In the last chapter, we examined the development of Bion's theory of alpha function, which I termed the "engine of transformations," and in this chapter I will explore in detail his theory of transformations (1965) with an eye toward separating out the clinical implications of this challenging book. When the topic of Transformations arises in conversation, the response is frequently that the book is excessively dense and nearly impenetrable. Interestingly, as far as I can tell, the book has never been reviewed in the analytic literature and it is met with mixed reactions among contemporary psychoanalysts. Until very recently many analysts in the UK have tended to regard Transformations as evidence of Bion's radical departure from the essential Kleinian tradition, while non-British analysts interested in his work have tended to embrace aspects of the ideas contained in the book. This divide was evident in a series of papers (2005) in the IJP, "Whose Bion?" in which Edna O'Shaughnessy, Elizabeth Bianchedi and Antonino Ferro offered their opinions about the value of the so-called "late Bion" period that began with the publication of Transformations. O'Shaughnessy (2005) offered that
his late thinking becomes less boundaried, the defects of these very qualities make the texts too open, too pro- and e-vocative, and weakened by riddling meanings.
(p. 1525)
while Ferro (2005) emphasized the ever evolving process of transformations of emotional experience in both the analyst and analysand and that, quoting Bion (1970), “Analysis is a probe that expands the very field it explores” (p. 1538).”1
The theme of transformations had already been significant in Bion’s work in various iterations since the late 1950s when he (1958) noted in “On Arrogance” that the analyst, like the mother, is obliged to introject the analysand’s projective identification and allow it to “sojourn” in his psyche. As I (2012, Chapter 3 here) discussed in the previous chapter, his introduction of alpha function (1962) described the transformative process that the patient’s projection undergoes in the analyst’s/mother’s psyche. To summarize: the transformation of β → α elements required some activity (α function) to act on raw emotional experience (β element) and transform it into what Bion terms a “thinkable thought” (α element) that is suitable for secondary process thinking. It was also in this period leading up to 1965 that he gradually formulated the theory of alpha function, which grew out of Bion’s (1958–1960) extension of Freud’s theory of dreaming while he simultaneously worked through his World War I traumatic experiences (Brown, 2012; Chapter 3). This combined activity of developing the theory of alpha function and working on his war diaries offered Bion an in vivo experience of transforming his own unprocessed emotional experiences (β → α) from the Great War.
In his brief introduction to Transformations, Bion stated that he had hoped this book could be read as a contribution independent of his previous books, Learning from Experience (1962) and Elements of Psycho-Analysis (1963), but realized that there was an undeniable continuity to these three volumes. It was in his paper “The Grid” (1963) 2that Bion first referred to the notion of transformation as a process, “whatever it is,” (CW V, p. 106) by which a raw emotional experience is represented; this representation may be an artistic work, a scientific achievement, ordinary conversation or the field of psychoanalysis in which “the communication of both patient and analyst is about an emotional experience” (ibid, p. 106). In addition, in my view Transformations should be considered in the context of themes that were developing in his work in the mid-1960s and evident in two unpublished papers, “Memory and Desire” (1965) 3 and “Catastrophic Change” (1966) 4. Briefly put, these two papers, together with Transformations, all deal with the necessity for the analyst to embrace uncertainty, the deceptive allure of believing one knows the analysand that forecloses understanding him, the inevitability of emotional turmoil in the analytic endeavor, the requirement that the clinician tolerate what is unknown in order for emotional growth to occur and the immense value of viewing each session as a unique event. Furthermore, I cannot escape thinking that these psychoanalytic works were embedded in, and intertwined with, some personal turbulence percolating within Bion, that eventuated in his move to Los Angeles in early 1968 after giving several lectures there the previous year (Aguayo, 2015). Indeed, uprooting oneself at the age of 70 to move to another country 5 seems the embodiment of facing the unknown, exposing oneself to barely tolerable doubt and to the challenge of learning from (potentially catastrophic) experience.
The subtitle of Transformations is “Change from Learning to Growth,” which links this book to Learning from Experience (1962) and also underscores Bion’s shift in focus to mental growth and the processes that occur between analysand and analyst to promote or forestall psychic development. He narrows the object of his study to what occurs in a session within each member of the analytic dyad and between their psyches as they are engaged in transforming the emotional experience that arises as a result of that engagement. Bion’s attention to the individual session as a window to the widening analytic process is a powerful tool, like a microscope on high magnification that reveals what is ordinarily unseen. He rarely refers in Transformations to the traditional analytic concepts of transference and countertransference; indeed, the different status of analyst and analysand is blurred and we are left with two individuals each engaged in transforming and giving meaning to their emotional experiences. Interestingly, though most of what Bion addresses in Transformations are processes that occur unconsciously, he considers the time honored technique of making the unconscious conscious as lacking:
For a greater part of its [psychoanalysis] history it has been assumed that a psycho-analytic interpretation has as its function the rendering conscious of that which is unconscious. The relatively simple division of elements into conscious and unconscious has proved extremely fruitful, but it no longer provides a satisfactory criterion of an interpretation to regard it as either making or failing to make that which is unconscious conscious.
(p. 135)
I do not believe that Bion means to discard traditional concepts of transference and making the unconscious conscious, but rather his aim is to reconceptualize these ideas within the framework of his theory of transformations. But what does Bion mean by a theory of transformations? He offers the following summary:
The theory of transformations and its development does not relate to the main body of psycho-analytic theory, but to the practice of psycho-analytic observation. Psycho-analytic theories, patient’s or analyst’s statements are representations of an emotional experience. . . . The theory of transformations is intended to illuminate a chain of phenomena in which the understanding of one link, or aspect of it, helps in the understanding of others. The emphasis of this inquiry is on the nature of the transformation in the psychoanalytic session.
(p. 34) [italics in original]
In asserting that the theory of transformations does not “relate to the main body of psycho-analytic theory,” I believe Bion is reorienting the analyst away from content analysis and making the unconscious conscious to instead observing the process by which that content is actively created and is a representation of an emotional experience alive in the clinical moment. Regarding the content of the hour, Bion would refer the analyst to the theories of Freud and Klein in order to ferret out the unconscious meanings (Brown, 2016a, Chapter 5 here). Similarly, Bion does not discuss instinct or drive theory but directs his attention to what is observable – i.e., emotional experience in the patient and/or analyst. To a possible objection that affects are derivatives of the drives in order to bolster the importance of instinctual/drive theory, my impression is that Bion would reiterate his interest in remaining an observer.
