Brazilian Lectures: 1973, Sao Paulo; 1974, Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo 0946439788, 9780946439782

Table of contents :
1973 Sao Paulo
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
1974 Rio de Janeiro
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
1974 Sao Paulo
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE

Citation preview

W.R. BION

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

1973 Sao Paulo 1974 Rio de Janeiro / Sao Paulo

KARNAC BOOKS

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

W i l f r e d R. B i o n

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

1973 1974

Sao Paulo

Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo

Wilfred R. Bion

Karnac Books London

1990

New York

First published in 1990 by H. K a r n a c ( B o o k s ) L t d , 118 F i n c h l e y R o a d , London NW3 5HT Distributed in the United States of America by Brunner/Mazel, Inc. 19 Union Square West New York, NY 10003 Copyright © 1990 by The Estate of Wilfred R. Bion. By arrangement with Francesca Bion and Mark Paterson. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form, by any process or technique, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library C a t a l o g u i n g in P u b l i c a t i o n D a t a Bion, Wilfred (Wilfred Ruprecht), 1897-1979 Brazilian lectures 1 & 2. — Rev. & Corr. ed. 1. Psychoanalysis I. Title 150.19'5 ISBN 9 7 8 - 0 - 9 4 6 4 3 9 - 7 8 - 2 Printed in Great Britain by BPCC Wheatons Ltd, Exeter

T

hese lectures have been edited to suit them to the printed, rather than the spoken word. With the exception of a few minor additions the text is substantially the same as that of the transcripts taken from the original tape recordings.

The questions which stimulated the material content have had to be subjected to the same selection and compression without, I hope, too much misrepresentation of the intentions of the partici­ pants. To them I would like to express my thanks; also to Frank Philips, whose arduous and spontaneous translation made the lectures in Sao Paulo possible. Of my wife's contribution in changing the spoken to the printed word I cannot speak highly enough. This book has cost her many hours of skillful work.

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

v

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

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

THE GRID Defini­ tory Hypo­ theses

A ^-elements

B a-elements

C

Dream Thoughts Dreams, Myths

D Pre-conception

E Conception

F Concept

G Scientific Deductive System

H

Algebraic Calculus

Nota­ tion

Atten­ tion

Inquiry

Action

3

4

5

6

1

2

Al

A2

Bl

B2

B3

B4

B5

B6

.. .Bn

CI

C2

C3

C4

C5

C6

...Cn

Dl

D2

D3

D4

D5

D6

.. .Dn

El

E2

E3

E4

E5

E6

.. .En

Fl

F2

F3

F4

F5

F6

.. .Fn

G2

•••n

A6

1973

Sao Paulo

ONE

I

n these seminars I will try to give a sketch of the area in which I am prepared to exhibit my ignorance and to answer ques­ tions that you care to ask. Go on asking the same question as often as you like and I will answer it if I can, although probably in a different way each time.

I shall start with a fable, in the guise of an historical account of the Royal Cemetery at U r . On the death of the king the entire court processed into an excavation, since called T h e Death Pit', and there, dressed in their finery and jewels, took a drug from a small cup later found by each body. Five hundred years later, without any publicity, the tombs were robbed. It was a courageous thing to do because the Cemetery had been sanctified by the death and burial of the Royal Family. The robbers were the patrons of the scientific method: the first who dared to break through the ghostly sentinels of the dead and their priestly attendants. This primitive reconstruction, which is not history, archaeology or art, might be categorized from a religious, aesthetic or scientific

3

4

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

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

1973

SAO PAULO

5

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

6

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

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

1973

SAO PAULO

7

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

8

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

can guess that we would be feeling anxious. But we do not know whether the feeling that we would have in fifty years' time would be something that we could stand. We often speak in terms of 'anxiety', Very anxious', 'exceptionally anxious', or 'I'm not anx­ ious at all'—that kind of quantitative language. A t some point quantitative change turns into qualitative change. But this sup­ poses the passage of'time' which is a concept, although we tend to forget that and to believe that there is such a 'thing' as 'time'. Q. Has analysis concerned itself too much with analogy? In your example of the tomb at U r , was this kind of model not itself a disturbing one? How does this affect the course of an analysis? B. It affects it very much—in the present. It cannot affect it at any other time. Similarly, nostalgia or anticipation are important because they exist in the present. This seems to me to be lost sight of—that the analysis itself is done in the present. It cannot be done in anything else whatever. But the ideas of the past and the future, although they are feeble ideas, are emotionally strong. When people talk about the future, or what they remember, or what they desire, they are really talking about a powerful, present feeling. If someone says they remember 'the good old days', they are talking about a powerful feeling, and they are giving it a name which will not stand investigation. Over and over again, these names, like 'past', 'future', 'good old days', are in fact names of a feeling in the present, and that is why they are so important. With regard to the use of the analogy, I agree it is a most defective tool, but it is also a very powerful one. The dominance of the ocular senses, both real and imagined, is such that it affects our capacity for thought. I may overcome the difficulty by being so abstract that what I say is incomprehensible, by being so concrete that it is comprehensible and misleading. But the importance of the analogy is not the similarity of one thing to another, but the relationship between the two. Q. I would like you to say more about the synthesis of the past, the present and the future, because in the sense of removing the limits of time and space I feel that the imagination is equivalent to a fifth dimension. You frequently express yourself mathe­ matically and I therefore take it from this angle.

1973

SAO P A U L O

9

S . Let us consider the opposite: the counterpart of the syn­ thetic in the sense of the analytic. I refer to Kant's distinction between the synthetic and the analytic; that is the way in which I am using the distinction between the a priori and the experiential knowledge. Q. Would you say some more about the model of U r in its relation to the scientific method and to the breaking down of taboos. B. I can put a visual image into a verbal formulation, like telling the story about the cemetery at U r , the priesthood, the royal funeral and the tomb robbers. As a result, if I am successful in calling up that visual image, then I am also falsifying it in the same way. That verbal formulation of a visual image is more comprehensible and probably more false. Euclid, by drawing lines and circles, appealed to the eyes. As a result, for several centuries intelligent human beings thought that Euclidean geometry pre­ sented space as it is known to all of us. But when Descartes promulgated the idea of the Cartesian co-ordinates, geometry became independent of these lines and circles and triangles and translated them into terms which were algebraical. Until that time nobody realized the fallacy of Euclidean geometry. It was con­ vincing and misleading. On the other hand, projective geometry is, for most of us, incomprehensible. Similarly, if I were to draw a picture, I could, even with limited artistic ability, give you the impression of an avenue of trees and a circular pond at the end. In fact, if you looked at it and were honest with yourself, you would admit it was not a circle but an ellipse. Thus, the artist is able to help people to ignore the piece of canvas smelling of paint, the better to see an avenue of trees and a pond. What then is to be done with that communication? Either it is visual, comprehensible and wrong, or it is accurate and incomprehensible—unless, of course, we happen to be either mathematicians who are familiar with projective geometry (that is, algebraic formulations which pre­ viously would have to be drawn or imagined in visual terms), or aesthetically trained. The problem would be a simple one if it were as extreme as that, but real life is not so simple. Psycho-analysts are confronted with a situation which is extremely complex. We

10

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

may first want to discuss the problem, but all we have at our disposal is conversational language. We might try inventing a language that is suitable for our work; would we then ever have a patient who understood what we were talking about? That sounds pessimistic, but it depends on the belief that a single individual is of any consequence. For example, it is rash, to say the least, to assume that one person would be able to carry this discussion further. But forty or fifty of us may, and I am hoping that quantity of us leads to a change of quality. The more of us who have not only heard of, but felt anxiety, the greater the possibility that someone will be able to say more about it than, 'You are anxious'. We do, in fact, use conversational language: we say 'sex', 'aggression', 'anx­ iety' and so on. The tendency, therefore, is for our listeners to say, 'But we know all this—we all know about sex and anxiety—what about it?' The reply is a difficult one because it will have to be, 'But you don't know; and if you will study our approach to this subject and you are able to benefit by it, at the end of the analysis you will discover that you do not know; 'yes I know' is no more a solution when said by grown men and women, than when said by a child. The analyst will say, 'Yes, I did say "envy", but you don't know what I mean when I say "envy"'. That is the problem. It sounds exactly 'as i f we are saying what everyone knows and using a language that everybody knows. Time and again we do not use what we understand by conversational language. It may appear to be articulate, governed by the rules of grammar and by an ordin­ ary vocabulary, but as practising psycho-analysts we have a chance of realizing that something else is going on in the sessions. We can say to the patient, 'When I say "anxiety" I mean something which is what you are feeling at the moment'. We can also say, 'When I say "envy" it is a name which I am giving to the way in which you seem to me to be behaving at this moment when you tell me you already know everything that an analyst can tell you'. It is difficult to get people to realize that they do not know envy as an analyst knows envy—his own or other people's. As a psycho-ana­ lyst I do not claim to know the answer, but I do not mean, therefore, that those who come to me for analysis know better.

TWO

he sign K (£) denotes a complex idea, or series of ideas, in its most simple and uncomplicated form. Its most extended - L . form suffers from requiring the whole of psycho-analysis, past, present and future, for its expression and elucidation. Its most economical formulation is incomprehensible without experi­ ence. In this way it is analogous to mathematical signs such as, dx = 2 Gij dxi dxj i:j = l 2

to represent a four-dimensional world of three space coordinates, and a fourth coordinate denoting time. K represents a constant, or variant. £ is an unknown compo­ nent, a variable, an unconscious which remains unconscious, a source of speculation and disturbance. Variables depend on ver­ tices such as religious, aesthetic and scientific, often represented in the world of reality by persons and their points of view. Perhaps you wonder why I do not say what I mean in a way that you could understand. You may be thinking, on the other hand,

11

12

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

'What about it? I know all this already—I can't waste my time on it'. But if we go on together I shall try talking in borrowed fables, verbal formulations of visual images, stories like that of Oedipus, of the Tower of Babel, or the Garden of Eden. A l l these are reminis­ cent of ideogrammatic speech. They are open to the objection that they are easy to grasp, being dominated by the ocular senses and distorted accordingly. They are both easily comprehensible and false. This is probably one of the components of Plato's hostility to the poet. I am now using the history of philosophy to tell a story. I can imagine that one of the grievances held against Socrates was that he was corrupting the youth by mobilizing visual imagery or poetry, both of which are powerfully seductive. Whether it is true I do not know, but it serves my purpose to construct the story as a method of making relatively simple something that I want to convey. I may be able to make it clearer while at the same time being misleading. Alternatively, I can resort to something which is so sophisticated that it has very little or no feeling; in that case the communication will be so theoretical (it may be true) that it will be incomprehensible. So, at the two extremes, I can either be comprehensible and misleading, or truthful and incomprehensi­ ble. But while it is possible, at a scientific meeting, to make an exaggerated statement of this kind, it is not like real life; the analyst should be talking about real life. No interpretation is any good unless it is reminiscent of real life. Although the analyst cannot, in fact, be a famous or important person, he may be feltby the analysand to be so. If the analysand is trying to co-operate he will speak or behave as if the analyst was somebody as important as a father might be to a child, or as God might be to an adult. But the significant thing is not the child and the father, or the adult human and God, but the relationship between the two—the link. This is expressed in psycho-analytic theory by the term 'transference', referring to the relationship between analyst and analysand. It reminds me of mathematicians (Frege, for instance) who talk about pure mathematics as being about the relationship between mathematical objects. It is useful for us to borrow that terminology. To return to the sign K (£): whatever one is saying in the course of the analytic experience, whether in the group or with the indi­

