience. The former
bad breast can turn into a good breast; or lead to a more integrated
view, in a ceaseless cycle of matching pairs. The marriage of two
points of view creates a third point of view that is different from both
the first and the second: it is something newand thus unknown.
This can be observed in all areas of human activity: the formation of
thought processes; the mother-baby relationship; the creative sexual couple; the perception of reality; the marriage between an artist
and his or her media; a psychoanalyst and his or her patients conscious or unconscious material. The unknown, new products of
the binocular vision are, respectively: the apprehension of thoughts
without a thinker; maternal love for a son or a daughter; affective
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friendship between a female and a male; percepts of facts; a work

of art; an insight in an analytic session, and so on. This insight is
the product of the meeting of the person with him- or herself: an
elementary two-ness, the internal basic group.
Narcissism and social-ism

The relationships between individual and group are clarified by
binocular vision, which is, according to Bion, a practical tool that
indicates what the prevalent impulsive drive is in the personality. He describes it in Transformations (1965, p. 80) and Cogitations
(19581979, pp. 105, 122) as being in the guise of two tendencies, one
ego-centric, the other socio-centric. This allowed him to address
hitherto unanswered questions. For example: why does a paranoid
individual lust for external approval? Why is social-istic behaviour
(as found in soldiers, social reformers, young idealists) often a cover
for self-hate? Bion points out that if a narcissistic (ego-centric) tendency is operating, a second, social-istic (socio-centric) tendency
must go together with it: If one group of impulses is dominated
by narcissistic trends, then the remaining impulses will be dominated by social-istic trends (19581979, p. 122). That has nothing to
do with love of the self. In malignant narcissism hate impulses are
also narcissisticthe death instincts cathexis is deflected against the
ego with its whole strength. Therefore, love of the group need not
be social-istic either. This individuals vicissitudes of instincts give
him a dangerous problem to solve in the operation of his aggressive
impulses, which, thanks to this bi-polarity, may impose on him the
need to fight for his group with the essential possibility of his death,
while it also imposes on him the need for action in the interests of
his survival (ibid., pp. 1056). It can lead to the splitting, the weakening, and even the destruction of the ego: If the love impulses are
narcissistic at any time, then the hate impulses are social-istic, i.e.
directed towards the group, and vice versa: if the hate is directed
against an individual as a part of narcissistic tendency, the group
will be loved socialistically (ibid., p. 122). This development can
be destructive of the group as well as of the individual when it is
claimed by political leaders who claim to be group-loving people.
This particular conflict is likely to be most intense in the so-called
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latency period and, most painfully, in adolescence. A loving pair

may steer its hate impulses social-istically.
Truth binocular; absolute monocular

Among the comparatively few (in quantity) contributions made
by Bion to the theory of psychoanalysis, as distinct from his many
contributions to observation of psychoanalysisfrom which the analogies of a compass and sextant may be regarded as extensionsone
may quote the sense of truth. Like Shakespeare, who put into the mouths
of comparatively minor characters in his plays some culminations of
his insight about the human mind, Bion seemed to have put some
treasures here and there in his texts4and this is the case with the
sense of truth. I suppose it was inspired by Sir Isaiah Berlins sense of
reality, for some of his lectures were in Bions personal library.
The sense of truth integrates, once again, Freud and Klein. It is
achieved with the realisation that the object that is loved and the
object that is hated are one and the same object (Bion, 1961b, p. 122).
I think one may conclude that when the object is seen as either loved
or hated, it is perceived monocularly.
Binocular vision, in contrast, allows for perception of the whole
object. I hope the reader realises Freuds theory of instincts here, and
the neurobiological origin of itthe two eyes, the optical chiasm in
the middle of the brain, the mixing of two images to integrate them,
since the inception of sight, inborn. After birth, the inception of the
depressive position is contingent on a perceptual process: the exercising of binocular vision of two breasts into one which in the first instance
is a no-breast. In this case, null equals to one; the minds mathematics
has Riemann-Lobachevskis non-Euclidean geometry inbuilt.
In the mathematics of hallucination, which belongs to the sensuous-concrete realm, -elements are the manifestations, in the area of
(lack of) thought, of feelings of contact with absolute truth. Void is
forbidden, as is no-breast, or frustration. Void differs from vacuum;
no-thing differs from nothing. They are also felt as concrete objects,
things-in-themselves. In stark contrast, binocular vision provides
the sense of truth, which has a built-in binocular quality. In a patient
with a predominantly psychotic personality
there are only -elements, which cannot be made unconscious;
there can be no repression, suppression, or learning. This creates
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the impression that the patient is incapable of discrimination.

He cannot be unaware of any single sensory stimulus; yet such
hypersensitivity is not contact with reality. [Bion, 1961b, p. 106]
The impression ensues from the highly emotionally charged

environment that the patient creates. In a certain sense, the patient
tries to make projective identifications of his inability to exercise
binocular vision. That impression may be swallowed as truth by a
professional who is unable to bring to bear his or her own binocular
vision. This may throw the entire analysis into the realm of superficial psychology, of what is known and conscious. Patients create
multifarious environments, as they please. The analytic context and
setting is open, to the fullest extent possible, to the patients creations and feelingsbut not to the whole of his eventual actings-out
that destroy the settings. But the emotional experiences are the analysts business to clarify; most of them are hallucinated and must
not be swallowed by the analyst as they are. It is important to distinguish what is as if from what is. Something felt as existing differs from
something that exists. If and when conscious claims, self-evaluations,
and statements made by the patient are taken at face value, collusion
ensues in the form of shared hallucination (folie--deux) and blindness to underlying, latent contents.
Dreams seem to demand binocular vision in order to realise their
nature as a composite made of manifest content and latent content.
Does binocular vision allow us to get hold of the psychoanalytic
vertex as well as the profoundness of Psychoanalysis? Which, like
beauty, is more than skin deep.
The unknown coin: fundamentals of psychoanalysis,

paradoxes to be binocularly tolerated, not resolved
1. The structuring of mind, or conscious and unconscious, id-egosuper-ego;
2. The principles of mental functioning, the pleasure/displeasure
principle and the reality principle (Freud, 1911, 1920);
3. The instincts, life instincts and death instincts as two sides of the
same unknown coin (O). This is what Winnicott, starting from
Klein, stated as the most basic element of psychoanalysis. In his
characteristically colloquial speech, home is where we come
from, or, in analytic terms, breast and baby: the observation that
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the breast is created by the baby while at the same time it was
already there (Winnicott, 1969; Sandler, 2003).
Trios to interpret solos

The unknown coinwhich can be equated to the two sides of a
human hand: two existences of the same invariant, hand, which
cannot be seen together; only one side can be seen at any one time
has an analogy with creation.
Therefore, all unresolved and not resolvable paradoxes of psychoanalysis are, in fact, trios rather than duos. This is expanded at
greater length in Part I, on the minus realm. Duos may easily tend to
contradictions and become warring pairs; but they may also develop
(as the Sophists developed into a Hegel, through a Kant) into Trios,5
which are the outcome of paradoxical creative couples. Let us see
the paradoxes under this view:
1. The structuring of mind: Conscious and unconscious have a creative aftermath, which can be called personality, soul, Geist, idego-superego (which Freud saw as a trio), or whatever name one
wants to give it. In fact, it is unknown, bound to become whatever it is. Please note that it is structuring, a verb which depicts
functions, and not structure.
2. The principles of mental functioning: Pleasure and displeasure, the
wanted principle and unwanted reality principle; their creative
aftermath can be named Apprehension of Reality (necessity and
possibility), or better yet, as named by Freud, the Principle of
Psychic Determinism, which encompasses psychic and material
reality (not realities!). One may see that Freud discovered
chronologically speakingfirst the aftermath or creative principle, the generator of free associations.6 One may see that the
discovery of the Positions by Melanie Klein is an expansion of
Freuds observation about the timelessness of the unconscious
which integrated the two principles of mental functioning,
seen here as three conjoined principles, with his later theory of
instincts.
3. The three basic instincts: Death instincts, life instincts and
epistemophilic instincts as the creative aftermath of the
ontogenetically earlier duo. Again, one may see that Freud,
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who worked mainly with adults, discoveredchronologically

speakingfirst the aftermath or creative principle, the epistemophilic instinct, just when he analysed Little Hans through
talking with Hanss father.7
Developments and clinical examples

Andr Green (1986) has expanded the positivistic view of mental
phenomena binocularly with perceptions of the negative and with
his concept of thirdness (tiercit, 1986, 2002), which at least in part
seems to correspond to the product of thesis and antithesis which
I advanced,8 in the same vein as James Grotsteins dual-track
approach to psychoanalysis. Grotstein (1981, 1997) further expanded
it with his more recent incursions into the realm of transcendence
vis--vis immanence (which coincides with my own earlier, independent research). Those expanded views are further developed in
this book, in the discussion of the minus realm in Part I. The technical tool to trace this realm may be binocular view.
Narcissism
Social-ism
The Dale Carnegie technique can be illustrated by the example of

a patient who saw that she could obtain favours and business clients by flattering her many bosses along her life. She played musical
instruments at their parties; she cooked for them; she would play
the humble role. In a short time her efforts paid off. However,
her financial gain implied abandoning her own ethical code, losing
her self-respect to a point of no return, with increasing suspicion
of other people, hostility and lack of gratitude. Cynicism and contempt towards real friends prevailed, as did bad temper, arrogance,
unhappiness and sour ideas.
Sartres existentialism in the clinic: one is who one is not

and one is not who one is, or the splitting of love and hate
This clinical expression is dwelt on in Part I; here it is seen as a
warning and intra-session orientation. It originates in a violence
of feelings that clouds the perception that both (love and hate) are
inseparable. It can be made visible through the exercise of binocular
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vision. Hate is the most primitive form of love hitherto known. If the
patient overtly displays manifestations that are superficially seen as
loving, such as an amiable manner, one should look for underlying
hate as well as minus-love; and vice versa. Overtly displayed manners are as informative as a car horn sounded in the streetthat tells
you nothing about the drivers intention, mode, and even less his
state of mind. A patient who declares I dont want to come to analysis any more may also mean I need to come backa feared or
denied sense of loving dependence. In this case, irritation or angriness means repressed love.
Geoffrey was confronted with his aggression, both at home with
his wife and in the session with the analyst. He quickly took concrete
external measures to evade genuine depression. During the session
he displayed a false compliance; outside it he swiftly got round to
buying some gifts for his wife and for the analyst. He displayed
a false depressive position tainted with persecutory colours.
Similarly, a false paranoid-schizoid position can be observed in
patients who try to provoke and manipulate the analysts persecutory feelings in order to evade their true self. For example, a patient
who resorts to judgements of right and wrong accuses the analyst of
judging him when his aggression is elicited. The analysis may focus
both on super-egoic features and on the apparently paranoid, persecutory feature. This permits rational knowledge of psychoanalysis,
but precludes insight. At stake is another hidden feature, one that
requires observation: the manipulative, guilt-inducing attempts of
false persecution.
Self-attributed feelings offer an opportunity for using binocular
vision. If something is true, it does not demand overt manifestation,
explanation or proof. A patient had the habit of self-analysing,
saying I am depressed, I am anxious, I feel guilty, I am hateful, I love. The emotional experience of real suffering, which is
different from merely feeling it, is an interpretation of the analyst,
as a way of helping the patient to achieve insight. The situation
brought forth by binocular vision usually proves to have a different nature as far as the consciously uttered claim is concerned. The
patient expresses an invitation to freeze in a monocular view, as if
manifest content statements were the absolute truth. When a person says he feels depressed, the underlying basic emotion may be
hate or fear. Conversely, hate may underlie overt manifestations of
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love. This is the case with what in past times was known as erotic
transference.
Albert reported two dreams. In the first, his wife was pregnant,
but she lost the foetus before its sex was known. In the second, he was
dealing with some envelopes relating to a public auction. He had
forgotten what his companys bid was. He suddenly remembered
that the amount was printed in the stamps on the envelopes. But the
stamps slowly became illegible. He decided to write the disappearing amount of the bid on a piece of paper, but the paper rejected the
ink. He replaced the paper, but now the pen didnt work. He stops
his report of his dreams. Surreptitiously; some extraneous fact has
come to his mind. He feels puzzled by a thought that has nothing to
do with the dreams; he remembers that his little son had refused to
play with a model truck and had fallen asleep without even touching the toy. I think that this patient can use his binocular vision,
even if somewhat unwillingly, when he remembers and verbalises
something that apparently has nothing to do with previous material, and cannot be rationally linked to it. In this case, the dreams,
matched with his sons behaviour, display an inner truth: his difficulties in getting in touch with himself. Binocular vision helps him
to express it (the baby that does not survive, which means life itself,
and cannot be known; the envelope that cannot be sent because its
content is lacking; the boy who cannot play). Monocular ideas are
avoided by not clinging to the manifest contentthe dream actually
has nothing to do with his wife as a concrete entity.
Serge, a lawyer, married a woman who had an adolescent, drugaddicted daughter from an earlier marriage. She had left home in a
rage one year earlier and led an errant life from then on. Occasionally she would return, wanting to stay for some days. Once she tried
to flatter Serge, saying: I like you. He spotted the lie and said:
I am sorry but I cannot say the same. In the session he laments:
I did not seize the opportunity. I should have said to her, both of
us are lying. As soon as he said this to me, he realised that he had
been sincere with her, which had been a manifestation of respect and
love. Also, the very expression I am sorry betrayed his true feelings for her. His binocular vision allowed him to see the truth.
Is binocular vision a posture we have at our disposal to attain
the psychoanalytic vertex, to the extent that it helps us not to be
too mesmerised by the manifest content, by superficial psychology?
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It rescues the richness of Freuds original psychoanalysis in its most

profound ethos. It should be welcome at a time when the question
one psychoanalysis or many? (Wallerstein, 1988) is on the agenda,
when psychoanalysis itself seems to be at stake.
The automatic man

When I was trying to sort out some examples of the clinical utility
of binocular vision, that, is the attempt to maintain a simultaneous
view of manifest and latent content, of appearances which indicate
and disguise as well as the underlying truths pointed out and disguised by the manifest content of the universe of discourse, my only
difficulty was to single out a discrete example among a multitude
that occurs to me as I see more than a dozen patients each day.
George is a 34-year-old father of one who has done fairly well in
the stock market over a number of years. He has been in analysis for
four years, and it is apparently useful to him; many sensible changes
have occurred in the life of this man who seems to be a person who
does not display his emotional experiences either outwardly or to
himself. In fact, what was striking were some of his main features,
namely, a kind of coldness which verged on callousness, a seemingly
serious lack of contact with himself, leading to a lack of apprehension of his inner experiences as a man and human being, as well as
some difficulties in learning from those experiences. He came from
a well-to-do family who had a business linked to vehicle agencies;
he and his family of origin lived abroad; he spoke several languages
and was used to moving between countries. He never sold cars but
entered the lucrative stock market business, soon entering into a
kind of Las Vegas action, whose vogue was rampant.
He was attached to a colleague who became his associate. This
colleague soon became famous in Brazil as a money-earner in the
mega-buck league. In the recent past George lost a lot of money
through trusting individuals who were not at all trustworthy. He
maintained sexual relations with different women, and seemingly
caught a strange disease with physical symptoms that were never
clear. This disease proved to be no disease at all but left him wondering
and obsessively thinking that he had AIDS. There were two women
whom he gave some consideration to marrying; one of them came
from a press tycoons family which was in decline but still powerful.
153
It was a typical case of not-so-vested interest from him, but he was

seemingly oblivious of this fact: evidence of his almost automatic,
unaware thinking and (consequently) behaviour. The other woman
was older than him and the relationship would hardly merit this name
at all. He carried on looking for other women, and almost anyone
would do provided that she was clean and beautifulneighbours,
and so on. There was a woman who probably harboured a genuine
interest in him, and all he could say was that she belonged to a religion different from his own, and his mother would not approve such
a union; he was aloof with regard to her. In fact, after two years of
analysis he actively sought out this woman, and within less than six
months married her, insisting that she undergo a conversion to his
familys and his religion, to which she agreed.
In a very superficial way he resembled Andrew, a patient I have
described elsewhere in this work (in Volume 1, illustrating a way to
deal with dreams and container and contained). As with Andrew
and other patients whom I had the opportunity to treat, his wife
soon became pregnant. Again as with Andrew, the foetus proved
to have an unfortunate and rather serious defect, this time in his
heart. The obstetrician was adamant in indicating an abortion in the
sixth month, even though the unborn child had a chance of survival,
though with severe limitations. It was a remarkable situation in the
sense thathe and his wife thought he was helped by his analysis
the couple made the best of such an awfully sad job. Making a virtue of necessity developed their link from the abortion, which was
experienced as appalling. For a while he stopped looking for other
women, something he did more sporadically after marrying, but still
carried on doing, at the cost of guilty feelings. He did not seem to
be genuinely guilty, but he displayed guilty behaviour on the basis
of not doing the right thing. It was a persecuted false depression
(or depression coloured with persecution) under the banner of not
following his ego ideal, with no realisation of the damage he could
do to his (and her) life. It was only through the idea that he could
have AIDS or infect her that he had second thoughts, but I cannot
state that he became really depressed. He would become outraged
in the sense of denying it (or had a negative contact with it; see Part
I about the realm of minus), as well as fearful about this possibility.
But I cannot state that I witnessedin the analytic sessionsthat he
was ever depressed.
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George seems to me lucky in having found a mate who seems to