Regarding specific analytic theories, Bion states, “I am therefore ignoring here, and throughout this book, any discussion of psycho-analytic theories” (p. 16).7 He seems to be offering a more general theory about how meaning evolves in an individual session out of the analytic engagement between analyst and analysand that is relatively independent of the analyst’s allegiance to one analytic school or another. Since his focus is on “the practice of psycho-analytic observations,” he cautions the observer to be wary of making inferences of causation about phenomena that frequently appear together, what Bion calls a constant conjunction, which is a function of consciousness. He warns against assuming causation between elements in a constant conjunction because that may lead to foreclosing the consideration of a variety of points of view. The pressure to attribute causation is “derived from forces within the observer and not necessarily having a part in the conjunction observed” (p. 71). This pressure to reach a conclusion about the causative relationship between various elements in a constant conjunction has to do with the analyst’s difficulties in tolerating doubt and in maintaining faith (Bion, 1970) that understanding will eventually emerge.
Bion repeatedly emphasizes the importance of keeping ideas unsaturated, which means that we dissuade the patient and ourselves from attributing meaning to a constant conjunction until it is better understood. It was his effort to promote unsaturated concepts that led Bion to employ various symbols (e. g., α, β, ♂, ♀) and that we should leave these symbols as unknowns whose value is to be determined. This is in contrast with the use of existing psychoanalytic concepts because such well worn ideas carry a “penumbra of associations” (1962b, p. vi) that lead the analyst away from understanding what currently is under observation. Instead, he encourages us to tolerate the uncertainty of not knowing and allowing a phenomenon to slowly accrue meaning; that is, to become saturated. But what is it about the constant conjunction that we seek to understand? Bion says we are trying to find the invariants that underpin and bind these constant conjunctions together.8 A patient I saw when he was eight years old because of anxieties about a peanut allergy and fear of dying from a random exposure to peanuts returned to see me ten years later for help in making a decision about which university to attend. He appeared a confident young man and made a point of beginning each session by visibly placing his Epi-Pens (in case of anaphylactic shock) by his chair as if to say, “I’ve mastered that earlier peanut anxiety,” and he was now concerned about having a concussion from a minor head bump. It felt obvious to comment about the constant conjunction between his fear of being damaged, both as a child and now as an older adolescent, but I refrained since such an interpretation would be dynamically “correct” but might well close off further exploration. I remembered him as a youngster and how he suffered then; now worrying about whether he had sustained some cognitive damage that would prevent his attending university, and I wanted to make a sweeping interpretation that would calm him and allow me to feel helpful. Instead I said that he wanted me to know that his peanut worries were under control but that he now was confronting a “new nemesis” that we needed to understand. The term, “new nemesis” captured my patient’s anxiety, but also was sufficiently unsaturated to allow for new meanings to accrue.
Bion’s ideas about invariants deal with the question of what is the essence of the “thing” that has been transformed, which, once transformed, is now a representation. He opens Transformations by speaking about an artist painting a field of poppies and suggests that any rendering of the flowers, regardless of how life-like, is always a representation of the invariants of the actual subject. Something remains unaltered: it may be represented, but the process of representation does not change the essential qualities of the object. I find it curious that the topic of invariants, so vital in the opening pages of Transformations, is mentioned only three times after page nine and never in the second half of the book. Instead, Bion introduces us to a new concept, O, that refers to the inherent nature of a thing, Kant’s “thing-in-itself,” which can never be known but may be represented. The introduction of O also indicates Bion’s continued movement away from classical analysis since “The differentiation I wish to introduce is not between conscious and unconscious, but between finite and infinite” (p. 46).
I remain puzzled about the difference between an invariant and O: both are the essence of something being observed and cannot be directly apprehended, but only represented. In his Introduction to Transformations in the Complete Works of W. R. Bion, Mawson (2016) likens O to an invariant that is the underlying component to a representation, a statement that seems to equate an invariant and O. I think it is significant that Bion’s introduction of O accompanies his exploration of the process of transformations that occur in the clinical situation. Indeed, Bion first introduced the term O in his (1963) paper “The Grid,”9 in which he stated, “O must always be an emotional experience” (CW V, p. 119). Thus, as I try to understand the difference (if there is a difference), both an invariant and O are the unknowable essences at the core of a representation, but he appears to apply the concept of O when speaking about the emotional essence of an experience encountered in psychoanalytic practice.
Clinically speaking, O’Shaughnessy’s critique that Bion’s “late thinking becomes less boundaried . . . [that] make the texts too open, too pro- and e-vocative,” is an accurate statement. His (1972) emphasis that the analyst should train his attention to what is unknowable, O (or the “Truth”), in the session is the epitome of an approach that is provocative/evocative. In his papers on “Memory and Desire,” Bion (1965, 1967b, 1972) cautions the analyst that his technical recommendations may arouse significant anxiety and in following Bion’s guidelines one is set firmly in the present, unmoored from comfortable illusions of being in familiar psychic territory, and without a roadmap or compass. But if our attention is to be focused on the unknown, how does one achieve this? As mentioned previously, Bion does not adhere to the notion of an instinctual drive that would push repressed and/or unrepresented material into consciousness, but he does speak of the psyche’s need for Truth (O) in order to grow:
Psycho-analytic procedure presupposes that the welfare of the patient demands a constant supply of truth as inevitably his physical survival demands food.
(1992, p. 99)
Put another way, the mind is engaged constantly in transforming O, the Truth, and thereby providing the necessary sustenance for emotional growth. Grotstein (2004) posits a truth drive that seems a bridging concept between drive theory and Bion’s emphasis on the phenomenology of the analytic session. He states:
I hold that the truth drive constitutes the force behind the analysand’s remaining in analysis in the face of frustration and emotional pain. The reward is truth. The truth is real and can somehow be dealt with – because it is sought.
