Sao Paolo

KARNAC

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

Wilfred R. Bion

BRAZILIAN LECTURES 1973 1974

Sao PauIo

Rio de -Ianeiro/Sao PauIo

Wilrred R. Bion

Karnac Books London

First published in 1990 by H. Karnac (Books) Ltd 118 Finchley Road London NW3 5HT Reprinted 2008 Copyright © 1990 by the Estate ofWilfred R. Bion By Arrangement with Francesca Bion and Mark Paterson 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, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bion, Wilfred (Wilfred Ruprecht), 1897-1979 Brazilian lectures 1& 2. - Rev. & Corr. ed. 1. Psychoanalysis I. Title 150.19'5 ISBN 978-094643-978-2 1098765432

T

hese lectures have been edited to suit them to the printed, rather than the spoken word. With the exception of a few minor additions the text is substantially the same as that of the transcripts taken from the original tape recordings. The questions which stimulated the material content have had to be subjected to the same selection and compression without, I hope, too much misrepresentation of the intentions of the participants. To them I would like to express my thanks; also to Frank Philips, whose arduous and spontaneous translation made the lectures in Silo Paulo possible. Of my wife's contribution in changing the spoken to the printed word I cannot speak highly enough. This book has cost her many hours of skillful work.

The lectures given in Rio de Janeiro were simultaneously translated by Cibele Pallon and Elizabeth Hart, to whom I take this opportunity to express my admiration and thanks.

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In Sao Paulo Frank Philips again translated as I spoke. I had a renewed opportunity to admire the facility and speed with which he did this and here express my thanks. As before, this printed version is the work of my wife. She is not to blame for the defects of which I become more aware at each scrutiny. Gardeners, like my wife, know how pebbles multiply on a bed which is supposed to present the 'minimum conditions' for flowers to flourish. That they are no worse I owe to her. Wilrred R. Bion

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

THE GRID Defini-

I/J

Notation

Attention

Inquiry

Action

1

2

3

4

5

6

Al

A2

BI

B2

B3

B4

B5

B6

... Bn

Cl

C2

C3

C4 . C5

C6

... Cn

Dl

D2 D3

D4

D5

D6

... Dn

El

E2

E3

E4

E5

E6

... En

Fl

F2 F3

F4

F5

F6

... Fn

tory

Hypo-

theses

A p-elements

B a-elements

C Dream Thoughts Dreams, Myths

D Pre-conception

E Conception

F Concept

G Scientific Deductive System

H Algebraic Calculus

G2

••• n

A6

1973 Sao Paulo

ONE

n these seminars I will try to give a sketch ofthe area in which I am prepared to exhibit my ignorance and to answer questions that you care to ask. Go on asking the same question as often as you like and I will answer it if! can, although probably in a different way each time. I shall start with a fable, in the guise of an historical account of the Royal Cemetery at Ur. On the death ofthe king the entire court processed into an excavation, since called 'The Death Pit', and there, dressed in their finery and jewels, took a drug from a small cup later found by each body. Five hundred years later, without any publicity, the tombs were robbed. It was a courageous thing to do because the Cemetery had been sanctified by the death and burial of the Royal Family. The robbers were the patrons of the scientific method: the first who dared to break through the ghostly sentinels of the dead and their priestly attendants. This primitive reconstruction, which is not history, archaeology or art, might be categorized from a religious, aesthetic or scientific

I

3

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BRAZILIAN LECTURES

vertex. In Grid terms we might say that it is a C category construction. Continuing this use of fable into the domain of finance: money was early used as a mode of communication in religious observance, the communication then being between corporeal beings like humans, and others such as the ghostly sentinels at Ur. Later, it was used by the anglo-saxons as 'wergeld' to compensate for the loss oflife or blood, and 'bride-purchase' to compensate for the loss of a bride from the membership of a group. The convenience of this method ofcommunication, analogous to the convenience ofspeech, made it suitable for take-over for purposes of exchange and communication in commerce. Psycho-analysis may be regarded as a response to the inappropriate; from that awareness arose the search for the cause ofthe inappropriate. In finance the inappropriate has not yet been discovered. Consequently, fluctuations in exchange are sought in the realms of the appropriate. The causes of the fluctuations will have to be sought, not only in the rational world of finance, but also in the continued survival of these primitive, and now no longer recognized, basic roots-religious and tribal (as described in my fable). Money does not work in accordance with rational, economic laws alone. Freud regarded the Oedipus complex as being one of the main discoveries of psycho-analysis; it is worth considering that Freud's use of the Oedipus fable (or myth) enabled him to discover the human personality. It is not necessarily of great importance for us to learn what Freud and others discovered; what is important is that one should learn the value of what we nowadays call psychological or psycho-analytic activity-that is, practical psycho-analysis. That vast area requires investigation, not ossification. It is of cardinal importance that it should not be treated as a closed subject. We have no way of guessing what the tomb robbers subsequently felt. I still consider that they must have been brave men to dare to rob the treasures hidden in a spot which was guarded by evil and dangerous spirits. Similarly in psycho-analysis: when approaching the unconscious-that is, what we do not know, not what we do know-we, patient and analyst alike, are certain to be

