The Smile of Bion - Edited, for Arnaldo's review

XVI Bion Conference by Arnaldo Chuster [1]

During a break at the biennial EBOR meeting in Seattle in 2011, I found myself walking along a path at Northwestern University, the venue for the event. It was during there that I engaged in one of many profound conversations with the esteemed James Grotstein. In his characteristic blend of humor and kindness, Grotstein shared a profoundly significant session he had experienced with Bion.

The subject of our conversation, which brought this memory to the forefront, centered on Bion’s technical proposal. Bion emphasized the use of the unconscious to access the conscious, contrary to the conventional approach in psychoanalysis. Grotstein highlighted that Bion’s proposal represented a profound shift in technique. He asserted that the employment of intuition and imagination is crucial in enhancing quality of interpretation and significantly influencing the mental life of analysands.

Bion’s approach parallels the process an artist undergoes from the inception of a work of art to its realization. This shift in perspective is akin to the difference between the dreamer who experiences the dream and the dreamer who recounts the dream upon waking. Ultimately, the skill of the artist or the dream narrator is reflected in the richness and depth of the meanings conveyed.

Similarly, an analyst must navigate these shifts in perspective during a session, adjusting their vertices to correspond with the changes they perceive. This process continues until the analyst can manifest these perceived transformations in their associations and interpretations.

I add that for intuition/imagination to find their appropriate time and place, the analyst must overcome the group dependency relationship with the couple memory and desire, where memory is considered feminine and desire masculine, though this could be reversed. The fundamental issue is the container/contained link.

Memory seeks a desire that could penetrate it, and desire seeks a memory to penetrate. Together, in the sensory bed, they produce a third: the need for understanding. This need begins to influence everything that happens, altering the direction of the analysis and causing various degrees of distortion in the observations.

In other words, this third element, an oedipal baby produced by the coupling of memory and desire, generates interpretations (transformations) that distort the observations made. Therefore, another pair must function—the pair of container and contained. This pair should operate as free as possible from the oedipal desires and memories that constitute the analyst's blind spots, aiming to create the vertex of a Language of Psychoanalytic Range (Chuster, 2023).

The modernist notion (T.S. Eliot) of the expression “without memory and desire” can be replaced, as Bion (1970) did, through the lens of English Romanticism, negative capability (Keats). This concept emphasizes achieving patience and detachment from the need for meanings, when confronting mysteries, uncertainties, and doubts. Alternatively, both expressions can be viewed through Nietzsche's futuristic lens of an “Act of Faith,” which embodies the willpower to engage one's creative abilities in pursuit of truth.

The fundamental characteristic of the language of psychoanalytic range (Chuster, 2023), akin to the poetic, is to transcend the vertex of everyday language and serve as a source of semantic innovation (Bion, 1970; Chuster, 2023). This language establishes a new vertex—the thing-in-itself—the transcendent loving vertex of poiesis, a prelude to action, or words that inspire the analysand to understand themselves. Understanding is integral to the act itself, but the fundamental act is to help the analysand “become” themselves, enabling them to inhabit the world with their full possibilities.

Certainly, the vertex of instinctual conflicts that hinder psychic development remains a possibility in the analytic work, as do the anxieties produced by the concreteness of psychic reality. However, Bion’s  emphasis in analytic work shifts away from instinctual conflicts and object relations. Instead, it focuses on psychic functions and investigating the types of turbulence and transformations they create. This approach involves a tragic ethics, manifesting at the vertices of failures or successes in aesthetic and ethical values that regulate the quality of psychic life.

In mythic-dreamlike-aesthetic terms, tragedy represents the ethic that reveals the identity between God and Satan. As in ancient Greece, it conveys the notion that every god possesses a satanic aspect. In the quest for at-one-ment with God [2] (Bion, 1970), an individual striving to be themselves inevitably encounters their deepest source of anguish and conflict.  They come to the realization that the gods have died, leaving humanity abandoned on the brink of depression, in an empty space. The only way out is to create one's own universe of life.