(2004, p. 1092)
Bion’s (and Grotstein’s) notion of the Truth has been criticized because it suggests that there exists an immutable truth that is beyond question; however, it is my understanding that Bion is referring to an impermanent emotional “truth” that is unique to a particular analytic couple and exclusive to the clinical hour colored by that “truth.” O, or Truth, is the affective essence of what the analysand and analyst are attempting to represent and understand in the clinical hour. At times Bion uses language that seems mystical and ethereal in speaking about O, but also offers a much more prosaic definition such as “the material provided by the analytic session is significant for being the patient’s view [i.e., representation] of certain facts which are the origin (O) of his representation” (p. 15). In my opinion, O is a useful concept for the practicing clinician because it requires a certain humility of us; that there are limits to what we are able to help the analysand (and ourselves) to know and that, in a peculiar way, every analysis is interminable because there is an ineffable emotional truth that may only be approached but never fully grasped. This reminds me of Freud’s (1900) well known comment that even the most fully analyzed dream has at its navel an unknown part that reaches into the infinite. With regard to the analytic situation, this is always a work in progress that approaches something essentially unknowable that calls to each of us to more fully comprehend.
I am grouping the types of transformations Bion described into two categories: projective and rigid motion transformations comprise one group while the other group deals with transformations in O. Rigid motion transformations are what Freud would call a transference neurosis, which “implies a model of movement of feelings and ideas from one sphere of applicability to another” (p. 19), e.g., the transfer of feelings from a parental figure to the analyst in which these feelings remain unchanged. Projective transformations relate to Klein’s projective identification in which “events far removed from any relationship to the analyst are actually regarded as aspects of the analyst’s personality” (p. 30) that results in a transformation of the patient’s experience of the analyst – and often changes in the analyst’s experience of himself – colored by the nature of what the analysand projects. It is important for us to keep in mind that for Klein projective identification was always an intrapsychic phantasy in the patient’s mind and she either ignored or rejected the idea that projective identification was an avenue to better understanding the patient.
Transformation in hallucinosis is a more complex phenomenon than the rigid motion and projective transformations and seems to involve two main components. The first is the analysand’s creation of his own set of perceptions, which are at odds with reality, that serve to replace an emotional situation too painful for him to experience. This construction, felt to be a perfect world, is clung to in the face of all evidence to the contrary. A second aspect of this type of transformation is that the analysand’s defensive adherence to his beliefs also is an expression of rivalry with the analyst, as though he is affirming the superiority over his version of reality to that of the psychoanalyst. Consequently, transformations in hallucinosis also imply that the patient satisfies “all his needs from his own creations [and that] he is entirely independent of anyone or anything other than his own products” (p. 137).
In each session both the analyst and the patient are engaged in attempting to transform (T) or represent the essence of their emotional experience of the clinical hour. Bion uses the letter T to signify the process of transformation: Tα notes the inception of that process and Tβ as the end product of that transformation. Furthermore, Bion uses Tpα to denote the process of transformation in the patient and Tpβ to signify the end product of the patient’s transformation. Analogously, he speaks of the process of transformation in the analyst, Taα,10 and the end product of that transformation, Taβ. Bion wants us to direct our attention to the processes of transformation in the patient and analyst, Tpα → Tpβ and Taα → Taβ, and it is this area he considers the most important to observe and understand. He states:
The psychoanalyst’s domain is that which lies between the point where a man receives sense impressions [Taα and Tpα] and the point where he gives expression to the transformation [Taβ and Tpβ] that has taken place.
(p. 46)
I take the phrase, “where a man receives sense impressions,” to refer to the analyst’s or analysand’s receptivity (see Chapter 5) to raw emotional data flowing from one to the other via projective identification and/or emotions evoked within each individual as a result of these projective and introjective processes. Furthermore, the words, “where he gives expression to the transformation,” refers to the representations by the analyst and analysand, Taα → Taβ and Tpα → Tpβ, of their respective unconscious emotional experiences in the session. Regarding the analyst’s activity in the hour, Bion views the analyst’s interpretation as Taβ, his transformation of the emotional facts of the session.
How are we to understand the processes by which emotional experiences unconsciously generated in an analytic session are transformed? I find it interesting that in Transformations Bion does not examine this aspect and leaves us with a sense of a black box into which “sense impressions” (affects) enter and from which representations emerge. What happens in that black box? Or, what needs to happen within the analyst’s and/ or analysand’s mind that accounts for the process of transformation: put in the language of the shorthand signifiers to characterize various transformations, what internal processes are at work in the analyst and analysand that effect Taα → Taβ and Tpα → Tpβ? My guess is that Bion assumed we are intimately familiar with the concepts of waking dream thought, reverie and alpha function he introduced in Learning from Experience; however, none of these great theoretical innovations are even mentioned in Transformations. As I discussed in Chapter 3, I see alpha function and its associated factors (container/contained, reverie, tolerated doubt, etc.) as the engine of transformations and so I think Bion has left it to us to apply his earlier ideas in order to explain the process of transformation and representation building.
Returning to the topic of O in the analytic situation, Bion speaks of an O of the patient (Op) and an O of the analyst (Oa) that determines each of their respective transformations in the analytic hour; consequently, the origin from which Tp and Ta emerge is different. However, this scenario is not one of isolated minds operating independently in the consulting room since the analyst’s interpretation (Taβ) may serve as the initiating stimulus to the analysand’s further transformations. In addition, Bion adds another dimension to the interactional complexity by introducing the notion of a shared O of the session, which is the common source of their individual transformations (Ta and Tp). I shall signify the shared O of the session as TapO. Bion comments that when the
O is the same for the patient and analyst . . . the distinction has to be made between the processes by which the patient transforms his experience to achieve his representation of it and the processes by which the analyst does so.
(p. 24)
Just as he did not elaborate the internal processes by which transformations occur, so Bion does not discuss the psychic mechanisms by which the shared O (TapO) is created, although he does say that “we find features of Oa and Op intersect” (p. 30) to form the TapO. Contemporary authors view this joint O, the unknown emotional essence at the core of an analytic hour, as arising from the deep unconscious engagement of analogous unrepresented and/or repressed areas in the analyst and analysand (Brown, 2007, 2011a, Chapters 2, 5, 8 this volume; Cassorla, Ogden, Levine, et al.) that await a process of mutual unconscious dreaming/transformation/representation by the analytic couple. However, the shared O is ineffable and may only be approximated through successive transformations by the analyst and analysand. Ultimately for Bion, the concept of a shared O (TapO) becomes bedrock for understanding the nature of psychoanalytic treatment as we can see in this unusually emphatic statement:
In psycho-analysis any O not common to analyst and analysand alike, and not available therefore for transformations by both, may be ignored as irrelevant to psycho-analysis. Any O not common to both is incapable of psychoanalytic investigation; any appearance to the contrary depends on a failure to understand the nature of psycho-analytic interpretation.
(pp. 48–49) [italics added]
I think the origin of Bion’s idea of a shared unconscious experience between analyst and patient can be traced to his early days as psychiatrist and officer in World War II where he was exposed to Kurt Lewin’s idea of field theory that greatly influenced the Northfield Army Hospital personnel (Harrison, 2000) at the time [discussed in the Introduction]. The shared O (TapO) of the session is conceptually similar to Bion’s (1952) notion of basic assumptions in groups. These “assumptions” were essentially a shared unconscious phantasy that permeated work groups when their task got derailed and it is important to note that the basic assumption was experienced differently by each member of the group in accord with his unique personality. In the language of Transformations we can say that the basic assumption is a similar concept to the shared O (TapO) of the session: TapO of the session and the basic assumption are formed from the collective psyches of the group members (or analyst and patient) and are subsequently transformed (Tpβ) by each patient.1 What is unique to Bion’s emphasis in Transformations is his careful study of the process by which both analyst and analysand give representation to O in the here-and-now of the session.
Lewin’s ideas about field theory, Bion’s concept of group psychology and Melanie Klein’s writings on unconscious phantasy were creatively combined by Madeleine and Willy Baranger (1961/2008) in Montevideo, Uruguay, in their classic paper, “The Analytic Situation as a Dynamic Field.” They proposed the concept of a “shared unconscious phantasy” of the analytic couple that was partly based on their view of patient and analyst as a small group, which, like the larger groups that Bion discussed, gave rise to a shared unconscious phantasy analogous to a basic assumption. Like Bion’s notion of the shared O of the session, the Barangers did not examine the process by which the shared unconscious phantasy of the analytic couple was created. These two concepts, the shared O (TapO) of the session and the shared unconscious phantasy of the couple, both derive from an intermixing of related elements in the psychic worlds of analyst and analysand that are unconsciously patched together through the “unconscious work” (Ogden, 2010) of their respective alpha functions (Brown, 2010, 2011a), resulting in a chimera about which it is impossible to say, “Whose idea was it?” (Ogden, 2003a). Thus, it seems to me that the notions of the basic assumption, the shared unconscious phantasy of the couple (Barangers), Ogden’s (1994) intersubjective analytic third and the shared O of the session are related ideas that are rich in their intersubjective implications. All three clinical manifestations suggest the emergence of a third entity (a basic assumption, shared phantasy of the couple or TapO of the session) that is unconsciously crafted from related elements in the group members or in the analyst and patient. However, the theory of O is linked with a sense of an evolving unknown in the session and emphasizes the use of the analyst’s intuition as a tool for slowly grasping that unknown.
The notion that the analyst and analysand begin each session without memory and desire, unhitched from the past and expectations for the future, introduces a sort of riddle: the analytic couple is challenged to apprehend what is essentially unknowable and to begin that quest from a point of ignorance, separated from what one believes one knows. This is an anxiety provoking situation for analyst and patient who may find some comfort by believing that one knows what is about to happen or what has already occurred. In Learning from Experience (1962b) Bion introduced the K link between patient and analysand in which the analyst is coming to know about the patient, but in Transformations he discusses the limits of the K link in the clinical situation. Bion expresses his skepticism about the K link and is critical of one model of interpretation that requires it “should be associated with a K link; the analyst is concerned to understand the associations and to communicate that understanding to the patient” (p. 129). Bion avers that this clinical approach yields knowledge about the patient that is an accumulation of facts that may lead the analyst into believing he understands the analysand. For Bion, transformations in K (TK) are an incomplete step in the process of interpretation. For example, most Bionian influenced analysts consulting on cases are less interested in extensive histories of patients, data Bion called “hearsay,” since such information offers factual details that may be unrelated to the session under observation. Instead, historical material may offer insight into the model of the patient in the analyst’s mind. However, TK “does not produce growth, [and] only permits accretions of knowledge about growth” (p. 156). In contrast, Bion states TO “cover the domain of [emotional] reality and becoming . . . and are related to growth in becoming” (p. 156).
But what does it mean to truly understand the analysand that promotes mental growth? Earlier in this chapter I mentioned that Bion considers experiencing one’s emotional truth as necessary to personal growth as food is to one’s corporeal self. While this statement may seem obvious, Bion observes that becoming one’s emotional experience may evoke a certain kind of resistance manifest by the analysand’s accepting the interpretation in order to know something (TK), yet not feel it (i.e., become it); what Bion terms a resistance to transform K → O:
transformations in K are feared when they threaten the emergence of transformations in O . . . Resistance to an interpretation is resistance against change from K to O.
(p. 158)
While TK → O is enabled by the analyst’s interpretations, this transformation also requires the analyst to achieve a state of at-one-ment with the O of the analysand; that is, becoming the patient’s experience of O at that moment (either of the patient’s O or of the shared O of the session). Of course, we can never entirely experience another’s emotional state, but we can experience our transformation (Taβ) of the analysand’s disowned (defended against) O that is projected into the analyst. Indeed, as Bion states (p. 11), the most effective interpretation is rooted in a shared O (TapO) of the session; that is, when analyst and patient are transforming a jointly created emotional experience: the affective essence that suffuses the clinical hour. However, this is not easily achieved because the analyst, too, has his resistance to transforming K → O, especially since the shared O of the session inevitably engages painful regions of his psyche that are interlaced with those of the analysand. In Chapter 9, “From ashes to ashes: the heroic struggle of an autistic boy trying to be born and stay alive,” I describe how I resisted becoming the O of this boy’s terror of nonexistence and the horrific nightmare I had one night after emotionally connecting with his primitive agony.