be life-prone and wide awake to the issues of real life. She seemed
to be courageous in not admitting disrespect and aloofness. Even
though I did not knew her, because no analyst can really know
relativesit is not easy to know even parts of our patients, who
spend time with us four times a week for yearsthat woman came
to my office a couple of times. As far as I could see, she wanted to
observe who her husband was dealing with. There was a sense of
care pervading her extremely brief contacts with me. According to
Georges reports of his daily life with her, she was the kind of person
who lifted him from his sleepy or automatic attitude.
He would quarrel with her when she (or her mother, by the
way) displayed signs of being alive, not living officiously.
Sometimes he said that he was educated to make deals, to have
interests, but not to have friends or a wife or sons and daughters. After the abortion (also like Andrew and his wife) she became
pregnant again; despite the fear and suffering involved in the false
anticipation of more problems, a healthy and probably very gifted
boy was born. In the session I will now try to describe, the boy is
one year old.
George seems to profit from the opportunity of the little
unknown,9 this new human being in his home, and is very attached
to him. George is careful with his clothing, always arriving welldressed and clean; he is educated and talks calmly. His attachment
to analysis always displayed some religious fear and proneness
to complicated aetiological explanations of everything, including
many psychological explanations of his behavioursomething that
seems to me to be a by-product of a past therapy.
He used to miss sessions and he usually arrived late; in more
recent times he has stopped this. He seems to display a rare capacity
to profit from the analysis. His religious fear displays itself in regarding almost everything that is said to him as commandments or rules,
and he is always getting into situations of right and wrong, both in
the sessions and in the reports he makes of his extra-session life.
He came to see me at first hoping to gain knowledge of the causes
of his physical illness, a vague sense of loneliness that was not put
into words, and above all he hoped to have some help with regard
to financial losses, which he feared greatly. Many of those losses
proved to be felt as more than they actually were due the presence
155
of greed; nowadays, and at least since he began analysis, he seems to

lose normal quantities compared to people who work in his profession, for he also earns a lot, incomparably more than he loses. His
ideal would be never losing in any kind of business. Losses have
a devastating psychologicalin fact hallucinatedeffect on his
feelings. He thus regarded analysis and himself as a kind of engineering: he must have a defective part and this must be repaired by
what he understands to be an analysis. The malfunction would be
repaired through explanations of mechanisms, duly worded in suitable psychological jargon. The other effects of analysis on his life still
surprise himeven though he derives an unsuspected satisfaction
from them.
If one relied excessively on a conscious, monocular view, one
could well be seduced by or immersed in the manifest content of
Georges complaints and desires, and above all his project for an
analysis, what an analysis should be like or how it should be conducted. Refraining from this conscious view would be impossible if
the analyst also shared those ideas, if the analyst could not entertain
an expecting, containing, empty space in his outlook, not imposing
his own prejudiced codes of conduct on the material.
What I am trying to emphasise, only for the purposes of illustrating the binocular view, is the feature of right and wrong, or
therapeutics and cure, issues that generally pass unnoticed or
are not subjected to criticism, as if they were conscious, monocular
truths-in-themselves, and their truth-value could be justified by their
conscious status, their propaganda face value as given by the conscious speaking patient and the conscious listening analyst in their
consciously shared, social views, above any scrutiny and criticism.
In this specific session (the fourth after my return from holiday),
which I hope will illustrate the issue, George arrives on time, comes
in and lies down on the couch. He first looks at the pillow, and says:
Oh, the pillow has decided to be in the right place now.
At once I thought he was making an obvious reference to the fact
that the pillow was slipping from the place it had been in the previous few days, due to the fact that it had been washed and its surface
had become slippery, demanding some adjustment and care when
the patients lay down. I had corrected the small annoyance it represented by attaching patches of Velcro tape. George seemed to refer
to this.
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I do not say anything at first but feel that something does not fit
in the mood and the phrasing, even though the observation seems
to be rational and logical. I decide to wait, to think about it; perhaps
more material can come and help to enlighten my immediate feeling. I say nothing. Then he proceeds.
Oh, I was thinking about something you told me last week.
It was very useful indeed. It is incredible how I could only see
what you meant after so many times. You are always telling
me this, in so many situations but I couldnt see, and suddenly I saw. It is that problem that I really dont work at all,
but what I know is how to play like a childan endless game.
I couldnt unplug the computer, and what I wanted to tell you
is that all those years I was looking at the screen and studying
the values of shares, companies and reports what I found
on the Internet was a gigantic site of motorised model off-road
cars you know how much I like off-roaders, since I bought my
Jeep every possible kind was there, gasoline powered, electrically powered, all possible types of remote control units
Then I saw, I always looked at the screen with the same eyes,
with the same interest, be it the large banking concern report or
the model car site Now I realise what you told me. I saw it
so clearly It was just when you left and I was searching the
Internet as I always do. [An almost imperceptible temporary
halt, as if for breath; then he continues.] You know, when you
were out, I earned a lot of money. Well, not so much, but I got
around that loss of 50,000 dollars of five months ago. I earned
a little more than that in those weeks I did it all rightsee,
I was following the values of that Canadian companys shares,
they were awfully undervalued; my Elliott wave showed clearly
that they would begin to fare better in the market, so I made a
betI thought, if I put 6,000 dollars, I will earn 21,000 dollars
in two weeks. But this time I decided to do everything the right
way. My bet was only 2,400 dollarsand I pocketed 8,500 after
ten daysand I also decided to get out of the position a little bit
earlier. If I stayed there for two more days it would be OK, but
I saw that three days would in fact mean a loss, for something
happened to make the shares drop again but I had sold anyway
at this point. I didnt win the amount I could have won (15,000
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dollars), my profit was in fact 6,100, but now I see that bit by
bit Im earning moreor losing lessthan if I risk as much as
I risked when I lost those 50,000 dollars. I did the right thing.10
It may seem to be a specific, very concrete and seemingly factual

account of the arithmetical dealings of a greedy person. At first,
some calculations in a seductive, curative form linked to what he
advertises consciously as his profiting from analysis. Those judgmental values were stated as I did it right now, I did it wrong then,
now I have learned, and so on.
I could well continue on the same rails George is going
on, or in Bions proposed notational system: in the same cycle
of transformations,11 and dwell on purely social, concrete and
non-psychoanalytic stuff. One may describe it as a superficial
quasi-psychological level which takes the name psychological
in the commonplace and ever-fashionable accounts popular in the
laymans mind and reflected in the press. This psychology or academic psychology is full of humdrum commonplaces; in Georges
case, with regard to the stock markets, his fears of losing or winning
in the social wayas well as, I now propose, even what seem to be
judgmental values and his apparent anxiety about them. I think that
stock markets, fear of losing or happiness at winning constitute what Bion called final products of transformations, or in his
quasi-mathematical notation, Tp. What I must say now is based
on my own experience of being an analyst as well as the experience
of being a non-analystthe latter is a necessary condition of the
former. Another way to say this is that in transient moments I found
the experience of being analytic (or good enough analytic)
only when I had the opportunity to become acquainted with good
enough patients. I may also describe the state of being a non-analyst
as being a quasi-analyst. In examining this case (being a non-analyst,
or a quasi-analyst), it happens that the conscious, final verbal statements of the patient, the final products of his (or her) own inner
cycles of transformations, may possess a mesmerising monocular
inductive power that may lead the non-analyst or quasi-analyst to
be imbued with the same mechanistic view as we have seen in
Georges case. That is to say: both of us are monocular rather than
binocular. In other words, I am stating that successful projective
identification, in this case, of a lifeless Weltanschauung,12 depends on
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the receptor, who may desire, consciously or not, to stay monocular,

clinging to manifest, Tp contents.
What matters to us is O, the generator of TpTp being just
a final manifest content product that both points to and conceals the
latent content, O. What is O in this case? What matters, psychoanalytically speaking?
Even without using the theory of transformations, Bions later
epistemological tool, the concept of binocular view seemed to help
me a lot as an intra-session observational step towards O and in
eliciting the invariant. Therefore it seems to be a very useful clinical tool which enables the analyst to attain the psychoanalytic level
or vertex, one that transforms a seemingly social intercourse into a
psychoanalytic encounter: a kind of quantum leap based on psychoanalytically trained intuition. The analogy may sound absurd,
but psychoanalysis, quantum and relativistic mechanics were made
like this. In the future, research may prove that way the inner
mechanism works (an active process, not to be confused with a
mechanistic attitude) is the same in the personality of the researcher
(be it a medical doctor, an analyst, or a physicist). This quantum leap,
which puts the idea-particle on another unknown level, broadens and deepens and also specifies the issue, opening a whole new
world of perspectivesthe contact with the unknown unconscious
(which is a pleonasm, but still needs to be stated as such).
In this case, it is the binocular view (as this concept was defined
by Bion) which allows us to observe that stock market and right
and wrong reasoning are purely conscious statements. They compose the conscious idea that the patient makes about himself. One of
them is full of concreteness and seems also devoid of any involvement of psyche; one might say it is a concrete object or contraption
that demands to be dealt with (and permits it) according to the ways
and means adequate to the inanimate worldthe stock market.
Though immaterial, both psychological and sociological facts are
involved, like for example greed and the need to make exchanges on
a commercial level, which is a sophisticated mode of organisation
of social systems. In the context quoted by George there is the mark
of something that must be dealt with in a particular way (using the
Elliott wave, for example) in order to function properly. Something like a TV set which has a switch that one must press or depress
in order to make it function. The proper functioning obeys the
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laws of macroscopic physics and Euclidean geometry. No inner,

underlying factors need to be considered, and consciousness is
called for to solve the problems involvedwhich it does successfully. The personality of the persons involvedsuch as a train driver
or an airline pilothas no importance with regard to making the
machine function properly, to go along the track or to fly.
The right/wrong reasoning seems to be psychoanalytically
seductive, and probably something can be said in terms of the nowadays well-known theories of superego. Anyway, I supposeon
the basis of my experience with this very same patient as well as
with some other patientsthat even though some comments may
be quite adequate following our existing knowledge of the superego
(and in this case, concerning obsessive traits), there is still a problem
lurking.
This material is also conscious. I have come to observe that in these
cases, the most the analytic couple achieves is to talk about psychoanalysis; there may be an increase in knowledge but one cannot
touch the area of insight unless one glimpses, even if partially, the
unconsciouswhich is the same as saying: what is unknown. And
if a person consciously talks about something, this something
forms part of what he or she already knows. For this reason I felt it
was fair to consider as a working hypothesis, clinically speaking, in
the light of the data available, that for many months we were being
monocular, so to say, imprisoned in the cage of the patients conscious thinking, talking about things that both of us already knew.
What was unknown there? The seemingly disjointed, non-fitting
initial remark that was made in passing, as if devoid of importance,
a casual and good-humoured remark. Georges initial observation
about the pillow came freely to my mind again, and it seemed to
furnish the clue to what was happening hereas if a sudden light
had dawnedincluding the uncomfortable sensation of its not
fitting. George was dealing with the pillow as if it were an animate object. This became crystal clear to me at this momenteven
though in hindsight I could see that this feature was there, but at the
moment the patient uttered the phrase, I was blind to the fact, and
it passed unnoticed by both of us. In a certain sense, we knew,
albeit unconsciously, that both of us were talking falsities: a pillow
cannot decide anything; people can. In Bions notation, we were
circulating in the field that appertains to Column 2 of the Grid
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(the multi-dimension Grid will be discussed in the next volume of

this work).
What was happening there was just this: all the universe of discourse, that was phenomena apprehensible in the room, pointed to
an inner reality of the patient: namely, his belief that one may deal
with animate as if it were inanimate and vice versa. Unfortunately,
his inner reality was proving to be a non-reality (the field of hallucinosis). This binocular view shed a new light for us, which we
had hitherto not suspected: even the right/wrong reasoning was
simply another phenomenal, conscious appearance that demanded
to be treated psychoanalytically, and not as a thing-in-itself or absolute truth expressing exactly what the wording indicated. Quite the
contraryit was expressing this machinery thinking of a person
who wanted to learn how to live a life with very simplistic schemata,
right and wrong, who wanted to learn from other people (such as
an analyst), or learn through rules (such as an analysis). Life itself
should not go wrong if he learned something in the analysis
for this reason he mentioned something that according to him I had
told him a few weeks before. Some seemingly incoherent facts (his
initial observation on the pillows and the other verbal statements)
seemed to cohere as soon the binocular view allowed us to approach
a selected fact. The selected fact was just his belief that if he pressed
and depressed the correct switches, life would be smooth and everything would be profits, roses and calmness. The question was not
superegoic in factit could theoretically be right to see it as such,
but we are not philosophising or theorising here (talking instead of
being)but it was the same unconscious belief being acted out in
the session. I think that the binocular view helped me to disclose this
inner truth (or untruthful truth) about him.
The result was striking and speaks for itself. It is relieving to have
a psychoanalysis on empirical grounds, where one may observe
something and test his or her hypothesis on the spot, in the here and
now: namely, the reaction of the patient, which is also subjected to
scrutiny and observation. As it happens, this observation unveiled
the dullness and superficiality of our talk until then. He was able to
say that he had the impression that he had woken up, as if until
then things had come to him in a kind of verbal somnambulism.
He now furnishes a flow of associations, after my comments on the
making inanimate of the analysis itself, which he tried to use as if
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it were a kind of home appliance. His machinery Weltanschauung

was elicited during our talk. He returned to commenting on his
work; now he says:
Well, I well know that what really matters is my intuition. Sometimes I have an inner voice that says to meor its not like this,
I cant say what is; its a kind of convictionwell, the prices will
go up, or those shares of that company will go down, I must
sellbut its so difficult to follow it The graphs and statistical analyses I make daily help, but they cant decide. I dont
know what happensif I work for somebody else it is simpler
for me to follow my intuition, and this is what really decides.
Sometimes I have it and sometimes I dont have it I think that
it could function in some other way that I would always have
it many people have it and sometimes they dont have it.
Take H, for example, he earns a lot in the market but there are
some days that he would prefer to get out, he doesnt play he
loses a little and says: Not today, or: Today is not for me,
and goes home. How can I make sure that my intuition will
do for every day? [Stops for a while.] Now I am reminded of
the website, the model cars when I was a boy, 13 perhaps,
my father bought me a model aircraft. It was complicated and
I tried to assemble the parts for many weeks months. It was
impossible. Father took me with the parts to Araruama [a city
which is 200 km from where he lived then] because, he said,
there is a man who is keen on building model aircraft but
the man had something to do with drugs, I cant remember, and
he died before any further progress could be made with my
model. In the end my grandmother told me: Give it to your
uncle he has young sons, give to him, as she did with everything she had, as she did with all her money, as you know, she
forced me to give the model to my uncle. I dont know what he
did with it. I never knew. Disappeared without a trace. I dont
know why this came to my mind now. I think it has to do with
the website.
I suppose that a binocular view was available both to analyst and to

