Symmetry in psychoanalytical practice

Texto para o International Conference Curitiba 2024

Em 28 de setembro de 2024

Por Arnaldo Chuster

Human beings are complex because they embody multiple perspectives: they are social, economic, political, and psychological beings. They are beings of wisdom and madness — Edgar Morin.

My paper is a proposal for a dialogue about the symmetry [1] between transformations in knowledge and transformations in being — also considered in Bion's work (1965) with the designations of transformations in K and transformations in O.

Symmetry (Chuster, 2018) is a concept that shapes many nonlinear mathematical models applied both to Physics and to Art [2]. It involves creating interpretative approaches [3] to reality connected to the infinite, being, ultimately, a principle of complex [4] thought. Therefore, the first symmetry of all is infinite/finite.

In scientific observation or artistic work, complex thought indicates the need to confront paradoxes and contradictions, to face seemingly insoluble problems, and to reach the limits of knowledge while questioning them constantly, for as long as necessary, until new variables emerge and create new spaces for thought. There is a constant connection to the future of ideas and the expansion of contact with reality.

Thus, in coherence with the content and ethical-aesthetic [5] principles followed in my text, I hope that my presentation will spark thoughts, ideas, or questions in the audience about aspects I could not address in my text.

The relationship between transformations in K (knowledge) and transformations in O (being) has been the focus of my investigative concern since 1997, when I presented the paper The Myth of Satan: An Ethical-Aesthetic Vision of Transformation in O at the first International Conference on Bion’s Work, in Turin, Italy.

Twenty-seven years of reflection on the subject have only sharpened my interest. Therefore, I am grateful to the organizers of this event for the opportunity to present the development of my ideas once again.

In my 1997 work, using the aesthetics of John Milton’s character Satan in Paradise Lost, I described the process of transformation in O (transformation into being), which begins after Satan criticizes God (for irresponsibility and invisibility to humans) and subsequently decides to abandon Him to venture into the unknown and uncover the mystery beyond.

The adventure of transformation starts with the metaphor of a fall, which the divine Establishment pejoratively calls the movement of the fallen angel (this is an example of a moral theory).Using Bion’s (1965) concept of catastrophic change, I understand this fall as invariance accompanied by the subversion of the system that caused it. It is a fall into oneself, resulting from a shift in perspective.

Catastrophic change allows the character to discover that emotional experiences are a by-product of a contact with differences. 

They are philosophically translated through the moment of discovering the contrast between day and night. This knowledge initially generates a mix of revolt, perplexity, and pain from the feeling of betrayal. The complexity of these emotions emerges violently [6]. 

Violence completes the triad described as characteristic of catastrophic change (Bion, 1965).

Between day and night, a metaphor for all differences and the fleetingness of all observations, there is a point of undecidability, a transition space-time, a caesura, an infinitely plastic entity where Satan realizes he is more separated from God than ever, more alone than ever. This drives his decision to change his name—which was not exactly a name, but a designation for a function in service of God (the chosen one, the favored, or the fiancé). He chooses to call himself Lucifer, the one born of light, or the morning light. Here, we witness the identity movement where the character chooses who he wants to be and not who God decided he would be.

The importance of every metaphor lies in bringing to language aspects of our life, of how we see the world and establish bonds, which would remain silent without this singular capacity of language to transcend itself. A metaphor is a detector of deep, often rare experiences.

Note the similarity between John Milton’s character and Sophocles’ Oedipus. Oedipus was also not a proper name but a nickname derived from a physical characteristic familiar to the Labdacids (which comes from the Greek letter lambda, the one that has crooked feet). However, unlike the modern Satan [7], Oedipus never choose his name, nor did his adoptive parents. He carried the mark of an enigma imposed tyrannically—the enigma of the human mind in a transgenerational dimension.

Satan’s fall into himself viewed, as transformation into being, is an uninterrupted poietic movement: the more he falls, the more he falls into himself and the more he discovers his lack of knowledge. In this metaphor lies an example of symmetry between transformation in O and transformation in knowledge. It is also a dialogue about the difference between thought and knowledge.

In continuing our dialogue, I will further explain how the concept of symmetry plays a central role in the construction of the interpretive process in Bion’s work. This way of thinking and observing psychoanalysis—as I have already pointed out—follows the method of complexity (Morin), which I have sought to demonstrate in several publications.

Complexity, first, informs us that the relationship established between transformations is not dialectical but dialogical. Through dialogue, we can escape the fallacy of circular arguments that often lead to moral causality and, consequently, lack ethics, which impoverishes aesthetics.Symmetrical arrangement in interpretative language is the art of psychoanalysis, which, in turn, is the science of observing the influences of the unconscious in human life (Chuster, 2023).

To delve deeper into my statements, I note that the symmetrical [8] arrangement in interpretations allows dreaming and imagining prevailing in the analytical process, always prioritizing emotional experience.

When we experience an emotional experience, we move away from the meaning that produced it. However, in seeking to reconnect with the meaning, the movement restores the experience in a different level and form, beyond any initial meaning: a transformation occurred. A better view of what changed is provided by the symmetry we can find, and it is part of the field of transformations in general.

The symmetrical arrangement means, first, observing a spectrum of possibilities, an open system governed by the principle of uncertainty. In other words, as with any open system, it allows us to observe non-linearly, that is, without sinking into causality (moral theory) and pure ontology, it is possible to admit the incompleteness of observations and recognizing that we can only make infinite approximations to the psychoanalytic object.

Furthermore, observing from the point of undecidability means observing transformations a point about which we know nothing and to whom it belongs. This point challenges us to create approximations at each moment. The observation made at one moment does not apply to the next.

I understand that Bion called this point O, which represents both an Onthos (ontology) and an Opus, “work in progress.” From somewhere we came and are going to some place; in the middle, some answer to who we are has the potential to emerge_ but it is not a certainty. Onthos and Opus are in a dialogical relationship, as ontology and epistemology, symmetry should be an initial point to the path of choice and decision.

In other words, an interpretative decision serves only for a moment and not for the next. The experience lived and relived in meaning creates contact with the ineffable, allowing a view beyond all certainties, exposing a spectrum that spans from primitive terror to the fear of the unknown [9].

From an ethical point of view, which involves many aspects, I highlight the significance of psychic pain. This denotes that the analyst’s responsibility cannot disregard the simultaneous observation of ontology and epistemology when seeking an interpretation. Ontology connects to a pre-dream and epistemology to the dream itself. In other words, a blind intuition, or pre-dream, seeks to see by using a conception that was previously empty, in the hope that some illumination will allow the birth of a thought.

I believe that Bion added something extremely relevant to the above-mentioned Kantian aphorism. By connecting intuition and concept, the analyst’s imagination works as a decisive factor in the creativity of interpretation, stimulating the patient’s thinking, without which they cannot progress. 

Imagination allows for constant approaches to the point of undecidability at the origin of psychic phenomena. It is an essential factor in the psychoanalytic function of the analyst’s personality.

It is a point of perception of transformations, always involving the catastrophic presence of creativity/destructiveness of forms. From there, through the verbalization of what is perceived, narratives, interpretations, communications, and images can be created. Depending on what factors influences our imagination; we may encounter both metaphors and their poiesis, or intrigues that lead to fiction and the distortion of history. However, both shape the human experience. What determines one direction or another is related to another spectrum that reflects the transformations: the spectrum of the psychotic and non-psychotic parts of the personality.

Nevertheless, always metaphors will reveal these aspects of our experience of transformation. We can think of them as aspects that were asking to be said but could not be expressed due to the difficulty of finding the appropriate expression in everyday language. We can call this the impossibility of fully understanding a statement, which depends on the complex atmosphere of the session—meaning the presence of feelings and the degree of turbulence, they create.

The misunderstanding of an interpretation, which can express itself as illusions (transformations into rigid movement), intrigues (projective transformations), and cruel disputes (transformation into hallucinosis), ends up not revealing aspects of reality, and thus not serving to implement it. However, if we consider that the psychotic part of the personality is active, we can view the revelation of illusions, false narratives, and intrigues as a desperate cry for help due to the helplessness experienced in the face of psychotic functioning. The cry for help from the psychotic part of the personality usually clings to omnipotence. Here lies the importance of the symmetry: omnipotence/helplessness, cited by Bion in many works and supervisions.

I can describe many other symmetries such as hypocrisy/desire to know, irony/ability to contain pain, humiliation/confrontation of ideas, challenge/revelation, arrogance/intellectual courage, envy/gratitude, security/freedom. I suggest that the audience search for other important symmetries for analytical work (Chuster, 2018, p. 143).

The function of symmetry, produced and describing the tension field between transformations in knowing and transformations in being, is to bring to language aspects of our way of living, of inhabiting the world, and of bonds with human beings—aspects that would remain silent without this unique capacity of language to go beyond itself.

In other words, in analytical sessions, the analyst is responsible for their words and actions when trying to translate their observations (approximations to the psychoanalytic object). However, the analyst cannot be responsible for how their words are understood, how their actions are misinterpreted, or for the fact that the patient does not truly want the analyst to be the analyst. In short, everyone is 100% responsible and 100% irresponsible.

There is something disorienting, turbulent, about this symmetrical position, or the spectrum of psychic reality. Psychoanalysis reveals our fragile mental organization, showing that we are still at the stage of struggling with little more than a rudimentary tool to navigate the infinite mysteries of this kaleidoscope, full of symmetries, flooded with contrasts between light and shadow, where perplexed, we exist—and call it the mental world.

Therefore, once again, we must always rethink and embrace our incompleteness, which can do nothing more than make successive approximations to facts. We are eternally transforming and struggling against this inexorable fact when we can see that knowledge and thought do not coincide but are symmetrical. We can project these assertions holographically, and then we will have two parallel lines that meet in infinity.

Following Bion, one faces this state of affairs into the fact that every analytical session begins in an abyss to be handled through certain conditions provided by our intuitive and imaginative capacity.

In Transformations (1965), the abyss is described by John Milton’s famous phrase in Paradise Lost: the world emerging from dark and deep waters, conquered from the void and formless infinite. It is from this indeterminate place that an analysis session begins.

Bion (1977):“In every session, evolution occurs. Something evolves from darkness and formlessness. This evolution may have a superficial resemblance to memory, but once experienced, it can never be misunderstood with memory. It shares with dreams the quality of being present and suddenly absent. It is this evolution that the psychoanalyst must be ready to interpret.” (Cogitations, 2000, p. 393)

In other words, at the center of the analytical experience, there must be a singularity, which presents itself as an unknowable element, “O,” an abyss, which may “come to be” when it has evolved into some knowledge acquired through the emotional experience of analysis.

In Michael Ian Paul’s presentation at SBPSP about his experience of analysis with Bion, he likely recalls what may have been, for many, a stunning approximation to the psychoanalytic object. Michael Paul narrated that in the session, he anxiously described the recent experience of an extremely turbulent and terrifying airplane flight. Bion said: “Did you realize that along with your terror, you noticed you didn’t have wings…?”

In this interpretation, we can conjecture that Bion was referring to the omnipotence/helplessness symmetry. However, note that the singularity of the intervention has its deeper meaning known only to the analysand.

In a personal communication, Grotstein told me that Bion often said he was limited by trying to deal with helplessness through omnipotence.

Let us now face a clinical vignette looking for the symmetry between transformations in knowing and transformations in being.

A patient recounts an airplane trip, explaining that he took a sleep inducer and an anxiolytic to “not see the flight pass,” but strong turbulence woke him up during the flight. Upon hearing the pilot’s voice command, “stay seated and fastened, as we are passing through turbulence,” he felt his heart race and was certain he was falling.

Could the myth of Icarus be illustrative of this situation? Knowing the patient’s rebellious and submissive relationship with his father, who functioned like the ambitious and prudent Daedalus, the myth could be very fitting. However, this application is the function of the analyst's imagination. It holds no certainty. Every myth used at this point is complementary to the Oedipus myth.

Suppose Icarus heard part of the metaphor contained in the myth and continued the intervention by saying:

P - It often occurs to me, like now, that I am afraid to tell you something and be judged by you. On the other hand, I am also afraid of saying something and being heard in a complacent way, like an analyst.

A - It seems that I’m in a position, like yours on the plane, where I have no choice but to continue limited, as an analyst who only judges or is complacent.

P - (silence). I had hoped you would know how to get out of this situation (sarcastic tone).

A - Why should I know? Your expectation so far is only judgment and complacency. Aren't there any other intermediate expectations that are not against you? However, if we imagine in this situation a child feeling frustrated with expectations from both father and mother, they may feel like both are always against them. Does this make sense to you?

P - Wow! That is true. Ironic on your part, but true. My father was a man who knew how to be cruel in his moral assertions, and my mother softened everything. I was lost; I did not know which way to go. Neither pleased me. This repeated itself many times in my life. In college, I did not know which specialty to choose. I went by elimination and ended up drawing lots between two. The dissatisfaction with that choice brought me here.

A - If you could choose, would you choose the parents you had? In addition, what kind of parents would you choose if you could? How would you describe them? Would you choose a different analyst if you could go back? Since obviously, we can never go back, we need to choose the life we want to live and not live the life others would like us to live. The choice is always symmetrical to the responsibility that comes with it. They are different states, but they have an important connection.

P - I think I have always been afraid of this situation. I feel like I am becoming more aware of my difficulty and how hard it is—sometimes I feel like I am in free fall. In fact, I just remembered a scene from a movie, The Abyss, where a city begins to sink because of a geological fault... the character has to fight to save her family.

II

In his discussion of the concept of symmetry, Bion (1977) begins by reflecting on the term “construction” used by Freud (1927). He draws attention to the fact that Freud considered the term to be more appropriate than “interpretation.” However, Bion (1977) says he finds it very difficult to agree with this, as interpretations cannot be made without prior constructions. 

In addition, these constructions are essential tools for working with symmetries.

Bion proposes, as in art, that an essential component of this "tool" is the visual image. In other words, the tool relies heavily on the analyst's intuition and imagination. Bion places it in the category of C elements in the Grid [10]. The C elements (myths, dreams, and dream thoughts) are always spectral and complementary. Without them, there is no psychoanalytic process. Moreover, the C elements that generate the construction are polyvalent, unlike the interpretation, which is monovalent, and they are quicker than F formulations (concepts) or G formulations (deductive scientific systems), though they may not be faster than H formulations (algebraic calculation). However, the latter has not yet been discovered in psychoanalysis. They just establish connections with science and future.

The issue of symmetry has many practical consequences for Bion, particularly in situations where the analyst must deal with primitive material.

He says that the patient functioning at a primitive level approaches a kind of "act first, think later" principle. Typically, a patient like this acts toward the analyst as if they have a very active, fast, and flexible unconscious, which is being chased by a heavy, slow, and rigid conscious mind. We can use Bion’s analogy here of an elephant trying to chase a tiger, with analysis being only one stripe of the tiger. From this metaphor, we can develop a different strategy for observing the material.

On the other hand, the metaphor needs to be taken in a more refined way, despite its common use in psychoanalysis. We need to expand the term carefully, as a metaphor can turn into a mere "analogy" used without discretion. To begin with, we need to highlight that a metaphor suggests a container that is both a disguise and a revelation of content. It becomes a silent metaphor while the relationship it intends to show remains hidden. However, when it does reveal something, it can be quite eloquent while facing a symbolic disguise that usually has many applications in narrative structures.

Sometimes a word or metaphor has been so overused in colloquial language that it loses its vitality and dies. However, it can be brought to life by juxtaposing another metaphor, whose inadequacy and lack of homogeneity work like a defibrillator [11] shock, making it pulse again [12].

Bion draws attention to the crossroads of development that can arise when thought prioritizes the two images used in the analogy instead of the relationship between them. What is important is not the tiger and the elephant, but the relationship between them. Moreover, when we examine the relationship, various possibilities open up, but we still see very little. On one side, we have the slowness of our conscious mind, which causes incompleteness, and on the other, the speed of the unconscious, which leaves incompleteness. That is why there can never be just one interpretation. If we only have one interpretation, something is misdirected, mistaken, or delusional.

Vaihinger [13] studied the "as if" relationship implicit in the use of metaphor and analogy within philosophy. Freud discussed this contribution in The Future of an Illusion (1927) [14]

Bion (1977) considers that from this essay, important considerations are to be developed. He suggests that if construction is the multipurpose tool of symmetry, we must consider the future of the metaphor in analysis, as while it is intended to make an observation of the transference, it could also create the future of an illusion. Therefore, he suggests that we need to take greater care of the "future of the transference," since that future will be the consequence of the transformations of an aesthetic construction made for the patient with the aim of establishing an ethical bond with the analyst.

For these reasons, I believe the complexity of the spectral model is more appropriate, as it respects the principle of the complexity of psychic phenomena and naturally deals with functions. The foundation of this model can be found in Mathematics, in infinitesimal calculus, is always and inevitably to look for a model of transformations.

Using the model of functions in psychoanalysis is equivalent to studying the relationship between the analyst and the patient, seeking the relationship between the field of invariants/variables, constantly expanding its scope, and integrating through symmetry. For this, we need to find a construction that contains the various variable and integrated elements. The more variables we obtain, the greater the possibilities for integration: the more we use the C elements, the broader the base of symmetry will be.

What I have done so far in today’s dialogue is ask questions related to the foundations of psychoanalysis. What lies beyond the psychoanalysis practiced today? However, perhaps I should start by asking, what is a psychoanalyst? Many people will say that a psychoanalyst is someone with extensive knowledge of psychoanalysis, or at least about some psychoanalytic author. Well, no one knows too much about any subject. Therefore, from this perspective, a psychoanalyst does not exist, but rather occupies a place within the abyss.

I prefer to think of a psychoanalyst as a person who knows some of the worst mistakes and misunderstandings that can be made in their field, and thus should know how to avoid them. So, the psychoanalyst should be an expert in avoiding some of their worst mistakes. One of these is the use of memory and desire during sessions. Above all, a psychoanalyst is someone who is continuously becoming an analyst.

Long discussions may follow regarding mistakes, memory, and desire, but if there is something important about these mistakes, which I’d like to emphasize in my work, it is that "only in the depths does truth reside" (Schiller). Although it is impossible not to engage with the metaphors of the superficial, in these matters, one does not have the right to be superficial. Being superficial is one of the worst mistakes a psychoanalyst can make, and they make it whenever they think they know what is best for their patients, thus hindering their patients’ process of becoming.

Notes

1 When I refer to symmetry, I am also referring to Bion’s spectral model. It is a model that introduces significant paradigmatic modifications on various levels: ontology, epistemology, methodology, logic, and practice.

2  Escher is a striking example of symmetry applied in art.

3  The notion of interpretive approximations follows the principle of Uncertainty formulated by Heisenberg.

4  Morin, E. Science with Conscience. Trans. Maria D. Alexandre and Maria Alice Sampaio Dória. 11th ed. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil, 2008.

Morin, E., & Kern, A. B. Earth-Country. Trans. Paulo Neves da Silva. 6th ed. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2011.

Morin, E. The Seven Necessary Knowledges for the Education of the Future. Trans. Catarina Eleonora F. da Silva and Jeanne Sawaya. Technical review by Edgard de Assis Carvalho. 2nd ed. São Paulo: Cortez; Brasília, DF: Unesco, 2000.

5 Chuster, A. W.R. Bion: New Readings, Vols. I and II. 1999, 2002.

6 One must differentiate between violence and emotions, which are synonymous with turbulence, from a cruel action.

7 John Milton, through his character, intuits three characteristics of modernity: the decentralization of the subject, the scientific critique that generates an investigative method, and the discovery of the cosmic and psychic infinite.

8 A more in-depth discussion on the themes of symmetry and its relationship with the psychoanalytic object can be found in detail in my book Symmetry and the Psychoanalytic Object (2018).

9 Let us recall here Pascal’s illustrative phrase: "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces terrifies me."

10 The Grid is the expression of a function that is established after the analytic session, to create conceptions that preserve the value of a preconception, which may or may not be used in a future session.

11 Roger Fowler (1939-1999), a professor of literary criticism at the University of East Anglia, discussed the relevant literary techniques for creating fiction. Analytical construction is a kind of fiction that requires these creative techniques, using metaphors and analogies.

12 For example, the word “element,” by itself, can mean many things and thus does not attract much attention. But if we associate it with the Greek letter β, we create an inadequate and non-homogeneous association, sparking curiosity. Furthermore, even after an explanation, it will continue to give the feeling that something is missing for complete understanding.

13 Hans Vaihinger (1852-1933), a German philosopher, Kant scholar, and author of the work The Philosophy of 'As If' (1911), presents in this work the philosophy of "as if" as a system of theoretical, practical, and religious fictions created by humanity, based on idealist positivism: "We behave as if the world corresponds to our models." This allows for the acceptance of false fictions to justify a non-rational and pragmatic solution to problems that have no rational answers.

14 In this work, Freud raises the question: What is the future of humanity? The essay explores whether human culture precariously rests on the repression of natural antisocial impulses common to everyone, and whether religion is the main force controlling these impulses. This leads to another question: What is the psychological origin of the need for religious feeling in the individual? What, in each person, makes them prone to believe in an irrational, unprovable system that denies reality? Freud demonstrates that religion ("the universal obsessive neurosis of humanity") relies on unresolved infantile feelings and claims that it, along with its dogmas, is responsible for the intellectual atrophy of most human beings. According to Freud, for mankind to organize itself reasonably and healthily on Earth, free from illusions, a radical change in the forms of education is urgently needed—a position he defends masterfully in this brief but impactful text, both today and at the time of its publication. Religion is a dead metaphor. The word indicates reconnecting objects but privileges only one of the anchors of the metaphor.