There is a tendency among some Bionian authors to minimize the role of interpretation in the clinical process, but in reading Transformations I was struck by the central importance Bion accorded to interpretation in the clinical situation. Grotstein (2009a), in describing his analysis with Bion, said that he (Bion) interpreted frequently and often these interventions felt typically Kleinian and hit their mark emotionally. Early in Transformations Bion connected the process of transformation with the activity of interpretation, which he viewed as the job of an analyst:
I propose that the work of the psycho-analyst should be regarded as a transformation of a realization (the actual psycho-analytic experience) into an interpretation or a series of interpretations.
(p. 6)
An interpretation is one point in a series of largely unconscious communications between the analyst and analysand that begins with an emotional experience, optimally the shared O of the session, that the analyst and patient each transform (Taβ and Tpβ) or represent and the clinician must be mindful that “we can only speak of what the analyst or patient feels happens” (p. 33) [italics in original]. However, what the analyst feels has occurred may resonate favorably with the patient’s experience (Tp), then
the interpretation given should then afford an opportunity for the analyst and analysand to contrast two sets of information . . . [which are] two transformations of the same O.
(p. 72)
When the patient and analyst feel the interpretation is accurate, Bion calls this “common sense.” Furthermore, though we are considering ineffable experiences, O, and how these are represented by the analyst (Oa) and patient (Op), Bion reminds us that an interpretation is also about the “truth”: not some absolute incontrovertible truth but “truth in the analyst’s opinion ” (p. 37) [italics in original] that also feels true to the analysand. It is that truth that nurtures the emotional growth of the patient.
Bion contrasts one model of technique, “associated with a K link” (p. 129), which directs the analyst to sift through the patient’s associations in order to detect the unconscious themes that are then communicated to the analysand. This is the standard analytic approach that yields knowledge (K) about the analysand that does not necessarily result in emotional growth. Instead, he considers the analyst’s interpretation (Taβ) as the beginning of a process: one’s interpretation is seen as a pre-conception that awaits the patient’s associations, which then saturate the interpretation with meaning. In classical technique, the analysand’s associations to the interpretation are considered to confirm, refute or amend the intervention, but here Bion is asserting that the patient’s associations serve to further infuse the analyst’s interpretation with meaning. Furthermore, when “the patient’s response does not saturate the analyst’s pre-conceptions [e.g., interpretations] . . . [it then] appears itself to require saturation” (p. 130). Interpretations, in this second model, are part of an intersubjective spiraling process by which the mutual associations of analyst and analysand broaden and deepen their unconscious elaborations of the emotional experience of the clinical hour.
Ferro’s (2002, 2009b) and Civitarese and Ferro’s (2013) discussion of “characters in the field” beautifully captures this unconscious give-and-take that creates and expands meaning in the subliminal dialogue between the analytic dyad in the here-and-now of the session. In their view, elements of the patient’s or analyst’s associations/reveries are transformational products that unconsciously depict aspects of the emotional atmosphere in the hour. In his (2009b) paper, “Transformations in dreaming and characters in the psychoanalytic field,” Ferro offers a vignette about a young woman at the outset of analysis who responded to the analyst’s interpretation with a memory of a trustworthy childhood friend whose grandfather molested her. There are several vertices from which the analysand’s response might be considered, including reference to an actual repressed experience from childhood; however, Ferro listens to the communication from a perspective he terms a “constantly expanding unsaturated field” (p. 214) [italics in original] that considers the manifest characters of the “friend” and “grandfather”
as a signal from the field of excessive closeness and depth of interpretive activity . . . [that express] her feeling that her affective world is intruded upon by tumultuous and abusive protoemotional states of her own, given that she lacks the ‘equipment to contain and metabolize them’ (insufficient ♀ and insufficient α-function).
(p. 214)
Ferro does not ignore the patient’s recollection of a childhood memory, but hears it as reactive to, and a commentary on, his initial interpretations. More important than what he actually interpreted is how the analysand imbues meaning to his interpretative action: put in the iconography of Bion we could say that Taβ (analyst’s interpretation) served as an unsaturated pre-conception that the analysand saturated with her interpretation (Tpβ) of Ferro’s initial remarks. Listening on this level of micro-transformations (unanticipated appearances of “characters”) gives the analyst access to the unconscious building up of meaning that accrues from their communicating alpha functions.
We have been examining Bion’s theory of transformations: the transition of β → α elements catalyzed by alpha function; rigid motion and projective transformations; transformations in hallucinosis and from K↔O; and the unconscious spiraling activity of the analyst and patient, fostered by their communicating alpha functions, around a shared emotional experience from which reveries, characters, intuitions, etc., develop. The laboratory that Bion suggests we enter in order to observe and study these processes is the individual session and he developed the concept of the Grid (1963) as a means to track the evolution of these transformational processes within the coordinates of the Grid. Bion likened its use as a kind of “homework” for the analyst “that would help him to track down after a session, in a moment of relative peace and quiet, what had happened during the session” (F. Bion, 1997; CW, V, p. 94). The dynamics in the development of the patient’s thoughts traced by the Grid equally apply to the analyst’s mental processes during the session. It is important to note that the Grid addresses the evolution of ideas and not emotional growth as we have been discussing earlier in this chapter; thus, the Grid is focused on K related experience. Francesca Bion (ibid) considers the Grid paper as foreshadowing Transformations: I would say that whereas the Grid addresses the evolution of ideas in the clinical hour, the focus in Transformations is on those processes by which emotional growth is nurtured in the Petri dish of the session; hence, the subtitle of Transformations is “Change from Learning to Growth.”
Bion wrote another version of “The Grid” that offered more clinical material and a discussion of some myths (Row C constructs, see table), but soon after appeared to grow dissatisfied with it: “I can say that an early casualty in trying to use the Grid is the Grid itself” (quoted by F. Bion, CW V, p. 97) and later, even more skeptically, he said the Grid was “only a waste of time because it didn’t really correspond with the facts I am likely to meet” (ibid, p. 98). Perhaps Bion’s loss of confidence in the Grid had to do with its focus on ideas and knowledge (K) and Transformations represented a turning point in “the facts I am likely to meet” as his theoretical interests shifted from epistemological works toward the nature of emotional growth, O, and the importance of intuitive processes. Thus, the Grid generally tends to be seen as a more esoteric instrument, though many colleagues 12 are skilled in its use, especially as a tool in teaching.