In other words, all psychic functions inevitably fail to some degree, leading to various degrees of mental confusion and pain that deteriorates both internal and external life. However, these failures can also stimulate an awakening, encouraging thought, provide one learns to think from emotional experience.

Note that it is not about moral values or judgments of what is right and wrong, nor about logics derived from determinism and positivism. Instead, it concerns ethical values that expand within the personality along with aesthetic values, expressed through the language of psychoanalytic range (Chuster, 2023). Psychoanalysts cannot and should not lead the lives of their analysands, but can help guide them according to their emergent ideas and feelings, aiding them and understanding those feelings and ideas (Bion, 1965, p.53).

The relationship between aesthetics, as the quality of feelings, and ethics, as the strength of the ideas associated with these feelings, is encompassed by the reverie/alpha function spectrum, whose action transforms into conceptions and concepts, which in turn express the life of thought. It essentially represents a complexity applied to psychoanalysis with the intent to expand the capacity to think.

The session Grotstein reported took place the day after the sudden death of a very close, still quite young colleague with whom he worked. He recounted arriving at the session with Bion feeling very sad. With tearful eyes, he reported the tragic event and added that he felt inhibited from writing the obituary at the family's request. He also felt that he lacked the desire for analysis that day.

He added that words were not coming easily, and when they did, they seemed merely commonplace, a politically correct speech—what everyone expected to be said.

Bion responded, "Besides a kind of blindness that may come from your tears, call no man happy until he is dead."

Bion's interpretation caused Jim emotional turmoil and feelings of perplexity. Instantly, outrage emerged, making him think that Bion was undergoing a transformation in hallucinosis, being sarcastic and cruel by praising death as better than life, or being cynical about life. He verbalized those thoughts to Bion.

Bion countered, "By no means has your judgment, wounded by the unjust death, turned me into a restricted and cruel person. This phrase is not originally mine; it was once yours, it seems you forgot, as you have brought it up in a session months ago. At this moment, I do not know to whom it belongs—me, you, or both of us. I cannot decide on that. It was once spoken by Solon, as reported by Aristotle at the beginning of his book on Ethics [3], with whom you identified that day."

Bion continued, ”I think there is hope in the phrase because there is no wisdom in making judgments about a person's life based on a single incident, or even a set of incidents. They may be good or bad, happy or sad, they have their own particular reasons, but they do not provide reliable criteria for accessing the whole of a life (of which they are mere parts).

In Aristotle, we read that to properly judge a person's life, we need a broad narrative from beginning to end. Neither death nor birth serves as an index; they are merely fleeting moments. We cannot determine whether a life was truly good or bad, genuinely valuable or worth living, or even pleasurable or horrific, unless we know the whole story.

Grotstein added that, as he left the session that day, he noticed one of the rarest things about Bion, both as an analyst in his office and in his institutional life: Bion, who was always very serious and usually said goodbye in the same serious manner, said "see you tomorrow" with a smile.

The emotional account equally moved me, and we spent a brief time walking in silence, but both smiling. The day was clear; the campus vegetation was at its peak, and a gentle breeze blew, guiding our conversation in another direction.

At this point, my presentation takes two potentially related directions: exploring the significance of Bion's smile, and smiling in general, and discussing the ethics of psychoanalysis through its interpretive aesthetics.

Before proceeding, I must say that James Grotstein was an exemplary human being in every aspect of his life. In our relationship, right up until his passing, he always conveyed wisdom with kindness and a smile. he never depreciated any idea; he exercised full awareness that we can only access aspects of a personality—facets of an ultimate reality that evolved until it intercepted with the personality of the observer.

