Simmetry and Technique: Bion's psychoanalytic object

Texto escrito por Arnaldo Chuster e editado por Elahe Sagart em 2025.

PROLOGUE

The work of Wilfred Bion (1897-1979), noticeably reflecting the configuration of his life - many lives in a single life [1] - it is comparable to a kaleidoscope in which innumerable open ideas come together in the short space of the pages. Therefore, it is possible to follow the ever-changing configurations as we read and re-read his ideas. In other words, time always bring new vertices to the reader.

This context full of emotionally complex experiences, mixed with a deep and universal culture, has produced a challenging discourse that often, in the proximity of understanding it, makes us stumble into a wild thought that sends us back to square one. It seems that Bion is always ahead of us, disappearing from our sight. It is very difficult to find a reader who has not had this feeling or something equivalent.

Over around 50 years researching and reflecting on his work, as well as living with different study groups, I kept a direction expressed in my first book (Chuster, 1989): To study Bion implies not trying to do it literally; just by resorting to the many authors at our disposal, including myself. There is even a seductive dictionary to teach us how to read and understand Bion. However, Bion is not there. It is necessary to go deeper, to go beyond his writings, to navigate with the founding meaning of his work, which I identify as the rebirth of psychoanalysis in every new session. This meaning_ present in the many unprecedented expressions of language that he created_ goes beyond the texts and establishes itself as each person's own experience.

I think that the main tool to help us navigate this meaning is to apply the vertex of complexity theory, which in turn depends on activating our imaginative capacity. This means, to prepare ourselves to get in touch with Bion's enormous intuitive capacity, which generates advanced ideas and places us in the future, which is only accessed through imaginative capacity.

I complete my last sentence quoting Albert Einstein [2] here: "I rely on in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited, while imagination embraces the whole world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research."

I

The word complexity has always been present in everyday vocabulary much more than in scientific vocabulary. The popular meaning often denotes something confusing or a web that is difficult to understand. The scientific vertex, thanks to Edgar Morin [3], has brought a thinking and methodological vision that includes interactions and quantities that defy our possibilities of calculation, and indicates coexistence with uncertainties, indeterminacies, random phenomena, chaos, and even luck. What's more, complexity has brought about the existence of open systems as opposed to the classificatory world, which depends on diagnoses. Those who act according to closed systems, if they open up to include something new; nevertheless, they soon close down again.

Morin expands ideas derived from mathematics, including Gödel's theorem, the main consequence of which was to cause an epistemological historical cut in axiomatic systems, making possible to conceive theory and logic as open systems. Besides, such cut also affected the way of thinking, the ontology, methodology, logic and, above all, practice.

To illustrate in Bion’s work the relationship between complexity <-> open systems as symmetrical, one has many concepts developed by him, some of which are more visible. For instance, the spectrum model of psychotic /non-psychotic parts of the personality influencing the re-reading of the Oedipus myth through the lens of arrogance. After this paper Bion changed the central metaphysical question of analysis to the search for truth, which create more spectrum models as the theory of Thinking, the psychoanalytic object, the Grid, “O” in the spectrum of transformations, Memoir of the Future, thoughts without a thinker, emotional turbulence, Caesura, act of Faith, language of Achievement versus Language of Substitution.

In this current book, I have decided to investigate more thoroughly the relationship between two concepts: the psychoanalytic object and symmetry. This relationship can be summarized (although inadequately as any summary) in the following sentence: the psychoanalytic object favors analytic transformations when it is observed and interpreted according to the concept of symmetry. The reader will note that this does not exempt me from addressing in the current book the other concepts.

The phrase about technique refers to various ideas developed by Bion in the last part of his work. The attempt is to set a dialogue with them by developing a question about the importance of the concept of symmetry in analytical work.

In order to achieve this goal, I assumed as necessary revisiting the theses of the texts The Grid and Caesura (1977) _ and their developments. However, before this central approach, it was necessary - and even imperative - to highlight the internal logic of the production of Bion's work, reviewing the ideas about the psychoanalytic object, its theoretical and epistemological origins in A Theory of Thinking (1962a), and its consequent and subsequent texts: Learning from Experience (1962b), Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963), and Transformations (1965).

The concept of symmetry has links with undertaking a problem that Serge Leclaire called the “empire of dead words”, an expression relating to the immobility that the use of theories taken as fixed habits can cause in psychoanalytic work. It also refers to words, or expressions that_ from being used so much, and often inappropriately_ end up losing the vigor of their original meaning. The issue therefore affects, above all, the language of analytical interpretation. But, as we will see in the course of this book, the problem goes further and also involves the path to interpretation (the use of intuition associated with imagination), in other words, it implies a reflection on the creative aspects of the analytical process.

Certainly, psychoanalysis cannot be a closed system, but is undeniable that there are currents that treat it this way, some explicitly, others covertly. It is not the aim of this book to expand on this criticism in detail. However, I think it is worth highlighting in order to reaffirm that psychoanalytic practice is compelled to constantly question itself and move forward with the knowledge it acquires through observation. The simple and - at the same time - complex fact that there are patients who express their pain challenges the psychoanalyst to constantly turn to the foundations of psychoanalysis: practice, theory, epistemology and ethics are incessantly intertwined.

Psychoanalysis - unlike many other disciplines - is inevitably open. It is interruptedly subject to the test of truth, which is listening to the person who has psychic pain and is trying to tell us about it. The analyst's listening is constantly prepared for this function, and it does not matter how much experience the psychoanalyst has. The psychoanalyst is always in the beginning of an investigation. Psychoanalysis is about singularity that does not allow for accommodation.

This direction inevitably leads us to think about our lack of knowledge and to worry about it. In each new session, we return to the encounter with the new and the unknown. Bion is categorical about this encounter with not knowing. Here the reader may wonder: what is Knowledge in Bion?

It is not exactly an answer, but we can say that knowledge in Bion is put up by asking questions about what is emerging in today's session. What we know about yesterday no longer serves us, it belongs to the order of the irrelevant, and if we insist on continuing, we will fall into the realm of false knowledge. Knowledge is not something we already know, but the knowledge we have to unveil in front of us. Knowledge is in the future. Even more so when the object of our knowledge involves the unconscious.

This issue also permeates relationships with colleagues. If I only talk about what is already known - repeating the commonplace - I think that this is almost a kind of insult to the interlocutor.

What is literally written in Bion's books can often seem too cryptic, too abstract, and for some even monotonous. The allusions to mathematics, which appear here and there, amaze many analysts who see it as a foreign body in psychoanalysis. Nevertheless, those who see Bion in this way are not worried, because they transform the discomfort of not knowing into a known definition. Because what known facts does not bother and can at most produce saturation of knowledge, and worse, it proposes, albeit in a subtle way, absolute knowledge. It is as if someone said, Bion is just that and nothing more than what I am telling you.

Paraphrasing Leclaire once again, there are certainly those who want to build societies of dead words, or a practice of dead words. However, we have the option of not letting ourselves be taken in by this. Just as Bion investigated and challenged the immobility of each concept in psychoanalysis, in this book I present the proposal to investigate Bion's concepts in order to incite them to speak again in the space beyond the texts. This “beyond” is where I think his work lies.

I can use here the metaphor of the Bird of Minerva, the Roman name for the goddess of wisdom. The allegory was enshrined in Hegel's phrase: Minerva's owl takes flight only with the onset of twilight. Hegel was referring to the moments of reflection that follow the deepest mechanisms of sensitivity. Those moments appear during the early hours of the morning or late at night when lights are low - those are moments of facing the unknown. This is when thinking take place above all, and everything is object of imagination. It is a matter of always casting a beam of intense darkness.

In other words, the psychoanalyst needs an instrument like Minerva's bird, an instrument for thinking in the twilight zone. To build it, he/she cannot be immerse in certainties, he/she has to tolerate half-truths and accept the mystery of the night-present: the eternal place of dreams and imagination. This place, like the top of Zarathustra's mountain, on the shoulders of the time-giant, looks out over a wider horizon. Minerva's owl is a metaphor for the analyst's dream and imaginative capacity.

In quoting Nietzsche's Zarathustra, I have in mind that just like the philosopher, Bion is a revolutionary; therefore, he proposes a radical change in the vertices to be privileged by interpretation.             

The psychoanalyst, with the help of his instrument, must try to look beyond the immediate field of vision. They need to have a kind of peripheral vision in order to seek - within the darkness - clarification of the gaps left by time and, without fearing the uncertainty of the journey, have a mind prepared to problematize the world and the issues of human life.

The psychoanalyst's job can coincide at certain points with that of the historian, who carries out a reflective exercise on the relationship between the past and the present in a sense of mutual influence. It can also coincide, as Freud showed, with the work of the archaeologist, who searches for traces in a specific field in order to reconstruct history. However, for Bion, psychoanalysis goes further than the philosopher does, the archaeologist does and the historian can, because it is not just about gaining, knowledge by making the unconscious conscious, but knowledge that is capable of transformation. It is about the movement of the possibilities of Being and finding harmony with oneself (at-one-ment).

Psychoanalysts need their freedom of thought to be vigorous and fundamental. Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, tells us: “Man is in permanent reconstruction; that is why he is free: freedom is the right to transform oneself”. This statement reminds us of the undeniable transformative power of the practice of psychoanalysis, as people who are able to undergo analysis and discuss it freely know. Psychoanalysis is an intimate activity, and in-depth discussions generally do not take place at events with lots of people present. A Conference with hundreds and even thousands of psychoanalysts, squeezed into short time slots to succinctly present ideas - developed over years - can hardly result in the deepening of themes, but it can serve well_ almost as a rally_ for institution

Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to work with small, non-institutional, unofficial groups, which constitute what Donald Meltzer called an “atelier” of psychoanalysis. Obviously, they are not clandestine groups, but they work very well in the freedom of reflection. I think I can say that, being “extramural” groups, this gives them a Socratic characteristic where they try to avoid “intramural” didacticism, which in turn unfolds in the conservatism and romanticism of Platonic education; both of which are implicit in training and, above all, in academic circles.

Bion's work launches the psychoanalyst into the same task as the thinker: not to give answers or formulate theories, but to examine the irruptions of the various answers and the many theories in their respective supporting assumptions. In the well-known Socratic formula - I know that I know nothing - the thinker actually lives, in everything that appears, not knowing, because thinking is not knowing. When you think, you do not intend to know, and when you intend to know, you do not think. The thinker is the one who never stops questioning the roots of Knowledge, which meet and mismatch at a crossroads sponsored by the search for truth, traveling the paths of Being and non-being, of knowing and not knowing, and of seeming and existing.