1973

SAO PAULO

13

vidual, one part of it will remain constant and the other will be constantly changing—the unsaturated element. But while these signs are useful for talking about psycho-analysis, they are not useful for experiencing psycho-analysis. For example, I thought the patient who said, 1 don't know what I mean', was talking articulate English. It took me a long time to realize that he was not, but when, after about six months, I did, the experience was instantaneous. He was as ideogram. He was something that ought to have reminded me of a person lying on a couch. That person had a meaning and I could say to him, 'You do not know what you mean; but you expect me to know that when I see someone lying on the couch, two people have been having sexual intercourse'. What this patient ^ e a n t ' was that his parents, or two people, had been having sexual intercourse. To return to the question of what this language is which is spoken but not articulated: the analyst has to manufacture some­ thing which enables him to know what is going on, in the way that Galileo—another story—had to invent and build a telescope before he could make any discoveries. Over two thousand years ago Aristarchus proposed a heliocentric theory, but there was no equipment, physical or mental, with which that could be con­ firmed or refuted. It took a long time and the co-operation of many people before an instrument for observing the facts and making it possible to understand what those facts meant became available. One can imagine that Aristarchus might have said, These are the facts; I don't know what they mean, but if enough of you, for enough years, get together, you may be able to see the same thing and even be able to understand what you see'. We are generally able to understand sensual experience; so long as we can use our physical make-up we can understand certain things. We can understand, for example, that I am Bion. But here is the misleading point about visual imagery. As a result of think­ ing that we know who or what Bion is, we may think that we know that character because we are misled by the power of our sight, and we may, therefore, think that Bion's character ends with his skin. In fact, any psycho-analyst would be bound to feel that if there is such a thing as a mind, or character, or personality, it cannot be assumed to correspond to the physical formation. A l l of us need, in

14

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

the analytic session, to wonder why we think there is a personality where the body lies. The area which is available for inspection to psycho-analysis is like an expanding universe. As soon as I can understand what it means when I can see a body lying on a couch, the live relationship between me and you, and you and me (either direction) has become a dead relationship between I and it, and it and me, and you and it, and it and you. This is, again, a verbal formulation of visual imagery. But in the consulting room the relationship is different. Let us suppose that the relationship between you and me, and me and you, is ultra-sensual and infra-sensual (again, terminology based on visual imagery). It is a theory made up of sensuous experience, like a measure or a telescope, in order to make contact with or discern something which is possibly infra-sensual or ultra­ sensual, like talking about infra-red or ultra-violet. But it is not about light; it is about what we might metaphorically call mental illumination. 1 see what you mean.' But I do not; nor can I tell you what I see without using terminology which is borrowed from the physical sciences and, therefore, sure to be unsuitable. Psycho­ analysts will have to invent and manufacture a way of'seeing' the other person. Q. Although, in analysis, the patient uses a language which is variable, we have to search for and understand the invariant—the ideogram. We have to talk to him in his own language, which is not ours, and capture his ideograms. Is this not a question of tech­ nique? B. In the practice of psycho-analysis the patient will make a statement. One part of it consists of what he already knows; another part is the attempt to formulate the problem for which he seeks help. The analyst must try to state the information asked for in terms which he thinks are comprehensible by the patient. If you wanted to relate a dream, you would have to tell it through time. You would have to say this happened, and that happened, and something else happened; but that is not what the dream did. One moment that dream was not there—the next moment you knew the whole dream. When dealing with some­ thing so primitive and fundamental we need to find some instru­

1973

SAO PAULO

15

ment or language which could distinguish between a narrative like a fable, and this experience which happens all at once. For this purpose I have used two things which are entirely meaningless: beta-elements, which do not belong to the domain of thinking, and alpha-elements, which are reserved for the domain of thought. The physicists have categorized physical atoms and have then described parts of atoms and have invented an instrument—the electron microscope. This is so impressive that there is a danger that we might want to do the same. It is useful to be stimulated by these achievements, but not to a point of trying to do the same. It is possible here to talk about psycho-analysis and alpha-elements and beta-elements. These words are useful if we want to talk about things, even if there is no reason to believe they are facts. There is no evidence whatsoever to believe that beta-elements and alpha­ elements exist, except by a kind of metaphor like calling them psychological atoms, or psychological electrons. A l l that I am saying could be classified according to Grid category C3. It might then be possible to bring together C3 and F3. It is a psycho-analytic game, like a children's game in which the arguments become so fierce and bitter as to who is father, or who is mother, or who is baby. The spectator, confronted with such a display of emotion, begins to think, T h i s must be about something'. As adults we can guess that the game is a serious prelude to marriage, but the child has not the knowledge to make it possible for it to understand the adult interpretation. At the same time, the ordinary adult can find it difficult to know why the children are so quarrelsome and why 'only a game' stirs up so much emotion. I suggest that it is equally difficult to know why an adult, mature psycho-analyst should feel angry about a psycho-analytic theory, unless that theory is part of an adult game—the psycho­ analytic game—which stimulates and engenders a great deal more heat than light. Using the theory of the expanding universe (for visual pur­ poses): when the analyst has made an interpretation he has also caused the universe of discussion to expand. His moment of illumination is very brief. At once he is back in the unknown; the

16

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

problem has gone out of sight. It has become ultra-sensuous (and infra-sensuous in the other direction). I have said 'direction' but what are the points of the mental compass? I do not know. Someone will have to find out. It may take anything from the time which has elapsed between Aristarchus and the present day, to that between Democritus of Croton and a modern psycho-analyst. The distance between the state of mind of the modern psycho-analyst and that of Democritus of Croton is vast when measured by the artificial scale of distance in time. But that may be the distance between one element in classical psycho-analysis and another. What is the distance between 'No, I didn't dream anything', and 'Yes, I had a dream'? What is the distance between 'nothing' and 'the whole thing'? This kind of investigation can only be carried out by psycho-analysts, who will have to invent their tools. Assuming that there is such a thing as a mind which is infra-sensuous and ultra-sensuous, how are we to find an instrument for investigating that? If it were the physical world, one could use the electro­ magnetic wave system and invent angstrom units to measure the distance between one wave length and another. Yet even in the physical world it is not possible to reconcile theories of wave motion together with theories of elementary particles which come together as a whole without any discernible gap between 'nothing' and 'everything'. Crude categorizations, such as religion, aesthetics, or science, are useful for macroscopic investigation, but not for psycho-ana­ lysis. They are only models which may be useful or not, and which can be discarded without all the upheaval involved in upsetting a theory. Models are expendable; theories are not. This is why it may be helpful to invent beta-elements and alpha-elements. It is like playing games with higher mathematics, except that the games are no more grown-up than those which are played in the primitive domain. To turn now to the story Virgil wrote, using an aesthetic capa­ city to describe religion in serious terms. The story of the death of Palinurus is a serious simplification, through the poetical capacity of a great man to draw attention to religion. The god Somnus appears disguised as another god and in this guise seduces Pal­ inurus, saying: 'You are tired; it is a fine night, the fleet is going by

1973

SAO PAULO

17

the guidance of your ship; there is no danger; you can go to sleep and I will guide the ship/ Palinurus replies, I am not such a fool as to be taken in by a smooth face. I would never trust the smooth face of the sea and the air', and he ties himself to the helm. The god then takes a branch, dips it in the waters of Lethe, and scatters it over Palinurus who is thereby rendered helpless. The god immediately hurls Palinurus into the sea with such violence that part of the ship is torn away at the same time. That is a moral story, a serious moral story. If we ask ourselves what words we should have to use to tell that story today, we should have to talk about things like memory, desire, drugs (the waters of Lethe), violence and great hostility. l

To continue the story—Aeneas sees his helmsman has gone, his ship is veering wildly and the fleet has nothing to navigate by. He says: Toor Palinurus! How sad that you should be taken in by something so commonplace as the smooth appearance of the sea.' Nobody gains anything. Aeneas cannot believe he has a faithful, experienced helmsman; Palinurus cannot feel that his leader knows anything about his fidelity or his ability. That is a moral story; plus or minus. Therefore, when your patient makes you feel that he is being omnipotent, it would be useful if you had evidence which might show what kind of god he is talking about and what kind of morals he is experiencing. In the consulting-room the analyst has to be a kind of poet, or artist, or scientist, or theologian to be able to give an interpretation or a construction (Freud, 1936). The analyst must be able to construct a story. Not only that: he must construct a language which he can talk and which the patient can understand. In the meantime he must be able to tolerate this expanding universe which expands faster than he can think. He can think fast enough to get from nothing to the inter­ pretations, but by the time he has finished talking, the universe has developed beyond sight. The problem is: How can we become strong enough to tolerate it?—a much more modest aim than trying to add something new to psycho-analysis.

THREE

W

e have previously divided the domain of investigation into religious, scientific and aesthetic. At any given stage one or other of these categories is liable to be predominantly obtrusive, but it does not mean that the other ones are not discernible. For example, the patient claims to be entirely scientific, to have no particular religious beliefs and not to be in any way artistic. But religious and aesthetic elements are quickly and easily discerned amongst all this presenting scientific material. Frequently one can point out that it is not a question of not having religious beliefs, but that the religious belief which the patient is betraying is one which is an insult to his intelligence. Consequently, his scientific view betrays hostility to the religion which is hostile to it. The fundamental, basic elements belonging to the primitive level of the human personality are at war with each other. The Grid categories are useful for the purposes of talking or thinking about these elements here—not in the con­ sulting room. We could suppose human behaviour or activity which we would not call thought at all. Alpha-elements and beta­

19

20

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

elements are supposed to represent elements which are equally primitive and difficult to observe, but even when we deliberately choose two meaningless terms, like beta-elements or alpha-ele­ ments, almost at once those empty categories have acquired a meaning. It is as if the mind abhorred a vacuum and filled it up accordingly. Q. Would you explain more about the mind which functions like a muscle. B. When you speak of a muscle, I am not sure whether you are speaking metaphorically, or about a physiological or anatomical structure; or is it a way of using a physical object like a muscle as the easiest way in which to describe a part of the mind? The only way to speak about this particular thing may be to borrow from the world of physical vocabulary, language, or experience. It may be difficult for us to understand, but it is the easiest and shortest way to attempt communication. The question will recur, although its formulation may be deceptively different. Milton's Paradise Lost and the termination of the Fifth Book of the Aeneid are both serious attempts to formulate, and thus com­ municate, something about religion, about a god representing the ultimate reality. We are trying to talk about an obscure subject, the most fundamental and primitive parts of the human mind. We could try to bring a brilliant illumination to bear on this obscure thing in order to show up the dark space so clearly that even something dark and difficult to see would become visible. Freud gave a clue to another approach [in a private letter to Lou AndreasSalon^] when he said, 'I often try artificially to blind myself in order to examine these obscure places'. I may not have translated that correctly, but I would like to borrow from Freud and divert his statements to suit my problem. Instead of trying to bring a brilliant, intelligent, knowledgeable light to bear on obscure problems, I suggest we bring to bear a diminution of the 'light'—a penetrating beam of darkness: a reciprocal of the searchlight. The peculiarity of this penetrating ray is that it could be directed towards the object of our curiosity, and this object would absorb whatever light already existed, leav­ ing the area of examination exhausted of any light that it pos­ sessed. The darkness would be so absolute that it would achieve a