analysand. George was able to allow for the emergence of a contact
with himself, with a kind of talk which differed radically from the
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earlier one in that it was not rational, but free; it was not intended
to seduce (with cures, memories of past sessions that explained
something to him) or to explain. I hope the reader will realise that
emergence does not mean in full. It was kind of embryonic
attempt.
My own binocular view was able to elicit that the talk was making progress, in the sense that the model aircraft and his continuous
request for explanations (I dont know why this came to my mind
now) expressed his greed and mechanising of what was animate.
The sad end of a drug addict or drug dealer who builds models is a
way of expressing his binocular contact with a drugged mind of his
own which dehumanises everything, making inanimate what was
originally animate. In this moment he saw a past image long forgotten, corresponding to some past experience with his internal object
Father (who is depicted, at least in Georges idea of him, as a seemingly weak, unsuccessful merchant who enjoyed material wealth but
lost a good part of it, the drug dealer in the distant coastal city), and
the model aircraft that could not be assembled, the breast in a fragmented shape (his internal object Mother, who seemed to be an aloof,
highly anxious, paranoid person, feigning in an exaggerated way an
affect she did not have in fact). The shape and status and nature of
his internal objects was hidden but living; it seems to have produced
the O-mechanising picture George made of his internal and external world, a psychotic core that tried to deal with the animate with
means and approaches that would be suitable to deal with the inanimate world. I consider that the emergence of this memory as a free
association is the return of the unconscious, the building of a binocular view that rescues one from the darkness of the unconscious, in
a peculiar form that was possible for George in that moment: some
inner contact with himself. The binocular view, that is, the matching
of the unconscious with the conscious strata in a transient moment,
during the here and now of the session (and in this condition, nonrepeatable and dependent on the relationship of the analyst with the
patient as well as the previous history and developments of his analysis, the work previously done) also includes his uncle, who is consciously an object of abhorrence. But George seems to be identified
with him. In the reference, the uncle is a person who takes care of his
sons and has a mother who takes care of him. During many months
of analysis, George expressed hatred and sincere anger towards this
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uncle, who in his view was stealing his grandmothers moneythe

thing was that his grandmother had already given George some
fairly substantial amounts of money in the past, to cover bad deals
he also made. His uncle is a greedy person who was overprotected
by his grandmother and his own mother; Georges picture of the
uncle seems to indicate a person with seemingly delinquent traits
who wasted all the familys money. But this uncle is also a kind of
distorted fountain from which some life springs, not overprotection in the material sense or lack of warmth and reverie as seems to be
his experience with his own mother (I cannot dwell on the evidence
for this now due to limitations of time and space in this report). The
grandmother who says Give it to the uncle permits a greedy idea
of the world, a case of eternal satisfaction and of the impossibility of
losingone only wins and gets satisfaction; a bizarre Lavoisier who
would say, In Nature, nothing is ever losteverything grows and
one always wins; an idealised contact with a non-frustrating breast,
eternal play and the impossibility of growing and working. Also,
the eliciting of an inanimate machine that is ever-fulfilling, for one
is always learning how to make it function properly (i.e. perfectly),
including analysis as a means of achieving this impossible task, was
made visible through the binocular observation of the monocular
right/wrong view.
For the next session, George arrives a little late again, as was his
earlier habit. He lies down and immediately begins to describe a
dream: he dreamt about an aircraft that was in some strange way
under his command. He was a passenger, for sure, but he knew everything about aircraft, and it was not only the pilots and crew who
were in charge but he also had something to do with it. The aircraft then entered a series of tunnels and was also travelling on rails;
the other passengers were very worried, looking out of the windows
and commenting: How this can be? An aircraft on rails and in tunnels? He then walked over to the galley and down the corridors
and told people: Oh, its just like this and went on to explain
to them what was happening; it was normal, he said, ands tried to
give rational explanations to prove that this was just as it should be.
He thought that the people on the plane, especially the women, were
humble and stupid, they knew nothing about how things work; but
at any rate he knew that he was proving the improbable: even he
himself was not exactly convinced of his arguments, but he believed
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in them. He says this wide awake in the dream, and he also states
that he had this sensation in the dream. Then he proceeds to what he
calls the second dream, but immediately says: Im telling you this
second, but in fact it was the first that I dreamt. He dreamt that he
was in a garage. Then he saw a disabled girl in a wheelchair going to
the counter to pay for some services carried out on her car. He wondered how a disabled woman like that can drive a car, how dangerous it is, how can the authorities agree with that, but nowadays
there is protection for every minority, so be it. He thought, in the
dream, that she is allowed to do it, but he thought it weird. He then
proceeded to wheel the woman out, to help her in some way, but
unwillingly and without showing his feelings. Then he was silent.
From my experience with George, he often stays silent and seems
unable to carry on by himself. He seems to enter into a state which
is very difficult to describe. I will resort to Bions metaphor of a state
in which a person is neither awake nor asleep; a kind of mental
catalepsy. It is from something I cannot put into words in a written
account, for it is an emotional experience of undergoing a special
type of verbal silence with him, that I suppose I learned to discern
it. He has other types of verbal silence which do not correspond to
this relative inability to associate that I am trying to depict. I intuit
that this is one of those occasions, and while he sinks into silence I am
reminded of the fact that he often travels by plane to his city of birth,
a coastal city which was formerly the seat of the federal government
and is presently undergoing a period of decay, forcing its inhabitants to look for work elsewherelike him. I am also reminded that
he was waiting for his wife and little son to return to this city by
plane a few days before, with his mother-in-law, whom he considers
stupid, excessively nave and old-fashioned; he often displays impatience and displeasure with her presence. Something in the second
dream (which he said was the first) also makes me associate with
his wifes activity as a sculptor of heavy metal piecesconsciously,
his depiction of the garage and something in the way he depicted
it reminded me of his earlier descriptions of her work with metals,
welding guns and all. I decide to try to help him, and I give him my
own associations to his dreams: that he seems to be telling me that he
dreamt about his wife, who in his eyes is a disabled, sub-human person, while he is a superhuman being who is able to rescue her from
the street, so to say, from poverty,13 and he will do things his way
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in any case; and we can see in the first dream (which he told me he
dreamt second) that he is able to do things according his will and
desire: even with something he knows is impossible, his desire prevails, like an aeroplane that can enter tunnels or go along rails. This
is related to his ideas of cure, of cure in analysisif he does everything right, things will go as he wishes. He seems to wake up,
his voice becomes less monotonous and more alive, and finally
he provides two associations of his own after my attempt, which
seemedjudging from his reactionsomewhat helpful. He says,
animated and almost enthusiastic:
Ah, now I remember! Just yesterday I went with my wife to
that very distant place where the foundry is located it is
so far away, the road is so bad, the environs are so typically
Brazilian we better off people have no idea how those poor
people live, but that is the real Brazil, poverty and dirt and
holes I took her there to see her most recent work being finished we spent more than three hours there, I dont like to
go there, its awful I did her a favour, and she becomes furious when she suspects Im not doing this sincerely or she
thinks that I will charge her after, or Im doing it only because
its right yes, I was really worried when she returned from
Rio de Janeiro with her mother and little John, the things that
can happen to planes nowadays, with so many planes, inept
air traffic controllers [He then displays what seems to me a
genuine sadness; he mentions that he feels a bit guilty about not
going to Rio to fetch his family. He continues:] You know, Paulo,
I loathe going on the plane with my mother-in-law; she behaves
like a country bumpkin with such silly questions that make
me embarrassed But it makes me feel guilty, staying at home
here in So Paulo with my tricks and games and Internet and all
that masturbation I was really worried that something could
happen to them.
Therefore one may say that the recovery of his own conscious
experiences was the completion of the binocular viewhe became
closer to himself and got a more truthful picture of his inner, psychic
reality and real emotional experiences of self-interest, the imposition of his own views on reality itself, manipulation and seduction.
166
There are many indications of his difficulties with women, seen in

his superior posture of saviour towards his wife and contempt for
his mother-in-law, which seem to me expressions of homosexual
phantasies. My experience shows that this phantasy is very common among so-called men. They imagine themselves as saviours of
their mates. Usually this hides homosexual phantasies, and an idea
that they can be male and female at the same time, occupying all
sexual spaces. They deny the females function in females. Male and
female are seen monocularly and in the same person, the patient
himself.
George is getting nearer to them, and the binocular view seems
to install itself in a more harmonious union between mind and
body, or inanimate and animate, or male and female, more akin
to the combined figure of the Ancient Greeks; and in addition his
conscious perception is getting through into his unconscious emotional experiences. The session that displayed the dreams about his
ability to manipulate the environment (the dream about the aircraft going into tunnels and on rails) seems to me a reaction to the
session of the previous dayI would see it in hindsight as a wishfulfilment dreamand for this reason he told me this earlier; it was
nearer to his conscious activity.
Anyway, this experience could happen as it happened in analysis. George decided to move again, after six years of analysis.
He followed his trans-national way, acquiring citizenship in yet
another country, tax free. He sought me out four years later; he
led a kind of double life, returning to see prostitutes and having
some problems with the legal authorities concerning money. His
long-time associate gained unwanted space in the newspapers,
immersing himself in political fights, where losers (or those who
felt betrayed in political dealings) and winners wereas was
always and is still the case in human affairs involving large sums of
moneyconducting their customary wars using other peoples savings and earnings. Famous meant infamous, as is usually the case.
They were prefiguring the greed which characterises the financial
markets and the continuous crisis in the junk-bonds bull market,
inside information that means corruption, vacuum-based funds
and bubbles, leverages based on nothing, insecure securities,
always exploring greedy monocular views. George saw a renewed
need for analysis, but he was living in another country. It has so
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far proved impossible for him to return.14 Satisfaction of desire is

confused with nourishment, but he longed for the time when he
was in analysis, when he felt less unhappy and more alive. He
could not profit from his many properties and his money, living a
nomadic life between his family (now they were four: he had since
had a daughter) and the prostitutes. With him, perhaps we can say
that until now the difficulties of taking a binocular view have won
the day, creating just a longing. Perhaps only future loss can help
him to collect enough anxiety to look for his wife and children again.
No one can know how long this will take, or if it will ever happen.
Notes
1. Une seule pense nous occupe; nous ne pouvons penser deux
choses la fois. Dont bien nous prend selon le monde non selon
Dieu.
2. As sung by Goethe, in his resort to the witches, quoted by Freud
(1930).
3. A more detailed review of this definition can be seen in Sandler,
2005.
4. This expression was used by Mrs Francesca Bion, in one of our talks
about Cogitations and other texts from that time.
5. Sophists knew just thesis and antithesis; Hegels dialectics introduced the synthesis, Freuds Oedipus. It may correspond to Greens
thirdness (Green, 2002, expanded in Sandler, 2003).
6. Free associations will be discussed in Volume 3 of this work.
7. Hans was later a conductor in New Yorks Carnegie Hall. In a crude
form, this can be a reflex of his binocular creativitygetting out of
the hell in his life wrought by the Third Reich and dedication to
music, a realm which integrates material and psychic reality.
8. These concepts have links to Thomas Ogdens theoretical conclusions
about the analytic third (1994), which will be the object of a forthcoming comparative study.
9. This expression is from Dr Ester Hadassa Sandler, a gifted child
analyst and mother of two, who refers to babies in this way. Babies
can superficially resemble their parents, but in their essence, coming
from a new and wholly unknown, creative DNA, they are unknown:
they always give the parents, who are not too hopeful, expecting
and making demands on the babies behaviour, the most profound
adventure into the unknown that can be given to human beingsor
any couple.
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10. Please see Part I on the minus realm to see in more detail the
reasoning on losses when profits can be mathematically shown to
be less than planned profits. This curious way to avoid displeasure
creating sadistic feelings displays a perverted sense of mathematics.
Earning profits less than plannedas if planning could be equivalent to being realis felt as an irreparable loss, when it is in fact a
gain.
11. See Volume 1, Part III on container and contained.
12. Because the mechanistic, lifeless regard for life constitutes a cosmology which is not a hallmark of so-called modern society, as many
think. It is a human feature. Please see Chapter Ten on anti-alpha
function.
13. Again, a superficial similarity with Andrew and other patients
described in other parts of this work.
14. I have a fair amount of experience in trying to help people who live
far from my city, in a country as huge as Brazil. I cannot state that
this is a good attempt; with gifted patients, it can only be moderately fair, and in some areas.
CHAPTER NINE
Geography to detect triadic

syndromes
Psychoanalysis tells you nothing; it is an instrument, like

the blind mans stick, that extends the power to gather
information.
(Bion, 19581979, p. 361)
elanie Kleins proposed technique expanded Freuds

observations about the unconscious that may, analogically
speaking, be used as if it was a kind of geography to orientate the analysts interpretation. The space-time realm of the mind
is viewed as defences, anxiety, and unconscious phantasies. The following scheme tries to construct a kind of geography using Kleins
proposition and Bions suggestion as another attempt to improve
the orientation, intended eventually to be used as an amendment
to the compass and the sextant, and also with the binocular
view, to include depthan inescapable compound of psychoanalysis. Perhaps a better term, though not yet existing, but more in
agreement with our times, could be ecography: psychoanalysts
could well be regarded as the peculiar forerunners of Ecology, in its
human manifestations and interest; respect for the basic natural and
169
170
living events was and is its inborn feature. The orientation factor
which underlies a utility of the analytic function as an expression of
psychoanalytic nuclei may be indicated, however clumsily, by the
term geography. Those features are also expanded in Part I of this
volume, and will be further discussed in Volume 3.
Symptoms
Symptoms are manifestations in the realm of (in the limited range
of) apprehensible reality, obtainable through the use of our human
sensuous apparatus. Therefore, symptoms belong to the world of
phenomena. What we call (for want of a better name) psychic reality does not abhor sensuous apprehension and, like anything in life,
depends on it. But the apprehension of psychic reality goes beyond
this range; Bion called it infra- and ultra-sensuous (in A Memoir of
the Future). Misunderstandings among the self-styled Bionians1
deprecate what is sensuous; but nothing can be sensuous except the
sensuous apparatus itself, that catches and grasps stimuli which are
then called sensuous, but they are just functioning as stimuli to the
receptor, the sensuous apparatus. This issue is expanded in the next
chapter, but one may issue concrete symptoms and the catching of
external stimuli can be seen as the obverse (minus) of symptoms. Each
absolute reality that enters into a human body is transformed into an
internal symptom, after having been de-sensified. Bion developed
a theory to depict this path, which he called alpha function.
Symptoms can be fine-tuned to ego or not; due to intellectual
properties and abilities, one is bound to find a locus in which
something that would be detected as a symptom by a psychiatrist,
a psychoanalyst or a family may be well accepted, nourished and
enshrined by a given society. If social-istic tendency prevails (that is,
death instincts are directed to the ego and love instincts are directed
to group activities), even destructive (more often regarded as antisocial) tendencies, may be valuedsuch as terrorism. Disrespect for
truth is demanded of politicians, as well as psychopathic attitudes.
Flights of fantasy and imagination are demanded of philosophers
(at least during some epochs, including ours) and writers of popular
writings, together with other popular habits, especially those oriented to pleasure, including sexual. Therefore, under a social vertex,
symptoms can be regarded not as such, but as actions demanded by
the social environment.
G E O G R A P H Y TO D E T E C T T R I A D I C S Y N D R O M E S
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Starting from here, and agreeing that this is the most primitive
in the sense of being the earlieststep of a movement from the
vertex that starts in material reality and aims for the other form of
this same reality (psychic reality), one may see a kind of path. Freud
described the path to the formation of symptoms (New Introductory Lectures, 1933); after Klein and Bion, and profiting from their
observations and achievements, we may hypothesise a description
of this path. From concrete, (in part) sensuously apprehensible beta
elements towards the infra- and ultra-sensuous alpha elements,
we may adapt pre-existing concepts, already accepted and used
by tradition, and studied in a still splitnon-integratedform by
psychoanalysis. In other words, the path can be seen as a method of
observation, of a journey from material to psychic reality, as a continuum, with no solutions of continuity or intervals or splitting. The
continuum may reflect a reality, clinical and, in the future, biological;
in terms of a scientific theory, it integrates concepts studied separately until now, as a heuristic model. In Geography, cities and
counties may form a country.
To illustrate this, we may use the terms Sensations, Feelings,
Affects, Emotions, and Emotional Experiences on a continuum
the human sensuous
of External stimuli, partially concrete
apparatus Psychic facts, partially immaterial. We can show this in
tabular form using Bions terms:
External stimuli,
partially concrete
and conscious
The human
sensuous
apparatus
Beta elements
Contact barrier
and/or beta
screen
Psychic facts, partially

immaterial and
unconscious (not
known)
Alpha elements
Therefore, the continuum may best be represented by the use of

a double arrow (dependent on and intertwined with the movement
between the two Positions), which is able to include a representation of ego functions and a whole cycle that begins with beta elements and ends with renewed beta elements. The situation can be
illustrated by visual art: the artist sees a field of poppies and ends
with a field of pictographic poppies; both poppies function as beta
elements. The end product represents the whole action of thinking,
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an effect of thinking itself being an action. This can also be illustrated

by applied sciences, through technology. Technology comprises
action, and technology is an action-in-itself. The table below illustrates the outward path:
External stimuli,
partially concrete
The human
sensuous
apparatus