II

Philosophers of science have always paid special attention to the significance of scientific revolutions. Geniuses, individuals whose skills - and above all - imagination, force the scientific community to abandon old habits of thinking and adopt new and unfamiliar concepts, unequivocally bring about each revolution. Less attention aims at the style, but in scientific progress, changes in working style have as great an impact as that caused by conventional geniuses.

Bion was an analyst who represented these two aspects for psychoanalysis by introducing changes in both ideas and working style. Describing his style include a kind of humorous reverence for psychoanalysis' past efforts in search of knowledge, and at the same time, a sharp criticism of this acquired knowledge that pretends to be knowledge in the present.

He had a special talent for approaching, in an idiosyncratic way, subjects that are essentially traditional in psychoanalysis: dreams, free-floating attention, resistance, the Oedipus complex, the language of interpretation, setting, and ethics. This means discarding formalisms and developing his own deeply intuitive approach. His style taught us not only a healthy disdain for strict formalisms, but also a genuine informality in the way we think and communicate. It is difficult to describe the depth of genius capable of working in this way. He disturbed the psychoanalytic universe by arousing both healthy curiosity and hostile opposition, and brought up many questions that has answers many years after their formulation.

I think that one of them was to have shown and inserted albeit intuitively complexity into psychoanalysis by centering it on the investigation of an unattainable truth, which also means a path of constant and indeterminate growth. Truth is a vital part of psychic life, and in its search, we ensure psychic growth. It is to the mind as oxygen is to the body. In the opposite direction, the use of lies acts as a toxicant for mental life and, instead of growth, produces “cancerous growth” (1970), which leads to the production of mental starvation, whose representatives abound in culture and politics in all historical eras. This starvation appears more intense in contemporary times because of our involvement with it.

In Attention and Interpretation (1970), Bion, following the path that began with his Theory of Thinking (1962a), takes new steps on the question of the metaphysics of truth as the center of psychoanalytic activity. The question has an unprecedented approach when he uses Nietzsche’s concept of an Act of Faith as an act that rests on the essence of Life, and this as a search for Truth. This is the act of simply aiming for the truth, which reinforces the existence of an important difference between the act of Faith and the mental state of Faith. In the act, the essence is not to objectify the truth in itself, but the creative capacity and power of creation that must emerge in the face of what is unattainable

Like Nietzsche, Bion identifies the imprisonment of the word Faith by religious institutions, in other words, it is a clear example of a word that is almost dead. Bion then gives it a defibrillating shock and removes it from the domain of belief, certainty and fanaticism. Religious people do not have the act of Faith, but rather the mental state of Faith, which is in reality a question of sick desire, or a will that gets sick.

The psychoanalytic act of Faith responds to the metaphysical disposition to point out the supreme condition of mental life - Truth - and in this way, the question reaches the psychoanalytic method. However, to objectify Truth is to objectify human growth and its vicissitudes and incompleteness.

Method_ a word derived from the Greek language _ means to search for something along a path. However, before searching we need to choose the path. The text Transformations (1965) addressed this methodological issue by showing that at the heart of all choices is Being. The individual being analyzed, rather than knowing something about himself, is there to “become”, which involves going through a whole journey where the interactions of the Being with the Self, with history, with the body and, finally, at the end of the chain of events, with ethics towards our fellow human beings come into play. This is the path that we can call the search for Truth: going through the apex of the unconscious, generating the conflicting dimensions that make up the human being.

Starting from the unconscious vertex to reach the conscious, inverting the classic methodological position of psychoanalysis, illustrates the alterations produced in the methodology by the open system which, in my opinion, discuss more deeply and increase the complexity of the assertion that psychoanalysis is an unprecedented activity in the history of humanity. Therefore, I think there is no method comparable or to which we can be accountable, even though the psychoanalyst deals with difficult problems inherited from other disciplines that have provided models.

The most obvious and first model to compare vis-à-vis the psychoanalytic model is the medical model, which is notably responsible for providing a method of observation, diagnosis, treatment and the search for a cure. However, the medical model, like so many others developed in Western culture, inherited a general problem brought about by Platonism when it established categorical rules and value judgments. In “The Republic”, Plato defined: The city whose principle we have established is the better, above all, by virtue of the measures taken against poetry. It seems that the methods of science retain something of this structure, and although they are useful to a certain extent, they have ended up creating an unbridgeable gulf with psychoanalysis, as Bion (1970) has pointed out.

In philosophy, as a brief example, we have Bacon and Descartes, where defining method is finding a rule of behavior that could lead to more knowledge: a method for building science. In this sense, for as long as there have been discussions on the subject, there has been a contradiction between Bacon's critique of philosophy and his belief in the power of methods.

The psychoanalytic method is not possible a priori. Any statement to the contrary is a postulate akin to a belief. However, a method that would make it possible to generate the work of psychoanalysis must somehow presuppose the prior possession of a principle of order that is broader than those we could arrive at empirically. This would be a kind of critical reference in metapsychology. The task I set myself in this book is to verify the possibility of inserting complexity as a metapsychological principle.

In W.R. Bion: New Readings, vols. I and II (Chuster et al., 1999, 2002), these issues were developed to the point where the authors were able to present the psychoanalytic principles contained between two symmetrical polarities, aesthetics and ethics. Their terminological association produced a general designation of ethical-aesthetic principles, which opens as: Uncertainty, Incompleteness, Infinitude, Undecidability of origin, Negativity, Singularity and, covering them all, Complexity.

I think that these principles are applicable to the psychoanalytical field. One can go from its fundamental and central line the search for truth  to the extensive problems brought about by lies, illusions, fantasies, delusions, false recognitions, deceptions, etc.

A practical example of the use of these principles happens when a patient tells us about a dream, and then makes an assertion - actually a very common one - that it was just a dream, meaning that nothing happened. However, in reality, at that point we can confront him with the possibility that the exposing essentials of psychic life at a specific moment. Basic facts of mental functions such as the decision to modify reality and the consequent ability to provide solutions, as well as their opposite, the ability to flee from reality. This is a description of a symmetry constantly found in psychoanalytical clinics.

Once again, I would point out that it was the application and development of the spectrum model of functions – an open system - that allowed Bion to understand dreams in a complex, broad and unique way. 

Many authors recognize that Bion's ideas do not prioritize the symbolic production of the dream, but rather the bond itself that the dream establishes. Therefore, the purpose of analytical work has a deep focus on the function of dreaming than on the content of dreams. In this direction, which confronts function and content, dreaming is thinking, and thinking is dreaming. Circularity reveals the fundamentals of psychic processing and the model can be used to investigate everything from the mother/baby relationship (reverie) to its complex extension in the most diverse relationships (alpha function).

The mathematical concept of function applied to the notion of reverie gave its understanding the presence of a constant unknown that unfolds with experience. The unknown is fed by the very field created by the function. 

Reverie as a function translates into a complex mental act, as it links together various sensory and symbolic elements from very different origins. They are the factors of the function, which can be selected, increased in number, but there is always the unknown that comes from uncertainty, because time and the rhythms inherent in any experience are constantly moving forward.

For example, reverie, as a function, integrates various senses in the act of breastfeeding: touch, smell, taste, skin sensations to temperature, support for the baby's head, the movement of the breast, the pressure of the embrace, the gaze and, finally, everything leads to thought and words. The meanings and movements of language and thought that integrate them vary from one moment to the next; between one act of breastfeeding and the next there is a new element. The same applies when it comes to one child to another. Variability increases as relationships become more complex. Nothing is sufficiently known to ensure a safe standard. The unknown, the mystery, which is always present, requires constant conceptual revision.

For this reason, in expanding the concept of reverie, Bion created the term alpha function, which allow us to investigate the unknown distribution of this function within the mind, such as the function of intuition, the social function, and the functions of the body. This is a complex articulation to follow the analytical material without preconceived ideas or ideas that take the analyst away from the reality of the session.

In general, Bion's proposal is to deal with the limits of human capacity and with the fact that the capacity to dream (imaginative thinking) depends on the capacity not to be overwhelmed by the disturbing and turbulent nature of what is being dreamed. In dealing with this nature, Bion clarified the fundamental participation of the analyst in dreaming the dreams not dreamed by the analysand, and in dreaming the dreams interrupted by something that cannot be worked through. He highlights at this point the PS<->D negotiation present in the continent/content interaction, and how the process is reflected in the search for a psychanalytically successful outcome. However, even if the analyst situates himself in the analytical relationship with his alpha function and is able to receive and “digest” the analysand's communications, failures still inevitably occur, showing - once again - a view of the complexity of the field.

In any discussion of clinical material, the understanding derived from alpha function theory establishes that the analyst's interpretation highlights something new and unknown that is always emerging in the analytical process. 

In this way, it becomes possible to observe (as several authors have described) the evolution of the natural history of the analytical process in another way, understanding the movement of transference as something represented by formulations or arguments of spiral configurations, which vary in diameter, that is, with the extent and type of emotional experience. In a general sense, it is a matter of observing how configurations transform.

The question I add is the analogy of preconception with the image of frames of a still empty landscape painting. With this, I try to inquire how these frames—preconception in the prenatal stage—which prepare to receive the landscape of the world, are communicated to reverie at the beginning of postnatal life, and how they influence the formation of an individual's mental characteristics. In other words, how the postnatal realization of psychic frames will result in conceptions and concepts that generate the mental states we observe in the analytical process.

III

In the postnatal stage, one can observe the formation of conceptions in two simultaneous areas:  an aesthetic area connected to an ethical area. This process is due to the emotional experience_ a consequence of alpha-function action.

In this process is observable the complexity of factors such as the increase in projective identification, caused by other elements such as intolerance to frustration, the incompleteness and immaturity of Oedipal objects, exploitative envy, voracity, destructive envy, and the violence of primitive relationships, which can amplify the distortion of conceptions and concepts. Bion described these degrees of distortion and expanded his observation under the aegis of the theory of Transformations (1965).

A very practical example of the application of complexity in the analytical method is the use of the couch. Definitely, the use of the couch helps the analysands to realize that analysis is within them, and that only from inside can it come to the surface. In contrast, the analyst is there to help the analysis emerge and not to provide analysis as if it were a medicine. The result of the process should be the achievement of social autonomy, and for that, paradoxically, the analytical process apparently uses the social model of conversation. The couch obviously helps to break the social model of communication and observation, creating “horizontal speech” (Green, 1970) that spreads in multidirectional lines—like a compass rose—toward multiple objects. The increase in objects, the multiplicity of questions, the admission of diversity and singularities characterize the search for social autonomy.