1973

SAO PAULO

21

luminous, absolute vacuum. So that, if any object existed, however faint, it would show up very clearly. Thus, a very faint light would become visible in maximum conditions of darkness. This mechanism could be described as a version of sophisticated thought—Grid category F (concepts) and G (scientific deductive systems). Suppose we are watching a game of tennis, looking at it with increasing darkness. We dim the intellectual illumination and light, forgetting imagination or phantasy or any once-con­ scious activities; first we lose sight of the players, and then we gradually increase the darkness until only the net itself is visible. If we can do this, it is possible to see that the only important thing visible to us is a lot of holes which are collected together in a net. Similarly, we might look at a pair of socks and be able to see a mass of holes which have been knitted together. Freud described some­ thing of this kind, but said that the patient had a phobia which made it impossible for him to wear socks. I suggest that the patient did not have a phobia of socks but could see that what Freud thought were socks were a lot of holes knitted together. If this is correct, terms like 'phobia' in classical analysis do not do justice to the facts, and in particular do not do justice to the extreme capacity for observation which is natural to some patients. Just as it is natural for me in my gross, macroscopic way classically to see a pair of socks, this kind of patient has a visual capacity which is different, making him able to see what I cannot see. What I think, with the light of my intelligence, brains, knowledge, experience, is a pair of socks, he can see is not. We should reconsider this domain of thought, because as psycho-analysts we must be able to see that it is a pair of socks, or a game of tennis, and at the same time to be able to turn down the light, turn off the brilliant intuition, and see these holes, including the fact that they are knitted, or netted together. I would like to consider the category 'psychotic' and suggest that it is too gross, too macroscopic. If we look at it more closely, in detail, in the way we would have to look at a game of tennis, or a pair of socks, we can see that there may be insane psychotics and sane psychotics. It might be possible to help the insane psychotic to become an efficient psychotic. That is talking in terms of a vertex of understanding, of knowledge, but it is not enough for psycho­

22

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

analysts. A psycho-analyst must be able not only to see something which is apparently a game of tennis, but also be able to move to a different vertex and see this same game from that position; he could then see what the patient who could not wear socks could see. Similarly, it might be possible to move the vertex and get nearer to being able to see what an artist or a theologian sees. It depends on a certain flexibility of mind of all of us who concern ourselves with the human mind. This can be seen to be difficult; Descartes, while suggesting philosophical doubt, failed completely to doubt philosophical doubt. 'Cogito, ergo sum' is a failure to doubt doubt. This means that the domain of present-day analysis is much wider than that known to classical analysis. I am aware that in referring to ^classical' analysis I am using another meaningless term, but it becomes possible to talk about psycho-analysis by using terms of this kind in much the same way as it is possible to talk about Euclidean geometry, or the geometry of Riemann or Lobachevski. These last two turn out to be important in dealing with space: not geographical space, not classical space, not geocentric space, but this other space—let us call it scientific space, or religious space, or aesthetic space, as a convenient way of talking about it. But it is no good going to a museum and expecting to see there classical, aesthetic space, any more than it is any good going up the Amazon to have a look at the equator. One has to be content with this element K(£), the constant together with the unsaturated space. Psycho-analysts must become accustomed to open-ended theory, to infinite, not finite space. If we want to know something about religion, or aesthetics, or science, we have to tolerate infinity. I suspect that we are addicted to a kind of Euclidean geometry which depends on our being able, like Euclid, to borrow from the domain of space which we think is real. The physicist, who might be supposed to believe that there is a world of real physical space, has now found it necessary (I am quoting Heisenberg) to suppose an uncertainty principle. So the physicists have caught up with Descartes. But Descartes did not have to use physical or philosoph­ ical doubt; psycho-analysts do. We cannot have the privilege of playing a game of philosophical doubt; we have to use it in practice. Similarly, we have to use a method which includes not only under­

1973

SAO PAULO

23

standing, but also m^-understanding. That is another reason why nobody, except ourselves, is likely to make progress. Q. Nowadays religion is a taboo as sex was a taboo before Freud. Religion, money, science and aesthetics are probably related to sex. Would you comment further on this subject. B. I do not believe that real life has any divisions such as religion, or aesthetics, or science, any more than there is a line dividing the northern hemisphere from the southern. That line tells you something about the human mind. These categories tell you something about the way in which sophisticated human beings think, but it is doubtful that they tell you anything about the things themselves. If there is a thing-in-itself, a thing which Kant would call the noumenon, all that we can know is about phenomena. When the noumena, the things themselves, push forward so far that they meet an object which we can call a human mind, there then comes into being the domain of phenomena. We can guess, therefore, that corresponding to these phenomena, which are something that we know about because they are us, is the thing itself, the noumenon. The religious man would say, There is, in reality, God'. What Freud and psycho-analysts have investigated is phenomena. The human mind is an unimportant element; it is also an obstacle. For example: I would not be able to see a stream which was flowing smoothly without any obstacle to disturb it because it would be so transparent. But if I create a turbulence by putting in a stick, then I can see it. Similarly, the human mind may set up a turbulence, and some sensitive, intui­ tive and gifted mind, like the one we call Leonardo da Vinci, can draw pictures of turbulence reminiscent of hair and water. He can translate this turbulence and transform it by making marks on paper and canvas which are clearly visible to us. But we may not so easily 'see' this turbulence in the world that we call the mind. If we can, then it becomes possible to believe that there is such a thing as a human personality in the world of reality, and such a thing as an underlying group in the universe of which we know nothing, only phenomena. By changing the vertex and borrowing from the religious, we can say that the assumption is that there is a Godhead (corres­

24

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

ponding to the noumenon) about which we know nothing; but we think we know something about God when we come to the realm of phenomena. In religious terminology, there is numen which can be numinous, and there are omens which can be ominous. The religious person would say that psycho-analysts are only inves­ tigating the phenomena and that in consequence things like dreams, thoughts, ideas, stories like Oedipus, are very superficial. There is, indeed, something important in this area which we can say belongs to the category of beta-elements. Freud gets near to this when he says that a dream is wish fulfilment. That is to say, there is no 'dream' (readily communica­ ble formulation) which is not a 'wish', in contrast with the original, unknowable, unknown 'dream'. In other words, there is no night­ mare so terrifying that it is not better than the thing-in-itself. Some patients will say they had a dream, and I may think, 'This is not a dream; it has no free associations'. This may be a mistaken impression. The patient may be able to have a real dream, exactly as he can see that a real sock is a series of holes which have been knitted together, and that the important thing in the game of tennis is the net. Why should a patient not have the same experi­ ence whether he is asleep or awake? I may think there is a dif­ ference between what he is experiencing when he is asleep and when he is awake, because they would be different experiences for me. To him the events in both instances are the same. The real thing is the dream which happens exactly as he said—he held out his hand and his arm fell off, and there it was lying on the ground. It is not a dream without free associations; it is the real thing. Similarly, a mystic may be able to say that he has direct relation­ ship with God, without the intervention of any other agency. Borrowing from the domain of physiology, let us suppose that the central nervous system does not develop further than the thalamus, and that there is a world which can be contacted by the parasympathetic or the autonomic nervous system which has the thalamus as its brain. In that sphere the individual can know and contact what we call feelings. I suggest that on this basis there could be such a thing as thalamic fear, or thalamic hate, or thalamic love, unknown in the relatively recent development of the cerebral spheres—the 'grey matter'. I suggest that the patient

1973

SAO P A U L O

25

who can mobilize his thalamus can have dreams and experiences analogous to seeing or hearing things, but is not hearing or seeing things because no system of sensory organs is developed. This patient may, however, be able to do something analogous to know­ ing about things which we cannot know because we have gone too far, and because there is now a gap between thought and action. In order to express this in terms of classical analysis one would have to borrow from Freud's 'Formulations on the Two Prin­ ciples of Mental Functioning' [1911, S.E. vol. XII], in which he suggests that the capacity to think can be used to intervene between impulse and activity. If thinking has not developed, the person will go straight from the impulse to the action without any intervening space of thought. This is why, in Homeric psychology, so much importance is attached to the phrenes, the diaphragm. It seems a reasonable idea. You can see for yourself that feelings of fear, hate, love, are accompanied by movements of the diaphragm. What is more natural than to suppose these feelings are caused by the diaphragm which must, therefore, be the home of the mind? Democritus of Abdera was the first to suggest that the mind is related to the brain. It is difficult to believe that the mind could possibly have anything to do with this chunk of white, nervous material. A l l you have to do is to hit a man on the head and expose his brain, and you can see for yourself there is no mind there. It is, therefore, a preposterous idea that this white stuff has anything to do with the mind, or the soul, or the spirit. On the other hand, according to Homeric psychology, there is no difficulty in believing in a whole spirit or mind of the person who is asleep and off their guard, or dead. To return to the religious vertex: it is easy to believe in some kinds of god, like the one Virgil described. There are many other gods in whom it is difficult to believe without insulting one's intelligence. A war between what we call science and religion is, therefore, inevitable. It is impossible for anybody who knows what is visible from the religious vertex to believe in science. Suppose that it has become possible to observe and believe in something which is so obtrusive that it is worth giving a name, like 'sex'. Equally, it may be possible, for the time being, to believe in a scientific approach, and even in truth. There is no reason why a

26

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

change should not take place in which people will no longer toler­ ate thought, but will say that thinkers, like Socrates, corrupt the youth, or, like Plato, that artists and poets should be forbidden because they tell lies, they corrupt the truth. Our next state may be one in which it is as wicked to be a scientist as it might have been a short while ago to do sexual things and to believe that even babies have a sexual life. It is as incredible as to believe that my hand was once a baby's hand; this is the kind of story that scien­ tists tell. Suppose that psycho-analysts say that an infant or child has a mind, and that games which children play, like soldiers, turn into wars, and that faeces and urine can turn into atomic bombs. Any people who could assert such nonsense obviously ought to be abolished. Q. Is it possible to show the model 'mother-baby' on the Grid? B. If it could be shown it would be by something in the area of transformations of visual imagery (C3), like saying, 'I had a dream last night', describing in words something that was seen when off one's guard as in sleep. Q. Is there a difference in the way in which 'time' is expressed aesthetically, or scientifically, or religiously? B. It depends which vertex one adopts. For example, one can treat the vertex itself as a variable and use a measure which might indicate angstrom units or light years (scientific). Using an aes­ thetic time-scale, we could quote 'Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away'; or, 'From everlasting to everlast­ ing thou art God'—a religious time-scale.