The reader may accurately sense my skepticism about the value of the Grid, but I do not mean to be dismissive of it and there are important dimensions that I believe are useful to the practicing clinician. Some explanation is necessary at this point about the Grid: the vertical axis “is genetic and is divided roughly into phases of sophistication” (Bion, 1963; CW V, p. 101), by which Bion means stages in the growth of a thought. His delineations of various stages (e. g., β → α elements → Dream Thoughts, Dreams and Myths → Pre-conceptions . . .) is useful in tracking the analy-sand’s state of mind (and the analyst’s as well) and how these states may fluctuate in the session. For example, the analyst may offer an interpretation that presumes the patient is in an oneiric (Row C) mindset that is capable of metaphor and instead discovers the patient, in a Row A state, responds as though being attacked by the analyst’s supposed lack of understanding. In addition, I find the vertical axis to be immeasurably helpful in considering a patient’s state of mind and how the analyst might phrase his interventions. Furthermore, the vertical axis offers an important metric with which to assess therapeutic change within the sessions as well as over the course of an analysis. With patients who are badly traumatized (Brown, 2007, 2010) and also with Asperger’s children (Brown, 2016b; also Chapters 9 and 10 here), the traumatized or autistic part of their personality may at the outset of analysis register as Row A (beta) elements, but with treatment we find the emergence of more sophisticated means of registering thoughts that enable communication.
The horizontal axis proposes six “categories [which] apply to the use to which ‘thoughts’ may be put once they have been represented by the patient as well as analyst” (1963, p. 20) in the session. The horizontal axis follows the course during the hour of a “statement” offered in Column 1, a Definitory Hypothesis. This “statement” may be as simple as a smile or a grunt or as complex as a Concept (Row F), which is then put to certain “usage” as the clinical hour proceeds. The usage is followed along the horizontal axis, beginning with a Definitory Hypothesis (Column 1) across to Action (Column 6). (Column 2, denoted by ψ, is discussed in the next paragraph.) Column 3 (Notation) refers to statements that record a fact; Column 4 (Attention) refers to statements that have already noted but are now the focus of attention; Column 5 (Inquiry)13 represents a use that is similar to Attention (Column 4) but refers to the analyst’s curiosity about what has been brought to his attention – the challenge for the clinician here is to find a means of inquiry that is neither too incurious nor too interrogating. Finally, Column 6 (Action) signifies an action taken by either the analyst or analysand to express the original statement (Definitory Hypothesis) as it has evolved through processes of notation, attention and inquiry. For example, Bion considers the analyst’s interpretation as a Column 6 action that expresses his perception of the status of his original statement as it has unfolded in the session. Paradoxically, regarding β elements (Row A), these may appear as Column 6 actions since such elements are acted on by projective identification aimed at unburdening the psyche of experience that has not been notated, attended to or inquired about. In each case, however, the analyst or patient has taken some action.
Each statement is further refined in terms of its placement in one of the categories that are found at the intersection of the rows and the columns, i.e., A1, C4, F5, etc. I think the Grid is most useful in helping to locate certain states of mind in the analyst and patient by their grid coordinates. For example, in Transformations Bion proposes that the coordinates for the ideal state of mind of the analyst and patient in the session are C3, C4, C5 and D3, D4, D5. Why does he say this? By delimiting Rows C and D, “Dream Thoughts, Dreams, Myths” and “Pre-conceptions” respectively, Bion orients the analyst toward an oneiric twilight zone between reality and phantasy and to partially conceived thoughts that await further saturation by the analyst’s interpretations and the patient’s elaborative associations. 14 In addition, the analyst is notating, attending to and inquiring about the ideas which come to him in this frame of mind.
Column 2 of the Grid, designated by the Greek letter ψ, denotes the “use” of a statement (α element, pre-conception, etc.) for the purpose of what is typically called resistance; however, Bion considers this resistance as a lie that aims to prevent the appearance of another statement “that would involve modification in the personality and its outlook” (1963, CW V, p. 103).15 Bion comments that the Column 2 statement does not have to be true, but rather serves to avert attention away from some idea that would cause pain to the analyst and/or analysand; thus, these “lies” are related to countertransference, which may be manifest by offering interpretations about unknown turbulent experiences in the session “intended to prove to himself and the patient that this is not so” (ibid, p. 18). It is incumbent on the analyst, Bion warns, that he offers an interpretation only after he has considered whether his statement might be a Column 2 phenomenon and therefore not “ripe for interpretation” (1965, p. 167).
Bion (1965) cautioned the analyst who has a dream about the patient to be mindful of taking it as accurately representing the analysand because such dreams are often Column 2 phenomena. In an earlier paper, I (Brown, 2007, 2011a) discussed a countertransference dream about a man in analysis and how I interpreted certain elements in the dream as indicating unconscious competitive feelings that were denied by the analysand and me. This supposed realization led to interpreting his resistance to acknowledging such emotions, yet my interventions were met with a lackluster “could be” and yielded no meaningful associations. Weeks later the patient made a seemingly innocuous statement that triggered a memory of a previously overlooked element in my dream, which suddenly took on new significance for me with much associated emotion having to do with paternal longings. As I thought about this theme I realized that I had told myself a “lie” (i.e., resisted) that the analysand would not have a paternal transference since he was several years older than me. Having reached this awareness, I wondered whether this fresh “insight” was indeed meaningful or just another blind alley; however, I came to realize an aspect of my relationship with my father that had gone unnoticed and was linked to this theme. This was a process of vetting any new interpretation for its potential Column 2 qualities and I intervened from this newly discovered perspective that enlivened both the patient’s and my associations to move the analysis forward.