When the couch is not used, the risk of speech being social or directed at a single object— which would be only the specificity of the Other's body, represented by the analyst—increases exponentially, amplifying the risk of not acquiring autonomy due to imprisonment in common speech saturated with known social meanings. This increases the risk of generating diverse theories—without criteria—that become beliefs. Anthropological and sociological disguises of psychoanalytic theory are very common. The lack of psychoanalytic criteria (the status of the object of psychoanalysis) also aggravates the moral assertions that end up replacing thinking.

The question at some point may be radical: either one works using the couch as an instrument of access to the complex object and does psychoanalysis, or one works at the risk of obstructing what psychoanalysis should be and thus doing something else. This statement is mitigated by giving credit to the diversity of objects of psychoanalysis formulated by other authors. However, radical psychoanalysis, if we can call it that, implies the assertion that only where the social gaze is not present can we follow the transference and its future. The opposite alternative is to observe the transference socially and see the future of an illusion gradually imposing itself.

Elisabeth Roudinesco’s expression referring to the number of therapies that become a kind of self-cult is very significant. Nothing against and nothing in favor of those who, in some way, cannot sustain an analysis and can make satisfactory use of palliatives. As analysts, we cannot set ourselves up as saviors of patients, nor do we intend to be heroes who will save humanity with psychoanalysis, prescribing it for everyone. However, psychoanalysis absolutely cannot ignore the unconscious, and must always develop its method for investigating it. Showing it as a complex object can be an expansion of this investigation. In doing so, we can work with a system that is related to others, including the simple object.

The aforementioned multiplicity of systems that we, as psychoanalysts, have to deal with should indicate the necessity to think in terms of a complex object. This should also occur when approaching the bodily dimension. For example, using complexity, it is understood that the body is not a unit, but multiple systems of different phylogenetic origins in constant effort to coexist and achieve balance. Sometimes, imbalance results in what is known as autoimmune disease. We can hypothesize that the cause of this imbalance is the central nervous system (which emerged only 50/55 million years ago), identifying one of the body's systems as a prehistoric predator. For example, the endocrine system, which emerged 350 million years ago, when attacked as if it was a predator has as a result a Hashimoto's thyroiditis. As analysts, are we able to talk about this to patients? The “modern” wanting to bdern’ launches an attack on the “prehistoric.” What language should we use?

Such an attempt must involve another complexity, because in these clashes there is the action of subtalamic terrors permeating the bonds, in such a way that we never reach a reasonable conclusion in any negotiation of positions. 

The above hypotheses are certainly products of the creative imagination that I dared to put into dialogue. You may even tell me—as in the poet's text—that I am “listening to stars” or having nothing but wild thoughts. But if this is not the case, what am I doing but repeating the familiar and, in this way, only denying my wishes that in the pages that follow, the reader may feel encouraged to find a Bion who may have remained hidden until now.                         

Introduction to the Psychoanalytic Object

In this chapter, I provide a general review of ideas about the psychoanalytic object (1962b). 

In Cogitations (p. 236), Bion stated: the analyst needs to know his myth. The purpose of this quote is to emphasize that psychoanalytically using myths, dreams, and dream thoughts is a crucial part of the essence of the concept of symmetry. It provides the development of specific observations and interpretations of the psychoanalytic object.

I put forward a myth of origin to situate the value of the concept of preconception in contemporary psychoanalysis: the element that gives rise to the psychoanalytic object and which, as part of an open and complex system, alters psychoanalytic notions of ontology.

The myth describes the successful development of mammals on Earth after the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago, following a catastrophe of enormous proportions that struck the planet: an asteroid hit the region now known as the Gulf of Mexico.

The main element of this developmental success was the extraordinary phenomenon of the objectification of the world. This occurred as proto-mammals managed to bring together in a single brain map sets of high sensory intensity, with very distinct information records: touch, smell and taste, hearing, movement, thermal sensations. These functionally integrated sets allowed proto-mammals, even when they were still living in restricted underground ecological niches, to recognize objects analogically. For example, they recognized that a moving object was the same object. It was an extraordinary integration between object and objective, and it is surprising to note that many human problems are due to the loss of this integration.

Later, when they went outdoors and began to inhabit a wide variety of territories, the development of vision integrated with the other senses, thereby increasing the power of the brain map and its exponential capacity, which is the reach of analogical language. The planet became a territory of beings who dominated it through language.

Over time, each species of mammal developed its own language, which was recorded—as is characteristic of living species—in DNA. In this way, each mammal is born with the necessary “experience” to recognize and relate to its peers and perform the movements related to its survival.

However, extraordinary changes in the mammalian brain map began to emerge around six to seven million years ago, due to a new catastrophic change that affected existing pre-human species, altering them forever. 

A climatic catastrophe (the end of the ice age) destroyed the original environment of dense forests, where a species of primate lived, forcing it to develop a very rapid ability to learn and adapt in the hostile territories of the savannas, the habitat of its natural predators in the food chain. Therefore, catastrophic changes pushed the species to the brink of chaos: it was a matter of finding a solution or disappearing forever.

The solution that pre-humans began to develop, accompanied by various anatomical changes, is nowadays known as the phenomenon of neoteny. In other words, pre-human babies began to be born increasingly immature, which made it possible to reduce the influence of innate factors and, consequently, increase the ability to learn from experience. Unlike other mammals, humans are born having to learn everything in order to live. Humans born with extensive incompleteness or immaturity, very dependent on their mother and other members of the group. However, this extreme dependence, which can last for several years, was the decisive factor in the species' move from nature to society. Humans became a social species. A political animal, in Aristotle's words.

The reduction of the innate meant no longer placing the information necessary for life—which was becoming increasingly complex—in DNA, but rather in something mysterious that we know as the “mind.” Therefore, human beings are innately condemned to have a mind and, thus, at birth, must seek a mind in order to survive. Finding this other mind is what will lead them to meet their basic needs for survival. Later, the mind will lead them to enjoy life, but this is not a certainty or something that happens without initiative and effort. In reality, the species has never stopped fighting against what Freud described as the main sources of unease (Unbehagen): the forces of nature, the fragility of the body, and the fact that laws cannot completely stop unconscious impulses.

With evolution, auxiliary language records developed so that mental life could increase its operation in the social and environmental context. The extraordinary advance of digital (symbolic) language emerged, recording shareable information from very early on. This was an unprecedented biological revolution. It marks the walls of caves with the testimony of early humans and their way of transmitting knowledge for the survival of the species. These engraved images even show artistic refinement, difficult to reproduce, which required a Picasso or a Kandinsky to recapture the vigor of these ancestors in art.

It was this ability to grasp and transmit information obtained through experience that determined the knowledge necessary for human life and, consequently, the resources for the survival of the species. However, this ability needs to maintain a degree of immaturity in order to continue learning unlimitedly and conquer its future.

Here comes the essential aspect of the myth I use: I suggest that the human revolution was possible thanks to something Bion calls preconception: the original element of thinking. 

By definition and following the parameters described, preconception is a vague expectation that in the future there will be an omnipotent, emotionally gratifying mind capable of meeting and supplying human needs and incompleteness. Naturally, as this omnipotent mind is not found, varying degrees of frustration generate varying degrees of feelings of helplessness. Thus, we have our first symmetry: omnipotence and helplessness. However, we also have a being endowed with a quality to perceive time, which gives it a three-dimensional mind: time, space, and depth.

In the constitution of the concept (1962a, 1962b), Bion applied the general theory of functions based on the Kantian algorithm, from which the description of movement arises: preconception seeks a realization that transforms it into conceptions (thoughts). Conceptions have the primary function of equalizing the painful experience of immature emergence in a hostile world.

Ψ (ξ) → conceptions → concepts

Paradoxically, immaturity or incompleteness is the element that allows preserving the vigor of preconception within a conception or a concept.  In other words, it is what maintains the creative capacity of preconception and distinguishes the internal functioning of an individual (singularity). 

In general, in the Theory of Thinking, we can consider that conceptions are thoughts that generate an individual’s relationship with himself or herself. When these conceptions are agglutinated with experience (constant conjunction), they form concepts, which are the thoughts that allow the relationship with other human beings.

I emphasize again that the concept of preconception alludes to the presence of future time in the unconscious, contrasting with the traditional concept in psychoanalysis of the timeless unconscious.

Risking another wild thought, I suggest that in Bion, the unconscious is the future, and the multiple meanings and paradoxes of this statement is not possible out of the aegis of complexity. Following this bias in the development of his work, Bion creates other expressions, such as Memory of the Future, thoughts without a thinker, caesura, act of faith. These expressions are only possible as hypotheses of complexity. Furthermore, all these terms refer to the ability to connect with a spectrum of creativity that has creative intimacy at one end and social creativity at the other, yet its results are always beyond what we can perceive in the present.

The first considerations on the concept of preconception developed from Melanie Klein's ideas on innate breast preconception. Such topic was part of Bion's analysis with Melanie Klein. Bion questioned the inadequacy of the innate element (closed forever) associated with something that would become a conception (which must continue to advance). A profound reader of philosophy and epistemology, he perceived a richness in the concept that was lost due to theoretical and epistemological inadequacy. Bion envisioned the application of the Kantian algorithm to this concept, that is, the proposal to observe the mind as a field of function, in this case, the function created by the relationship between blind intuition and the empty concept.

Melanie Klein, in addition to not having a deep understanding of epistemology, probably felt the need to remain silent in the face of such a brilliant analysand who needed attentive listening, rather than intellectual confrontations, a lack of acceptance, and yet another disappointment with the female figure in her life. Having experienced a series of abandonments by female figures, Bion certainly had something to complain about deeply, and he did so by criticizing his analyst's interventions and thinking, but his accounts of these confrontations never failed to follow the Latin saying: Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re. 

Klein listened and silently welcomed the pain of his many experiences of loss, deception, and betrayal; pain that over the years had transformed him into a lonely, reserved, almost shy, yet highly imaginative, honest, combative, and courageous spirit. Paradoxically, Bion protected her, and as an example we have the episode in which he was supposed to be absent from analysis for a month, confined to home rest because of hepatitis, but decided to return ahead of time. Without any fuss, he noted that Klein was seeing someone else during his time slot, without ever having told him that she would do so. When he resumed analysis on the date he had informed her, she charged him for all the sessions she had missed during the month, but Bion never told her what he had discovered.

In their last analysis session, faced with another critical question that Bion always asked: But, after all, what is psychoanalysis? Melanie Klein replied: in your own words, Dr. Bion, psychoanalysis is a preconception in search of a realization. 