Since 2000, I traveled to Los Angeles at least three times a year. During most of these trips, I met with James Grotstein, and when that was not possible, we spoke by phone. additionally, we frequently exchanged emails since 1997. On my way to board one of these trips, I received a message from an American colleague asking if I knew about the worsening of his illness, which could take him away at any moment. 

As soon as I landed in Los Angeles, I called him. His secretary answered and informed me that he was no longer able to speak on the phone. Distressed, I identified myself but did not know what else to say. I simply left a Hello! That moment, a Beatles' song came to my mind:

I say no, You say yes

You say Stop and I say Go, go, go

You say goodbye and I say hello, hello. 

Five minutes later, to my surprise, he called me. I noticed his voice was very weak, and he struggled to speak. Yet, with humor, he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world, “I am on my deathbed, but I could not miss talking to you.” Then, he jokingly quoted Shakespeare from Julius Caesar, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant taste of death but once.” He then apologized for not being able to talk more. I said goodbye with a choked voice, all I could manage to say was, “Thank you for everything you taught me. You are the Man.” He softly replied, still with humor, 'Don’t spread it around.'

Any quotation from Shakespeare seeks to illustrate the effects of time on humanity and how we can understand and respect it. Shakespeare's work is an intense reflection—in the deepest sense—a reflection in motion, a tragic quest for truth that expresses the symmetry between feelings and the existence of a mind that seeks meanings. As Keats said, Shakespeare’s work represents the speech of a Man of Achievement confronting one of humanity’s greatest obstacles: time, and its offspring—death, memory, and life. This timeless quality is why Shakespeare's work has become immortal, with infinite reach. 

Unforgettable also was the time when Grotstein invited me, along with my colleague from Berkeley, John Stone, to dine at La Dolce Vita restaurant. He warned us that it was one of Frank Sinatra’s favorites. We sat at the very table Sinatra used to sit at, with a plaque and an oil portrait of the singer hanging on the wall behind us. We ate Sinatra’s favorite food and drink [4]. Jim, always surprising, knew Sinatra intimately. That day he mentioned that a song sung by Sinatra had a lot to do with analysis, 'Dancing in the Dark.' He hummed the lyrics:

“Dancing in the dark, till the tune ends. We’re dancing in the dark and it soon ends. We're waltzing in the wonder of why we’re here. Time hurries by and we’re gone. We dance in the question of why we are here. Time passes quickly and we depart [5]."

He added that in analysis, we can follow the lyrics up to a point, but there is always a space beyond lyrics, which lies in the sonic composition of feelings, in the rhythm itself. He often played with the expression "beyond" when referring to Bion.

I associate Grotstein's comment with what Bion said (1970, p. 97): in any object, material or immaterial, resides the ultimate unknowable reality, the thing-in-itself. Objects produce emanations, or emerging qualities and evolving characteristics, that almost impose themselves as phenomena on the human personality. Of these qualities, the personality is aware, either consciously or unconsciously; they differ from the ultimate reality. Therefore, we go beyond.

Wisdom, in any form, arises from exploring the dark and unknown parts of ourselves. This process involves dancing with our deepest questions. While knowledge often inevitably brings the mourning and pain of leaving parts of ourselves behind, beauty remains in this journey. There is music in life, an aesthetics that we can salvage. This is the aesthetics of the true smile.

I expand the inquiry: When does a person, through smiling, genuinely express the aesthetics of happiness in a meeting? This question stems from the fact that many people can laugh but not truly smile. 

I extend this inquiry: When does a person, through smiling, genuinely express the aesthetics of happiness in a meeting? This question stems from the fact that many people can laugh but not truly smile. Numerous individuals smile out of politeness or conformity, like advertisers, product sellers, or journalists who only report agreeable news. Some smile to mask their internal struggles, or without genuine meaning, merely as a reflex of the sympathetic nervous system’s contraction of the perilabial muscles.