Along with Bion’s proposal of O, his alleged mystical turn towards the end of Transformations has contributed to the impression that he had become “less boundaried . . . [and] weakened by riddling meanings” as O’Shaughnessy has said. It seemed to many that he had crossed an unspoken border that I (Brown, 2014) have called the “separation of church and couch” by citing mystical religious texts as support for his new theory of O. However, a close reading of Bion’s references to religious ideas reveals a different story in my opinion: that he discussed the concept of O from several vertices including artistic, clinical and, now, mystical/religious to help the reader grasp the meaning of O. I agree with Caper’s (1998) comment that O “is a psychoanalytic model of mysticism, not a mystical model of psychoanalysis” (p. 420). Reiner (2012), in her book Bion and Being: Passion and the Creative Mind, similarly stated that the aim of O
is not to bring religion to psychoanalysis. Rather, it is to clarify that psychoanalysis, as a science of the mind, is a science of spiritual proportions, and that this perspective is an essential part of analytic work.
(p. 59)
These “spiritual proportions” are the analyst’s recognition that, in Bion’s view, there is more that remains unknown in any analysis than what is known and that our work inspires awe as we bear witness to the endless unfolding universe of meanings, unique to each analytic couple (TapO), in the analytic process.
Bion introduces the framework of religion when speaking about the individual’s (TaO and TpO) transformation of O and refers to the Christian Platonistic notion of the Godhead, which is seen as the ultimate essence of what we call God. He refers to two medieval Christian mystics, Meister Eckhart and the Blessed John Ruysbroeck, who said “God in the Godhead is spiritual substance, so elemental that we can say nothing about it” (cited by Bion, p. 139). Meister Eckhart, a thirteenth–fourteenth-century German mystic, promulgated similar opinions that were condemned by the German Inquisition that sentenced him to death for heresy; however, he died before his sentence was carried out. Eckhart’s heresy was to state that there was something more elemental, unknowable and unnamable, than God himself and of which God is a manifestation. Bion likens Kant’s concept of the thing-in-itself – the source of a phenomenon that can only be “known” through its representation – to Eckhart’s and Ruysbroeck’s Godhead and says these ideas “can be represented by terms such as the ultimate reality or truth” (p. 139) [italics added].
So, had Bion gone off the rails in 1965 by bringing arcane mystical ideas into psychoanalytic thinking or was he merely using these metaphorically? As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, he had published a series of papers that dealt with making what is unknown the elusive object of analytic inquiry (introduction O in Elements, 1963; “Memory and Desire” lecture, 1965; “Catastrophic Change,” 1966) that perhaps foreshadowed his move to Los Angeles in early 1968. I believe that Bion intentionally used the religious references metaphorically; however, I also wonder whether his thinking about the mystic and mysticism may have been a response to his ascendance to positions of importance at the British Society and the “dangers of the invitation to. . . [an] individual to become respectable” (1970, p. 78). In Attention and Interpretation (1970), published after his move to America, Bion wrote about the important role of the mystic in relation to the Establishment, in particular “the ruling ‘caste’ in psycho-analytical institutes” (ibid, p. 73). The Establishment or Institute needs a mystic who “is both creative and destructive” (p. 74): the group may destroy the mystic on whom the group’s future depends and, conversely, the mystic may destroy the group. Did Bion identify with being the mystic who shook up the Establishment, threatening catastrophic change by challenging the authority of entrenched traditions?16 There is a great deal that remains unknown about his motives for moving to California, though he commented that a person promoted to an administrative position in the Establishment might find his creative energies sapped by other pursuits, such that “He was loaded down with honours and sank without a trace” (1970, p. 78). Clearly Bion was speaking of himself: perhaps he was feeling an internal conflict about having become Establishment (President of the British Society and other responsibilities) and needed to invoke some inner mystic in order to further evolve as a psychoanalyst?
This last question about Bion’s possible internal conflict between an inner Establishment and mystic relates to the clinical implications of his supposed mystical turn. I find his reference to the mystic and the Establishment to be relevant to psychoanalytic politics as well as practice. Institutes, like other organizations, need the infusion of new ideas and methodologies to avert becoming arthritic. In the book Hate and Love in Psychoanalytic Institutes, Jurgen Reeder (2004) detailed how insufficiently analyzed aggression in analytic candidates was manifest in their later careers as adherence to an in-group (usually training analysts) and its promotion of a group-think; that the unmetabolized aggression of the in-group was projected into an out-group of alleged apostates who were then reviled. Such calcified institutes need a jolt – whether a diminished enrollment of candidates or a sense of intellectual malaise – in order to reacquire their vitality and reignite intellectual curiosity. My impression is that until about a half-dozen years ago the American Psychoanalytic Association (of which I am a member) had a moribund sense about its annual meetings [Establishment] with many colleagues finding them unimaginative and predictable. However, more recently there has been an infusion of new ideas [the mystic] from European, South American and other analytic perspectives that have enlivened the meetings for many colleagues.
Furthermore, I find Bion’s ideas about the Establishment and the mystic to be relevant clinically. As we have discussed, Bion sees real change resulting from becoming one’s O rather than merely knowing about (K) oneself and he quotes Milton to give the reader one way of thinking about O:
The rising world of waters dark and deep
Won from the void and formless infinite.
(Transformations p. 151)
This quote refers to God’s creation of the world out of the “void and formless infinite” which Bion creatively links to his advice (1965, 1967, 1972) that we should begin each session without memory and desire:
[What] is common to all developmental processes whether religious, aesthetic, scientific or psycho-analytical is a progression from the ‘void and formless infinite’ to a ‘saturated’ formulation which is finite.
(1970, p. 170)
He goes on to say that the beginning of a session is like the notion of the Godhead, that there is an unknowable “something” (O) that will emerge from the “void and formless infinite,” which I take to mean to analyst’s mind emptied of memory and desire. We must wait for something to emerge – whether a thought by the patient, a reverie of the analyst, an unexpected shared emotional experience – an evolving pattern the analyst observes that “is subject to his Transformation and culminates in his interpretation Taβ” (ibid, p. 171). Each interpretation is an invitation to the analysand to “saturate” the analyst’s intervention with meaning through the patient’s associations, which in turn impregnate the analyst’s alpha function to produce new transformations (Taβ). Through this shared fecundity some approximation of O (TpO, TaO and TpaO) is achieved that, like the future and the past, may only be glimpsed but never fully known.
As though guided by T. S. Eliot’s (1943) observation that revisiting our place of origin after a long journey permits us to know that place in a new way, Bion’s (1970) next major book, Attention and Interpretation, revisits the container/contained relationship, the central factor of alpha function, from the perspective of his ceaseless exploration that has led him to investigate in Transformations what is mysterious and unknown in psychoanalytic treatment. The analytic couple – the container/contained – are charged with having to face the “Truth,” which now, owing to the requirement that the analyst become the disowned O of the patient, is the “O that is common to analyst and analysand” (p. 27). Together, the analyst and analysand must “suffer,” that is, bear and tolerate, the truth in order to achieve “the consolation which is drawn from the truth [which is] solid and durable” (p. 7). Given that the emotional landscape to be explored by the analytic dyad is the befogged and shadowy territory of O, then the analyst’s intuition becomes his chief tool in probing a mental space that is unknowable. In this connection, Bion revisits his earlier (1967b) assertion that the analyst must eschew “memory and desire” to achieve a receptive state of mind, which he now relates to intuition:
For any who have been used to remembering what patients say and to desiring their welfare, it will be hard to entertain the harm to analytic intuition that is inseparable from any memories and any desires.
(1970, p. 31) [italics in original]
However, relying upon intuition instead of one’s memory and desire may leave the analyst feeling off balance, which must be met with faith:
faith that there is an ultimate reality and truth – the unknown, unknowable, ‘formless infinite.’
(p. 31)
Bion’s journey in his discovery of alpha function has traveled a long distance from its initial beginnings as an inquiry into how the psyche can learn to think under fire and manage unbearable emotional experience; from there to his realization that another mind is required and, finally, to how the activity of these collaborative minds is internalized as the apparatus for thinking. What distinguishes the discussion of container/contained in Attention and Interpretation from previous accounts is Bion’s frank depiction of the stresses on the analytic pair associated with the transformation of O as an intersubjective process. Bion states that patients
experience pain but not suffering . . . The patient may say he suffers but this is only because he does not know what suffering is and mistakes pain for suffering it.
(p. 19)
But the patient does not suffer alone; the analyst “can, and indeed must, suffer” (p. 19) the analysand’s pain just as a mother intuitively dials into her baby’s inarticulate cries, becomes that pain and through her reverie gives it a name. In my view, it is a process that goes in the opposite direction of the Biblical account of God’s word turned into flesh (Jesus); instead, it is the corporeal world of sensory experience (flesh) that is transformed by mother’s reverie into a containing word. It is as though genuine emotional growth occurs on a tightrope that balances between catastrophe and successful evolution of the personality, which requires the presence of a fertile connection between container and contained that itself also faces, and may present, potential danger:
The container may squeeze everything ‘out of’ the contained; or the ‘pressure’ may be exerted by the contained so that the container disintegrates. . . [and there are] fluctuations which make the analyst at one moment ♀ and analysand ♂, and at the next reverse the roles.
(pp. 107–108)
Thus, in his return to the topic of the container/contained, Bion has arrived where he has started from and the Bion who has returned is a different man, chastened by his experiences from which he has also learned much.
1 I recently attended the 2016 Regional Bion Symposium in Los Angeles, “Clinical Klein and Bion: Continuity or Caesura?” in which a colleague from Seattle mockingly said that Bion oriented analysts in LA were “in love with O,” Bion’s enigmatic concept in Transformations [discussed in this chapter]. Thus, divided opinions about “late Bion” are not restricted to any particular region.
2 The Grid (1963) is discussed in another section.
3 Later published in 1972.
4 Later published as Chapter 12, “Container and Contained Transformed,” in Attention and Interpretation (1970).
5 George Bernard Shaw’s observation that “England and America are two countries divided by a common language,” also pertained to differing analytic dialects in Los Angeles and London: the Americans spoke with a primarily Ego Psychological accent that was generally hostile to the English Kleinian argot.
6 For example, he includes the “transference neurosis” under the heading of “rigid motion transformation.”
7 Though he does acknowledge in several places his indebtedness to Kleinian theory.
8 Bion states, “Kleinian transformation, associated with certain Kleinian theories, would have different invariants from the invariants in a classical Freudian transformation” (p. 5).
9 Francesca Bion (2014) reports in her Introduction to this paper that it had been “lost” until Dr. Rosa Beatriz of Rio de Janeiro sent Francesca Bion a copy in 1994. Dr. Beatriz had received the paper from Dr. Hans Thorner in 1971, although Bion had given the paper to the British Society in October, 1963.
10 This denotation can be confusing since “a” for “analyst” and “α” for the “process” of transformation look very similar. In addition, many readers are familiar with the transformation of β → α elements in Learning from Experience, but in Transformations “α” signifies the beginning transformation while “β” marks the end product of that transformation.
11 In individual psychoanalysis this is achieved through the unconscious collaboration of the analyst’s and patient’s alpha functions (Brown, 2010, 2011c, 2012) and Corrao (1981) has proposed a similar process, gamma function, in group psychoanalysis.
12 Arnaldo Chuster of Rio de Janeiro, James Gooch of Los Angeles and Rudi Vermote of Brussels are three colleagues who come to mind and are especially skilled in the use of the Grid.
13 Column 5 in the 1963 paper was titled “Oedipus” but soon was changed to Inquiry. Bion refers to Oedipus as an example of “obstinacy with which he pursues his inquiry” (p. 104) into solving the Riddle of the Sphinx; thus, Bion is cautioning the analyst about excessive curiosity such as that which “killed the cat.”
14 In my view, orienting the patient and analyst to this cluster of Grid cells seems like an evolved and more detailed elaboration of Freud’s (1912) concepts of evenly hovering attention and free association.
15 These “lies” may be necessary in order to bear the truth of the painful realities in human experience: we all need “a curtain of illusion to be a protection against truth which is essential to the survival of humanity” (Bion, 1965, p. 147). Taken from another perspective, I think Bion is saying that “lies” have an adaptive containing function in which what is too painful to endure is transformed into a bearable falsehood.
16 Perhaps we might see Bob Dylan’s “going electric,” also in 1965, as a musical counterpart to Bion’s mystic? Both individuals, having established themselves at the top of their respective professions, were deemed by their peers as going too far with productions that were “too pro- and e-vocative, and weakened by riddling meanings” (O’Shaughnessy, 2005, p. 1525). Each of these highly creative men was also living in a time of cultural upheaval, which surely had some influence on their work.