Bion went on to expand this idea on a large scale, making it the core of his psychoanalytic model of mental functioning: preconception seeks a realization that gives birth to a conception (thoughts in general). If the conception retains its value as a preconception, it continues to generate new conceptions and their transformation into concepts.

The definition of the concept as a vague expectation that in the future there will be an omnipotent and welcoming mind capable of fulfilling human needs and incompleteness is a kind of primary ingenuousness of Being. The inevitable frustration of such expectation produces what is historically called “original guilt” or “original sin,” concepts present in the most diverse myths of origin and religions. 

In fact, this definition allows us to understand in a very categorical way why religious ideas, which promise fulfillment after earthly life, that is, Heaven, Paradise, Nirvana, Valhalla, 70 virgins, and other advantages, are so successful. They provide the illusion that in the future there is a place that will bring full satisfaction of preconception. 

It is worth noting that the introduction of the future tense into the Unconscious leads Bion to conceive an unconscious that goes beyond the Freudian unconscious. It looks like a kind of “warehouse” of the possibilities of the human species, a “storehouse of thoughts without a thinker” or a “memory of the future,” which would be a kind of shadow cast from the future that will welcome us, and where human beings will find solutions to their problems.

Bion's model understand the primary physical object of preconception, the breast, as a generative function of the psyche. The breast is not just a physical object provided in isolation by the mother, but primarily the mother's mind as everything she brings with her in response to the baby's communications. The act of bringing the child to the breast is a mental act: a conception of the maternal mind attending to the mind of her baby.

The theory unfolds into a practice that understands human beings as innately mental beings and therefore destined to seek another mind that meets their needs. The existence of the mind should clarify that it is not a purely instinctive mechanism as in other animals, but the integrated action of a function that involves the unfolding in space-time of the depth of thoughts and feelings. 

The complexity brought about by the concept also shows that it is not just about the maternal mind, because, not being an isolated entity (as many theories suggest), it brings with it the minds of sexually united parents, ensuring the existence of the mother's function. These bring the mentality of the family culture, and this brings the mentality of society—which guarantees and protects the configuration of the family—and, finally, as a backdrop to society, a creative mind constantly seeking solutions so that all these bonds continue in unison to preserve the life of the species. 

There is a kind of spiral in this process similar to the DNA model. The following drawing shows the infinite development of preconception, which is—as I intend to demonstrate—always an oedipal preconception.

I understand the concept of oedipal preconception to describe the main solutions that enabled the transition from pre-human to human species, that is, the acquisition of a capacity to seek emotional experiences, or the ability to seek psychic three-dimensionality.  In other words, the human baby seeks the mother's mind so that she can lead it to the breast: there are always three objects relating to each other as mental acts. The baby is fed simultaneously in the body and mind, or rather, an interface body/mind fed throughout life by experiences. This will always be a frontier where various clashes take place to achieve conceptions and concepts that function properly. 

The inevitable failures of this process of mental feeding/digestion produce the various dissociations that lead to the known human universe. As examples, I can cite the culture of emptiness, consumerism, the culture of original guilt and original sin, unpayable debts, devastating group morals, but also, at the other end of the spectrum, the most advanced forms of science, art, and literature.

The psychoanalytic model of pre-conceptions broadly contemplates the potential of the complex experience of human life. It shows the creative aspects of solutions in the spiral of surprising overcoming of the most difficult situations, the apparently insoluble problems, the most incurable diseases, which so often lead astonished doctors to say things like “I'll have to tear up my medical books.” 

Years of psychoanalytic practice have taught me that the experiences of analysis slip through language, and whenever we think we are capturing something of their truth, they refer us to another truth. The truth we deal with is always covered in shadows, obscurities, and edges marked by the unknown. Certainty only exists when fed by the collagen of lies, whose function is to fill the gaps of ignorance caused by the central phenomenon of psychic reality: the inaccessibility of “O” (Bion, 1965). In other words, we know that our work is inevitably difficult, and that the history of the psychoanalytic process is not linear, much less moral. We must always visualize some possible failure, and even inevitable failure to a certain extent, precisely because uncertainty about psychic reality is fundamental, not only to keep observations going, but above all for the very survival of the mind.

It is a matter of the analytical process to have a basis more on intention than on certainty. The principle of uncertainty removes the guarantee, but keeps alive the intention to seek the truth. In other words, the fact that we are analysts, that we have had long experience of analysis, does not guarantee us exemption from difficulties, because we are dealing with an object that is complex and therefore constantly evolving. 

Throughout his life, Freud lived with the immense possibilities of openness that his ideas brought, despite living in an era of tight limits of determinism. Determinism had a record of scientific validity by which Freud intended, as a starting point, to inscribe psychoanalysis in Culture; which could have been fatal to him since it generates an enclosing system. As is well known, Freud did not believe in the limitations of scientific exteriority. He took it as an essay in which improvisations allow for unusual movements. Freud always remained open to the unknown. With this, he endured gaps and rough edges that needed constant revision, and sustained as much autonomy as possible, which allowed him to dive into the unknown. 

Freud embraced an immense task: he sought to remove the unconscious from Antiquity and insert it into Modernity. For this Herculean task, he even thought that he needed to seek some recognition for psychoanalysis by science. He went through a period in which he sought in Physics an ideal of science, while Biology was his ideal science. Inside this search, he insinuated recognition of psychoanalysis as a science if the reader recognized science in his writings. However, Freud did not believe so much in this project. For this reason, his thinking made the necessary and prudent advances. This “disbelief” ultimately prevented psychoanalysis from being reduced to a simple science, just as the sciences chosen in the context of the ideal could not be reduced to psychoanalysis. Nor was it possible to oppose these two terms in an absolute way or to establish a harmonious complementarity. It was the art of uncertainty that Freud placed at the service of human beings.

Michel Serres uses the metaphor of the “Northwest Passage” to describe the path of the search for scientific knowledge, comparing it to the search through an icy labyrinth linking two continents. It is a bouncy path, full of dead ends, which forces the traveler, the thinker, to advance and retreat, to doubt, to experience uncertainty. It is a path full of impasses. However, the “Northwest Passage” makes Freud’s work full of resources, some of which so far unexplored. Keeping these important characteristics in mind prevents the iniquities of stagnation of Knowledge.

Edgar Morin established that the Method for complex thought must cross the “Northwest Passage” using the following resources:

1) Notion of a System (Set of different parts, united and organized. It is necessary to join the parts to the whole and the whole to the parts).

2) Circularity (Retroactive nature of the system. Contrary to the linear idea, it suggests a circular causality where the effect itself returns to the cause).

3) Autopoietic looping (We are the product of a cycle of reproductions that produces generations and generations. The product is the producer itself. The effect is also the cause).

4) Hologrammatic (Opposite to linear. The part is within the whole and the whole is within the parts).

5) Dialogical (It is necessary to bring together antagonistic principles that are, at the same time, complementary).

6) Reuniting the one who knows with his knowledge (Integrating the observer with his observation and the knower with his knowledge).

Morin completes the Method with the Ethics of Tolerance governed by four axes of thought:

1) Principle of Free Expression: Voltaire: “your ideas are hateful, but I died for the right you have to express them”.

2) Democratic Institution: allows and encourages the conflict of ideas, if it does not take the form of physical and violent confrontation. Democracy demands respect for minorities that deviate from the majority. The truth may not lie with the majority, but rather with power.

3) Pascal's concept: “the opposite of truth is not error, but a contrary truth”.

4) Niels Bohr's concept: “the opposite of a profound truth is not error, but another profound truth”.

The thinking resources described above are in tune with the concept of the unconscious of preconceptions, and emphasize that the psychoanalytic object is different from the Freudian unconscious, which is the unconscious of drives. Certainly, this difference does not aim at affirming that Freud was wrong. It means that Freud's work covered the essential part and that the human unconscious, from the perspective of preconception and the complexity of the psychoanalytic object, expands the concept to a level beyond the Freudian unconscious. In reality, the unconscious without designations will always be far beyond what we can reach, it always demonstrates the impossibility of a conclusion.

Applying the aforementioned notion of autopoietic looping here in the spiral model that means the point of arrival is always a starting point. Any observation only allows for transience. This characteristic, as we will see later, refers us to the concept of Caesura (1977) used by Bion.

Pre-conception and Caesura

Bion's work Caesura (1977) one of the main references in this book uses a quote from Freud, in Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety (1926): there is much more continuity between intrauterine and post-natal life than the impressive caesura of birth would have us believe.

Freud's phrase seems to sound like Shakespeare's speech in Othello, in which the playwright says: There are more things in heaven and earth, Othello, than are dreamt of in our vain philosophy. However, Freud's phrase, more than a vital reflection, was also a kind of “message” to Otto Rank's theory of birth trauma; a theory that sought to universalize the origin of psychic phenomena in a specific event. Freud knew well that the origin is lost forever. It is only useful to allow our imagination to work, thus subtly questioning Rank's absence of epistemology. In Bion, the issue is no different; the essential is always in the imaginative capacity seeking, not exactly the origin, but an argumentative circularity that can lead to the future of Being. Pre-conception_ as an original vigor that moves the psychic apparatus_ will become present in conceptions and their creative unfolding with a target in the future. Pre-conception has as its future a conception that keeps the value of pre-conception.

At the end of the text Caesura (1977), Bion expands on Freud's phrase and gives it full complexity:

“There is more continuity between autonomously appropriated quanta and the waves of conscious thought and feeling than the impressive caesura of transference and countertransference would have us believe. So? We investigate the caesura; not the analyst, nor the analysand, nor the unconscious, nor the conscious, nor sanity, nor insanity. But, the caesura, the bond, the synapse, the (countertrans)-ference), the transitive and intransitive mood”.

Every caesura establishes as a search for Knowledge in a line of continuity of past events with the present and_ concomitantly_ sustains the possibility of an opening to the future. The plasticity of this imaginary line frees the imaginative capacity to deal with the most original elements, such as, for example, one can postulate in a radical way opening a line of connection between a past buried in total oblivion and a future buried in the not yet happened, both of which can hardly be admitted as being part of thought.

The caesura as an interface between the liquid environment (prenatal mind) and the dry environment (postnatal mind) indicates that there is a complex crossing with dreamlike and imaginative contents, bringing the three-dimensionality of Oedipus to the forefront of discourse, breaking with the closure of meaning that the individual's narcissistic conceptions (-Y) can cause. 