Wisdom is not merely an accumulation of knowledge; it is thoughtful reflection, and therefore, it can bring happiness. Nietzsche said that thinking is a celebration, and happiness is a fleeting feeling because we must continually think. however, this process allows us to exercise the freedom and the right to pursue happiness. As poets [6] remind us:

Sadness has no end,

Happiness does—

Happiness is like a feather

That the wind carries through the air,

It flies so light,

But it has a brief life,

It needs unending wind.

As a psychoanalyst, I believe we can place all our questions within the framework of Oedipal configurations and sufferings. To reach the necessary transcendence, the language with the loving matrix for truth is essential—in our effort to create something new, we aim to rescue the enchantment of life.

In line with these ideas, I suggest that in the endeavor of poiesis— finding a language of psychoanalytic reach—we can discover the analyst's enchantment with their work. 

In line with these ideas, I suggest that in the endeavor of poiesis—finding a language with psychoanalytic reach—we can discover the analyst’s enchantment with their work. This leads me to ponder whether we can investigate the experience of happiness through psychoanalysis using the Greek concept of eudaimonia. Literally meaning ‘good spirit,’ eudaimonia, far from being simply an emotional state, translates more accurately as ‘blessed.’

I propose to rescue this term from its religious connotations and attempt to use it freely to discuss the language of psychoanalytic reach that allows for the transcendence of the Oedipal configuration. The analyst must be free from undue appropriations of words to focus on the underlying Oedipal mental state.

If an analysand uses words like blessed or cursed to explain or justify their difficulties, or correlatives like luck and misfortune, or if they turn to astrology, magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, and charms, or even chemistry to explain relationship difficulties, we can shift to the psychoanalytic vertex. 

I emphasize that we 'moderns' do not use the word 'blessed' well, as our immediate tendency is to associate it with an external act of power, such as a religious or magical blessing. Any word, I insist, can be hijacked by non-psychoanalytic disciplines, no matter how sophisticated they may be, often leaving it moribund. There are even societies of dead words.

In Ancient Greece, although being blessed had a connection with the gods (dâimones), meaning 'approved by the gods,' or 'favored by them,' this did not imply an advantage. On the contrary, the gods approved only those individuals who endeavored to be virtuous, sought wisdom, courageously confessed their ignorance, and stood out from worldly concerns. Thus, being blessed by the gods carried a commitment to live responsibly according to one's potential. It was seen as a mission in life, a defined direction, in a world where deviation into inconsequentiality and the ease of simplistic, moralistic, and positivist explanations were most common.

For thematic coherence, one might ask if those who succumb to deterministic and moralistic simplicity, rejecting complexity, are not the opposite of blessed—cursed, in fact—or, from a psychoanalytic perspective, prisoners of their Oedipal configurations, unable to transcend these through language. 

The responsibility assumed by the blessed involved living not to seek glory or euphoria—the supreme mistress of fleeting happiness produced with 'drugs'—nor to achieve power. The pursuit of euphoria or power for its own sake are actions emblematic of the cursed, those who cannot remain true to themselves.

Whenever we observe phenomena through the lens of Oedipal theory and its variations, it can be asserted that we engage with the most psychoanalytic of all questions: the origin of all our intuition/imagination. This varies from individual to individual, yet the Oedipal configuration is present in every communication and in every word used.

Those who have not managed to transcend their Oedipal destiny through self-knowledge, who cannot articulate their inner selves through creative metaphor, but instead discourses in the manner described by Shakespeare in Macbeth—“full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing”—these individuals are cursed.

In summary, the problem of becoming a prisoner of the Oedipal configuration lies in being able to choose only two paths, as Grotstein suggested. One path is feeling like a victim of one’s parents, with the sense of entitlement to rights and reparations. The other path is perceiving the parents as victims and negotiating reparations and rights on their behalf. These are two facets of a spectrum that socially manifests in extremist political preferences and other fundamentalisms. Essentially, this boils down to two positions: either constantly demanding reparations for victims without knowing who is responsible, or always blaming the victims for their inability to make reparations, thereby creating a false responsibility. 