immaterial and
unconscious
Sensations,
furnished by beta
elements
Feelings
(further from
concreteness,
partially
sensuous)
Emotions, i.e. that which

moves, or provokes
movement, coming
from instincts (far
from concrete, but
materialised again in
the form of instincts)
The next table illustrates the return path, to complete the cycle
(the scheme should be read from right to left, in the returning direction of the arrow):
External stimuli,
partially concrete
The human
sensuous
apparatus

immaterial
Actions, expressed
by emotional experiences, through
links (K, H, L)
Feelings
Affects, or that which

affects, driven by
emotions
Bion thought that the time was not ripe to define the semantic
field of the concepts sensations, feelings, affects and emotions, even
though he had hinted at some features of emotional experiences
that they could not possibly exist devoid of links (K, L and H as well as
commensalism, parasitism and symbiosis; see the review in Sandler,
2005). In Freud and Klein one may find definitions (for example,
in Freuds clinical cases and in Kleins concepts of love, hate and
reparation, with the help of Riviere) of those termswhich, as far
as affects are concerned, were explored by French analysts, mainly
Andr Green.
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This attempt at a guide has a practical vertex, with a method

based on both the nature and the movement of the counterparts in
reality to which the terms try to point; on their bearings in concrete
(material) or psychic (immaterial) nature.
Sensations
They correspond to stimuli, which are concrete and appertain to
ultimate reality; they can be felt through phenomenal features but
cannot be known. As Bion observed, if a stone is submitted to a
difference in temperature, one may say it feels hot or it is hot
(Bion, 19581979, p. 2). One says I feel hate with the same emotional experience as one says I feel hot, and when one says I feel
warm, it may mean both physical and psychic sensations and feelings, or either one of them. Therefore, sensations can be seen clinically as the closest to physical and concrete sources of stimulation.
They correspond to raw material and must be processed in order to
be used psychically, both by patients and by analysts. They may be
expressed by acting out and acting in (after Rosen). In Kleins technical hints, they correspond to the final product of defensive mechanisms, and their interpretation or counter-acting out is analytically
ineffectual. They are final transformations and dead ends per se if
used in isolation, cut off from other associative links (in the sense
of free associations). They must not be dismissed as waste, and may
be used as the analysts associations under his or her free-floating
attention.
Feelings
The same can be said of feelings, but they have now entered into
the sensuous realm. They must be transduced, or translated by the
sense apparatus. Feelings also correspond to beta elements. Feelings
may be transduced from one way or mode, here called Sensations,
to another form, which gives it the status of Feelings. As an example: the sensuous human hearing system transduces sound waves
into electrochemical impulses; the sensuous sight system transduces
electromagnetic waves whose spectrum ranges from red to violet
into (again) electromagnetic impulses, and so on. Those new inner
impulses will continue on their ways, which are outside the context
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of this study. People say I feel hate, and I feel angry. This tells
uspsychicallyas much as a car horn sounding in the street; which
is almost nothing. For example, a wife becomes grumpy because her
husband is late coming home and says I feel hate. To the analyst,
she expresses anger, and the guiding or prevailing instinct is not hate,
but lovefor she is indicating that she wanted her husbands presence at home, quite contrary to a destructive drive better expressed
by hate. The same translation that will need an alpha function
acting over a beta element is required by the analyst, to convert
the manifest phenomena (words spoken) into psychic facts belonging to affects and emotions. Sensations and feelings belong to the
appearances and may mislead conclusions that aim at something
more than skin deep. That is usually the case with psychic facts.
Anger, rage, lust, the many destructive manifestations one puts in
the basket, envy (denudation, denigration), greed (feeling desire
for what one does not need) and jealousy are examples of sensations and feelings. Any psychoanalytic classification (if one uses the
medical terminology, any psychoanalytic nosology) has a built-in
problem: namely, resorting to words; but words were not planned
to describe psychic facts, as Bion observed. Descriptions limited to
words usually belong to the discipline of phenomenal, academic,
superficial or conscious psychologytherefore, pre-psychoanalytic.
Moreover, feelings and sensations may be illusory (due to builtin failures of the sense apparatus), hallucinatory and delusional,
having no counterparts in reality, be it psychic or material. They
have representations but no counterparts in reality, due to the human
ability to make tools and construct representations.
Sensations are allowed to display extreme individual variations
that account for the adaptability of human beings: sensibility to
physical pain; also, people manifesting fever may feel hot even
though they are placed in an environment felt as cold to most people or non-feverish subjects; this also is dependent on dozens of
other personal factors, like continued physical exercises, endocrine
state, and so on. Anyway, in any individual case, sensations always
present that which they are expected to present, in other words,
their counterparts in reality. As Kant said (1781), the senses do not
err because they do not judge. (Kant used sensibility for what
we now call the reception of sensations; judgment was, at first, the
human ability that we call thinking.) Nevertheless, feelings, when
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hallucinated and/or delusional, are turned into a state devoid of

any counterparts in material and psychic reality. In this case, paradoxically, feelings acquire and possess representations in psychic and
material reality thanks to the human biological ability to create tools
that construct, or erect those fantastic representations.
Assessment with Kleins intra-session method

A sizeable part of the analytic movement still knows, and some of
this part still uses, Melanie Kleins technical hints. Some of them
counsel the use of three factors (rather than functions) of mental
functioning as tools and strategies intended to help the analyst
who tries to perform what may be regarded the main or highest
analytic actnamely: the interpretation or construction that
looks for insight. These three factors were originally described by
Freud but were integrated by Klein into a technical recommendation: defence mechanisms of the ego, anxiety and unconscious
phantasies.
The final products (or phenomenal manifestations) that express
the egos defence mechanisms are used, from Melanie Kleins observation, as a diagnostic tool rather than as interpretations. Melanie
Klein noticed that when the analyst does the obverse, the patient
usually reacts by issuing still more defences, like a wounded animal
full of pain. This includes attention to some actions of the analyst
that may be seen by the patient as a kind of disapproval or counteraction to his defence mechanisms. At best, such interpretations
are analytically ineffectual. Sensations may directly stimulate those
defence mechanisms; they may also be their final expression. In the
first case, they are the starting point of everything; in the second
case, they are the end of the road, if used by the analyst in isolation, unconnected to any other associative link (such as a free association). Sensations are concrete and are dependent on the reaction
of the receptor, which may keep them in a concrete fashion. This
classification is not a judgmental valuation; therefore, defence mechanisms expressed by sensations and feelings cannot be ignored, and
much less dismissed with denigration, labelled as waste or similar. If they are regarded as the starting point of everything, they may
be used for the analysts free-floating attention as well as for the
analysands free associations.
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We may be in a position to indicate the following route after the

detection of feelings, reaching affects and emotions. Affects and
emotions are closer to psychic facts, up to the point of configuring
them in some cases.
Affects
Affects emerge as the result of the coupling of sensations and
feelings with instincts2 through links.3 They are formulatedas
in chemical and mathematical formulae, depicted by Goethe as
elective affinitiesin terms of the nature/nurture (or genotype/
phenotype) mix. That is, in terms of each individuals personality
traits and environmental conditions. Moreover, they can develop
and decay (negative development) continuously, suffering infinitesimal increases or decreases. A literary model may be the open
work; a physical model may be Einsteins infinite universe as
well as Pascals espaces infinies which gave him reasons to fear.
Affects fall into the realm of Transformations (brought to analysis
by Bion, after Sylvester and Cayley; first used by Dirac in quantum
mechanics, and later by Nozick in philosophy). Affects demand
individual and minute observation in each patient, in each decisive micro-moment of each single session4. Affects function in two
directions, and for this reason, the representative graphics depict
them after the sign .
In constituting a connecting tissue between instincts and their
emotional equivalentsdescribed by Klein and Riviere as basic
human emotions (or, in shorthand form, emotions)affects
go back and forth through the contact barrier.5 Affects are always
looking for effects (see below), as well as promoting links, again
through the contact barrier between unconscious and conscious.
Affects bridge emotions to feelings as well as feelings to emotions,
back and forth in a tandem movement mediated by another, similar
tandem, observed by Klein and graphically or quasi-mathematically
described by Bion as PS D.
According to and in proportion with each individuals biological
endowments mixed (and even integrated) with environmental experiences,6 variable degrees of perception are imposed on affects. As a
matter of consequence, the majority of affects belong to the realm of
ego (both conscious and unconscious); a smaller part belongs to other
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psychic instances (superego and id). If the unconscious prevails,

affects are out of the reach of consciousness, and in this case one cannot be aware of ones own affects. Such people may feel and always
have sensations, but remain insensitive to their real affects. Even
though those real affects do exist, they are kept apart from ones own
view and, consequently, action; they are existent but mostly ineffectual. They can be viewed by other people, such as analysts, and this
contributes to the frequent conclusion of patients that the analyst
can read their thoughts when he conveys their real affects to them.
Many patients are described by their analysts and other people as
having no idea about their affects (and emotions and feelings). Their
ineffectual affects are replaced by hallucinated and delusional experiences. If regarded in terms of the study of thought processes, they
account for splitting of the ego, as observed by Freud in 1938 and
expanded by Klein in 1934 and 1946.
Analysis often has fairly good results with these persons, even
though it leaves them bewildered. For they find that the laws of their
mental functioning do not govern the natural laws of reality. Some
of them find that analysis propitiates a stimulus or renewed stimulus of self-curiosity. This had been dormant, or regressed, or undergone some fixation, enslaved by the pleasure principle and confined
to the boundaries drawn by infantile sexual curiosity.
Even though words were not planned to express emotional reactions and features, some of them are endowed with etymological
features coherent with the counterparts in reality which those words
purport to express. Affect (from the Latin affectus) is one of them; it
describes something that acquires consequences that affect something else. If what Bion called language of achievement (after
Keats) applies to insight, the highest analytic fact, affect may be
regarded as its fuel and conveyor belt7. A less concrete analogy may
be made with two biochemical composites: DNA and RNA; both
undergo reproduction processes; the former is sexual. And there is
also a messenger RNA, a kind of chemical delivery system from
here to there, from the inner cell to its outer environment. Both
DNA and RNA have a circle of confusion where energy and matter
mix, bringing with their activity something we do not know, but
whichas often occurswe call the mystery of life. This analogy,
including its creative output, can be made with the affects and their
paths.
178
We saw that the coupling of sensations and feelings with

instincts forms affects, but this forming tells us nothing about the
inner raw material or components of the form. Instincts are part of
this raw material, and they express themselves in mind through
emotions and emotional life, which we will see soon. Up to now,
we have examined the path of the affects in one senselet
us say: . In the other sense, in its bridging or conveyor belt function, , the opposite vector, one may state that though affects, one
may realise a feeling. The realisation, which may be called (borrowing Kants term) sensible experience, or sensuous experience, is
achieved in the very act of experiencing-in-itself. In this sense (meaning, vector), affect is a mobile container, a conveyor of emotions; it
can be plastically transformed through the defence mechanisms
of the ego. Affects are within the range of what is communicated
through written texts in exquisite ways, within the powers and abilities of poets and writers; when they are communicated, they are also
within the consciousness and conscious behaviour. In the absence of
poetic abilities, there are some single terms available to communicate affects: intimacy, respect, preoccupation, admiration, contemplation, outdistancing, solidarity, contempt, dismissal, appreciation.
There is a heavy prevalence of judgmental values in their individual
expression. Affects are the foundations of a possible individual synthesis from the paradox which is the hallmark of emotions, as we
shall see below.

Klein conferred on affects, as seen in object relationships, more analytic relevance vis--vis feelings, which in turn have analytic significance as pointers to hallucination. On this issue, Klein was in
agreement with Freud. Affects, beyond their availability which confers on them a function of diagnostic elements (as is the case with
feelings), also have at least a second intra-session use: as factors for
interpretation. We saw that if feelings are used for this higher (i.e.
more analytically developed) function, they are condemned to stay
in the consciousness, or pre-analytic (and still non-analytic) superficial method. They keep the situation outside the domain of insight;
like a door to a room, they condemn the prospective analytic couple
to not enter the analytic room, but remain in the function of porters.
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If affects do have this potentiality to be used under the analytic

vertex, they equip the interpretation (or construction) on the way
to an insight. It demands a delicacy with regard to the parsimonious identification of the main prevalent affect (or group of affects)
acting at a specific moment of the session. This delicate identification is possible with the analytic discipline recommended by Freud
(neutrality akin to a surgeons) and its negative specification by
Biona discipline counteracting tendencies to rely on memory, to
splash in desire and to attempt at understanding. To sum up, this
discipline replaces the tendencies more typical of someone skilled
in the already-known with the exercise of intuition. After Klein, one
may intuit the main prevalent affects through analysing the components of anxiety, which is one of the phenomenal manifestations
of affects, and shares their contradictory and grouped composition,
acting simultaneously, represented here by .
Emotions
Emotions are wholly unconscious, that is, unknown. Is it possible
to name them? Freud and Klein did it; Bion thought it was too early
to do it. Portugal is a maritime country; there is a Portuguese musical-verbal genre called Fado. A well-known fado offers the listener
the possibility of two different interpretations, thanks to the multiple meanings of the words employed. One interpretation regards
the phrase as composed of two verbs; the other regards it as composed of a verb and an adjective; the former warns while the latter
recommends. In the Portuguese language it is written as navegar
preciso; the double meaning is impossible to translate, but the two
different interpretations are either one must navigate or precision
is needed in order to perform the endeavour of navigating.
Psychoanalysis offers a solution to this verbal puzzle. Due to built-in
features, namely, amiability, integrating, putting up with paradoxes,
it is a Solomon-like solution, devoid of the ancient violence of the
King. Like Hamlet, one must face an ocean of problems in acknowledging a need; and one must be precise to nourish this need. O, the
ultimate reality, is unknowable and ineffableor cannot be wholly
named. Nevertheless, it is intuitable, usable and detectable, and can
be transiently and partially named. Attempting to name emotions is
never wholly successful. It corresponds to the relationship between
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the preconception of a breast and the realisation of the breast, where

a satisfaction-gap always exists. That is to say, the attempt to name
emotions is not an artifice invented by psychoanalysts but a perennial need of human beings.
The symptomatic manifestations of emotions are made through
unconscious phantasies, and appear in dreams and free associations
(discussed in Volumes 1 and 3 of this work). They are strong enough
to move a whole person in some direction. The etymological origin of
the word emotion points to something that moves in directions (or
vectors) whose vertices are instinctively devoted to the preservation
of life and death, with their epistemophilic invariants. Its elemental
names are hate and love and intuition (a drive to know, described by
Aristotle as an urge to know). Emotions are constitutive of Oedipus
and make basic emotional paradoxes.