In several works (2003, 2011, 20014) I have applied the concept of Radical Imagination (Castoriadis (1997)) to represent the original vehicle of preconceptions, or the root of the movement that gives rise to the human frame. This root is activated and shaped by a series of interactions of rhythms: rhythms of the mother's and baby's heart, of the lungs, of the internal organs, and rhythms coming from outside the mother's body - noises of falling asleep, waking up, work - in short, all the rhythms of the social-historical world. The infinite set of these rhythms provokes an expansion of human features  they carve forms in the still formless world  that is something like a limit of chaos. It is at this limit that the maximum creativity in the possibilities of combinations became a fundamental organization moving in an autopoietic looping.

In developing these ideas (2008, 2009, 2014), I represented this original moment of preconception by the image of the frames of a triangular window still empty of landscape. A window with frames made of time in which the individual's becoming has a non-linear capture or connection to the future (a pre-vision).

I think that Bion suggests this process when he quotes Martin Buber (1977): In the mother's womb, man knows the universe and forgets it at birth.

In the analytical experience, we can often hear traces of these very primitive experiences. For example, in the account of an analysand about a difficult life that focuses on the feeling of being a person without any value, a slave to forces that do not care about what happens to him. When this appears - as a hypothesis - we can consider something of a very archaic world that Bion called the “urge to exist”. A force is completely indifferent to the objects it affects. In particular, I draw an analogy between this force and the perception of the first human beings of the forces of Nature, presenting itself as something mysterious, indifferent to the disappearance of species, nor to the violent predatory activity among them: this force simply needs objects to perpetuate life, it has no rules or values. Its characteristics seem to indicate that the human function was violently broken, giving way to something cruel, voracious, merciless, and envious, without respect for any rules.

In the analysand’s associations, a constant conjunction with its associative lines converge to the history of a solitary struggle against this “force” (“urge”). There is a struggle to remain a person, to remain an individual in combat against annihilation, against slavery, against the power of this free and meaningless, almost chaotic energy. A struggle in many moments for the freedom to be and live.

Bion uses the word “existence”, but considers that he is trying to describe something that does not have human characteristics. I conjecture that this is the embryonic part of pre-conception, or the radical imagination exposing the individual to terrifying situations, while searching for a rhythm that creates a beginning of meaning. However, terror can move through the imagination, and thus, even ancestors can be seen as slaves of this force that makes the rules about incest and parricide (the Oedipal rules) not work. This terrified understanding of history suggests the existence of a force that demands total submission, and that did not hesitate to force everyone to generate babies.

The inherent feeling of helplessness is proportional to the degree of omnipotence attributed to this force. The patient seems to come closer to some understanding that symbolizes his terror when he compares it to the human imagination working towards the full exercise of evil. He cites the Nazi concentration camps, in which the human imagination was able to create a factory of deaths, simply to perpetuate a delusional idea of ​​the superiority of one human being over another. I will now mention the case of an analysand who very often said she was upset because she did not understand the analyst's interpretations. At other times, this difficulty, which we can call the difficulty in establishing bonds, translates into her inability to come to sessions. She insists on saying that she does not know how or why this happens and that she cannot even say anything about what is happening to her.

However, I can notice from her facial expression that her mood is one of bad humor towards the analyst's interpretations. I suppose that it is also towards anything she has to do in her daily life. We can say that her mood is transitive: the mood that requires a complement from another human being in order to be able to live life. However, the patient says that she does not notice any of this.

Another approach to the situation supposes that her statements about an inability to form links states about an inability to dream or as a defiant testimonial about an ability not to dream. Not to dream means that the other does not exist.

Dreaming is a complex and transitive act. It concerns transitive actions. To be, to be, to change, to live, to grow are transitive verbs. In the life of the analysand, all these actions are compromised. We can conjecture that in order to dream, she has to negotiate with something terrifying, very primitive, before she can have any social awareness of Being, changing, growing, living. However, the fear of this still unrepresentable something prevents her from approaching negotiations. She suffers from chronic insomnia; she can only sleep by anesthetizing herself with medication, and on an increasingly increasing scale.

In Bion, the work of analysis as a dream deals with the opposite process of the classical analytical method. Dreaming is always a continuous process that belongs to mental life to negotiate the elements of living.

The psychoanalytic object: some epistemological questions

The psychoanalytic object  from the epistemological point of view is the object of psychoanalysis to Bion, that is, the basic paradigm of his theoretical-clinical development of his work until the last session. That means that is open to changes in every moment of his practice. The object of psychoanalysis is today’s referential.

Like the other objects of psychoanalysis formulated by other authors the psychoanalytic object establishes the model and the field of the singularity of the analyst W.R. Bion. It is the expression of how and in what material the analyst directs his listening, and how through it he constructs and applies his interpretations. In other words, it is both the models and the theories through which the analyst conceives and constructs his understanding of transference, while maintaining a critical reference for his interpretations of this phenomenon. Ultimately, it is the connection between theory and practice, or the circularity between abstraction, model, theory, interpretation, practice, critical evaluation.

However, it is worth noting that every singularity leads to divergences, and we often have to ask ourselves - given the existence of so many - what makes psychoanalysis possible? The reality of the unconscious itself is the main cause of these divergences, both because of its real inaccessibility and the way in which this inaccessibility is constructed by personal theories. That is why there are differences in the method of investigation, which leads us to ask what, therefore, would be the difference in Bion?

We can try to begin to answer this question through the formula of the psychoanalytic object written in characters that suggest a mathematical formula: {ψ (ξ) (±Y) M} in chapter 22 of Learning from Experience (1962b).

Mathematical abstraction is categorically consistent with the proposal of Bion's Theory of Thinking (1962a). Let us remember that he places the relationship between psychoanalysis (the practical answer) and philosophy (life questions) as being of the same order as that between pure mathematics and applied mathematics, that is, psychoanalysis needs to have a field defined by epistemological principles that protect it from the interference of habits and beliefs. Such habits and beliefs usually promote discussions about ontology as if metaphor and myth were real. Ontology without epistemology, instead of opening, closes the space for investigation.

The basic epistemological proposal implicit in the mathematical formulation is not to saturate the investigation with meanings using a writing with a high degree of abstraction. Meanings may or may not emerge through practice. There is no a priori for the meanings of the psychoanalytic object.

We can translate the abstraction of the formula as follows: the pre-conception ψ (ξ) seeks a realization (R) that gives birth to a conception in the spectrum of possibilities that goes from –Y (narcissism) to +Y (socialism) under the constant aegis of the complexity (M) inherent to a biological organism.

When I use the model, I always try to emphasize that the first level of realization always produces conceptions-beliefs. The more these acquire roots in the pole of narcissism (-Y), the more difficult, and even impossible, it becomes to move on to the level of thinking, which is where one can evolve to learn from experience, and from there to the creation of something new or unique.

For example, fundamentalist societies that are structured based on dogmas and religious beliefs are able to create very little (or nothing) in the artistic areas. Creativity simply does not exist in music and painting. It cannot be said that it does not exist completely, because when it does appear, it is only vehicles for ideological propaganda. In general, beliefs crush the individual's ability to think and differentiate themselves from the group mentality. They are a type of concept derived from a conception that has lost its pre-conception value; a value that would allow for the generation of new conceptions and the innovation of concepts. In other words, without the ability to think, one cannot learn from experience: consequently, one cannot reach the level of creativity, including the ways of relating to oneself and others. Fundamentalist societies do not accept differences: all their members must be equal, differences are not welcome.

In general, conceptions and concepts are the product of the complex process of Realization that interacts with the various functions of the individual's mind.

The first of these functions is the alpha function of the Self, responsible for making contact and negotiating between internal and external reality, through the digestion of sensory impressions and raw reality. The result of this function is to be a container for the product of digestion; However, the function can never be fully realized: it always has some degree of failure intrinsically (since, since it is dreaming, if the individual had a perfect dream he would never wake up). Another vertex of the impossibility of the function being fully realized is the inalienable difference between one individual and another: singularity can never be entirely contained.

The inevitable failure finds two supporting functions in the mind: the intuitive function and the social function. The intuitive function, when developed, may transform into mystical ideas, science, art, or into the psychoanalytic function of the personality. The latter is trained for analytical work. The social function would be responsible for providing the individual with elements so that he can deal with facts and situations that he cannot deal with alone. These elements are laws, rituals, codes, ceremonies, etc. The social function is always historical; it provides references for the individual's historicity to locate itself in his group context. Conceptions and concepts, in turn, have their alpha function that reproduces the scope of the circuit's containment capacity.

A significant part of the concept of the psychoanalytic object - with all its complexity_ is the process of Realization.

However, this has often been understood in a simplistic way as being merely a process of saturation by reality, that is, as a preconception meets reality, the movement naturally produces a conception. That is not the case.

When I investigated more thoroughly the concept, it was possible to grasp its mathematical origin, and realize that very few theoretical attentions was given to it in psychoanalytical literature, to the detriment of the polarities of the model, which are preconceptions and conceptions.

The mathematical meanings take into account many epistemological questions with which Bion formulated it. They provide a different view, especially when it became more evident that the mathematical vertex led me to the epistemology of complexity.

With this new perspective of investigation, the concept of Realization expanded the paradigm shift that occurred with the formulation of the Theory of Thinking.

The mathematical concept defines Realization as a succession of infinite sets with repetition of signs. Such definition implies it develops while becoming more and more complex. Its understanding follows the field of functions by seeking diverse variables that confront invariants in the investigation process, and by coexisting with the paradoxes and contradictions that naturally exist in analytical work.

Expanding the model of Realization

In this chapter, I resort to a few rational mathematical concepts to support my imaginative conjectures in order to construct a model of Realization. This thinking is consistent with the foundations of the Theory of Thinking (Bion, 1962a): psychoanalysis, while situated by the metaphysics of truth provided by pure mathematics, requests to state clearly its field. Likewise, in applied mathematics, psychoanalysis must be aware and discover its limitations and possibilities, and, above all, the epistemological principles that govern it. Dealing with questions of life, psychoanalysis require them to be ethically translated, here is where philosophy merge in the field. The slippage between parameters shows the complexity of the field and points to the constant need for evolution.

Taking the mathematical definition of Realization given at the last chapter, which is the succession of infinite sets with repetition of signs, I will consider signs as individual proto-symbols, which undergo transformations until they emerge in the field of symbolic exchanges. 

In this field, we have heteronomous symbols and autonomous symbols. The former are symbols acquired from the culture in which the subject lives and finds tools common to all: concepts. Autonomous symbols are those created by the individual or the result of the psychic processing that marks subjectivity. 