FOUR

I would like to hear more about category A of the Grid (beta-elements) and column 6, thoughts transformed • immediately into actions. B. There is a good deal of evidence to support the assumption that there exists something which we call the human mind, thought, personality. For example, 'sensuous evidence', meaning that which appears to be based on the information given by our physical, sensual feelings; this in turn suggests that there are physical bodies, that is 'corporeal evidence*. That material could fall in this category of beta-elements. We are not assuming that that is human thought at all. We can use the category as a way of making it possible to talk about these elements. If we want to talk about the analogue of small, elementary features of thought, we can use the category of alpha-elements about which we are equally ignorant and for which we have no evidence whatever. Beta 6 would represent not thought, but action with actions. Freud supposes, in 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Func­ tioning' [1911, S.E. vol. XII], that if no thought were possible,

27

28

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

the individual would go straight from an impulse to an action without any intermediate thought. Confronted by the unknown, the human being would destroy it. Put into a verbal formulation of a visual image, it is as if the reaction were, 'Here is something I don't understand—I'll kill it'. But a few might say, 'Here is some­ thing I don't understand—I must find out'. Keeping to this primitive area of alpha-elements, the human animal might say, 'Here is something that frightens me, let me hide and watch it', or if it became braver, 'Let me go nearer and sniff it', using its olfactory senses. It is not enough to say, 'Here is a civilized human being, let us analyse him', as if we could categor­ ize his conversational language with these comparatively complex and sophisticated categories like C, D, E , F to H , and 1 to n - 1. That is an assumption we habitually make without verifying its validity. So long as we do that, psycho-analysis itself, although the most profound method of investigation we know, is not only not profound enough, but also risks destruction by the potentially observed object. Q. I am going to try and sniff it and see what happens about this frightening unknown. I heard a story. There was once a man who was born in Ursprung (German word for origin) who felt very lonely, helpless, anxious and split off from something that he intuited to be the absolute, the beautiful and the truth. He per­ ceived in himself the mental attitude that we call rituals—it gave him an intimate experience and evidence of contact with the truth and beauty and the absolute. I think it is what we call religious activity. On his journey through life he forgot the beginning and began to learn new things. Going from the culture of God to agriculture, a new form of culture, he succeeded in diminishing his anxiety and produced from the earth everything that he needed— plants, animals, minerals for his new god and made gold his symbol. He made art his new religion. He made doubt his god. Who told me that story? B. I have been told a story about this microphone. It has no recognisable smell. I am told a lot of stories about its insides and I am assured it is safe to talk at it. I do not like it and I am filled with admiration for the questioner who is able to tell me that story and ask questions with a microphone in his hands. In fact, I hate the

1973

SAO PAULO

29

thing, but I put up with it. I am not convinced that the microphone brings me nearer to you or that it protects me from you. In so far as psycho-analysis is only an instrument, like a microphone, it mat­ ters very much what it is being used for. I am not sure that I have to use psycho-analysis to get nearer to human beings or further from them. When a human being gets hold of a microphone and a lot of other scientific apparatus so that he can talk to some millions of people at the same time, I would like to be able to tell what he was using it for. Similarly, I would like to know what the people who are going to get control of psycho-analysis mean to use it for, and how they are going to use this extraordinary invention of human speech. I know of nothing in the realm of sensuous experience which would tell me. Perhaps using a religious vertex might give me a clue. There is a wide choice of religions for the person who is addicted to religion—anything from food, to money, to psycho-analysis, to science, to art, or even to curiosity. He might be addicted to stories like the one we have just been told. The hero of this story became so addicted to these sophisticated religions that he forgot the early ones. Even in psycho-analysis we might forget these early things and become addicted to the freedom which allows us to choose whether to be scientific or to use jargon. We have a wide choice; but there is something to be said for retaining some contact with these primitive, long-established aspects of our mental history. Like the hero of this story, we might prefer to be sophisticated and forget where we started the origin. Q. Is there any connection between the concept of desire and memory, and the same concepts in Hindu literature: for example, Krishnamurti? Do you consider that the phenomenon of trans­ ference is comprised of desire and memory? B . I can see a connection because you have just made one, but I do not know what it is. I do not know enough about Krishnamurti, but I am familiar with nostalgia and anticipation, both of which seem to me to be states of mind in which memory and desire play a great part. From my experience both of them interpose an opacity between me and the present. If I spend the time trying to under­ stand what you are telling me, then I cannot listen to you. If I am thinking about the 'good old days' or the good times which are

30

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

coming, I cannot pay attention to the present. But the only place I can live is always the present; there is, therefore, no value in what I can remember about my past except that I cannot forget what I cannot remember. Consequently, unless I know what the past is that fills my mind, I cannot forget it; and I am not paying attention to the present if I am obsessed with the future which I know nothing about because it has not yet happened. We bring into the open certain elements of an analysand's past, not because we think they are particularly valuable, but because they are not valuable for him to have in his luggage. If we bring them to the surface then he can forget them. Those memories, past or future, which he does not know seem to have a great deal of power; they are what I would call feeble ideas but powerful emotions. Desire and memory are discernible as elements in trans­ ference—that is, supposing we can recognize the reality for which Freud coined the term 'transference'. Q. You underline the religious categories in physical and aes­ thetic. Do you consider only these categories, or are there in your opinion others such as political, ethical, etc.? B. A t present it is simpler for me to limit, by definition, the areas of the primitive. That has nothing to do with reality. It only has to do with my own ignorance and lack of capacity. It is a simplification and it is sure to be an over-simplification because the universes of reality cannot be simple enough to be understood by a human being. One could imagine that there is not only this universe of discussion, but the universe of discussion which con­ cerns all living animals. But then suppose there are countless more universes like the globular clusters or the spiral nebulae such as M31 and M33. Even the scientists cannot calculate the distance to our nearest neighbour more exactly than between one and two million light years—a measure of the vast ignorance of the human mind at its most sophisticated, mathematical, scientific level. Similarly, the most profound method known to us of inves­ tigation—psycho-analysis—is unlikely to do more than scratch the surface. It is, therefore, not surprising that the people who have a predominantly religious outlook say that there are certain experiences which are independent of the human mind; that to say that God is just a projection of the father of the family as he

1973

SAO P A U L O

31

appeared to us in infancy or childhood is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the God of reality; that it is a human interpreta­ tion which flattens out the religious belief, turning it into an imprisoning idea; that the scientific, psycho-analytic view of religion or God can in no way describe the reality of religion, but flattens out religious dread, or religious love, or religious hate to a point where the individual cannot feel awe or dread, terror or stupor. This is one reason why modesty is becoming to the analyst: arrogance is not. Even the mystic who says he has direct contact with God must, in fact, have flattened out the religious experience, although it is much more profound than anyone else's experience. However long we live we cannot possibly, as individuals, experi­ ence events such as those recorded by a few, mobilized from the whole of the human race, who, in spite of differences in age, religion, race and language, are all in agreement. Note, for example, what is said by Dante in the 36th Canto of Taradiso'; by Krishna asking Arjuna, in the Baghavad Gita, why he thinks he can understand God; and by God replying to Job's assumption that the human being can comprehend the Almighty. We lay ourselves open to the same accusation when we behave as if we could under­ stand the spiral nebulae simply by scientific method. Q. Do you think that the purpose of language is the destruc­ tion of meaning immediately after the process of discovery and communication, leaving man no opportunity to find another means of communication, either by way of neologism or of art or science? Does it not seem as if what we are saying at a given moment immediately afterwards suffers a restriction of meaning which makes it necessary to invent or create another? Do you yourself search for a new method of expressing that which tradi­ tional psycho-analysis got hold of and lost, or which the analyst got hold of and lost? Have new ideas become obscured by the fact that they have been discovered? B. I would like to believe that. I would like to desire that, but that very desire, and what I know of desire, makes me doubt the validity of what I can see. Nevertheless, I am prepared to go on trying and I think it may be possible, even though we have turned our backs on our pasts, our origins, our genesis, to revive or recreate what we once were able to do or think, as well as what we

32

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

can do and think today at our present age. I desire, with all its failings, to believe that it is possible to mobilize what I knew once with what I know now and what I still hope I may be capable of learning. I am hopeful because, after many years of effort, I have at last achieved the capacity to be awed by the depths of my igno­ rance. Whether I can continue to dare to appreciate how ill-equip­ ped I am to exist in the reality in which I am bound to live—let alone the universe of universes which are beyond my comprehen­ sion, which are beyond my mental capacity even when augmented by radio-telescopes, electron-microscopes and psycho-analysis—I do not know. Such depths of ignorance are difficult to dare to contemplate. Therefore, I am bound to feel a wish to believe how god-like I am, how intelligent, as a change from being appalled by my ignorance. This is where the religious person would say, 'You have given a good description of your arrogance as a psycho­ analyst; you have flattened it out so that you are no longer capable of awe, of dread, of stupor or terror'. Q. Could you explain the presence of action that does not substitute thought but precedes or follows it? B. Man is said to be a tool-making animal whose capacity may be so one-sided that he cannot keep up with the need to learn how to use the tools he makes. This might help us to understand why the dinosaurs, who were the lords of the universe, disappeared almost suddenly (measured by an absolute time-scale) at the height of their power. The human animal may, similarly, by virtue of the cancerous growth of his toolmaking capacity, put an end to the Magdalenian age, unless he can learn how to use his tools and related capacities. A t present it is much easier for us to be awe­ inspired by our clever monkey-like tricks than by our abysmal lack of knowledge of how to use them. I suspect that the question asked will have to be repeated, perhaps many times, to elicit an answer, if not from me, from somebody else. Q. How can we understand the concept of unconscious fantasy within the category of the Grid which you have been showing us? B. Another story: suppose I played a game like 'fathers and mothers'. That could be described as a 'conscious fantasy' at some stage. Then suppose I became so frustrated because I could not be father or mother, that I forgot it. I could say that the fantasy which

1973

SAO P A U L O 3

3

was once conscious had become unconscious. Today, when I am one of the parents, I may again be unwilling to know anything about this unconscious fantasy, for what is the use of knowing about 'fathers and mothers' when I am either too young to be one or too old to be able to do anything about it now. I may say, 'I don't want to have anything to do with these psycho-analysts. I do not want to be reminded of these fantasies. The best place for them is the un­ conscious.' The answer to that might be, T don't object to that, except that that "unconscious fantasy" of yours, as you call it, is horribly alive; it may be obscured but is active and powerful, though beyond the reach of my ability unless psycho-analysis (or something better) can bring it again within my scope'. The phrase I have used—'horribly alive'—is not an analytic concept; it is a synthetic concept in which the term 'alive' does not include the meaning, as it would analytically, of 'horrible'. Nor does the word 'horrible' include the idea of being alive. But if the two can be brought together, then you have a synthetic concept which also involves daring to bring two ideas together in a creative or generative manner. If, on the other hand, the individual is still dominated by hatred, envy and jealousy of the father and mother who can make anything from babies to ideas, he may be unable, even philosophically, to form symbols or synthesize analytic con­ cepts. There is no chance of making progress because there is no way of generating thought.