Freud observed and named the unconscious phantasies, describing them as the psychic equivalents of the instincts. Even though he
already used them in his clinical activity, as seen in both his clinical
reports and the reports of his patients, it was Klein who expanded
their investigation and use. Under this operative vertex, if the analyst is able to diagnose and to reach emotions in a transitory way,
he or she may analyse unconscious phantasies. This seems to be the
most profound layer one is able to attain with the psychoanalytic
knowledge currently available. I have been suggesting, based on the
foundations seen in the works of Freud, Klein, Winnicott and Bion,
that tolerating paradoxes may well be one of the basic tools of our
activity. Perhaps this action can be put on the level next to the one
occupied by a loyalty to the unconscious and a respectful awareness
of free associations and Oedipus. My suggestion also finds counterparts and equivalents in the posture of many other authors such as
Searles, Reik, Jacques, Green, Riviere and Pontalis.
Basic psychoanalytic triadic syndromes to be sought

and mapped
The work of Klein and Bion added new contributions to the various psychiatric and psychoanalytic symptoms and syndromes
described since Kraepelin, Bonhffer, Bleuler, Freud and many
othersbut a review of these is outside the scope of this work.
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Bions contributions to intra-session psychoanalytic nosology

can be seen in his paper On Arrogance (1957b). Bion always
insistedand this was a matter of necessity in his timethat the
analyst should return to colloquial language in order to communicate with his or her patients. Analysts of what may be seen as the
second generation (Freuds being the first) became accustomed,
and then addicted, to employing heavy jargon. The terminology
was first devised as a tool for communication between analysts.
Nevertheless, the increasing use of analytic theories led to the
production of fantasies dissociated from facts both psychic and
material. Communication using this extremely technical language
seemed to gain favour year after year. Winnicott and Bion (each
seemingly unaware of the others identical attempts) contributed
to the restoration of colloquial language and plain discourse in the
session. This aspect was emphasised and reviewed in some entries
of my dictionary on Bion (Sandler, 2005) and other papers.
If the psychoanalytical situation is accurately intuitedI prefer
this term to observed or heard or seen as it does not carry the
penumbra of sensuous associationthe psychoanalyst finds that
ordinary conversational English is surprisingly adequate for
the formulation of his interpretation (Bion, 1967, p. 134). Therefore
one may conclude that Bion avoided penumbras when they meant
cloudy confusion, since some usages of colloquial speech may carry
with them a penumbra of associations, as he warns in Transformations (1965, p. 25) and also in A Memoir of the Future. He was inspired
by Freud, as far as one may see in the reports of his patients about
their analysis; and as far as my research has indicated, by English
poets of the Romantic Period, especially Wordsworth, who in his
Lyrical Ballads warned about the un-poetry full of pompous phraseology that was passed off as poetry in his own time (Sandler,
2002).
However, no amount of care limited to terminology can ensure
precision, for terms are circular in their path, beginning in the
attempts of the issuer and ending in the means available to the
receiver, and are anchored in sensuous methods. Bion acknowledges
in A Memoir of the Future (on the first page of Volume III) that colloquial terms in analysis still cannot dictate how the audience will use
them; a catch-22 state of affairs.8
These warnings about the pros and cons of communication in the
session and with colleagues through colloquial language are also
182
based on the fact that academic, superficial psychology usually uses

it. Terms like solidarity, badness and others, full of judgmental
values, admit such a penumbra of associations that their use has a
built-in, unavoidable misleading factor.
First triad: arrogance, curiosity, stupidity

Our measuring instruments (the analytic compass, made by the
crossing of the two principles of mental functioning and the two
positions; the analytic sextant, with its measuring gauge made
by the establishment of possibilities constantly conjoined with
necessities under the aegis of the three basic instincts; and binocular vision) were amended by a geography whose geographical
events are detected through names (as occurs with any geographical accident). Bion seemed (at least to me) to be able to avoid this
pitfall by using those terms in a way which is known in medical
practice: some facts appear in constant conjunction to form a syndrome. Medical science has hundreds of syndromes like this, usually named after their discoverers. I am referring here to his paper
On Arrogance (1957b). What follows is inferred from the clinical
use of it, even though one may hypothesise that Bions intuition
allowed him to form a triadic syndrome. To realise the underlying
nous of Bions formulation, that of a syndrome, warrants a link
between the three terms. Even though they are colloquial, rather
than technical terms, their conjoint useas opposed to their use
in isolationassures the analyst that they are not used in a superficial, academic psychological sense. As such, psychoanalytic
depth and precision are added. Bions paper could also be entitled
Arrogance, Curiosity and Stupidity, since the two latter behaviours form an integral part of the paper. The core idea is that the
triadic syndrome emerges when one feels prevented from making
projective identifications. Whether the person feels he is prevented
or whether he actually is prevented is a matter for investigation.
The syndrome is classified as psychotic; Bion first observed it in
patients with disturbances of thought. As in many real descriptions of psychoanalysis, extended or protracted analysis displayed
the same fact in so-called neurotics, albeit transformed; in the
same epoch, Bion also suggested the coexistence of psychotic and
non-psychotic personalities.
183
Even though they are all factors of the syndrome, one or two
of them may prevail; but they are always conducive to each other.
Clinically, every time a psychotic personality cannot function
through projective identifications, he or she resorts to this triad, or
to a variation of it in which one or two of these behaviours prevails.
Bion regards curiosity under two vertices that imply two different
meanings. To use it in the way I suggest, the distinction is fundamental. A first sense of curiosity is akin to that described by Freud
and Klein. It is regarded as a manifestation of the development of
the epistemophilic instinct. Infantile curiosity about the sexual
organs transforms itself into a curiosity about ones own mind. If
the psychotic and non-psychotic parts of the personality function
in tandem, in other words to and fro (as in PS D), the person
may, in the next step, undergo a process of sublimation, and proceeds to a curiosity about the external world, as a scientific or artistic
curiosity. This kind of curiosity is linked to life and death instincts
under the prevalence of the former. When the latter prevailsand it
does prevail as life goes on, due to biological and genetic influences
known as old agecuriosity decays. So an Aristotelian curiosity
has a function of postponing senility up to a point, or preventing a
precocious senility. It is a specific manifestation of the K link (Bion,
1963, p. 46, footnote).
A second sense corresponds to a regression to or a fixation of
infantile sexual curiosity. It manifests itself as an arrogant, stupid
curiosity that emerges when one feels hampered or impeded in
ones attempts at projective identification. Pleasure wins the day,
day after day. In the everyday work of the clinic, Bion observed that
this second kind of curiosity is displayed through an exaggerated
interest in the analysts private life. Usually such people also nourish an exaggerated interest in other peoples lives rather than in their
own personal life. The patient behaves as if the most important person in the room is the analyst.
Therefore one may display an arrogant curiosity, a curious stupidity and a stupid arrogance; but those terms indicate a movement,
a verb, rather than an adjective. Their functioning as a syndrome
avoids superficial approaches which would send them to academic
psychology.
Arrogance creates a make-believe that ones mind is inoculated into another person; stupidity makes the other personthe
184
analyst, in our caseact arrogantly, as if his judgmental criteria

would create a better world for the patient. The analyst would not
discover the patients lights, but would try to give him his (the analysts) own lights (as Bion observed in Transformations and A Memoir
of the Future), participating in an environment of crossed projective
identifications. The analyst who allows himself to be transformed
into a pedagogue, a judge, a policeman or a lawyer unconsciously
states: My patient is a stupid man who cannot lead his own life and
have his own experiences, learning from any errors he may make.
This collusion may clothe human disrespect. One may warn another
about an impending threat to life, but cannot forbid behaviours.
Curiosity (clothed in an attempt to learn) mixed with arrogance
led Oedipus to destroy his own sight; how can one learn how one
was born? The principle of uncertainty lets us know with absolute
certainty that we were born and will die, but it allows us to know
nothing about how and when the former happened and the latter
will happen.
The analyst can see in each individual case how those psychoanalytic geographical marks act. The possibilities are unknown
and must be seen in each micro-moment of the here and now. Bion
said that the triadic syndrome of arrogance, curiosity and stupidity emerged when one could not function through projective
identification. My own research, shown in the case of Andrew (in
Volume 1) when acoustic silence pervaded the session, indicates that
projective identification is always at work, sometimes heightened,
when the triadic syndrome emerges. One cannot perform projective identification, and due to the prevalence of desire, stubbornness allows one to make a very good try at doing it. In trying, one
succeeds.
My observation allows for the hypothesis of a circular continuum
with no starting point, where each situation contributes to a state of
mounting violence of projective identification. Thus curiosity fuels
arrogance, which fuels stupidity, for example. Few people can be as
nave as the paranoid personality.
Second triad: hope, optimism, demand

As will be seen in more detail in the next volume, the following
expansion of Bions findings deals with non-psychotic manifestations
which are more usual in so-called adults, beyond the psychotic
185
personality which remains more hidden from sight, clouded by

rational measures. This aspect was also approached in the early parts
of Volume 1. Here it is put in a more general form that encompasses
(hopefully all hitherto known) particular forms, in order to be used
as geographical tools ancillary and linked to the analytic compass
and sextant and binocular vision. These symptoms also act as a syndrome and constitute a sophisticated model to enforce a projective
identification which is forbidden (or felt as forbidden).
Hope and confusion are usually what drives people to what they
think analysis is all about. Hope spring from desire and wish, or
under the aegis of the principle of desire; it nourishes belief. Hope
to be helped, to get out of confusion and mess, to be absolved of
responsibility for oneself, including ones mind; hope for happiness
and freedom from pain. If under the aegis of the principle of pleasure, hope of paradise prevails; it differs from Faith, as it is defined by
Bion. Hope can be normal in children, linked to three hypothesised
preconceptions: Bion suggested the preconceptions of breast and
Oedipus; my experience suggests a third preconception, heightened
and precocious in females: the preconception of Mothering.
Hope has no experience and abhors possibility; it has a damaged
sextant, in the sense that it has monocular vision which considers
only necessity. This, more often than not, cannot be wholly satisfied.
A basic tonus of hope can be put into abeyance; under the aegis of
the life instincts it leads to curiosity (in Freuds and Kleins sense)
and serves as a conductor to the epistemophilic instincts. Respect for
the conjunction of possibility and necessity means persistence and
capacity to work, even in dreadful situations. Contrastingly, hope
means confusion.
As a continuum, hope can reach a higher pitch, reaching violence.
A psychotic denial of probability is conducive to the hallucinated
idea of optimism split from pessimism. The person cannot see the
futility of both hallucinations. Nevertheless, the experience of the
latter (the belief about pessimism) allows for an experience of paradox; reality obtrudes as a counterpoint. If not, denial of probability (or possibility) also attains a higher pitch. A common example
is when one purchases a lottery ticket and anticipates that one will
win. Hopeful optimism transmutes into split pessimism and is conducive to melancholy; ageing brings continued health problems that
are met with growing expectation. Hallucination, as violence, breeds
more hallucination. Many professions, such as medicine and justice,
186
derive from religious rituals and in many cases return to their origin;
solace and warmth are transformed into more expectant hopefulness. This means tragedy.
Demanding is the latter stage, and both stages can appear in
mixed communion. Demanding or exigency is manifest in orders,
previous stipulations driven by desire, exigency and challenging
demands. Motherhood, fatherhood and marriage, when conducted
under the direction of exigency, create a volcano of crossed projective
identifications. Parents abhor the fact that the little unknown who
comes to their home is a new being; resemblances between parents
and children are much more a matter of nurture than nature, even
when there are tendencies due to instinctual need (primary envy and
narcissism). Parents hope, optimistically expect and finally demand
that their children must be geniuses and cannot adopt them (adoption is not just a concrete issue). Children, for their part, aspire to the
same felicity and happiness, and cannot adopt parents when parents
fail to deliver the demanding, desire-ridden perfection. Winnicotts
good enough mothering is regarded as a maximum, rather than a
minimum. The same happens in would-be marriages, which decay
into mutual demands and orders. Demanding exigencies in human
relations create inhuman non-relations, spelling disaster.
Notes
1. A socially shared hallucinosis, originating in the constant conjunction
of intolerance of basic human helplessness and groups organised by
the basic assumption of dependence.
2. Epistemophilic, Life and Death.
3. L, H and K, expressions of the three instincts, as well as the commensal, symbiotic and parasitic links (reviewed in Sandler, 2005).
4. Decisive moment is an expression coined by the 17th century
Cardinal De Retz and quoted by the photographer Henri CartierBresson.
5. This term was coined by Freud (1895). It was expanded by Bion
to describe the intersection and caesura between the unconscious
and conscious systems, and corresponds to what Freud called preconscious.
6. Often indicated by the clash or collaboration of nature and nurture.
7. The reader can see that the analogy here is with artificial contraptions; nevertheless, artificial machinery attends to some natural
187
functions, in that it is intended to help human beings overcome their

limitations, which are also natural. Perhaps it would be useful to
distinguish artificial from artifice. The latter implies qualities of lie
and evasion. A home, clothing, means of transport like aircraft or
cars are artificial. But none of them is an artifice. If there is some
kind of link with what is natural, that is, if the natural function is
kept alive, the contraption works and is endowed with some utility.
Humankind is a relatively recent development; its powers of perception and understanding display many faults, still not corrected
by Darwins law. Humankinds creations suffer the same problem
at an exponential rate: those creations magnify the same faults.
Psychoanalysis is a very young discipline, even though it is supported by older disciplines and their methods: art, philosophy and
science, especially medicine. Psychoanalysis profits from some of
the earlier developments in these disciplines, but at the same time
it has created a new series of faults. The survival of all these disciplines depends on yet another discipline, known as communication, which also suffers from the very same faults. The flawed
communication powers of psychoanalysis have two main bearings,
material (or inanimate) and immaterial stuff. For this reason, Bion
called it non sense.
8. I owe to Florence Guignard a warning about my own nave posture
then aiming for a more precise terminology. In an official meeting at
the IPAC (Santiago, 1999) devoted to the work of Bion, I proposed
to use the phrase Bions readers around the world instead of the
previous one Bions writings around the world. I felt that the latter would give an apostolic condition to people present, and would
also attribute a gospel essence to his written contributions. Mme
Guignard said: You may use any words you want; people will see
what they can or want to see despite the words. Those meetings
were created by Thalia Vergopoulo in 1993, and lasted for ten years.
At first they were unofficial, but admitted to the IPAC; in two congresses they were official. Their success doomed them to a kind of
vested prohibition in political tones. Since 1995 they have been
organised by Thalia Vergopoulo, Jane van Buren and myself; there is
evidence that they have served their initial purpose: to get an international meeting to comment on Bions contributions, discussion of
which had up to that time been more local. The first IPA officials
who allowed the inclusion of this meeting were Dr Leon Grinberg,
Dr Joseph Sandler and Dr Otto Kernberg.
CHAPTER TEN
An anti-alpha function
If we look at unconscious wishes reduced to their most

fundamental and truest shape, we shall have to conclude no
doubt, that psychical reality is a particular form of existence not
to be confused with material reality.
(Freud, 1900, p. 620)
The theory of functions and alpha function are not a part of
psychoanalytic theory. They are working tools for the practising
psychoanalyst to ease problems of thinking about something
that is unknown.
(Bion, 1962, p. 89)
We do not know what is concerned in the transformation from
inanimate to animate though we know, or think we know,
something of the change from animate to inanimate.
(Bion, 1970, p. 129)
189
190
he distinction between two kinds of existence was seminal

to the development of key psychoanalytic concepts, for example, transference: Freud regarded it as an unreal fact that nevertheless seemed materially factual to the patient (Freud, 1912, p.
108.) Freud has been accused of having little or no experience with
psychotics. Nevertheless, his written contributions indicate that he
was quite able to describe precisely the psychotic features of the socalled normal mind. In the observation just quoted, Freud illuminated hallucination and hallucinosis. Bion was a careful reader of
Freud; this aspect, among many others, did not pass unnoticed by
him. From this avenue opened by Freudamong so many others
still unexploredBion made one of his expansions, with a dualtrack theory of observation in psychoanalysis (Grotstein, 1981),
under the names alpha function (Bion, 1961, 1962; reviewed in
Sandler, 2005) and transformations in hallucinosis. Both are factors in the proposed function, an expansion of the model of alpha
function, thereby described.
Two queries are brought by clinical practice. Firstly, how and
when may a thing be factual, a material entity amenable to be apprehended by our five senses, and yet not be real? Secondly, how can
one know at what point in an analytic session it is essential to unswitch ones mind from the concrete, material aspects of the patients
communication in order to make room for that which occupies no
space as well as to make time for that which is timelesspsychic
reality or the unconscious (unbewu t)?
Clinical observations
As with all clinical observations in this work, these stem from my
own practice. For the sake of writing, and supposing that the situations are reproducible and then shareable, forming part of any ordinary analysts practice, they are reported in the third person (the
analyst rather than I).
Confusing concrete and psychic reality through

their inner split
Some patients are capable of rationally understanding a truth about
their relationship to the analyst in the transference, but actively
AN ANTI-ALPHA FUNCTION
191
resist the suffering of immersion in the emotional experience that

realisation ought to bring. Bion referred to this situation as the
difference between suffering pain and feeling pain (1970, p. 9).
Instead the insight is applied outside the analytic session in the
external world in a mechanical way.1 John, a doctor aged 43, felt sadness when he realised how rapacious, aggressive and hostile he was
towards the analyst, his wife and his friends despite his overt behaviour being almost servile. As soon as he left the session he bought
some gifts for his wife. During the following sessions he increased
his evidently feigned amiable, overly affected attitude towards the
analyst. The concrete gift-giving expressed an attempt to be rid of
real depressive feelings, although they remained there, for their psychic quality prevents such an extrusion. Real solace for this state is
real gratitude, coping with depression through self-containment;
an immaterial, psychic process. His attitude was destined to confer
concrete reality on still underdeveloped, grateful feminine generosity and masculine prodigality. John tried to use concrete acting out
as a replacement for non-concrete psychic reality.
Dwelling on seemingly factual accounts and reports:

the dangerous search for meaning
Mary, aged 32, an unmarried mathematician working in computing,
was in analysis for two years. In this session she makes reference to
a meal she has just eaten:
Was it properly cooked? They didnt seem to follow the rules
of hygiene in that restaurant Might the raw vegetables I ate
cause cholera? I have some pain here [points to her stomach],
perhaps nausea, perhaps not. A friend of mine got severe food
poisoning a bacterial infection, staphylococcus. Oh, why
did I eat that mayonnaise today? I didnt eat too much; I left
almost all the food in the dish. Is my stomach pain caused by
the fact that Im still hungry? I left the car with the front wheel
too close to the kerb. Will it damage the tyre? They are so expensive today Perhaps the shop wont have this kind of tyre in
stock, theres a shortage of tyres today There are shortages of
everything will the military return to power and crush those
greedy industrialists? Its no use the military will crush the
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people in the long run Oh, this is my sisters car. Drivers are
crazy! There are too many car-burglars in cities; theyre looking for the radio-cassette player. Oh God! I didnt switch on
the anti-theft alarm. What if a robber appears just now? Excuse
me, doctor, but I must get out of here, I must go and see the
car, I must see if I still have time to activate the alarm.
The analytic couple herewith has at its disposal some factual data:
the military, the shortage of goods, the parking against the kerb.
After all, the town where patient and analyst live really is plagued by
robbers and thieves, as perhaps all megalopolises are nowadays.
This kind of patient clings tenaciously to an overwhelming plethora
of concrete out-of-the-session facts as if she (or he) were painting
Soviet realist pictures.2 In addition such patients have difficulties
in furnishing associations. The analyst noticed that he became worried about his own car parked nearby. This fleeting idea was used by
the analyst as a warning that he had immersed himself in a realm far
from psychoanalysis at that moment. There were no factual thieves
in the consulting room, thus he considered that psychoanalysis had
been stolen from what should have been an analytic session.
The analysts collusion with concrete social values threw the analytic pairwhich in this case could not be a couple3momentarily
outside the realm of our work. The analyst tried to orient himself
through her considerations of ill-prepared food. Were the remarks
linked to oral fixation or oral regression? Poisoned milk? Do those
manifest fears have anything to do with her relationship with the
breast? The analyst was not comfortable with those ideas.
The analysts experience indicates the wisdom of discerning
whether the discomfort factor is due to a temporary incapacity to
be at-one with oneself or whether it is driven by pleasure and desire;
probably the former situation proves to be correct.4 Being uncomfortable with interpretations creates an opportunity to seek truth;
pleasure is the way to lie.
The analyst was trying to use Freuds and Kleins already available theories as tranquillisers for himself. He was trying to fit them
into the material, instead of verifying whether or not the material
would confirm his theories. The theories allowed him the reassuring sensation of being spared having to deal with the unknown, the
freshness and newness of the material. Any interpretation regarding
193
food would be wholly linked to the concrete manifest content,

literally following the words as in the childrens game of Follow
the leader. Consequently, he would be dealing with those words
as facts rather than trying to elicit their possible symbolic value.
A clue to her psychic reality seemed to be her fear. Now the analyst
was approaching a degree of personal freedom that allowed him to
observe the invariant fear, which pervaded and underlay all her
communications in a latent formabout meals, about her sisters
car, about shortages, about the military, and so on.
The analyst thought he was in a better condition to talk with his
patient. Perhaps the verbal expression of fear would enable us to
approach the psychic, non-sensuous, immaterial but real fact that
was occurring there in the session? Her verbal constructs on meals,
cars, and so on, were a report of a day-nightmare being dreamed during the session (and perhaps before) whose latent content included
fear. It was something conveyed by meals, food and the like, but
it had nothing to do with the manifest content of those matters. They
composed a word picture that simultaneously concealed and pointed
to the latent fear, the psychic selected fact (Bion, 1963, 1965; after
Poincar), an underlying common pattern that gave coherence to
seemingly disparate events. The analyst thought Mary gained some
relief when he named this aspect of her inner emotional reality, as
she responded by giving up her idea of leaving the session to check
her car, saying: Well, in fact now I remember I turned the hidden
fuel tap those buzzing alarms are no use after all. If a robber comes
and it sounds, what should I do? Im neither strong nor an expert in
martial arts She was considering reality from a new perspective:
her safety was her responsibility; it was not wholly based on outside
factors. Her next associations were linked to her lack of care with her
feminine appearance. Out of the blue, one might say, she talks about
a karate class she has been attending for many years, in connection
with the statement not an expert in martial arts. As though not
paying attention, she adds, again in a non-logically related comment
more typical of schizophrenic, non-syllogistic thought: I look like a
slut The eliciting of fear led us to some very destructive traits
Mary had, which drove her to manic, sadistic attacks on herself.
Fear was something that made sense to the observer; it can be
a step on the uncertain route to the invariant. This was hinted by
her next free association, that her feminine features or behaviour
194
were put into doubt. The invariant5 on the way to O, which could
be named O-femininity-masculinity, was not limited to being
a selected fact belonging to the observer, it also belonged to the
observed personalitythe patient. But during this time of analysis
it was too far from observation. The action of a function which limited personal apprehension of the sensuous aspectsin which analyst and patient had hitherto colludedwas still prevalent. Fear
and its accompanying emotional experience was beyond the senses,
but still tainted by them, as witnessed by the presence of projective
identification as well as reversed perspective. Social shared values
also contribute to the sensuous concrete syndrome that keeps the
analytic vertex at bay.6
Sophia, a 27-year-old psychologist and mother of two, paid half
my normal fee; she misrepresented her real financial situation. She
would make all kinds of fussy complaints: about the schedule, about
noise from the neighbours, about the presence of other patients in
the waiting room, about the absence of other patients in the waiting room (when the analyst managed to arrange a special room for
that purpose), about the lighting and heating of the room, about the
height and hardness of the pillow and the couch. If the pillow was
too soft for her taste, any other pillow the analyst eventually furnished was judged too hard, and the same occurred with the lighting in the room, and so on.
Initially the analyst responded concretely to what she was saying, and tried to satisfy her, for example by providing different
pillows. One may see that the analyst, in this first stage, was colluding with the patients manifest content. At best, he was practising a psychology of the consciousness, keeping the psychoanalytic
vertex and his possible psychoanalytic function safely at bay. It
mildewed, unused. Sophia responded for a brief moment with happiness and contentment, only to relapse into sulking and complaining with renewed strength. This is the normal outcome of superficial
psychology.
In due course, thanks to his own personal analysis,7 the analyst
realised that both constituents of what could be an analytic couple but did not cross the boundaries of a non-analytic pair were
immersed in an environment of projective identification: she was
trying to make the would-be analyst guilty of being a faulty professional. From this new perspective it was not very difficult to see
195
that Sophia was guilty with regard to the fees. Despite recognising
that three years of work (which I prefer not to call proper analysis,
and analysis improperly done has no right to be called analysis)
had helped her make useful social gains, she seemed unable to bear
the emotional implications of this psychoanalytic fact.
This kind of helpemotional implications and aftermaths
would up- or down-grade the work into the psychoanalytic realm.
I say up or down because the name implies level of attainment,
rather than judgmental values. Each reader or practitioner will
decide whether it is up or down; for example, if depth and profundity of grasp is considered a parameter of appreciation, the name
would be down, with no downgrading of the work done. The
question is of sufficiency; natural selection in life will judge whether
analysis is good or bad. Those are adjectives based on arbitrary
and authoritarian thoughts, or linked to specific individual vertices.
As Shakespeare observed, there is nothing either good or bad, but
thinking makes it so (Hamlet II ii). All these considerations were
seminal if one wanted to deal with Sophianecessary, yet not sufficient steps to be made. Moreover, those facts which differentiate
analysis from passing judgment seem to me to be seminal to the
performance of analysis proper, outside the fields of criminal and
civil justice, politics, education and religion.
Instead Sophia resorted once more, and with renewed strength,
to projective identification, rather than acknowledging her guilt and
making amends. The analyst felt he was wasting his timeand much
worse, Sophias timewhen he paid attention to adjusting the physical environment or even to the meaning of her complaining.
Meaning in psychoanalysis is a double-edged tool at best; and
a treacherous, destructive weapon, scientifically speaking, at worst.
Meaning may bring hermeneutic, fantasy-flight interpretations,
a much feared outcome emphasised since Francis Bacon, Kant and
Freud (Sandler, 1997). Psychoanalysts turn into meaning brokers
and meaning rental agencies, with no criteria for refutation other
than their own or their patients individual authority. No marriage
or creative thought is possible under this aegis. Meaning is a
mildly successful tool in analysis if and when it is constantly conjoined with the search for vertex, which varies in time and space
with each patient (and sometimes with the same patient as a specific
session unfolds); it requires very small doses used with the utmost
196
careat least in my experience. Meaning used devoid of form and

content, as a general and generalised view, is useless for analytic
work.
In Sophias case, until the analyst recognised that these concrete,
apparently real, material facts were the means by which she got rid
of an important aspect of her psychic reality (by projecting it into
the analyst), both were involved in a collusive engagement that
would avoid touching her real emotions. Unconsciously she was
aware, though this was split off, that she was living a lie in relation
to the fees. This also condensed many more lies in her life, composing one of the most peculiarly simplified, obvious and terrible patterns of Winnicotts false self that this specific analyst had ever
known before or since. Due to her upbringing and particular form
of intelligence, this false self was, as often happens, mildly successful in social terms. Such people usually find a social locus which
they can enter, to the extent that they develop socially seductive
manners.
Were this knowledge to challenge Sophias view of herself as
impoverished and therefore entitled to special treatment, she would
have to take a painful emotional step towards recognition of her
psychic reality. It was thus at the point where depressive-position
emotions were called for (connected with the recognition that she
was exploiting the analyst to whom she owed a debt of gratitude,
that hatred and love were directed at the same whole object) that
she resorted to projective identificationthe phantasy of a concrete
operation in which non-material psychological facts (emotions) are
transformed into sense-data apparently arising from the material
world (physical discomfort, financial poverty) in such a way that
the analyst is induced to carry the emotions or to act out.
The case of Sophia was not seen, at least by this analyst, as successful analytic work in the short term. As soon as she was able
to acknowledge her lies in the session and decided to change her
fee system, she abandoned analysis. Purely by casual observation,
the analyst saw Sophia carry on professionally, being accepted in a
doubtful selection for analytic training. She had no clinical experience but devoted herself to political-bureaucratic tasks, where her
social skills, orientation and links were valued. Hate of analysis,
as necessary as love of analysis (in Bions terms, the same fountain from which vitality springs is also the source of non-vitality or
197
destruction, i.e. narcissism), often wins the day, becomes prevalent

and nourishes addiction. Intelligence adds to it; it seems to have
advantages; facing depression is increasingly difficult. People usually look for that which resembles themselves, in order to construe
social (but not intimate) conviviality. It is based on projective identifications, and usually falls into a short-term mode. In hindsight,
Sophias analysis could be seen as partially successful, if the goal
was for this woman to become what she really was.
Dream work, the cornerstone of real psychoanalysis, offers an
unparalleled opportunity to the analyst who endeavours to extricate him- or herself from concrete outward appearances. For
example, Arnold, aged 38, a high-ranking executive in a large
business-promoting and financial brokerage organisation, adamantly stated that he had never had dreams in all his life. Over
many months of analysis of his associations it became apparent
that he invariably took great pains when making decisions which
involved millions of dollars. He would look for advice in matters
where he was supposed to be the expert. Moreover, he was easy
prey for opinionated, often conflicting views. He acted out all of this
during the sessions: he would ask my opinions about everything.
He never accepted opinions from women. There were real difficulties in assisting his wife and her family, especially when she was
pregnant; I witnessed the omissions and flights that surrounded the
birth of their third child. In due course we were able to realise that
his apparent ambivalence in taking decisions was in fact an expression of a phantasy of having passive sexual intercourse with men.
Then he reported a dream: he was in the emergency unit of a hospital, lying on a kind of surgical bed, and passers-by confirmed that
he was in danger, he had been shot in the neck, and he would inevitably become paraplegic. Suddenly he touched his own neck with
his hand (he actually put his hand on his neck during his report of
the dream); he felt no blood; he saw no blood either. He got up from
the bed, saying: I wasnt shot after all, Im well and walked out
of the hospital, somewhat relieved but also a bit worried about such
an event. He was very surprised that he was able to dream after all.
The interpretation enlightened some parts of his sexual phantasies,
a suffusion of homosexual fears with confusion between vagina and
anus. In the dream, he seemed to perceive his male potency to the
extent that he investigated something in himself, considering that
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he did not need the opinions of others; he seemed to discover that

he was a man, having neither a vagina nor menstrual blood. In this
man, analysis was able to investigate his invariants.
Alpha function: a review

Bion proposes his observational theory of alpha function in relation
to Freuds description of consciousness as a sense organ for the perception of psychical qualities (1911). He suggests that alpha function transforms sense data into alpha elements: in other words, it is
a de-sensifying function of mind. These sense data include other
patterns that can be described in the future (visual images, auditory patterns, olfactory patterns), and are suitable for employment
in dream thoughts, unconscious waking thinking, the contact barrier and the memory. In contrast, beta elements are the undigested
sense impressions, indistinguishable from the things-in-themselves
to which the sense impressions correspond. They remain sensuously
apprehensible and are always concrete. They are employed for hallucination and projective identification. This brief summary of the
concept can be seen in Bion (1962, p. 26) or in my own history-based
review in the form of a dictionary (Sandler, 2005, pp. 22, 77).
Reversal of alpha function

Bion proposes that in psychotic functioning the direction of alpha
function is reversed such that instead of sense impressions being
changed into alpha elements for use in dream thoughts, etc., the contact barrier is dismantled and alpha elements are divested of all the
characteristics that separate them from beta elements. He writes:
We could consider that the reversal of alpha function did
in fact affect the ego and therefore did not produce a simple
return to beta elements, but objects which differ in important
respects from the original beta elements which had no tincture
of the personality adhering to them. The beta element differs
from the bizarre object in that the bizarre object is beta element
plus ego and superego traces. The reversal of alpha function
does violence to the structure associated with alpha function.
[1962, p. 25]
199
From the beginning of our lives we face the task of processing raw
sensuous data in order to transform them into psychic data. If
the capacity for toleration of frustration is sufficient the no-breast
inside becomes a thought and an apparatus for thinking develops
(Bion, 1962, p. 112).
Definition of anti-alpha function