Autonomous symbols are not always shareable as concepts, but they can be very powerful conceptions, and for which we often need poets for this task, as well as scientists and other artists.

The process of Realization, according to Bion's imaginative conjectures (see footnotes), suggests that it occurs in two evolutionary stages, which are simultaneously related by a caesura. At the apex of ontology, we have an embryonic, indeterministic mind, the essential bedrock of the human process, a mental space full of potentiality and possibilities. After crossing the caesura of birth, we have its unfolding and expansion as a postnatal mind, subject to experiences that circumscribe the universe of determinations and symbolic exchanges.

Infinite sets are very specific to each stage of Realization, prenatal and postnatal. I describe this difference in a practical way. The prenatal is always an unknown, inaccessible, and unknowable origin; the “O,” or the “infinite formless void from which the world is conquered” (Bion, quoting Milton in Paradise Lost, 1965).

The original preconception—an expression I sometimes suggest adopting in place of innate preconception—is realized from the embryonic mind, forming a kind of empty “frame” that develops in anticipation of receiving the postnatal “landscape.” It is, as already explained in previous chapters, a window to the world.

This framework consists of time-space derived from the rhythms of the intrauterine world and some extra uterine rhythms. For example, in the former, we can highlight the rhythms of the baby's heart, the rhythms of the mother's heart, the rhythms of the bladder, intestinal peristalsis, and the influence that these rhythms undergo with the mother's daily life. This whole range of timbres, varied tones, and rhythmic forms function like an orchestra under the baton of daily routines, tasks, and vicissitudes. In addition to these, we have the most diverse incidents, multiple coincidences, and conflicts, which manifest themselves in setbacks, syncopations, and dissonances: all experienced in various bonds, especially in the bond between the mother and herself and with the baby. There should be no doubt that, in this rhythmic way, culture reaches the baby in the womb, which is not immune to this influence, despite being immune to most things that the intrauterine environment is able to protect.

In the first phase of realization, prenatal, I postulate the following infinite sensory sets: touch, smell, hearing, and movement. These sets function as operators that contribute to the formation of the prenatal framework. The fact that only four operators are mentioned does not illustrate the complexity of the model with which we work. It suffices to note how there is immense variability in everyday life, given the most diverse possible combinations of a set of four to four. Therefore, due to its complexity, it becomes epistemologically necessary to add an empty set, referring to the M factor of the psychoanalytic object. This factor inserts complexity into the psychoanalytic object by characterizing it as an open, non-linear system. Thus, in this model, we will have to deal with a minimum of combinations from five to n. This is the same as referring to Infinity.

The result of the combinations of infinite sets in a psychic apparatus framework crosses the caesura of birth and recombines with new effects from external reality. In this reality, the records of sets of high sensory intensity are augmented by the visual element, but above all depend on the emotional universe brought about by maternal reverie. This turbulent interaction will gradually form the landscape of the preformed frame: conceptions arise and, later, concepts, both bringing the vision of links between the external world and the internal world. In other words, everything occurs as in a holographic vision where the objects of external reality interact in a growing spiral with the objects of the internal world.

In this second phase of realization, we must also—for the same reasons already described—consider the reality of an empty set, so as not to lose sight of the infinite combinations, an indisputable example of human uniqueness.

The alpha function operates from birth in the caesura between minds. It is responsible for “digesting” the interaction of sets transported from the liquid medium to the dry medium. The M factor (mystery) adds indeterminacy to the perspectives used, increasing the possibilities of infinite combinations.

Another epistemological question must be raised: I suggest that the movement driving preconception in the embryonic mind should be given another theoretical status. I believe that it cannot be said to occur through projective identification, as there is not yet an object of destination in the liquid medium. Thus, as I have already pointed out in previous chapters, I propose to call this movement radical imagination (Castoriadis, 1997), and only after birth to consider that projective identification exists when there is an object to receive it. Before birth, I believe that there is only the formation of a space-time frame, an empty landscape frame, preparing for postnatal life.

If an object is formed at this stage, the frame will become saturated prematurely. As a result, it will become primitively rigid, connected only to sensory sets, giving rise to the conditions we know as autism (generally stuck in repetitive rhythms that do not change with the influence of any object). 

If we consider here a thesis entitled “The full-term fetus and the rhythms of its world: the pre-dream,” several possibilities for elaboration can be realized. First, I suggest that two aspects be investigated in the clinic: the interaction between the radical imaginary (which is the initial movement from pre-conception to reaching external experience with the mother's mind) and the imagination itself (driven by projective identification emerging in verbal language) up to the social imaginary.

In the first stage, the mother produces the rupture of the closed psychic world of the full-term fetus. In other words, the socialization of the child is initially achieved through maternal reverie, daydreaming, or the interaction between the radical imaginary and the imaginary of language itself. However, this action is not—as has already been shown—only a function of the mother, but also the function of sexually united parents who support the maternal function, the function of the family that supports the function of the couple, the function of society that supports the function of the family, and the creative social mind, the final integration that generates solutions so that this circuit expands and becomes stronger and more effective.

The maternal role should thus be understood as representative of functions developed over at least six to seven million years of attempts at hominization. This historical dimension, which is difficult to quantify, does not invalidate the fact that the mother's uniqueness is there, with her unconscious acting decisively on the child. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that this unconscious is also the result of a process of socialization undergone by the mother. If the mother had not undergone this same process, she obviously could not be a mother or teach the child to begin to think and then to speak. For six to seven million years, possibilities have varied from individual to individual, never repeating themselves, and combining infinitely, revealing the complexity and all the theories that may claim complete knowledge.

How can these broad questions be placed within the limited time frame of the analyst's work? The starting point must be a specific mental state that is not influenced by this quantification of millions of years. Bion (1965, 1967, 1970) describes it as a state without memory and without desire, or a state of negative capacity. With this state of mind, we can try to unite blind intuitions with empty concepts (psychoanalytic models and theories). In other words, the psychoanalytic mind needs to dive deep into time and space in order to emerge with imaginative conjectures and rational conjectures that form thoughts about what is happening in the present moment of the session. In terms of the transformations of “O” and “O” (1965), we need to put the creative ‘Onthos’ into constant action (“Opus”). In short, in the analytical mind there is the pre-dream/dream movement, or radical imagination with the imagination itself of the experience of life as a whole.

The union of rational and imaginative conjectures can generate progressive thoughts and questions that acquire specificity in interpretive language. The analyst's intuition initially responds to the rhythms communicated by the analysand, and perceives within itself the concepts used in the interpretation. Thus, the analyst connects these perceptions to his/her chosen theories that must be in tune with their way of Being and, at the same time, need to be adequate to contain the perceptions of the material that was communicated by the analysand. Everything is about one essential question: how to put into words for the patient the observations? How to develop an interpretive language?

Freud took at least a quarter of a century to decide that, for the practice of psychoanalysis, it was less important to have studied medicine than to be knowledgeable about literature, ethnology, history, philosophy, and archaeology. He supported this proposal in The Question of Lay Analysis (1926). In other words, the psychoanalyst needs to be competent in capturing and containing the phenomena of intuition and language. 

Bion (1970) points out that Freud's work is an example of this grasping and containing, which he called the Language of Achievement. The term comes from a letter by the poet Keats, in which he described Shakespeare's competence to his brother, and refers to a language that is both a prelude to action and a kind of action in itself. It is a prelude because it allows one to think and prepare for future situations. It is an action in itself because it not only actively deals with something that arises and is revealed through the phenomenon of thinking, but also because it transforms into language that has reach and duration for those for whom it is intended. The prelude complements the action that complements the prelude, so there is an argumentative circularity that produces a successful language for the moment. Thus, the expression Language of Success essentially means that one celebrates precisely the advent of Being, although it can be confused with the advent of cultural and social successes of external reality.

Once again, the ideas that led me to develop these theses originated in Bion's Theory of Thinking (1962a). In my view, Bion's theory introduced the notion of implied order, which is the logic of the complex object. The word, with Latin roots, means “to envelop” or “inward.” Implied order contrasts with explained order, which is dominant in general thinking (the logic of the simple object). Implied order generates difficult and uncomfortable questions that can spark wisdom in the individual and, as such, even if a wealth of language is achieved, they cannot be fully put into words. 

I think that in Bion (1965) this description of implied logic coincides with what he called transformation into O. Only emotional experience, which is also an example of implied order, can lead to such a transformation.

In general, Bion's theory of transformations (1965) shows how the combination of infinite psychic sets produces experiences that lead to the formation of conceptions and concepts. Both can be represented by a personal and/or shared view of the world with well-defined “inside” and “outside” dimensions. These dimensions usually appear clearly in the space of dreams. 

The psychic world is constructed with the expansion of thoughts, feelings, and ideas, while another aspect of the mind undoes this growth and gives rise to delusions, beliefs, misconceptions, lies, etc.

The issue can be seen as symmetrical human possibilities that can be revealed by analytical interpretations, opening up a space for the creation of parameters for language development. For example, mental symmetries: omnipotence and helplessness, rationality and perversion, generosity and complacency, joy and sadness, loneliness and dependence.

Symmetry works analogously to the image of a fold, which also suggests the three-dimensional image of a function. In other words, symmetry creates a spectrum of intermediate possibilities, between one term and another, to be named by analytical work. Each person's personal history should provide the uniqueness that connects one polarity to another, and that connects the subject to the Self, to the body, and to others.

The above examples of symmetries are just a few among the infinite combinations produced by the human mind. It is up to each analyst to establish their unique spectrum and use it to capture these possibilities, without forgetting to apply the Uncertainty Principle to their observations.

The Psychoanalytic Object and the Uncertainty Principle

“Keats discovered a Principle of Uncertainty that he called negative capability.” Memoir of the Future, volume I, pg. 220

In this chapter, I expand the link between the psychoanalytic object and the Uncertainty Principle (Chuster, 2011, 2014).  

The Uncertainty Principle, as already shown in previous chapters, provides us with the status of a complex object, representing a significant paradigm shift in Bion's work. This shift constitutes our permanent challenge to renew our thinking.

We can describe it by the interaction between the oedipal configuration of the analyst (A) and the oedipal configuration of the analysand (P) always containing many more unconscious elements (I) than the language (L) used in its translation can express. This means that one can never observe the whole of a relationship, because when we choose something to observe, or when we try to put that observation into language, the split inherent in the act leaves out several elements (Hence the importance to work with the notion of a complex object). That is, in a general sense, something is being excluded or not included in the observation. Our observations depend on this exclusion or non-inclusion, whether we want it or not.