FIVE

W

hat is the interpretation of this cup that I am holding in my hand? My interpretation could be classified on the Grid as E l , that is to say, an interpretation in sophisti­ cated form. I could call it an element in a sentential calculus. There are, I am sure, many other interpretations which would probably be better placed in some other Grid category. [Silence] It seems that the combined wisdom of this group has no inter­ pretation to offer. We should be stimulated to wonder why silence is the group's response to this particular problem. If this occurred in analysis with an individual (one could consider the individual as being represented by a group) and I wanted to talk about the polyfaceted characteristics of that personality, I would need a large group of people to give me a visual image of that personality. I could then regard anything that that individual said or did as a statement made, or not made, by only one of the people in that group. That one person would still not be known to me any more than I know one facet of the silent individual. I might feel that

35

36

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

although the silence remained the same (what I would call K), the element £ (the variable) had changed but would remain without a value. Falling back on my classifications and verbalizations, one could say that the psycho-analytic vertex was too gross, too macroscopic, in the same way that a molecular formulation is on too large a scale for dealing with electrons or neutrons. On the other hand, suppose one tried to formulate it in terms of the very small, then the group of these elements would form a constant conjunction of elements which I could not distinguish the one from the other. The one mental element would, for my purposes, be indistinguishable from the other because the tiny element of the human personality has not been described by anyone. Nobody can say what a mental atom is. The language and formulations which have to be used by the psycho-analyst were, all of them, forged for different kinds of investigation or activity. The apparently simple question, 'What is the interpretation of this cup?, is not as simple as it looks. My interpretation means nothing. For one thing, it is too gross. If I try to make it more comprehensible and say, 'It is a coffee cup', neither you nor I feel any wiser. I hope, however, that what I have said so far indicates that I am talking about something that is not thought at all. I have to use words which do not belong to this subject in so far as there is a reality which approximates to the theoretical world of psycho-analysis or even of human speech. Q. The cup impresses me as being an object of use as a con­ tainer. In what sense is the mind itself a container with a content? B. This question has already led to one answer: it is a con­ tainer. That itself is a sophisticated observation in the category of C , which is one in which I would place the verbal formulations of a visual image. But the moment that is done the universe has begun to expand and another question is raised, namely, what is the use of this? I could say, 'I agree it is a cup, but I am not using it for holding anything. I am using it here to stimulate a question.' In that respect it is not as simple as a cup. It is questionable whether the verbal formulation is accurate because it is this which is used for purposes of stimulating the group or the individual.

1973

SAO PAULO

37

Q. I feel that you have an idea of what this cup is, but I have the impression that I cannot know what your idea is. I need more information to be able to give an interpretation about that. B. Put to the test of a reality situation, it is difficult to believe that there is any technique, whatever its name, which could reveal what I am thinking—remembering at the same time that I have already said what I am thinking. Assuming that there is some standard by which one could distinguish what is true and what is not, namely that there is some sort of truth function, it is difficult to believe that I, as the object of investigation, am likely to give you a correct (truthful) answer as to what it is that I am or contain. Q. This silence leaves me feeling curious. I would like to hear your opinion about the silence which was the response to your question. B. I can give my interpretation of what has just been said. It appears that the silence stimulates a certain fascination. It does not appear to further the investigation, but because of the fascina­ tion of the unknown neither does it cause every member of this group to abandon the investigation. Judging by appearances, the majority of the people who make up this group—or, if it was representing one individual, the majority of the elements of his make-up—do not want to carry the investigation further, but there is, as it were, one element which is too fascinated to allow it to lapse. Q. I suggest that the interpretation of the cup could be F4. B. This formulation is a sophisticated one, but could it be reformulated in any other terms which were more illuminating, or is F4 the simplest possible way of discussing this subject? I might say: this scientific stuff is too much for me. Is there some poet, or philosopher, or priest who could say it in a way which is com­ prehensible? I am not doubting that it is a sincere statement and that a scientific approach is permissible; I can still say that I cannot understand it, or I have not had the training or experience which makes it possible for me to understand the language. There may be nothing wrong with that formulation, and, according to me, nothing wrong with me, but I cannot understand it. Or, I can understand it but I do not know how to make it clear to the rest of

38

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

me, because I am a complex person and the majority of the aspects of my personality have now been forgotten by me. It is possible that I might know enough in the future, but there is no way I know of in which I can borrow what I might know in the future in order to make it possible for me to understand what is being said now. I have many years of experience to fall back on, including years of what I have been told is psycho-analysis, so it is a serious thing if, in spite of it all, I am still not able to use my equipment to comprehend this meeting and, even less, the people who are not here at all. Q. The cup brought me visual impressions: I saw its form, its height, the colouring on it, although I could not see it very clearly. It seemed to have a trademark at the bottom. It is a physical, inanimate object which by common consent we call a cup. By experience I have with other cups, it is a small cup which is suitable for holding coffee. I could put it in another context, but it is better to call it simply a coffee cup. When you used the cup as a model for us to think about we could distinguish you as a person separate from the cup. This cup can awaken in me visual and emotional impressions although it is not a cup which impresses me particularly by its artistic value. I feel a taste of coffee in my mouth that I took from a cup very much like this one. B. What impresses me about that formulation is that it sounds like a description of an emotional state or a symptom of a mind. That, of course, is itself partly an interpretation, but mostly a preconception. There appears to be every sign of an ability to make acute observations. A problem arises if the observer now wants to know what his observations mean, or, to put it in more theoretical language, what the interpretation is of these Tacts' which he has observed. Resorting to verbal formulation of a visual image, it is as if a child had an acute, fresh capacity for seeing things, but not enough experience to know what the interpretation is of those same observations. When a mature individual, who can make extremely acute observations of the environment in which he lives, wants to know what this environment means, the problem becomes a difficult one. What, for example, if he not only wants to know what this cup means, but also wants to know what the spiral nebula at M31 means? That is something which can be seen with

1973

SAO PAULO

39

the naked eye and has been observed by countless generations of the human race as a faint blur in the constellation of Andromeda. Suppose these countless generations are able to pass on the obser­ vation from one to another; suppose there is an individual whose observation is sufficiently acute to enable him to see this same faint blur on dark nights just above the central star of the three in the limb of the Andromeda and Pegasus; suppose his curiosity is aroused and he wonders why there is this constant conjunction; suppose it is 1973 and vast telescopes have been invented. With these instruments he can look at that same faint blur and discover that it looks like a spiral nebula, edge on. That will not only have an effect on what he has seen, but he himself may never be the same again. The universe in which he lives is the same as ever, but he will have changed. If I can see this happen with two or three people I can have a theory that learning something or seeing something with his eyes and his intuition can affect the growth of the individual. Intuition is a term which I can use for purposes of mental observation and I can then be curious about what stimu­ lates or causes mental growth. I can say something about what causes my hand to grow. I can even have theories about a baby's hand and say I thought I once had one like that, but now have an adult one. But suppose I have a theory that there is a mind and that I have evidence for thinking so; how am I to explain that I can see intuitively that there is a mind, and how can I say that this is different from an hallucination? How am I to know that the correct description of this is that I have the intuition which enables me to know that there are human minds and that I do not think that somebody is right who says I am hallucinating? The religious man can say that he knows from experience that there is God and he knows the difference between an hallucination and a fact; that to persuade somebody that he is deluded, or hallucinated, or is suffer­ ing from an exaggerated view of what his father looked like, leads the individual to lose his experience of awe, wonder and mystery. Painters, musicians, sculptors, creative writers would also dis­ agree with the view that scientifically prejudiced people express in book after book of what they call psycho-analysis. A patient once told me that if I would stop talking and listen to him playing the piano, he might be able to teach me something, but there was

40

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

nothing that he could do because I had a shut mind, a mind closured by these prejudices in favour of a very limited human activity—talking. Vast though psycho-analytic literature may be, the whole of the psycho-analytic view is too limited. The spectrum is not wide enough to take in the world of the human mind. Q. What is the relationship between interpretation, intuition, culture and wisdom? B. These are all elements of language. They are definitory hypotheses. The definition and the use that is made of those words is laid down by the person who uses them. I can criticize him only if he changes the meaning of the definition of those terms in the same universe of discussion. According to the rules of what I consider to be scientific thinking, he should not make those changes without warning. But assuming that he is using an articulate mode of communication, then I can try to understand what he means when he articulates those words in a particular manner. But I may be wrong because he may be using those terms, putting them together as he did just now, according to rules of ideogrammatic expression. In that case, I would not and could not understand what his communication means. I would be thinking, or trying to interpret, in terms of articulate speech, whereas he was talking in terms of verbal expression of visual images in the way a Chinese would talk. I could wonder, is the speaker thinking in a way which resembles the way he is talking? Is he thinking from left to right? These apparently articulate sentences cannot be understood if I translate them as if he were thinking from left to right when he is thinking from up to down. It would be much easier to refer you to a two-hundred-inch telescope than to say, 'You have to look through a very much augmented "intuition" and then you would be able to see, instead of a vague blur, things which corresponded to your words, "inter­ pretation, intuition, culture and wisdom"'. I hope that I should be able to understand what you told me about these things that you have not only heard or read in a dictionary but observed in your consulting room—thanks to your psycho-analytically augmented intuition. I would hope, but I should not expect, that you could find somebody who would see the difference that you were attempting to point out. My own answer to you has to be so vague that I can

1973

SAO PAULO

41

hardly expect you to be illuminated by it. In this present context 'wisdom' could be usefully used to describe that experience which had become sufficiently a part of the personality to generate men­ tal growth. 'Culture' I would regard, analogously to the vague blur, as the wisdom which the group is permitted to use or permits to be used. 'Intuition' I would find useful to relate to the individual member of a culture. 'Interpretation' I would consider to be related to the process of knowing what the observation such as 'the vague and constant blur' meant which, when interpreted, is a galaxy. At a corresponding point of another cycle of the helix it could be seen as a distant universe similar to our own. These would all be interpretations of the observations. Q. You have described beta-elements and alpha-elements but I am not sure whether by beta-elements you mean those things which are perceptible to the senses, and if so whether you are making a distinction between the sensory phenomena and some­ thing which is to do with the psyche. In your books it seems to me that you are making a distinction. B, Beta-elements are a way of talking about matters which are not thought at all; alpha-elements are a way of talking about elements which, hypothetically, are supposed to be a part of thought. The poet Donne has written, 'the blood spoke in her cheek . . . as if her body thought'. This expresses exactly for me that intervening stage which in the Grid is portrayed on paper as a line separating beta-elements from alpha-elements. Note that I am not saying that it is either beta or alpha but the line separating the two which is represented by the poet's words. The practising analyst has to be sensitive while the conversation is taking place to what is taking place. M y impression is that the questioner is contemplat­ ing just such a situation of change from something which is not thought at all to something which is thought. In practice, a patient may sometimes blush—a physiological fact. The analyst may think the blush conveys something to him. In this instance the line could be thought of as separating the patient from the analyst; a corporeal fact from a physical fact. Q. Could the Grid be amplified so that it included not only alpha- and beta-elements, but elements that could be called 'gamma', 'delta' and so on, becoming gradually less psychic and

42

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

more physical, so that in combination it would permit us to speak about mental phenomena with the same ease that we can formu­ late words into grammatical phrases and sentences? B. It could certainly be used for exactly that purpose. Suppose the analyst wants to investigate more deeply this very area that lies between corporeal fact and psychic fact. He can interpose between the Grid rows A and B the entire Grid as if within the Grid itself could be seen, in depth, further Grids. In this way he could amplify the Grid indefinitely to suit himself, provided he explained what he had done by some phrase such as 'second cycle', as contrasted with 'first cycle'. For my part, I would visualize the Grid as repeating itself as a helix. I am reminded that we are already reaching one of those pecu­ liar terminations dictated by the clock. But I suspect that the thinking will go on even after we disperse and when we go to sleep. According to Freud, people dream and, however unpleasant, those dreams mean something. The interpretation of those 'dreams' will depend on what your particular vertex is. I say 'vertex' because I do not want to say 'from the point of view of smell'; people would say to me, 'I don't smell with my eyes. I don't see smell'. They cannot bring together my statements from the point of view of smell or music; for them the interpretations have to be exact or they do not exist. Others will bring them together by making up for the defi­ ciencies of human conversation.

SIX

I

f psycho-analysis is to survive and develop, there has to be a contact with the reality with which we deal.That is why the practice of psychoanaysis is dependent on the analyst and the analysand being able to contact psycho-analytic facts. When we talk about 'psycho-analytic facts', that is itself a theory; it is a definitory hypothesis and practice depends on being able to recog­ nize what kind of event falls into the category of Tact'. Unfor­ tunately, all I can do here is to mention further theories, but in the practice of analysis carried on in the consulting room, there is a chance of being able to say, 'That is what I call a fact', or, 'That is what I mean when I say "anxiety"', or, 'That is what I would call "sex"'. The reply can be: 'What about it? We all know that', or, 'What about it? It's nonsense—typical of psycho-analysts to say it's sex'. This situation can arise over and over again because we have to use words like hate, envy, jealousy, anxiety and it is difficult to say 'I don't really mean what you mean when I say "envy" or "sex"'. It is relatively easy to talk about physical facts such as the resemblance of the baby's hand to that of the adult. But it is not so

43

44

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

easy when it comes to mental facts like the feelings of the baby which grow up into the feelings of a man or woman. In the con­ sulting room it is easier, because it is possible to say, What you have just said', or 'What you have just done is what I call sex', or, 'That which you have just expressed in ordinary language is what I call evidence of envy'. The advantage of being able to do that is that the analysand can say, 'I don't agree with you', or, 'I agree with you', or, 'I think I see what you mean'. One could say, 'You don't deny this, but you can't confirm that what I have said is right. Perhaps later on something will happen which may show that we are both right about this, or perhaps that we are both mistaken.' To turn to something to which it is more difficult to draw attention—the translation of verbal communication. If I use the words, 'terribly efficient', it poses a problem for the translator. But it is still more difficult if the analyst wants to translate these words if used by the analysand. 'Terribly' and 'efficient' are a part of a synthetic construction, not what a philosopher like Kant would call an analytic element, that is, not a priori, but synthetic. 'Ter­ rible efficiency', on the other hand, would express something very different from what is meant by 'terribly efficient'. The analyst must be capable of acute observation in order to 'translate' the sounds made by the analysand, the differences between which do not show up in the printed word. [Author's later addition: The difficulty is bad enough when the language as spoken between analyst and analysand is homogeneous and it is necessary for the analyst to speak correct English. The problem is analogous but even more difficult when, as here, a difference must be indicated in Portuguese analogous to the difference between colloquial and precise English. The analyst has to speak with greater accuracy than the analysand, but at conversational speed.] I gave an example of this before [see p. 13] when I spoke of the patient who said, 'I don't know what I mean'. If he himself is able to understand that there is a difference, then his capacity for discrim­ ination is extremely acute. This acute capacity is not likely to be limited to one or two words; the same patient may be unable to tolerate ordinary conversation. He may even be unable to tolerate using ordinary conversation himself. [Author's later addition: I have known a patient, 'supposedly psychotic', who was suffering

1973

SAO PAULO

45

because of the precision of exact thought and perception, e.g. intolerance to a musical note incorrectly performed. The difficulty with this kind of patient arises when his hostility takes the form of being vague and inexact when he has realized the importance, which has been made clear to him by the analyst, of precision. He will employ whole sessions in conveying Tacts' in vague, imprecise abstractions.] Changing the vertex: the patient may have such a capacity for discriminating one musical note from another that he cannot tolerate trying to compose or perform a piece of music and it might appear to us that he is inadequate as a musician. But the reason he cannot be a musician or even listen to music is because he is such an acute musician. Changing the vertex again: suppose the patient can discrimi­ nate colours (the differences in what a physicist would call visual elements, changes in the wavelength of light) to a point where he cannot tolerate the differences, not because he is unable to see, but because he can see much more than the analyst can. We could multiply those vertices. There can be no limit to the domain in which the person appears to be incapable because he does not possess the gifts. It may be true from a macroscopic point of view to say, 'Oh, he is hallucinating', or, 'She is highly disturbed', but it would not be true if one could see or hear or intuit what the analysand can. Psycho-analysts must be able to tolerate the dif­ ferences or the difficulties of the analysand long enough to recog­ nize what they are. If psycho-analysts are to be able to interpret what the analysand says, they must have a great capacity for tolerating their analysands' statements without rushing to the conclusion that they know the interpretations. This is what I think Keats meant when he said that Shakespeare must have been able to tolerate 'negative capability'. Q. In quoting Freud, you suggested that the analyst seeks to blind himself, the better to see what is happening with the patient. If this is the best attitude for the analyst to have in his work, what would be the best attitude for the patient? What would be the meaning of 'seeing an interpretation'? B. The best thing for the patient is to be either blind or acutely observant, whichever is best at the moment. The analyst knows this, but the patient does not and therefore freely expresses

46

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

hostility to his own or the analyst's perception without any idea what it costs him. With regard to the analyst's attitude, nothing can relieve him of the responsibility of knowing whether to be acutely illuminating or acutely blind and deaf. This problem was dealt with by one patient by staying in his bedroom, drawing the blinds, having thicker curtains put up and making it clear that he did not want to be called on the telephone. That might have settled the problem, but he was then terrified of the news that he would hear if he answered the telephone. If he allowed himself to hear sounds or the light to come in, he was afraid of being deafened by the acuteness of the noises and blinded by the brightness of the light. In analysis, he could not listen to my interpretations because I was unable to find a way of giving him only an interpretation. It was never a pure interpretation; it was never possible to use one's intuition with such purity that he could bear to listen to it. Keats said that Shakespeare must have been able to tolerate mysteries, half­ truths, evasions, in order to be able to write. He had to be able to pay that price if he wanted to be Shakespeare. What he wrote still endures; it has a toughness, a durability which we cannot achieve; and yet he was an ordinary person like the rest of us. What makes people like Shakespeare and Virgil and Milton so 'extraordinary' is their ability to do such extraordinary things while at the same time being ordinary. A l l of us ordinary people must dare to behave as if we were extraordinary without believing that it is the case and without being cheats. Q. Is there any difference or similarity between the a priori of Kant and psycho-analytic intuition? B. The question poses what is to me a difficult problem. How can we acknowledge the person who has illuminated something for us, without also risking misrepresenting him? If I appear to talk as if I had said something original I know that is not true, because what I say has usually been said by somebody else, often by Freud, but also often by people I cannot remember. I do not know where the ideas came from or whose ideas they first were. On the other hand, if I say, 'Yes, I am a Freudian', or 'I am a Kleinian', I cannot be sure that I am not libelling the originators by falsely attrib­ uting to them my own ideas of what they said.

1973

SAO P A U L O

47

A n infant feels that it has turned good food into faeces or urine; he may have to wait until childhood before he gets the idea that what he ate had something to do with his having grown. Using that analogy, can we say what we and our analysands are to have for mental food which would promote mental growth? What pic­ tures is a painter to paint which others could look at and 'devour' with their eyes so that they were never the same again? How is one to know what is growth-producing and what is poison for the mind? It is often assumed that all that psycho-analysts have to do is to interpret what the patient says. I would not quarrel with that, but I do not know whether it is right; nor do I know what the author­ ities should allow the national family to look at, or read, or say. Milton has already said this in his pamphlet on free speech, The Areopagitica. To consider the question of striving to clarify the difference between the a priori of Kant and psycho-analytic intuition: I have digested much knowledge conveyed to me in the course of psycho­ analytic and other experience before and since reading Kant's view about the a priori. It has seemed to me that all of it has increased my mental growth, but the question of the relationship of one part of my mental sustenance to another is very difficult; it is formulated with greater ease than any answer. Nevertheless, the attempt to answer it can mean that it provokes growth in both of us. Q. Is it possible to relate the expression, 'negative capability', to the capacity to tolerate ignorance and doubt, and to confront it with curiosity and fear of acquiring knowledge? B. That is how I would understand what Keats said. Can one say 'negatively capable' or 'capably negative'? Clearly, there is no good elaboration and it is difficult to conceive of one. The difficulty with these formulations arises if one requires good sentential elaboration, as these instances show. Q. How would you consider the negative capability of the analyst in relation to the so-called repetition compulsion? B . Because I am unable to formulate ideas in the way that Keats, or Shakespeare, or Homer, or Horace could, I shall probably have to go on repeating what I have said. In other words, if I cannot command quality I can try to make up for it by quantity. If I cannot

48

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

make myself clear verbally, then I might fall back on actions, which speak louder than words. If I were a baby I could try screaming. If my mother was unable to understand that, I might become so frightened by the noise that I fell silent; then nobody, not even I, could hear my screams. I might have to find actions instead. If I grew up and found an analyst, I might try acting-out. This does not mean that the screaming and the acting-out are the same, or that screaming turns into acting-out. Nor does it mean that if I analyzed somebody he would end up by being a grown man who went around screaming. It is difficult to say what a patient who is acting-out today was doing long ago when he was silent, when he was the good boy or girl who did not scream, or when he was a baby who might have screamed so much that the mother said, T h i s is a very disturbed child'. One does not know what it would look like even if one could go back to the past; nor do we know what the person who is compulsively repeating will be doing in twenty years time. However, I would prefer not to use 'repetitive compulsion' unless the element which is being compulsively repetitive includes conscious or unconscious awareness of fascina­ tion with the imperfectly adumbrated problem that he is repeat­ ing. Q. Could you clarify the expression 'pure interpretation? J5. It might be easier if I used another expression borrowed from physical science, like 'absolute interpretation', or the analogy of'absolute zero', or, 'absolute cold', or, 'absolute vacuum'; some­ thing which is only interpretation. There are certain patients who can recognize that any interpretation I give is not absolute. I can describe it in terms of an actual experience in this way: the patient cannot listen to what I am saying because of the noise. Sometimes the 'noise' is the way I speak, sometimes it is the distraction produced by a fly in the room, but in a sense all the noises that he can hear appear to have an equal value. He can say, 'I know you are angry', and if I am honest about it, I realize that he is right. But he may not differentiate between whether I am annoyed by the buzz­ ing of a fly, or by the noise of the traffic, or by what he is saying and doing. A l l these facts are of equal value. It is an instance which can only arise because his interpretation is absolute, but lacking in the capacity to discriminate values. Equally, he might at another

