Breakthrough

Abstract

Bion's investigation focused on the clinically observable field of psychoanalysis and a description of its rules of transformations. Analytic observation has as its objective the discovery of connections and objects not previously observed, and therefore it necessitates breaking pre-existing meaning configurations. The discovery of a new meaning requires not only integration, but also a shift toward disintegration. Rupturing the protection of common sense, rationality, and consensus entails “a catastrophic impact with the true experience of the self,” and it is therefore obstructed by the individual and by the group, who consider it dangerous for their own survival. And not wrongfully so. We cannot know in advance, Bion affirms, if that impact will involve a break-up, a breakdown or a breakthrough – a disturbing perspective that is replete with consequences for theory and technique.

Notes

¹ Catastrophic change will later become part of the 12th chapter of Attention and interpretation (Bion, 1970). It is interesting to notice that the quotation mentioned above is changed so as to mitigate the contrast with the Kleinian theory: “Both appear to differ from the configurations represented by the Kleinian theory of paranoid-schizoid and depressive position interplay. I am unwilling to accept this apparent cleavage. The most satisfactory formulation that displays the underlying harmony relates to the practice of psycho-analysis (Bion, 1970, p. 123).

² “I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (John Keats, “Letter to George and Thomas Keats,” December 21, 1817).

³“We had the experience but missed the meaning / And approach to the meaning restores the experience / In a different form, beyond any meaning” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets)