Wilfred Bion by Bion Wilfred R.; Aguayo Joseph; Malin Barnet

Author:Bion, Wilfred R.; Aguayo, Joseph; Malin, Barnet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Karnac Books

Fourth Seminar—19 April 1967

Bion's treatment of a borderline psychotic patient—audience questions—visual and auditory hallucinations in disturbed patients and Christian mystics

Moderator: I would like to announce this session for those who might be recording it. This is the fourth meeting of Dr Bion—this is April 19th [1967]. And with that, we'll turn the floor over to Dr Bion. Please.

Bion: I feel some trepidation about what I want to try to talk about this evening; I hope at the same time I will be able to explain why I feel trepidation about it. Now, I was just waiting for the session to start, I went into the waiting room and I brought the patient into my consulting room. As we were walking towards the consulting room, she had started. And she started by expressing her doubts about analysis—about me personally, about the relationships with her father and much the same about her mother, what had been going on in the office, which made her have doubts about the efficacy of analysis—and all this between the waiting room and the couch. By the time she got to the couch, a woman of about thirty, she had really warmed to the job [laughter]. To say that she seemed to be hostile was putting it very mildly indeed. The abuse became much more violent and in the course of this, she slithered off the end of the couch onto the floor, appeared to be frightened by the fall, which led to still further abuse and violence. She then proceeded to slap herself on the thighs, still pouring out hatred against analysis, with a parting swipe at Kleinians generally, of which she regards me as one, but made it clear that this wasn't to the exclusion of all other forms of analysts; that the whole lot were equally bad, but some more equal than others.

Now of course what I should tell you what she said; but it is very difficult to do because the real point about this is the general impression of real hate, no nonsense about this at all. Something where I would like to use a phrase like “psychotic hatred” to get nearer to the point, meaning by that something which one doesn't just ordinarily meet with in everyday life in positions where people hate you and spite you very much. Something which one needs to qualify, one needs to say “hate”, plus something or another, to make it quite clear that you are not talking about what you ordinarily talk about when you mention “hate”. The usual problem of psychoanalysts, the problem which crops up of course with Freud where he talked about sex, and you all know that what Freud meant by this, is something that wasn't accepted; hasn't been accepted since by the vast majority of people, and it's probably only understood by psychoanalysts, who have a good idea of what Freud meant by that term.

Now this business went on. The free associations, if that is what you can call

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