This problem also appears in extremist scientific groups like the neo-Dionysians and the neo-Apollonians (Holton [7]) (Bion, 1970). These groups rigidly defend opposite positions and appear to fight each other, becoming increasingly rigid and certain in their beliefs. However, those who end up suffering from the crossfire of misinformation and hatred towards knowledge are the majority who find themselves caught  in the middle.

When Oedipus goes to the Oracle, he seeks an answer to the question “Who am I?” The Oracle, claiming to offer such answers, has is described on its portal the words “Know thyself.” However, the arrogance of the Pythia provides only a half-answer, therefore uttering a half-truth, which is nothing more than a good lie. Finally, with a discourse of hatred, full of sound and fury, she declares that Oedipus is cursed, terrifying him and inducing him to his tragic fate. The Oracle breaks the ethics of human knowledge by keeping the truth to itself, fully aware that the unknown can lead, through turbulence, to pre-catastrophic states.

The corruption of words through impatience, the submersion of the subject, and the mutilation of essential communication only serve to misinform. this process stifles creativity, freezes words in the face of the unknown, idealizes them, and mystifies them until they follow the path of lies [8].

Certainly, these aspects have existed since time immemorial and are encapsulated in the broad view of the myth of Oedipus. Freud, the blessed one, illuminated this for us. It is up to us, as psychoanalysts, to adopt a spectral vertex that encompasses all possibilities emerging from the plots of Sophocles—who, like Freud, could perceive the Oedipus within and outside of himself, sharing this knowledge with humanity.

Bion (1970) states that certain elements of psychoanalytic development are neither new nor unique to psychoanalysis. Instead, they have a history that suggests they transcend race, time, and discipline, and are inherent to the relationship between the mystic and the group. These are Oedipal issues, as Oedipus, in his search for truth, encounters institutional rejection at every turn — be it the Oracle, Laius, the Sphinx, or the city of Thebes. It would have been a blessing had he found the truth in the first institution he approached, the Oracle. Instead, he was met with a half-truth that branded him as miserable (cursed by the gods), words he himself echoed as he went into exile.

The cursed lack the protection of the ethical contact barrier, unable to contain their hatred and perpetually targeted by the hatred of others. Consequently, they feel compelled to discharge this hatred onto someone or onto the group. The breach with ethics, I affirm, generates and proliferates feelings of guilt, which in turn drive acts of destruction and terrorism, both in private and public spheres.

The concept of eudaimonia is like a pregnancy, encompassing many unfoldings. In Aristotle’s view, these unfoldings manifest in his analysis that a blessed person must demonstrate diligence in life (arête) by practicing moral discernment or wisdom in practical actions (phronesis). True eudaimonia, when fully examined, reveals a life that has achieved the highest degree of correct functioning.

Concepts such as the “Good enough mother” may have originated from this vision of the ethics of quality of life, acknowledging that a good enough mother can only be present for a moment in a child’s life. The real outcomes of an individual's life require the contributions of many other people, whose role over many years collectively show that the life is achieving arête.

For Aristotle, each individual has a specific potentiality rooted in the depths of their being or singularity. In Bion’s terms, this potentiality is the pre-conception, which encompasses both the realization and the conceptions and concepts it gives birth to.

Regarding the specific potentiality (singularity) and its importance for psychoanalysis, I will share another experience related to me by an analysand of Bion.

This analysand recounted his first interview with Bion, where he encountered a man whose seriousness was deeply uncomfortable. He had previously had contact with Bion from a distance, attending his conferences at the Veteran Administration Hospital, and had assumed that Bion’s seriousness was part of his institutional persona. However, he arrived at Bion’s office with the expectation of finding a more welcoming demeanor.