From a practical point of view, following the Uncertainty Principle will_ at the very least_ prevent beliefs in a complete interpretation, or not being involved in the mythology of a correct interpretation, or in the fallacy of the existence of an interpretation that is conclusive. It also avoids the habit of repeating interpretations, or repeating them simply because the patient claims not to have understood them, and of having only one interpretation to formulate. If the latter situation occurs, we should be suspicious of the interpretation and continue observing. When another, or others, arise, we can decide better and, as I intend to specify later, generally decide on the most difficult one to give.

In another sense, there is always uncertainty about the origin and observation of any phenomenon. Taking into account the emergence of uncertainty means giving rhythm to the world, and with that exposing a difference, and it is in the way that we perceive the importance of something deeply linked to our human condition: time. 

We perceive time since there is expressively rhythm in human life. Rhythm produces a rupture of continuities, and at the same time, produces continuity. We perceive a caesura with the existence of time. 

When uncertainty erupts, it brings the surprise of the new as time brings non-linear dimensions to the limit of our perception.

The question unfolds in the singular perception of time and its influence on how to understand and conceive the formation of certain mental characteristics or mental states. That is, why are certain conceptions and concepts predominant in one person and not in another?  

This may mean investigating how distinct conceptions and concepts — due to their uniqueness — generate their own styles of communication, and how these alternate or replace each other, computing their subtleties in a field of functions. This is a fundamental difference in thinking about Bion's proposals.

The primary element of psychoanalytic investigation—considering it in a field of functions—lies in the action of the alpha function. The term alpha indicates only the presence of unknowns in the ongoing investigation of the open system of the psychoanalytic object. In this process, we must maintain the hypothesis of a function failure always occurring, and in fact, it needs to occur to some degree for there to be an “awakening” (psychic birth), and for there to also be the discovery of the body (through beta elements). Thus, the degree of failure determines distinct and unique paths for this psychic awakening and for the formation of the concept of the body; some of which may suffer greater distortions in certain people than in others and which are ultimately expressed in the worldview brought to the analyst (along with the degree of psychic suffering they produce).

In the most severe degrees of failure, comparable to a functional disaster, it is no longer a question of the subject's awakening and perception of the body's existence, but rather the erasure of the subject and the distortion of bodily functioning. 

Placing the above statements in a spectral model, we have conceptions with degrees of distortion on four levels: of the Self, of history, of bodily perception, and of the Other (Non-Self). In practice, we depend on our imaginative capacity to make the connection between the conceptions that translate conceptual distortions and the psychic pain inherent in them.

In the formation of each conception, I observe two simultaneous areas, one area where the impact of aesthetic experience (feelings + sensory activity) occurs and another area where this aesthetic experience acquires an ethical value (conceptions and concepts). This relationship, which we can call ethical-aesthetic, is the emotional experience. It occurs when a selected fact creates a relationship between sets of three elements that can be theoretically described and named. For example; mouth, nipple, breast; mouth, gaze, word; physical embrace, gaze, word, etc.

It also means that even in babies, whose thought processes are very rudimentary, every moment involves judgment and decision-making related to the selected fact. This “ability” to make decisions and judgments can be observed as the baby's temperament, and will produce what will be known as the baby's genius. The latter encompasses their reactions and decisions to the inevitable failures of reverie. The extent of these failures will produce more or less appropriate choices. 

On the other hand, the result of these relationships is known as the superego, a psychic instance of mediation and observation between two areas that combine to form conceptions, but also representing what these conceptions allow for mediation with reality and in the choice of selected facts that produce the specific repetition responsible for the formation of a concept.

At this point, I propose adopting a spectrum of superegos: different types of superego according to their incidence in the spectrum of narcissism/social-ism_ the core of the psychanalytical object. (Bion, 1962b). 

For example, an extreme degree of narcissistic polarity coincides to the murderous superego, and an extreme degree of social-istic incidence coincides to the social superego. Between one extreme and the other, we have the emergence of various conceptions and concepts that will result in the several known psychic frameworks.

It is possible to understand this process through the lens of a container/contained relationship whose harmony (K) is altered by the action of different types of superego. This action has effects of restriction on the contained, which creates an area of disharmony between container and contained. The crushing becomes greater while more elements are being added. In summary, the use of projective identification as the basic form of communication is progressively restrained by elements such as intolerance to frustration, the existence of the non-self produce frustration, the incompleteness of oedipal objects, the violence of primitive relationships, exploitative envy, voracity, and destructive envy will all expand the area of disharmony in the container/contained relationship. (Bion, 1965) 

It is worth noticing that the constant conjoint of elements provides the experience of time and space. Time generates causes, establishes relationships between before and after, present and future, past and present. Space indicates the unification of elements. The theory deals with the relationship between time and space and elements unified by this interaction, which measure the depth of individuality.

Psychoanalytic observation, complexity, and negative capability

In this chapter, it was not possible to avoid repeating aspects developed in previous chapters.  Overall, it is almost a review of the theses mentioned before.

The expression negative capability helps the analyst's task in the face of uncertainty that governs his field. Bion (1970) borrowed this expression from the poet Keats: the ability to tolerate uncertainties, mysteries, and half-truths without anxious attempts to reach an understanding right away.

When we use negative capability, we become able to observe simultaneously the aspects of the psychoanalytic object, since uncertainties correspond to pre-conception, half-truths to conceptions of the narcissism/socialism spectrum, and mysteries to factors inherent in complexity.

In previous chapters, I have attempted to highlight and study the two stages of the process of Realization. I did establish a specific field of functions for each of them, and emphasized how this process is the constant basis of mental life. 

The embryonic mind, a term that defines the first stage of Realization, is never fully born. There are parts that remain waiting for a future mind capable of giving them the conditions for birth. When they are born, they can be thoughts without a thinker, wild thoughts, stray thoughts, or even thoughts with a recognized owner.

The two stages of Realization became clearer to me through a re-reading of Bion's later works: Caesura (1975) and the Four Papers (1976, 1979), which highlight the Caesura between a prenatal stage (Bion, 1975, 1977a, 1977b, 1977c) and a postnatal stage. 

In other words, I postulate a spectrum that begins with maternal reverie and becomes more complex throughout life with the alpha function. The difference between the two is somewhat obvious: reverie is predominantly sensory and the alpha function is predominantly symbolic. Both are extremely complex functions. We cannot study them in a simplistic way, nor can we capture them with saturated concepts.

In the embryonic or prenatal stage, I propose as a general theory a combination of infinite sets of high sensory intensity that form the three-dimensional framework of preconception. The type of combination of these sets will influence the type of failure that can occur with reverie and, subsequently, with alpha function. This failure will determine the types of conceptions and concepts that dominate the postnatal psyche. These dominant mental states can mistakenly be defined into psychiatric diagnoses. However, psychoanalysts can think differently, and we must do so in the name of psychoanalytic freedom of thought.

In summary, in the first stage of Realization, infinite sets of high sensory intensity combine and repeat themselves, creating psychic frameworks that will influence, after birth, in a distinct way for each individual, the type of configuration achieved by the sets in the second stage.

We can even recognize them in the second stage, through observation of predominant mental states, but how and why they combine in the first stage is impossible to observe. In this sense, it is consistent to refer, as Bion did, to the realm of the inaccessible: a mental state that remains active throughout life alongside the unconscious and the conscious. Perhaps in the future we will be able to make wider observations about what happens there, thus preventing a series of problems that may occur. Nevertheless, for now, we will keep this hypothesis as science fiction.

In several works, I have referred to the inaccessible prenatal environment, proposing a mechanism more primitive than projective identification. This mechanism would be responsible for combining sets of high sensory intensity in the embryonic mind. Such a mechanism would function like the “strange attractors” of physics, pointing to directions where a possible organization could emerge. I also used the model of the electroweak force, which points to hidden symmetries for matter to develop. I called this mechanism radical imagination, borrowing ideas from Castoriadis (1990). The mechanism refers to bodily rhythms in the intrauterine interaction between the fetus and the mother, and the influence of social rhythms on this interaction.

The term projective identification, as I have already clarified, is only for the basic and rudimentary level of communication in postnatal life.

The concepts, or thoughts that enable relationships with others, according to Bion (1962a, 1962b), are formed by the repetition of conceptions (emphasizing that this is not Freudian repetition compulsion, but complex repetition, the formation of a constant conjunction in experiences, where there is always a new element in each movement. (We can represent this movement with a spiral image). 

Concepts and conceptions create the contact barrier whose function is the negotiation between the conscious and the unconscious. It is also a supplier of specific selected facts for negotiation between the PS<->D positions (the arrow implies the space-time simultaneity of the schizo-paranoid and depressive positions) that appears in other negotiations such as Self/Not-Self, external/internal world, concepts and ideas. All of them have a specific and unique alpha function in their operation, which uniquely digested the experiences provided by the corresponding selected fact. 

The selected fact performs a certain combination or aggregation of sets of high sensory intensity, although it is not solely sensory in nature, container/contained, masculine/feminine, Self/Other, etc.

We then have the following spectrum:

High sensory intensity sets -> radical imagination -> empty preconception -> reverie/alpha function -> selected fact -> conceptions -> concepts.

The prenatal combination of sets meets reverie: the complex capacity for loving language of the maternal mind. I highlight in this capacity the loving gaze (activation of the visual set) and the tenderness of the word (successful word), completing the necessary care that provides the initial landscape of the window. This landscape acquires elements specific to the individual (singularity) from which their own worldview progressively emerges. The container /contained relationship unfold infinitely. The baby who was contained by the uterine continent, at birth has to contain the mother, who in turn has to contain the newborn baby, who will contain the mother who contained him, and so on infinitely. In this process, other elements come into play, such as the father, other characters in the environment, the family, and society in general, and as a backdrop, the creative and negative aspects of society.

The triangular window represents the inseparable oedipal characteristic of human beings, not only as a childhood drama of formation, but also as the tragedy that constitutes the impossibility of not being a three-dimensional and social being. For this reason, I defend the thesis that all preconceptions are Oedipal. I do not consider that there is anything human outside the Oedipal. Such a statement may sound radical, and I will not dispute if such a label is given because it contradicts theories that speak of a pre-Oedipal existence. I do not think that humans exist outside the mental realm, and the mental realm is synonymous with the Oedipal. The root of humanity is Oedipal. It does not seem to make sense to me to speak of pre-Oedipal.

The theory of infinite sets implicit in the concept of Realization also contemplates the tragic question of the never-ending search for an inaccessible truth; an inexhaustible search on which all human creativity depends. It is not about truth itself, but about the complexity that the term represents: something insoluble, unattainable, and paradoxical. The search for Truth expands into infinite sets in the most diverse human activities. Therefore, it is not philosophical truth but truth as synonym of human.

Once again, I emphasize that the terms prenatal and postnatal are, above all, metaphors for the creative process of the mind, the only possible outlet for our lives centered on that tragic, ineffable, inaccessible, and unknowable essence that is truth. Truth as a representation of human complexity: the soil of human creation.

The Uncertainty Principle and the development of new spaces for thinking

As already noted, the application of the Uncertainty Principle in understanding the concept of Realization implies the epistemology of nonlinear mathematical structures for the field of observation. An example of this is Hilbert space, which deals with infinite sequences and the choice of operators on this space.

The Hilbert space is an opening evolution and expansion of Euclidean space. It is not ne restricted to a finite number of dimensions. It is a vectorial space endowed with inner product, that is, with notions of distance (which in psychoanalytic thinking correspond to the observation of the intensity of projective identification) and angles (which correspond to the theory of multiple vertices). When Bion (1965) proposes a mind represented by points, lines, curves, hyperboles, etc., he was referring to a Hilbert space. 

“It is convenient to postulate the existence of a mind represented entirely by points, positions of objects, places where something used to be, or would be at some future date. Objects perceived in space contribute to the transformation of these elements (analogous to (ξ) or not specific things).”

When using in observation the methodology furnished by transformations it implies a search for a mental vector representation that necessarily involves functions. In turn, a functional analysis has as its base the study of transformations in unrestricted and nonlinear spaces. In mathematics, this premise is the Fourier transform and refers to the study of differential equations and integral equations. The term functional, in turn, always refers to the study of variations (detect variables).

In the case of psychoanalysis, we will write it as follows, by analogy:

T = f (α).  ∫ i/v.  (a, p) = K --> O

The formulation means: Analytical transformation = alpha function applied to the integration of variables and invariants of the field formed by the link analyst/patient, which has as a possible outcome a transformation of K towards O (an analytical transformation that enables a transformation into O).

Once again, the goal of thinking like this is to emphasize the complexity of mental operations in the analytical field using the visual resource of the abstract formula, but based on the dreamlike and imaginative characteristic: producing a wild thought. 

The model is better understandable as a holographic model, meaning that each of its parts join to reconstruct the whole. The whole is present in each part, and we can use different mental planes.

In an attempt to further clarify the above statements, and if it were possible to give an example of the use of a simple object as a term of comparison with a complex object, even knowing that any comparison is inadequate, I think I can find it in the system of Ego Psychology. This is a theory that centers the individual on a core of identification in the Ego. However, it is certain that the individual does not organize himself in a simplistic way around the Ego, even if the Ego were not a fiction and had a real existence. Here we find another clear situation where ontology does not accompany epistemology, generating a flattening of images rather than a holography.

Despite everything Freud said about the ego being a fiction, it seems that ego psychology believes in its real existence. However, the unconscious is not the ego, but a system of becoming human. Humans organize themselves into a multiplicity of vertices that start from preconception, which is something related to the future of the species, totally indeterminate, with no possibility of centralization, except in theory when it systematizes the psychic apparatus based on some premise.

Preconception, as an example of a concept governed by complexity, or part of a complex object, involves an unfolding into a spectrum of possibilities (conceptions). The view of complexity on the creation of every conception shows that everything changes at every moment and with every movement.

Another example of complexity is the container/contained relationship, which is part of an infinitesimal observation system generated by the Uncertainty Principle. Bion described this relationship with the following symbols:      ↔       the double-headed arrow indicates that container and contained exist simultaneously in time and space, and that the exchange between them is constant. These are elements of psychoanalysis in symmetry.

Through this understanding, it is possible to address a series of problems from other angles. First, the double-headed arrow establishes a separation and a continuity. It also indicates that there is something beyond the visible (caesura). The space between the two elements can then be seen in various ways: beyond the obvious indication of the relationship between feminine and masculine, it also indicates Self and Other, mouth and breast, mother and baby, individual and group, group and

society, etc. The possibilities are endless.

To observe the changes in the space between elements, we can use an operator that is the intensity of projective identification. As already mentioned, this intensity determines the various types of perceptual spatial distortions in each type of transformation. Overall, we can ascertain how this space, which can be considered the cradle of ethics and all the psychic nourishment (truth) that ethics needs to stay alive, can be altered, causing difficulties in the precious value that is responsibility in choices.

In any case, in which the intensity of projective identification is excessive, experience shows that it takes many years of analysis to help a person out of this situation, which reflects a state of critical psychic survival. Once there is such achievement, is still required the entire course of analysis ahead, which is the quality and stability of life concepts. Therefore, it involves a multiplicity of factors such as the quality of relationships, which determines factors such as physical health, long-term mental health, productivity, the ability to live with others, and curiosity combating senility.

At the basis of the process of acquiring quality, following the observation of the primordial encounter between minds made by projective identification (which we can call the fundamental word), we verify that it depends on the integration made by the act of reverie/alpha function. Thus, in analysis, the word is not simply an abstraction, but a specific state of language derived from transformations. The intrinsic power of the word therefore derives from the capacity for integration of reverie/alpha function, and from there it can be a vehicle for thought that attests to the encounter of minds.

Later on, we will see how the relative supremacy of psychoanalytic construction over interpretation, which constitutes the basis of symmetry, stems from the integration process described above. For construction tells a “story” (‘spectralizes’), rather than speaking specifically about an “observation.” The story favors the elements of psychoanalysis being agglutinated as an unsaturated and causal affective system rather than a simple juxtaposition.  

The story produced and presented as a construct should indicate that we are searching for singularity, a point where the individual can recognize themselves as being themselves and no one else. This is the result of psychoanalytic transformation. 

Through the apex of the word, the psychoanalytic transformation needs to achieve the Language of Success (Bion, 1970), that is, a language that allows the word to be both an action and a prelude to action. This is not about achieving a sophisticated and elaborate language—as poets and artists do—but, following the model of poiesis, achieving the best expression of an ongoing transformation. We can call it a word of psychoanalytic scope in terms of its proposition, which must be, above all, the word that celebrates the advent of Being; and that is always a becoming.

Psychoanalytic language translates what we might call the psychoanalytic prerogative of “insignificant” details and the affects related to them. They are the mark of an inarticulate truth, which imprints on the surface of every expression as singularity and disarms all logic of well-composed history, or rational composition of elements.

We can place the above ideas in a refined grid, using the infinitesimal system as a model, which considers both the differential of the elements used and the vector of the functions of these elements. Bion used this articulation by proposing two axes, development versus use in the construction of the Grid. The two axes also correspond to the comparison within a field between epistemology and ontology.

This statement aims to focus the discussion on the achievements of pre-conception, at different levels of possibilities that are coexisting, evolving, or devolving, according to the influence of complexity and the action of the alpha function in the conceptions of the spectrum:

In the next chapter, we will focus on the concept of selected facts and their role in the oscillations that occur in this spectrum. For now, I will just recall the characteristics of the polarities of this spectrum.

Non-Psychotic Part

a)    Able to tolerate frustration, therefore aware of temporality.

b)    Able to feel guilt and depression, therefore able to admit causality and, hence, responsibility.

c)    Ability to verbalize.  

d)    Common use of common sense.

The non-psychotic part is like a navigation device, which uses an artificial horizon to record and communicate parameters (K link). Through the horizon, it is possible to perceive deviations by comparing the invariable parameter with the variable parameter, and to correct deviations when they begin to occur, causing danger or instability.

Other characteristics of the non-psychotic part are decreasing generalization—which promotes increasing particularization—and the maintenance of affections that integrate synchronously with thought, action, and language. The navigator allows us to use criteria such as common sense, which brings the ability not to exceed certain limits, knowing that if we do, a disaster may occur. In other words, we can call this prudence in action or action-oriented foresight. This terminology is part of one of the three principles of life described by Bion, replacing Freud's two principles of mental functioning (1979).

Psychotic Part

a)    Intolerance to frustration causing intense psychological pain, losing awareness of temporality.

b)    Hatred of internal and external realities and attack on the apparatus that connects them (the apparatus for thinking). Non-admission of causalities, therefore, elimination of responsibility.

c)    Transformation of love into sadism.

d)    Fear of imminent annihilation and loss of the ability to verbalize.

e)    Formation of hasty and fragile relationships with unusual use of common sense.

Other characteristics are increasing generalization and loss of particularization to the point that the cause becomes a phenomenon that has no corresponding realization. When the integration between the domains of ontology and epistemology breaks down, causes become beliefs, which has superficial feelings and appearances, creating a cruel juxtaposition of objects. This phenomenon extends to the lack of life in psychic objects resulting from the attack on the ability to think, which is an attack on the ability to bring objects into internal reality by giving them life. The rejection of the psychotic part of these external objects produces the extreme situations that are described in clinical practice with individuals appearing and acting like the living dead.  They cannot sleep or be awake, they cannot be or cease to be, and they cannot think or cease to have thoughts. In short, they cannot make symbolic exchanges that represent imaginative capacity. An imaginative idea becomes indistinguishable from a hallucination.

On the other hand, this superficiality of relationships (described by Bion (1956) as fragile and hasty, i.e., volatile) stems from this deficiency of exchange between the symbols of culture (heteronomous) and autonomous symbols (internal reality) as a product of the action of the alpha function on everything that is brought into internal reality. 

Following the theory of transformations, is possible visualize the existence of a spectrum ranging from superficiality to intimacy with corresponding degrees of autonomy. The more superficiality, the greater the loss of autonomy. The same would be true if we wanted to use the spectrum of the psychoanalytic object ranging from the polarity of narcissism to socialism.

Notes

1 The child born in the countryside of Victorian Imperial India, the student in an English public school at the beginning of the 20th century, the Royal Tank Regiment soldier in World War I, the war hero decorated for extreme bravery, the student of Modern History at Oxford University, the History teacher and swimming coach for children at the same public school where he studied, the Rugby player, the medical student at University College in London, the analysand of John Rickman, the candidate at the British Psychoanalytical Society, the therapist at Tavistock, the psychiatrist in World War II, the innovative therapist group, the analysand of Melanie Klein, the Training Analyst at the British Psychoanalytical Society, the President of that society, the analyst in Los Angeles, the supervisor and lecturer in various places around the world, the friend, the husband, the father, the writer, the painter, the genius thinker.

2  Schemberg, M.; Albert Einstein- Pensamento político e últimas conclusões, 1983.

3 Morin, E.; Introdução ao Pensamento Complexo; editora Sulina, Porto Alegre, 2011.