1973 sAo PAULO

5

disturbed. Anyone who is going to see a patient tomorrow should, at some point, experience fear. In every consulting room there ought to be two rather frightened people: the patient and the psycho-analyst. If they are not, one wonders why they are bothering to find out what everyone knows. It is tempting always to engage upon something familiar. This temptation is greater for psycho-analysts than for others because it is one of the rare situations in which human beings can be engaged in a frightening occupation without even going outside the door. We should not consider too much what we have already done in the way of investigating patients; we should consider what we are going to do tomorrow, about which we know very little because it has yet to happen. Let us now consider any questions arising from the above. We shall have to go on asking the same question, because although the question may be in the same words tomorrow as today, it will not be the same, because it is a different day. Q. If we are interested in the thing that will happen tomorrow how can we maintain our attention on the things that are happening now? B. One hopes, as a result of experience, to learn how to concern oneself both with the present and with the future. These are the only things about which we can do anything at all; the past we can do nothing about. A famous general once said, 'You do not have to be very intelligent to be a general, but you must be able to use such brains as you have while you are being bombed and shot at.' It does not sound very dramatic, but I think most psycho-analysts know what it feels like to be giving an interpretation in front of the patient. It sounds simple. It is difficult to say why it is not. One would have to say, 'If it is as easy as you think, you go and try it.' If you can try it, and if neither you nor your patient have what we loosely call a breakdown, and survive, then both people will be mentally stronger after the experience. The writer, Bagehot, said, 'Strong men are attracted by strong ideas, and strong ideas attract strong men and make them stronger'. In psycho-analysis two people dare to ask questions about what they have forgotten and about what

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they do not know, and at the same time must be capable ofliving in the present. As a result they do get stronger. Q. I would like to ask how to proceed in practice with this question of 'tomorrow'. I would also like to hear more about the aspect of religion. B. To take the second point first. Psycho-analysts have been peculiarly blind to this topic of religion. Anyone, recalling what they know about the history of the human race, can recognize that activities which can be called religious are at least as obtrusive as activities which can be called sexual. In the domain ofthe physical, if a human being were spoken of as having no alimentary canal, one would think-here is a monster indeed! It bears no resemblance to the human animal. If that is so, then one wonders on what grounds a mind or personality could be regarded as a human personality or character if it had missing one of the main departments of mental activity. I will try to answer the first part of the question by posing another. How can a human being, with a human mentality and character, not be interested in, or concerned with, the future? If anyone wants to claim exemption on the grounds that he knows nothing about the future, I would think he was rationalizing; nor would I accept the explanation that he is unconcerned because it has not happened yet, particularly as it is so common for people to claim that they exercise foresight or that they are prudent, or even sometimes that they have acquainted themselves with the mathematics of probability. This seems to me to be the mathematics of a human feeling, or what is a guess on the part of the individual as to what is likely to happen in the future put into convincingly mathematical terms. If someone says they are not concerned with the future because they have learned about it from the past I would not believe them. The fact that a thing has happened in the past has nothing whatever to do with its happening in the future. Q. I would like clarification of the concept of 'the future'. Ifwe are always dealing with something that is to happen and nothing else, is not the present totally absorbed in that perspective? B. I have been using a concept, and it is one ofthese situations in which one tends to believe that there is some realization which approximates to that concept. We are all used to words like 'sex'

1973 sAo PAULO

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which, if one considers the matter, means nothing. But the word 'sex', like 'the future', is useful for this kind of discussion. What it has to do with the world of reality I do not know. Yet people use words like 'sex' and 'the future' exactly as if they were about something. Why that is so, psycho-analysts will have to find out, because I do not think the philosophers have yet done so. Q. I would like to hear you speak about the use of the past, the present and the future in relation to anxiety. B. This word 'anxiety' is a praiseworthy attempt to give a name to a feeling. Most of us think that we know what people mean when they say 'anxiety', although a child would not. If we were to look at the X-ray of a baby's hand we could see cartilage and bone and so on, and say, 'That is a baby's hand.' Why? It is nothing of the kind; it is not a hand at all; it is a collection, a constant conjunction of various numbers of sense impressions together with a theory that it turns into a hand. The reason why one says that it is a baby's hand is based on many years of accumulated experience which leads one to suppose that that is so. The question has this forward component: what does anxiety, and any other feeling which has become sufficiently noticeable to be labelled with a name, bear on the future? What will it turn into? One can observe certain children's activities and say, 'That behaviour is going to become sexual activity.' In the present one could say, 'This sort of activity resembles that which I think I remember having witnessed in a child.' It is not surprising, however, ifpeople who are not psycho-analysts or psychiatrists do not see what the connection is. Indeed, I suspect there are many things which analysts interpret to patients that it is unreasonable to expect the patient to understand. One of the questions involved is: are we simply exchanging concepts, or have these concepts some realizations which approximate to them? For example, when we say we are, or think we are, anxious today, we are talking about what was once the future; and in this 'future' this meeting had not taken place; we knew nothing about it; nor did we know what this 'anxiety' was. But some of us may think that we are reminded of some experience in childhood or adolescence which was similar. What we do not know is what we should be feeling if we were in existence in fifty years' time. But we

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BRAZILIAN LECTURES

can guess that we would be feeling anxious. But we do not know whether the feeling that we would have in fifty years' time would be something that we could stand. We often speak in terms of 'anxiety', 'very anxious', 'exceptionally anxious', or 'I'm not anxious at all'n and lnterpretatton ( 1970), Two Papers: The Grid and Cue.•ura (1977) and "' 0 post humo usly pub lished volumes of autobiogra phy. The w ng Weekend (1982) ..nJ A ll My Sins Remem bered ( 1985).

The Brazilian t.ecuoes. del ivered in Sao Pa ulo and Rio de Janeiro d uring 1973 and 1974, reveal Bio n in his most vital and challenging mode both in respect of the material he presents, and in his responses 10 the questio ns from his a udience.

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