I wish to propose that apart from this form of psychotic functioning
that Bion described there is a universal tendency towards a specific
kind of transforming mental function (Sandler, 1990), which works
in the opposite direction to alpha function. It can be understood as a
minus alpha function to the extent that it forms part of the realm
of minus, or negative. But, being a function found in any functioning mind, it seems to merit its own place and emphasis, both clinically and theoretically.
The human mind has difficulty containing immaterial abstractions within psychic boundaries. There appears to be a universal
tendency to replace psychic reality with material reality, which
coexists with and opposes the development of thinking (Bion, 1962,
chapters V and VI). The material products resulting from the action
of anti-alpha function carry with them from the beginning the marks
of such defensive processes as denial, reaction formation, displacement and condensation. The concretisation of psychic reality precludes the occurrence of free associations. Anti-alpha function is a
factor in acting out. When anti-alpha function is in operation, one
is bound to transform, as it were, energy into matter. The mind
actively functions in this way; it is not only a dysfunction or disturbance of alpha function. It structures rigid, concretised organisations
in the mind, in the sense described by Riviere (1936). This concept
was later developed by Rosenfeld (1965) and, more recently, Steiner
(1993) under the vertex of pathology. I emphasise here the repetitive, rigidly structured, concrete non-functioning of the thought
processes, not in the pathological sense, but as a humans primitive
function. To me, the developments made by Steiner characterise a
backward step under the psychoanalytic vertex, and an upward
step under psychiatric and superficial psychological adaptation patterns, due to the emphasis on pathologya concept put into serious
doubt by Freud with regard to features of mental suffering. It would
200
be scientifically unfair not to quote this development, which can be

put, in terms of the Grid, as category A2, A4, A6 and B6 (the multidimension Grid will be discussed in detail in the next volume). But
the difference of its vertex and approach made it unsuitable for the
present research, which does not base itself on pathology and ideas
of cure, unless in a critical sense, the expansion of which is beyond
the scope of this work.
Anti-alpha function operates to avoid frustration; it produces a
state in which the mind is under the sway of the pleasure principle
(Freud, 1911). It produces what Bion calls the field of negative grid,
negative growth, minus K (Bion, 1962, 1963). Anti-alpha function
may be regarded as a factory of lies endowed with concreteness
and a plausible rationality that enables them to pass for truth and
reality, if good enough emitters and receptors are available. Being
a phantasy, this ability leads nowhere, and nothing real or durable
ensues. It builds thoughtless tales full of sound and fury, signifying
nothing (Macbeth Vv). Nevertheless, since it is a factor in acting out
without being a real fact, something material and factual takes place.
Something false and destructive to truth ensues. Anti-alpha function
is a factor in promoting what Freud described as a return to the
inanimate state (1920, p. 38).
Technical issues
Anti-alpha function is also a factor operating in the mind of the psychoanalyst in opposition to true analytic work. Consider the analyst
who faces a patient such as John (described above). If his anti-alpha
function is operating, perhaps he will collude with a patient who
displays a false depression through giving gifts, and he may interpret the concrete giving as a therapeutic improvement. The sense
of truth one achieves when a real insight occurs is only possible if
the analyst realises that, in the universe of the discourse, the words
that convey something also do not convey something; they simultaneously betray and conceal what really matters: the truth about
oneself.
In the light of our hypothesis, let us review the case of Mary, the
mathematician who talked about food. I suspect that the model of
anti-alpha function may be useful to the extent that one may think
the analysts own anti-alpha function was operating at the beginning
201
of the session, when he tried to link her remarks in a concrete, direct,

mechanistic fashion, making inappropriate use of previously learned
psychoanalytic theories (in this case, Freudian and Kleinian) to fill
the void of his ignorance. In fact he was badly missing the point,
losing the psychoanalytic vertex. Bion tried to warn that the practising analyst has to decide whether he is promulgating a theory, or
a space-filler indistinguishable from a paramnesia (1977c, p. 229).
Freud often stressed this point, warning against too many abstractions in analytic theory (1926, p. 101). It is also as well to note his
comparison between the analysts constructions and the patients
delusions (1937, p. 268). Bions warning about psychoanalytic paramnesias may be put under the heading of meaning, a field better
covered by hermeneutics and by philosophers.
Sophia, the third case described above, may furnish a glimpse of
anti-alpha function in action; perhaps this constitutes the justification to venture an extension of Bions theory. It is not simply that
there is a lack of alpha function; we can observe the existence of
an active concretisation that in phantasy, in the mind of the person,
either patient or analyst, turns what is animate into what is inanimate. The case illustrates the analysts early failure to reach the
latent content: in Bions terms, he was unable to move from Tp to
Ta (Bion, 1965). He was not able to use his own alpha function in
order to de-sensify her apparent complaints. However, I think this
model does not tell the whole story, for the analysts alpha function
was being truly replaced by anti-alpha function, which enabled
him actively to concretise what she was trying to communicate. He
became trapped in what she was saying (manifest content) and
could not grasp analytically what she meant (latent content). To
quote Bion: in fact the clue to the extension I am proposing would
be that my alpha function was being reversed (1926, p. 25).
In my view, Bions original ideas on alpha function and the lack
of it do not emphasise explicitly the sensifying and concretising
tendency of the human mind. This chapter is not intended as a criticism; rather, it seeks to expand verbally and explicitly that which is
to be found in his texts. Moreover, one may take into account the historical epoch in which he lived. Even if Freud, Klein and Bion made
efforts towards a de-pathologisation of psychoanalysis, making
humankind a little more aware of the universality of neuroses and
psychosis (Bion, 1957a), this was an anathema, perhaps a nemesis in
202
their historical environment. The return to the inanimate observed

by Freud is not a passive situation of remaining in an emulsion of
beta elements, but rather an active movement towards deathbut
even the death instincts are still the subject of debate more than a half
century later. In any case, Freud, Klein and Bion made advances on
which the present expansion could be based. I just want to emphasise that this expansion brings nothing new in itself.
Clinical observation made me suspect that it is not only a passive state where free beta elements which are not subjected to alpha
function remain in their original beta state. More than that, it
seems that the mind promotes an active transformation of what is
alive into what is dead, and people deal with living creatures and
their productions (for example, discourse, works of art) as if they
were inanimate. In Bions terms, potentially useful alpha elements
are transformed by anti-alpha function into beta elements before
they can be used in dream work. This model of anti-alpha function
purports to describe a function of the human mind that is active
in primitive states of mind and overly active during the adulthood
of many people. It constitutes a factory of lies, and constructs the
field of what Bion called minus K. I think that Bion left all of this
implicit, especially in his later work. He opened the path I am trying
to pursue when he observed the reversal of alpha function (1962,
p. 25)but he did not expand the theme in those terms.
This case of Sophia, besides illustrating the well-known use of
projective identification as a method of communication (Klein, 1946;
Bion, 1956; Rosenfeld, 1965), offers an opportunity to observe the
relationship between projective identification and anti-alpha function. When I provided her with different pillows I was unable to
see the phantastic nature of her projective identification, perceiving
it as concrete sense data. Projective identification is the concretisation of an emotion and of feelings; through this very concretisation
one is enabled to build up a phantasy of projecting something
into someone else, for the something projected is never a thing:
it is not material, but the person who projects deals with it sensuously, as if it were a concrete thing amenable to being projected. It
seems that emotions and feelings that are felt as unbearable must
also be felt as concrete things in order to be expelled. How can one
expel something that has no concrete or sensuous properties? Either
203
PS or D is expelled through this concretisation. Sophia indulged

herself in a pleasure-ridden, sadistic relationship, further adding
an infantile impoverishment to her adult self. Therefore anti-alpha
function seems to be an underlying factor, a building block in the
phantasy of projective identification; the container or receptacle is
also regarded as an inanimate thing. Anti-alpha function and projective identification led to my collusion with her hitherto unobserved
sadistic pleasurean immaterial fact.
Kleins original observation is as follows: projective identification is a phantasy (therefore it is immaterial, non-sensuous, and
non-concrete) producing real effects in the patients processes of
thought (also immaterial, non-sensuous and non-concrete). In my
view, Klein did not confuse this real effect of projective identification in psychic reality with concrete, material effects in factual reality. To do so is to become trapped in the same confusion in which
the patient trapped herself, namely, confusing psychic reality with
material reality (Klein, 1946).
The fourth case, that of Arnold, perhaps displays the fact that
when anti-alpha function is operating one cannot report dreams, and
in extreme cases one imagines that one is unable to dream. Also, an
analyst in whom anti-alpha function is operating will not be able to
cope with dreams (Freud, 1900; Sharpe, 1937; Bion, 19581979, especially pp. 3747; Segal, 1982). The analyst may regard them either as
irrational, unreachable productions or as something he or she can
subject to concrete, rational explanations with the help of previously
learned patterns of symbols and the like.
Seemingly intelligible and seemingly unintelligible

beta elements
Clinical observation coupled with the conception of anti-alpha
function suggests that some beta elements are not easily seen as
such. I propose to augment Bions observation on beta elements by
considering two kinds of beta elements: the seemingly intelligible beta
elements and the seemingly unintelligible beta elements.
The seemingly unintelligible beta elements are fairly easily spotted during a session: for example, in so-called schizophrenic thought
and discourse; or in the silent patient. There is a churning of primitive
204
feelings and the creation of a highly charged emotional climate that

often leaves the analyst alone with his (or her) countertransference
(Pick, 1985). This particular form of beta elements corresponds to
Bions first and now classical description of beta elements.
The seemingly intelligible beta elements often pass unnoticed
as true beta elements. They are primarily imitative deeds, words,
behaviours and actions tainted with traces of ego and superego, with
the interference of a secondary process, especially rational thinking
that may be regarded as originating from anti-alpha function.
They are disguised by social collusion: what is frankly psychotic
passes for normal or neurotic in a given social organisation. One
may notice that this classification is not valid if taken concretely per
se, but only during an analytic session, in the transference as a total
situation, a term coined by Melanie Klein (1952) and popularised
by Joseph (1985) with no mention of its origin. They are vividly
experienced in the relationship between the analyst and the patient.
There are no intelligible beta elements in isolation, for they depend
on the particular way one perceives the communication. During an
analytic session they compose the patients discourse, which seems
to the analyst to be normal, or express exactly what they intend
to express.
Many events during a session pass as if there were no latent content. The psychoanalysts prejudices and social or moral codes help
those beta elements to pass unnoticed and no transference phenomena will be detectedthe discourse will be a thing-in-itself either
to the patient or to the analyst. What may ensue is a mimicry of
analysis with pseudo-insightsthe field of minusK. The factual
data in the case of Marythe military, shortage of goods, parking
against the kerbconstitute what I propose to call intelligible beta
elements. The patient and the professional talk; if they are sophisticated and educated, they may understand and learn about psychoanalysis, but will be unable to experience psychoanalysis.
Consequently they will remain blind to the truth about ones Self
(Grinberg, 1980). The various complaints of Sophia revealed themselves as a mere manifest content: intelligible beta elements. If one
takes them in the same concrete way that the patient apparently
offers them, there will be no possibility to realise that the patient
is feeling guilt. This kind of beta element contributes to composing
what Bion called bizarre elements; their intelligibility helps to
205
disguise their bizarreness to both the observer and to their creator,

the patient.
Some consequences and implications

One possible use of the present hypothesis is to recognise the
destructive effects of anti-alpha function, as presented in the consulting room. These can be spotted in thought processes, the introjection of real (i.e. integrated) objects, the apprehension of psychic
reality, regard for truth, the acquisition of a freer movement between
PS and D, and a degree of achievement in scientific research, either
during an actual analytic session or in the formulation of theories
within the psychoanalytic movement.
If this model proves to be clinically useful, one of its main contributions is the need to continually review our concepts of normality.
In the light of the model of an anti-alpha function, a great many
acts, endeavours and behaviours often regarded as normal either
in social systems or in the microcosm of the analytic session will
be viewed as psychotic productions that demand to be dealt with
accordingly. The person under the aegis of this hypothesised antialpha function maintains scant contact with his (or her) psychic
reality, resorting to a special kind of hallucination: that something
immaterial can be turned into something concrete and inanimate.
Even psychoanalytic theories can become concrete, taking on for
their proponents the quality of absolute truth. Anti-alpha function
attacks the perception of what is transiently ( ) the characteristic of real life (Freud, 1916). It interferes with the achievement of
a sense of truth through tolerating paradox, uncertainty and the
unknown, inherent characteristics of reality, all painful qualities
where the pleasure principle prevails. The a priori and ad hoc search
for meaning disguises intelligible beta elements as if they were
alpha elements. This kind of superficial search indicates that the
researcher is limited to the realm of academic psychology, which
deals just with the conscious system of the mind. This does not
acknowledge the existence of any analytic function, in the sense that
it does not encompass the unconscious system. Please see Part I and
Chapter Six.
The reality of an analytic session includes the unknown freshness of an experience that Freud called insight. Eternal vigilance
206
is the price we pay for freedom. Psychoanalysis is linked to freedom

and to lifefreedom from hallucination, from being enslaved by the
pleasure/pain principle, from the concrete, cosy, secular fetters of
the already known. Anti-alpha function is a factor in the unwillingness or inability to attain D and to experience the free movement
PS
D, freezing the
part. The operation of alpha function and
anti alpha function can be summarised by:
Alive, Animate
Truthful
Dead, Inanimate or Real

Hallucinated, Lie
In the broader perspective of epistemology and science, the true

novelty and revolutionary contribution of psychoanalysis since its
formulation by Sigmund Freud, as well as its seminal contribution to
real science and philosophy, seems to have deep links with the effect
of anti-alpha function in the functioning (or better, non-functioning)
of thinkers and researchers minds. Bion stressed on many occasions the fact that some problems faced by psychoanalysts have
always faced the philosopher of science (19581979, p. 9; 1962,
Introduction, item 2; 1975, 1977). Psychoanalysis remained outside
the concretisations that I believe always plagued our old epistemological issue. This issue troubled thinkers over many centuries,
and was unsuccessfully dealt with through attempts that invariably
ended with a splitting (in the sense described by Klein) which was
given many names such as matter and energy, mind and body, idealism and realism, form and content, forming a plethora of verbal
expressions. Such concepts failed to observe the basic underlying,
undue splitting until the advent of psychoanalysis, which seems to
have contributed decisively to the issue through empirical practice
and observation, creating a halt in a long history of pure speculation
(Cassirer, 1920; Hartmann, 192329).
Speculative thinking gradually left aside the notion of
processes. The products of speculation divorced from reality
(which always nourished Freud in the form of clinical observation) were taken as if they were reality itself, in a sense; the process
was turned into a concrete thing. The other split part produced, in
the field of science, what is known as positivism: full of concrete
causal laws, a dark time when predictions and knowledge tried to
207
replace research and the processes of knowing, with why replacing

how and memory and desire winning the day over an attitude of
facing the unknown. All of this, which constitutes a (Cartesian) habit
of thinking, perhaps still hampers our daily work with our patients,
which demands that we try to the maximum possible extent, as
Freud tried, to see facts as they really are (Samuel Johnson, quoted
by Bion, 19581979, p. 6).8
Notes
1. Please see Part I, where the same issue is discussed in more depth.
2. Now forming part of the heap of history, the criminal times of Soviet
authoritarianism dictated restrictive political criteria governing how
a painting or any work of art had to be made, as was also the case
with Nazism. Both imposed a nave realist method.
3. Please see Volume I, Part IV on the difference between couple and
pair.
4. Uncomfortable interpretations will be discussed in more detail in
the next volume; the meaning of the term at-onement must be
seen in Bion, 1970, pp. 31, 889; reviewed in Sandler, 2005.
5. Please see Part III of Volume 1.
6. See the discussion of the analytic compass in Chapter Seven.
7. At that time with Dr Deocleciano Bendocchi Alves.
8. Expanded version from a paper first published in The International
Journal of Psycho-Analysis (Sandler, 1997a).
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INDEX
Aristotles realm
of metaphysics 114
equipping 120121
Euclidean-Aristotelian concept
114
negative tools to improve
121123
positive and negative bearings
of 111
positive tools to improve
123125
risks 125128
risks in the exercise of 128129
symptoms of failing 129
anti-alpha function 189, 199,
201204, 206
avoid frustration 200
concreteness 200
consequences and implications
205207
adamant self-pamperer 5859

adoration 69, 99
affects 126, 171172, 174, 176179
Alive, Animate Dead, Inanimate
or Real 206
allopathic tendencies 44
aloof mother 5055, 71
alpha function 170, 190
analysts 201
direction of 198
reversal of 198199, 202
review 198
Althusser, Louis 65
Amelia syndrome 51, 5556
analytic
compass 134137, 140141, 146,
169, 182, 185
sextant 133134, 136137,
140141, 146, 169, 182, 185
analytic function
215
216
INDEX
definition of 199203
destructive effects of 205
Antinomy of Pure Reason 13
anti-Semitism 46
antithetical pairs 9
Apprehension of Reality 148
Arendt, Hannah 46, 67
arrogance 149, 181184
authoritarianism 95, 207
Bateson, Gregory 44, 68
Bergmann, Ingmar
Calvinist bishop in Fanny and
Alexander 48
Berlin, Isaiah
history of ideas coupled
with psychoanalytic
achievements 29
sense of reality 146
beta-screen 24, 40
Bin Laden 75
Bion, Wilfred 5, 8, 23, 32, 124
A Memoir of the Future 11, 8184,
8889, 91, 181
A Theory of Thinking 30
All My Sins Remembered 80, 90
analytic function 109
Arrogance, Curiosity and
Stupidity 182
Attention and Interpretation 12,
88, 98, 125
bizarre elements 204
books 81
Cogitations 29, 102, 141, 145, 167
compact writing condenses 6
concept of Minus K, 21
contact barrier 24
container and contained
revisited 7172
contributions to formulation of
analytic function 111129
contributions to intra-session
psychoanalytic nosology 181
contributions to psychoanalysis
5, 10
counterpoint 14
discomfort factor 192
element of psychoanalysis 123
Experiences in Groups 92
feeling pain 191
final products of
transformations 157
formal description 81
formulation 118, 182
humanitys tolerance of
frustration 26
hypothesized preconceptions
185
K space 21
K link 62
language of achievement 177
Learning from Experience 91
links of commensalism 22
links of parasitism 22
links of symbiosis 22
minus K, 202
Minus realm 18
narcissistic (ego-centric)
tendency 145
non sense 187
non-psychoanalytic approach
113
notation 159
observation on beta elements
203
observational theory 198
observations of hallucinosis 20
original ideas on alpha function
201
paranoid depressive position 137
parlance 13, 136
personal library 146
pleasure 136
proposed notational system 157
psychoanalysis 96
psychoanalysts gasbags 97
INDEX
psychoanalytical situation 181

psychotic functioning 198199
psychotic personality 12, 82
realm of the unconscious/
conscious system 88
relationships between
container and
contained 63
second theory of links 62
suffering pain 191
suggestions about a Minus
realm 7
terms 171172
The Dawn of Oblivion 81, 85,
9899, 128
The Dream 81, 85, 97
The Long Week-End 90, 96
The Past Presented 81, 85, 97
theories of PS D stemming
from Klein 63
theory 24
theory of links 2223
theory of preconception of
nourishing breast 135
theory of psychoanalysis 146
theory of thinking 11
thought of myths 124
Transformations 11, 20, 80, 88
trilogy and its reception 79
universal tendency 199
universality of neuroses and
psychosis 201
verbal thought 125
War Memoirs 80, 90, 9394, 96
warning about psychoanalytic
paramnesias 201
work teaching with help
of trilogy 106
Bionians 99, 102, 170
bizarreness 205
Blanchot, Maurice 80
Bloom, Harold 129130
Browning, Robert 85
217
Cartier-Bresson, Henri 186

Christian Cabala 13, 88
commensal relationship 19
Communism 46
constructive criticism 48
contact barrier 24, 127, 143, 171,
176, 198
container and contained 1012, 22,
56, 62, 71, 153, 168
contradiction 79, 42, 148
contrapuntal Minus 24
countertransference 55, 204
coupling of sensations and feelings
176, 178
Cubas, Bras 103
curiosity 132, 177, 182185
Dale Carnegie technique 149
De Retz, Cardinal 186
decisive moment 72, 186
Deleuze, Gilles 65
delinquency (prevalence of desire)
124
de-pathologisation 201
de-sensifying function of mind
198
destructive criticism 48
disciplined abstinence 121122
DNA reproduction 17
Doyle, Conan 97
dualism and splitting
philosophy and its discontents
1617
ego 9, 11, 2728, 31, 52, 67, 94, 115,
118, 127, 143, 145, 147, 153,
170171, 175178, 198, 204
defence mechanisms of 178
functions 171
realm of 176
splitting of 9
ego and superego traces 198
Egoism 56
218
INDEX
Einstein, Albert 17, 29, 85, 89

infinite universe 176
theory of relativity 65
Elective Affinities 70, 74, 176
Elliott wave 158
emotions 171172, 179180
symptomatic manifestations
of 180
erotic transference 151
eternal vigilance 205
Euclidean
coordinate system 114
geometry 159
logic 84
system of coordinates 118
Euclids realm of sensuously based
geometry 114
Fado, Portuguese musical-verbal
genre 179
false paranoid-schizoid position
150
familial benefactor 55
fashionable non-sense 121
feelings 171173
Ferro, narrative counterparts
of alpha-elements 23
first triad, arrogance, curiosity,
stupidity 182184
Form
Content 72
Foucault, Michel 66
Fowles, John, novel The Collector
56
Frege, Gottlob 13, 27
Freud 2, 17, 111, 175, 206207
description of consciousness
198
description of free associations
83
description of psychosis 65
Group Psychology and the
Analysis of the Ego 27
hallucination and hallucinosis

190
in Civilisation and its
Discontents 128
insight 205
invent Oedipus 29
mental suffering 199
original psychoanalysis 152
preconscious 186
Principle of Psychic
Determinism 148
psychoanalytic analysis 117
sense 65, 88, 185
surpassing of positivist criteria
114
theory of consciousness 141
theory of the unconscious 142
time with surrealism 28
true psychic reality 89
unconscious phantasies 115
frustration 6, 9, 2627, 30, 32, 4950,
53, 63, 6568, 70, 81, 124, 146,
199200
fumbling infancy 120, 133
functional monism of PS D 72
Gassman, Vittorio 74
Geoffrey 150
Georges
case 157
initial observation 159
O-mechanising picture 162
German Romantics 88
Germans 4548, 102
Ghost of Stokes 95
Goethe 17
Faust 17
Naturphilosophie 115
good object
bad object, greed
and ambivalence 6667
Green, Andr 7, 17, 63, 80, 149, 172
contributions of 23
INDEX
realm of negative 24
theory 24
thirdness 72
work of the negative 23
Grinberg, Len 106, 187, 204
Grotstein, James 149, 190
Guignard, Florence 187
hallucinosis 36, 39, 74, 83, 98, 127,
136137, 160, 186, 190
Bions observations of 20
pure 93
realm of 23
rules of 68
shared 60, 9293, 98, 186
state of 71
superiority of 33
superiority of the method of 21
transformations in 21, 57, 190
widespread 126
Hamann, J. G. 13, 88
hate of truth 6566
healthy mental growth 116
Hegel 17, 23
pregnant hints and ambivalent
confusion 13
Heisenbergs principle of
uncertainty 65
helplessness 28, 186
Heschel, Asa 47
Hitler phenomenon 45
Lebensraum policies 46
psychoanalytic achievements 45
Holmes, Mycroft 97
Holmes, Sherlock 92, 9697
Homers Odyssey 62
homosexual
partners 69
phantasies 25, 56, 59, 69, 166
Hopkins, Manley 15, 85
Horowitz, Vladimir 29
human bisexuality 60
219
Hume, David 8385, 142

refutation 83
sense 142
hypercritical hypocrite 3740
hypothesis, a versus link 61
idego-superego 148
inanimate immobility 8
infantile curiosity 183
infantile sexual curiosity 183
internal Hitler 4449
intersubjectivism 113
intuition and V 6365
Kants definition 63
Melanie Kleins description 64
intuitive audiences 133
IPA congresses 102
Jewish-Christian idealism 96
Joan of Arc all-giving syndrome
4044
Johnson, Samuel 84
Kants
ambivalence 13
numinous realm 16
revival of Platos numinous
realm 13
sensible experience 178
Kantian criticism 2829
psychoanalysis look for truth 29
Kermode, Frank 29, 48
Kernberg, Otto 187
kidnapping father 4950
Minus Love 49
Kiplings seven servants 133
Klein, Melanie 6, 11, 17, 25, 86, 89,
124, 135, 204
bewilderment and disapproval
102
conception of projective
identification 11
220
INDEX
concepts of love, hate and

reparation 172
concepts of splitting 143
intra-session method 175176,
178179
Minus Love 26
projective identification 64
sense 65, 185
technical hints 173
technical recommendation 175
Knowledge link 41
Kuhn, Thomas 48
peer groups 112
theory of scientific paradigms
112
latent content 201
Latour, Bruno 65
Lidz, Theodore 68
Lincoln, Abraham 84
Lockes concept of common
sense 142
Love in the Time of Cholera 74
love-it-or-leave-it personality 50
malignant narcissism 38, 145
manifest content 75, 122, 129, 147,
150152, 155, 158, 193194, 201,
204
Mrquez, Gabriel Garca 74
Mason, Albert 105
megalopolises 192
Meister, Wilhelm
journeys 70
mental apparatus 120
mental functioning 120
principles of 710
mental health enhancing sources 92
messenger RNA 177
Milton, John 28, 85, 101
Minus 56, 17
breast 3031, 37
clinical sources 3560

container/contained 19, 56,
59, 62
L/H relationship 25
Life 60
marriages 55
phenomenon 59
PS D 5960
Realm 60, 62, 65, 68
two kinds of 24
minus alpha function 199
Minus Hate (H) 25, 3536, 3839,
43, 5357, 6163, 67
defining 33
Minus K 1820, 2223, 2526, 33,
35, 38, 43, 61, 63
contrapuntal 24
realm 30
transformations in 23
Minus Love (L) 2526, 3032,
3536, 3839, 45, 50, 5357,
6263, 67, 69, 71
defining 2633
pseudo-love 33
relationship with Mother 51
modern-day information theory 9
moral superiority 1920, 33, 56
mordacity 38
Morgenthau, Henry 47
mother-baby relationship 144
mutual adoration 69
nave idealism/relativism 16
nave realism 16, 74
nameless dread 11
narcissism 28, 30, 38, 68, 85, 124,
137, 145146, 149, 186, 197
narcissism social-ism 149
naturalism 115
Nazi characteristics 46
Nazism 128, 207
necessity possibility 136
INDEX
negativation 23, 43, 59, 65

Neo-platonic Hebrew 13
neurosis (prevalence of memory) 124
Nietzsche 17, 34, 89
non-existent generosity 55
non-motherly mother 35
non-psychoanalytic stuff 157
non-syllogistic thought 193
nothingness 19, 21, 2324, 62, 122,
128
Nozick in philosophy 176
nullity 57
object-relationship-in-itself 64
observed personality 194
Octave Mannoni 28
Oedipal sense 36
Oedipus 6, 17
complex 124
in the light of versus 68
triangle 69
Oedipus and Superego
manifestations 135
O-femininity-masculinity 194
paradoxes 7, 910, 1617, 26, 28,
63, 72, 8182, 89, 123, 144, 148,
179180
to be binocularly tolerated, not
resolved 10
tolerance 124125
paranoid-schizoid
experience 6, 8
pairs 69
position 82
stuff 30
paranoid schizoid depressive 135
paranoid violence of emotions 19
Parmenides 13
parsimonious identification 179
parthenogenesis 65, 67
Pascals espaces infinies 176
221
Penelopes constructions and

deconstructions 62
Planck, Max 29
Platos numinous realm 13
political-bureaucratic tasks 196
Popper, Karl 48, 112
post-Kleinian psychoanalysis 97
post-modernism 28, 113
post-Nazi military commander 95
post-Soviet freedom 46
preconception in negative and
versus realm 6768
pre-Hegelian philosophy 143
prevalence of desire 124, 184
pre-World War I Central Europe 46
primordial mind 24
projective identification theories
53, 185, 202
environment of 194
non-existent self-responsibility
128
pseudo-free associations 60
pseudo-insights 204
psychic reality 1516, 26, 29, 32, 64,
85, 87, 89, 106, 115, 117, 144, 165,
167, 170171, 175, 190191, 193,
196, 199, 203, 205
concretisation of 199
material counterpoint of 15
with material reality 203
psychic selected fact 193
psychoanalysis 12, 29, 49, 111, 116,
131, 169, 187
communication powers of 187
cornerstone of real 197
element of 10, 147
fantasy-flight interpretations
195
fundamentals of 10
meaning brokers 195
meaning rental agencies 195
practical application of 139
222
INDEX
rational knowledge of 150

Spinozas and Kants
observations 140
psychoanalysis practice, binocular
vision 139
psychoanalytic
epistemology 106
establishment 101106
interest 59
knowledge 180
movement 12, 112113, 115, 205
realm and practice 121
roots 142145
symptoms and syndromes 180
theories 205
triadic syndromes 180182
psychoanalytic theory 10, 58
Bions contributions to 5
psychoanalytic vertex 147
in Sandler 13
psychopathic personalities 124
psychosis (prevalence of
omnipotence) 124
psychosomatic causes 129
psychotic
and non-psychotic personalities
182
denial of probability 185
personality 12, 82, 122, 183
psychotics 18
quasi-mathematical
analogy 26
double arrow 85
notation 19, 157
symbol 10, 18, 117
rationalism 64, 73, 75
Raubal, Geli 47
realm of material reality 13
realm of Minus 56, 18, 2324, 35

and negative 1333
tolerance of 27
religious fundamentalism 128
Rickmanns two-body
psychology 143
Ricoeur, Paul 129
Riemanns and Lobachevskys
non-Euclidean 84
geometry inbuilt 146
Riviere, Joan 199
ROLAND Institutions 112
Rosenfeld, Herbert 199, 202
Ruskin, John 29
sadism 25, 36
Salomo, Jayme 81
Sandler, Joseph 187
Sartres existentialism 149152
Savonarola, Girolamo 48
schizophrenic thought 203
schizophrenogenic mothers 44
Schmitt, Carl 70
self-aggression, whirlwind of 54
self-attributed feelings 150
self-righteousness 9
sensations 82, 120, 171178
sensuous bombardment 73
sexual
intercourse 63, 197
relationship 69
silences 72
Singer, Isaac Bashevis
novel The Family Moskat 47
social shared values 194
socialism 46, 145146
Sophias case 196, 201202
Sozialismus 46
space-time realm 169
Stalinism 128
INDEX
Stangl, Franz Paul 46

Stegosaurus, Albert 95, 101
Steiner, John 199
Stokes, Adrian 29
stupidity 182184
Sturm und Drang 71
subjectivism 113
super-egoic features 150
superficial psychology 182
superficial quasi-psychological
level 157
superiority in potency 33
superiority-inferiority 57
Sskind, Patrick,
novel Perfume 74
Talamo, Parthenope Bion 15, 102,
106
thalamic fear 11
The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras
Cubas 103
thoughts without a thinker 18
transcendent synthesis 13
transference 21, 33, 44, 52, 91, 96,
18, 127, 129, 135, 151, 190, 204
transformations 5, 1112, 2023, 57,
80, 8688, 9193, 98, 104, 134,
143145, 157158, 173, 181, 184,
196
and invariance theory 21
functioning 61
in hallucinosis 190
in O, unconscious and
transcendence 8691
realm of 176
theory of 158
triadic syndromes 169
223
trilogy 8689
triple character
Bion Myself P.A. 95
truth binocular 146147
truth function 117
Truthful Hallucinated, Lie 206
Tyrannosaurus, Adolph 95, 101
unconscious, non-rationality of 84
un-hating baby and its aloof
mother 5055
untamed Shrews husband 5556
verbal silence and versus 72
verbal somnambulism 160
Vergopoulo, Thalia 187
Vico, Giambattista
history of ideas coupled
with psychoanalytic
achievements 29
versus link 6365
science and art 73
wars among psychoanalysts
101106
well-behaved baby 36
Western civilisation 13, 29, 113, 120,
134
Williams, Meg Harris 103, 105
Winnicott, D. W. 32, 38, 124
false self 196
good enough mothering 186
sense 95
without-ness 19, 24
Zionism 46

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A CLINICAL APPLICATION

First published in 2011 by

To Ester, Daniela, and Luiz

Solomon saith, There is no new thing upon the Earth. So that as

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PART I: EXTENSIONS INTO THE REALM OF MINUS

PART II: HERE AND NOW: A MEMOIR OF THE FUTURE

PART III: ANALYTIC FUNCTION

Due to non-analytic, but equally vital issues, the completion of

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paulo Cesar Sandler, MD, MSc, MhFAB, obtained his medical

social and community psychiatry, including the epidemiology of

Appreciation of Volume 1 of A Clinical

In this magisterial work Paulo Sandler continues to distinguish

especially including the philosophical and scientific points of view.

FAUST What is your name?

psychoanalysis precludes the possibility of regarding as good a

gree with the argument or not, it is undeniable that in many

Moreover, Bions compact writing condenses a lot of information

about a Minus realm. It seemed to illuminate those issues, but in

Contradictions, paradoxes and the two principles of mental

with differences, with no single state, person or idea overpowering

One must not confuse the first realisation of a breastthe meeting of

computer practice (in the last century called cybernetics) is based on

Fundamentals of psychoanalysis: paradoxes to be binocularly

Container and contained

container and contained the essential feature of Melanie Kleins

is re-introjected has become tolerable to the infants psyche.

The realm of Minus and the negative

inus in Bions parlance is by definition a non-concrete,

what I call the realm of Minus (or no) cannot be equated to

of nature in what one may surmise or intuit as the transition of the

Dualism and splitting: philosophy and its discontents

Lack of tolerance of paradoxes results in dualism, an issue as old as

according to Andr Green) one pole of a dialectical pair that cannot

The epistemologically and psychologically significant function

A clinical source for the theory

claimsa remarkable fact in view of her evident tenderness in many

As in the third quotation at the beginning of this part of the

of the destruction incident to the stripping and partly because

This product would be better studied in his book Transformations

The ultimate misunderstanding: a temporary destruction

From link to transformation

This opened up the path to Bions observations of hallucinosis which

That which seemed to function just as a link also performs a

Therefore the concept of Minus K evolved in Bions work from

Bions theory of links evolves

The parasitic relationship furnishes us the main invariant present

of Minus K as a link and Minus K as a transformation, mutually

The contributions of Andr Green

This is an important part of Greens theory and it seems to me to

Provisional summary: two kinds of Minus

many years reading and listening to reports of clinical data seem to

according to the world, not according God (1670).3 If we resort to

The thought, represented by a word or other sign, may, when

The point is indestructible because it is not sensible to the minds

the not-me: Mother, in the first place, as an Object of libidinal

the history of ideas coupled with psychoanalytic achievements,

Minus breast be in the L realm? It is also felt enviously to remove

obtrudes when the process of denudation is seen under the vertex

expressions of love. They are not intended to lead to accretions of

suppose that more clinical examples must be given in order

The non-motherly mother