1973

SAO PAULO

49

moment be absolute in his discrimination of value, but not in his discrimination of what was the symptom of the value. It is a dynamic situation changing all the time. Q. I feel that the area of the Grid from Notation to Attention to Inquiry, cols. 3, 4 and 5, includes all attention, from desires and generic attention to particularization, and is directly connected to the theme of interpretation. In which area of the Grid would you put 'construction' as referred to by Freud? JB. 'Omnipotence', compared with the 'construction', approx­ imates to an absolute. The contrasting construction would be a story of God's anger at the building of the Tower of Babel, or Adam's expression of shame by hiding his genitalia. Both these might be said to be verbalized transformations of a visual image. There is no reason why the 'construction' should be in C category terms rather than F , or G, or H , but I think a 'construction' implies something more elaborate than a single word such as 'sex' or 'omnipotence'. It is comparatively easy to talk about attention, notation and so on when discussing the Grid. It is possible to change the vertex and talk about an infinite series of numbers; one could even say that the distance between 1 and 2 could be formulated with another infinite series of numbers—it becomes innumerable. But it seems extremely unlikely that psychic reality bears any resemblance to articulate speech. Words like 'attention', 'notation', 'inquiry' may be useful for us if we want to talk about it, not if we want to know about the reality. It is difficult to see how one's ideas could change into the things themselves without its being indistinguishable from what analysts call 'acting-out' (as that English phrase is understood). Beneath all the verbal formulations of phenomena there is an underlying group which does not belong to thought or thinking, or anything that human beings do, but which exists independently of the human being in the way that the turbulence which we associ­ ate with an invisible centre appears (to take an astronomical model) to correspond to the 'crab nebula'. Today, thanks to electro­ magnetic wave disturbances and radio receptors, we can say that there is something behind what we can see or hear or transform by mechanical means. For example, the noise which comes out of a

50

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

microphone is a more audible but grossly distorted version of the voice itself; it leaves out a great deal which is not audible. There are certain answers which I can give to questions, but the answers that I give, let alone the answers that are heard, are a feeble representation of what I think. If I heard a recording of what I said I might be surprised to hear that that is what I sounded like; or if I looked in a mirror I might get a shock to see that the person in the mirror looked like me. If analysis is regarded as an attempt to produce a mirror in which the analysand can see what his charac­ ter or personality looks like, however near to perfection it became it would be only a feeble and inadequate representation of the person, or the mind, or the personality that was believed to exist. Q. Can the ideogram be considered as a non-verbal communi­ cation? B . Yes; but whether or not it is a useful way of considering it I do not know. It depends on the possibility that that change of vertex might make something more comprehensible. For example, if I could look through the two-hundred-inch reflector at that faint cloud in M311 could see a spiral nebula. But suppose I could also bring another sense to bear; not only could I see this spiral nebula, but I could hear it, thanks to the radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. By using two different senses, sight and hearing, a bi-sensual rather than a binocular vision might be produced. Any words which I employ in an attempt to convey something to you are extremely inadequate; it depends on your being friendly enough and tolerant enough to be able to bring my statement into contact with your hearing. Some patients cannot do that, nor can they listen to what they themselves say. They have no respect for what they already know, so that their experience and knowledge are of no use to them. The question is not simply one of the relationship of the patient to the analyst, but the relationship of the patient with himself which may be so bad that he cannot even make use of what he already knows. Nothing can be done about his unconscious knowledge because he can make no use of his con­ scious knowledge. At present I know of no way in which either he himself or I can help him. We may both come to the session, but neither of us can pass on anything to him.

1973

SAO P A U L O

51

Q. Candidates often bring material from their patients on the problem of God. According to Freud's teaching the child grows up and sees the father who is insufficient as a container for his admiration. If the patient has arrived at a stage where he can be conscious of his reality he should be able to realize his direct contact with God. I should like to mention a clinical example which may indicate a conflict between a scientific and a religious man. The patient had two dreams: in the first he saw a very powerful thing looking at him with its two eyes; in the second he saw one woman with exuberant breasts and another who was displaying some textiles. B. The problem is what we are to say to the analyst that might make it easier for him to know what to say to the patient. Children of all ages, whether at the beginning or near the end of their lives, are not adequately equipped to be God. A t the same time, the parent, the mature human being should be of such a kind that the child can see or understand the father or mother without insulting his intelligence. In other words, the grown human being should not be so lacking in a sense of proportion that his beliefs about himself amount to what we could call, in psychiatric language, 'megalomania'; nor should he be so contemptible, either in his own eyes or the child's, that the child has no chance of respecting him. To translate that into terms of psycho-analysts and analysands: the psycho-analyst should not be under the impression that he is God or that he is as wonderful as people are ready to believe he is. At the same time he should make it possible for people who come for analysis to have a chance of feeling respect for him. If they cannot, they suffer serious deprivation. Referring back to the two dreams described by the questioner: if I were the analyst I would expect to have a visual image called up in my mind by the patient's verbal accounts of the dreams. I suspect, from the account given me by the questioner, that I would feel that both those dreams were describing an object which sooner or later turned into a god. This depends on information which the practising analyst can have, but I, who am writing or talking about it, cannot have—unless one assumes that my ability to interpret the translator's remarks (who in turn has been able to

52

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

translate the questioner's statements, who in turn has been able to translate his observations in his consulting room, which in turn is a translation (interpretation) of what his patient said was a dream) is considered to have some validity—a large assumption.

SEVEN

Q

I would like to hear you speak about the realistic aspect of projective identification in relation to the • mother with the baby. B. The problem is how to formulate verbally what is a visual image—the mother and the baby. One of the advantages of such a visual image is that it is relatively simple and not as complicated as trying to trace the counterpart in the lives and mentalities of adults. Taking this simpler formulation, let us imagine that the baby is very upset and feels afraid of an impending disaster like dying, which it expresses by crying. That kind of language may be both comprehensible and disturbing to the mother who reacts by expressing anxiety—1 don't know what's the matter with the child!' The infant feels the mother's anxiety and impatience and is compelled to take its own anxiety back again. Contrast this with a different situation. Suppose the mother picks up the baby and comforts it, is not at all disorganized or distressed, but makes some soothing response. The distressed infant can feel that, by its screams or yells, it has expelled those feelings of impending disas­

53

54

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

ter into the mother. The mother's response can be felt to detoxicate the evacuation of the infant; the sense of impending disaster is modified by the mother's reaction and can then be taken back into itself by the baby. Having got rid of a sense of impending disaster, the infant gets back something which is far more tolerable. Susan Isaacs has described a situation in which the baby could be heard saying something like 'oo el, oo el', which the mother recognized was an imitation of herself saying V e i l , well'. In that way the infant was able to feel comforted by a good mother inside and could make reassuring, comforting noises to itself exactly as if the mother was there all the time. To return to the first situation: the infant takes back into itself the sense of impending disaster which has grown more terrifying through the rejection by the mother and through its own rejection of the feeling of dread. This baby will not be able to feel that it gets back something good, but the evacuation with its badness worse than before. It may continue to cry and to rouse powerful anxiety in the mother. In this way a vicious circle is created in which matters get worse and worse until the infant cannot stand its own screams any longer. In fact, left to deal with them by itself, it becomes silent and closes inside itself a frightening and bad thing, something which it fears may burst out again. In the meantime it turns into a 'good baby', a 'good child'. Suppose this child comes as an adult to you for analysis. It would be difficult to trace those primitive ideas which have become overlaid by any number of other thoughts and ideas. It is like trying to trace embryonic signs in the physiological anatomy of the adult, but more difficult because in the mental world one has no physical signs to fall back on—only these fictions such as the one I have tried to invent. A still more sophisticated version is one which is related to concepts and theories, such as projective identi­ fication, but these theoretical terms are almost meaningless. Q. Although I understand the theory of the death instinct I have difficulty in contacting it. I have only found it as an aspect of illness. B. The theory of the death instinct is a controversial matter amongst psycho-analysts of all schools or groups. Melanie Klein

1973

SAO PAULO

55

was inclined to believe that it was a useful theory, that Freud's work on it made a valuable contribution and that we would be worse off if it were not there to use. Suppose it appears to be useful: is it useful to feel it as part of a personality in any situation except that presented by what most of us would think of as an ill person? The term, 'ill', has a meaning in physical medicine; by the time we have borrowed it, it is difficult to say what kind of a mind or character one is going to describe as 'ill'. Even if we borrow the terminology, for what purpose are we going to borrow it? What is the mentally ill person or character? What is the healthy or well person? I do not think one can use such a term, in the mental sphere, as if there was only one pole without the other pole. In analysis we cannot usefully think in terms of a single expression; there ought always to be another pole, or another end of the spectrum. Making use again of the story about the infant and mother, the mother can be glad to be able to say, T h i s child is ill . Before long the infant turns into a child and finds it much easier to say, T v e got a stomach ache', because it has no word for anxiety, and in any case I doubt whether a child ever considers that there is anything peculiar about being anxious. I have no doubt at all that children, from a very early age, feel anxious, but they have no language in which to express it and do not consider that feeling anxious is anything out of the ordinary. If they dislike it they have to say something like, T v e got a stomach ache'. 5

Q. Can 'transference' be explained as that phenomenon which passes between analyst and analysand, and as a religious aspect of the mind when someone who feels mentally helpless consults an analyst as if seeking help from a divine personality? B. As the language had no word for the kind of relationship which Freud thought he had found existed between one human being and another, he gave it the name 'transference'. Our prob­ lem in the practice of psycho-analysis is to know what this curious thing called a 'transference' looks like. Theoretically it is the link between any two human beings. When it comes to the question of the practice of psycho-analysis you may feel that a description like 'transference' is not sufficiently accurate because you are not dealing with a general relationship between two people; you are

56

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

dealing with a particular instance of the general. It is like saying somebody is ill and then wanting to say, 'What do you mean by "ill"? Has he a lymphosarcoma? Or cancer? What illness? I am a doctor and if I am to practise medicine I don't want to hear that the patient is ill—I'm no wiser.' Similarly, the analyst might say 'It's no good telling me that there is a transference relationship between X and Y . It is still less useful to tell the patient that he has a transference—it doesn't mean a thing!' One wants to know what the transference looks like in a particular instance in the practice of psycho-analysis. Even analysts mistake a particular example for a discovery of a general application. There would thus appear to be millions of psycho-analytic discoveries but in fact they are only particular instances of an already existing discovery. To the state­ ment, 'This patient has a duodenal ulcer', one does not reply, 'Oh! Do you mean the patient is ill?' The doctor already supposes that everybody knows that, but that they did not know the patient had a duodenal ulcer. As regards the religious aspect, the question is, what particular aspect of this general idea has emerged in a particular patient with a particular psycho-analyst? I remember an example where a practitioner said psycho-analysis was ridiculous and nonsensical because he had told his patient that he had an Oedipus complex and he did not improve at all. In this instance Freud's theory of the Oedipal situation has not been related to what the patient is saying. In the context of Freud's discovery it could be said to be universally discernible in members of the human race. In analysis the analyst is not dealing with 'the human race' but with a particu­ lar person. He therefore needs to put into terms which are com­ prehensible to the particular individual whom he is addressing, the gist of the Oedipal theory as it applies to that individual at that time. The analyst does not have to know the theory but the aspect of the realization which is presenting itself to him and to the analysand at that time. Q. Would you explain further your use of the term 'vertex'. B. The reason I have suggested this term 'vertex' is because it is less complex than saying something simple and more accurate like 'from my point of view', or 'from your point of view'. There are