At the moment of experiencing this discomfort, it crossed his mind that he was entering a battlefield full of dangers, with little possibility of survival [9]. He felt as though he was standing before a Warlord. To relax himself amid the tension caused by his persecutory feeling, he began recounting picturesque and amusing stories about his family environment. Bion, maintaining his serious demeanor and showing astonishment in his gaze, raised his thick eyebrows and asked if he was, in some way, trying to impress him and if there was something violent at that moment that he was trying to hide.

Without waiting for a response, Bion said, “Know that having lived up to today, which includes having been directly involved in two world wars and other risky fights in institutions, little in this life can impress me. Why did you seek analysis? Everything so far seems very fine with you. Perhaps you should take another path.”

The analysand [10] said he was perplexed by Bion's intuitive grasp of the internal battle he imagined he was avoiding. However, he found this perplexity delightful and added that Bion worked by using the unconscious to reach the conscious. It was not about making the unconscious conscious but about working on the transference while respecting the communication from unconscious to unconscious—always privileging the link.

The Aristotelian principle of singularity implies that no individual has an accidental origin or is a product of mere fate. Instead, each individual is created according to what Aristotle called telos — a purpose. Only someone who seeks at-one-ment, harmony with themselves, without being carried away by the splitting that affects us all from the beginnings of life, is achieving their telos. Then, and only then, can we talk about having added possibilities of achieving some happiness, which would already be a true blessing for improving the quality of life.

To conclude, I quote Bion at the Paris Conference (July 1978):

“It is very important to be aware that you may never be satisfied with your analytic career if you feel that you are restricted to what is narrowly called a “scientific” approach. you will have to be able to have a chance of feeling that the interpretation you give is a beautiful one, or that you get a beautiful response from the patient. This aesthetic element of beauty makes a very difficult situation tolerable. It is so. important to dare to think or feel whatever you do think or feel, never mind how un-scientific it is.”

James and Shirley Gooch from Los Angeles recount that at the airport, before boarding his last trip to London — unknowingly his final trip — Bion smiled and said, “Continue the adventure [11].”

I hope that those who have been able to listen to me thus far have shared in my adventure and my enchantment with working in psychoanalysis.

Notes

1  Full and Teaching Member of the SPRJ, Full Member of the Newport Psychoanalytical Institute, California, Honorary Member of the W. Bion Institute, Porto Alegre.

2 In English Romanticism, poets assert that human development relies on the adoption and gradual assimilation of new, previously unconsidered ideas. Scientists discover these ideas, they inspire artists, or they can be inspired by them. Both prospectives are valid, and in the case of the analyst, perhaps we should not make a distinction between science and art. At-one-ment, the pursuit of truth, is a common endeavor shared by scientists, artists, and psychoanalysts.

3 Lives do not fit into obituaries; they are far greater than mere summaries. Lives are not collections of incidental traits or fleeting circumstances, nor are they defined by good or bad decisions made at one time or another. To say that a life was worth living, it is necessary to know it as a whole and recognize that there are no more chapters to add. Only then can we truly know what kind of life it was, whether it was joyful, sad, or something more thoughtful.

4 Tuna tartare, eggplant caponata with almonds, gnocchi with veal meatballs, Prosecco.

5 And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. - Nietzsche.

6 Lyrics from the song “A Felicidade” (Happiness) by Brazilian composers Antônio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes.

7 Holton, Gerard, "The Scientific Imagination," Zahar, 1979.

8 Those corrupted by the speech of the corruptor of speech may experience euphoria and sensations of triumph characteristic of hallucinosis, brought about by the fleeting, worldly comforts of deceit, lies, and empty bravado. However, those who support them often fall into the depths of frustration and bitterness, and in revenge, may support all perverse forms of hypocrisy, hatred, and racism.

9 He later admitted that information from Bion's biography about his experience in World War I may have influenced his perception. Marcus's family had come to the United States fleeing the effects of this war: famine, unemployment, the decay of political systems, and disillusionment.

10 Personal communication.

11 Personal communication.