1973

SAO PAULO

57

some occasions when that produces confusion. I cannot be sure that it does not produce as much, or more, confusion to say Vertex* except that it may leave the particular instance free to be described. I remember a mother telling me about discovering her young daughter with her head right up against the baby. The child's explanation was that the mother had said, 'Keep your eye on the baby', and that was what she was doing. In analysis we increasingly find that our help is sought by people whom we call Very i l l ' or Very disturbed', and who use language in a literal manner. You cannot use terms like 'from the point of view of smell' because the patient will say 'I don't view things with my nose'. It sounds as if the patient was trying to be difficult, but he is in fact being extremely accurate; he cannot understand a phrase which is conversational language. It is, therefore, better to borrow a term from mathematics, like Vertex'. There are many other terms which one could borrow, such as 'radiant' from astronomy. In particular instances you may not be able to use terms like 'point of view' or 'vertex'. You have to consider what word you should use to formulate a particular instance of a point of view, or vertex, or radiant which would be the general term, like 'transference' which is itself the general term. But in psycho-analysis one is not dealing with people generally', one is dealing with a particular person and that particular person's relationship, link, transference with another particular person, the analyst. Q. I would like to hear about the difficulties of certain patients in finding a balance between an excessive wish and inertia. These patients cannot achieve an adequate rhythm. One patient com­ plains that he has too much work, he does an excessive amount, and he wants everything in excess; or else he doesn't want any­ thing; he falls into inertia. B . When a patient does not want anything and lapses into a state of inertia, that is also excessive. One might say to the patient, 'You often tell me that it's too much; once or twice it mightn't matter very much, but when you say it as often as you do, then we have to pay attention to this "too much'". Is this some form of greed? Who is being greedy? Is it the patient? Is it the analyst? If it is neither of those, who is it? Is it some kind of a greedy god, or some

58

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

form of a greedy curiosity—a curiosity which in ordinary meta­ phorical speech one might say is a devouring curiosity, or even a devouring morality? Consider some part of it as a constant conjunction with many specific instances of the same thing—the unsaturated element, the unsatisfied patient, or analyst, or conscience, or aesthetic impulse, or religious impulse. The person who wants to have a religious or aesthetic experience feels very unsatisfied by science. Conversely, the analyst or analysand, while becoming extremely scientific, may also be becoming more and more inhuman. The patient in this case will feel that he is more efficient than he was, certainly more efficient than when he was a baby but not, therefore, necessarily improved. Both people in the room may be better analysed or more efficient, but could hardly be felt to be nicer people. These refer­ ences to 'more' may also be a sign of an ideal situation known to the patient, in contrast with which he realizes he is not better. The analyst must attempt to guage the standard by which 'better' is measured and which makes the patient know that he is 'worse'. He can do nothing about the patient wanting 'more'—he needs to know what it is that the patient is lacking. Q. Would you speak about the religious cult and the aesthetic impulse, and the relationship between them. B. In psycho-analysis, and even in ordinary conversation, one is always talking about religion or art or business, all of which is very useful if you want to talk; it is another matter if you want to talk about the thing itself. You can easily feel from your own experience that these watertight compartments of categories have a lot to do with human thinking but very little to do with the universe in which we live. Nevertheless, however ignorant or mistaken we may be, we can feel that religion and art have often worked closely together. The same can be said for psycho-analysis in so far as it can be regarded as an attempt at a scientific approach. Sooner or later one will feel that one knows the interpretation but does not know what to say to the patient, or how to say it. At this point the psycho-analyst would gain if he could be an artist and express himself, as Freud could, in terms which are easily appre­ ciated as being highly artistic. Even Plato, while critical of artists and poets as people who are always misleading their fellows by

1973

SAO PAULO

59

telling lies, nevertheless expressed things, in the Socratic Dialogues, in a way which no artist has since excelled—and yet he might be supposed to have been opposed to the artist. This kind of conflicting view is common; the artistic or aesthetic capacity seeps into the expressions of those who want to be purely scientific; and the artist, reciprocally, can discern the science in his art. [See p. 44. Sometimes he can even consciously aspire to a 'golden number', as with Leonardo da Vinci, Diirer etc.] Q. I should like to hear about your experience of the analysis of psychotics, especially about schizophrenics. We know that Freud was very pessimistic about this; he thought we should have to use great modification in order to be able to analyse them. There are two schools of thought at the moment—one advising modifica­ tions, the other not. I should like to have your technical advice on this subject. B. I do not advocate any changes—through sheer ignorance— not because I believe that the classical idea of analysis is good or effective, but because I cannot think of anything better; and bad as it is one has to adhere to it unless one has good reasons for changing. I have only analysed schizophrenic patients who were able to come to my consulting room. Although I still think that the best description of them was 'schizophrenic', I do not suggest they were comparable to the kind of patients who have to be hospi­ talized. I must add that in the psycho-analytic world with which I am familiar, 'crazes' appear to be frequent. I am amazed how often an analyst seems to think that he can hardly claim his title unless he has treated many schizophrenic patients. I would almost wonder how mental hospitals manage to make a living. From the little I know I find it difficult to believe that so many analysts are treating schizophrenics. Such a claim belongs to the domain not of the science of psycho-analysis but of fashion. As it is sometimes the fashion to wear feathers in hats, so psycho-analysts wear 'psychot­ ics in their hair'. Q. What is the relationship between belief and knowledge? B. I do not see why one should bother to believe in something one knows. One should, surely, reserve one's capacity for belief for matters for which there is no evidence. Otherwise one would have

60

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

to find a new language. Terms like 'belief are used in such an ambiguous way in ordinary language. I like to use it when I have no facts to support what I wish to say. I 'believe' it is worth trying psycho-analysis with a patient who might be called schizophrenic, if there is nothing else to try. In that sense you might say I 'believe' in trying. I do not mean that I think that a schizophrenic patient can be analyzed or cured, although I have known patients who have been certified as insane—by people who by definition were qualified to do so—who, when they finished their analysis with me, were thought by many people—but not by me—to be improved. They had found a way by which, whatever their mode of thinking, they were able to look like a good imitation of an ordin­ ary human being. But since everyone connected with the patient wanted to believe that, I do not know what importance one can attach to their opinion.

EIGHT

Q

I would like to hear your views about the following. One group of analysts has a common medical vertex # related to certain ideas about illness, pathology, etiol­ ogy, etc. Another group recognizes other vertices, such as the desire to earn money, to have power, to educate, to influence, to apply psycho-analysis to the individual or to groups. These form groups which are related and give rise to tensions in the practice of analysis when seen as a whole.

B. One fundamental matter with which we are all concerned is tension. Sometimes there can be so little tension between two people that they fail to stimulate each other at all. A t the other extreme, the differences in outlook or temperament are so great that no discussion is possible. The question is, can the society or group or pair find the happy mean which is tense enough to stimulate but belongs to neither extreme, either lack of tension or too much? Can a nation achieve both sufficient homogeneity and sufficient tension?

61

62

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

This problem applies also to the categories of science and religion. How is a proper balance to be achieved between a scien­ tific vertex which could be said to be devoted to truth or the facts, and a religious vertex which could equally be said to be devoted to truth? Similarly, the sincere artist is also concerned to depict truth. If Vermeer can paint the little street in Delft, and if people can look at it, then they will never see a street in the same way again. The painter has brought about a change in the individual which makes it possible for him to see a truth that he has never seen before. It would seem absurd if the tension between these three groups—science, religion and art—which are all fundamen­ tally devoted to the truth, was either so slack or so tense that they were unable to further the aim of truth. Q. A theme which particularly impressed me in your book, Transformations', was your description of the concept of transfor­ mations in hallucinosis. I should be interested to hear more about this. B . In this matter of transformation I suggest that, as a model, you might see photographs of what appeared to be two entirely different mountains which were, in fact, the same mountain: one from the southern vertex and the other from the northern vertex. Indeed, one could multiply those by all points of the compass. It is much easier to understand this applied to physical matters than it is when dealing with mental phenomena. It is possible for a psycho-analyst to think that hallucinations are operating and to observe this so accurately that he can say the patient is 'seeing' things coming into his eyes. At other times, although it might sound just the same, the words are related to things which start as C I category statements and as such are projected into the air. Are these formulations of visual evacuations by the visual apparatus, or ingestions? The answer might affect our view of the nature of the situation which we could call a state of hallucinosis. The analyst's capacity for intuition (analytic observation) must be greatly increased and developed even though it then leads to a state of affairs in which we seem to be in disagreement with our psychiatric colleagues. It would be a pity if these different vertices, and the adherents of them, could not contribute something to each

1973

SAO P A U L O

63

other. I would like to say more later about this matter of direc­ tion—evacuation and introjection, and the difference between the two. Q. First, I would like to hear more about the question of the liar. Second, what do you think about the practice of analysis by lay people? B. To take the second question first: who decides that someone is a 'lay person' and what is the definition of a 'lay person'? I have heard several people say that Melanie Klein was a lay person. From one vertex it is perfectly true: I do not think that she was ever medically qualified. I might as well say, 'She can't play football and therefore I'm not going to listen to the sort of nonsense she talks', or, 'That person doesn't play cricket so I won't pay attention to him'. It depends from what vertex the person appears to be qualified or not qualified. Something similar applies with regard to the liar. Plato sug­ gested that in his republic—it sounds almost like national-social­ ism—artists would be forbidden because poets and painters are liars who corrupt society and the country. It depends whether you think that the artist is able to teach us something about the truth, about what a brick wall looks like, or whether he actually misleads us all. It is, therefore, a matter of importance who says the person is a liar and why. I had a patient whose entirely coherent and vivid description, so I was told, had not a word of truth in it. There was much to be said for the view of the person who said that the patient in question was a pathological liar. The difficulty arises if one is a psycho-analyst and is not satisfied with the idea that the patient is actually trying to deceive, or that the patient is talking about one of the many facets of the truth. I have already said that psycho­ analysts have a chance of investigating misunderstanding in a way that is not available to a philosopher. A philosopher is con­ cerned with understanding and misunderstanding, but he cannot do what a psycho-analyst can do: that is, watch and listen to a person while he is understanding and while he is misunderstand­ ing. This is one reason why I am not greatly interested in psycho­ analytic theories. If one gets trained one can go and look them up in a book, but the practice of analysis is the only place where it is

64

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

possible to read people, not books. It is, therefore, a pity to spend time which could be spent in reading a person, in reading a book instead. I would like to take up another widespread question of vertex. The whole of psycho-analytic literature and training is based on the idea that there is a mind and that it is even connected with the central nervous system. We know a certain amount about the anatomy and physiology and embryology of the central nervous system, but we have not considered what could be the situation supposing this system never developed beyond the thalamus. One can imagine that there might be such a thing as a possibility of experiencing 'thalamic dread', and that it might be very different from the dread or fear with which we are all familiar if we are capable of conscious thought. But suppose that, for some reason, we are not. Suppose that kind of mind with which we are dealing in a particular instance, is not capable of going beyond thalamic emotions. That may also be something which psycho-analysts have to investigate. Carrying that kind of model in mind, one could say that in the last two thousand years or so, from the time of Democritus of Abdera, there has existed the impression or preju­ dice that the central nervous system is an important development and is somehow associated with the mind, the soul, and what we generally call mental phenomena. If that is true—as we think— then perhaps we do not know as much as we ought about the significance of the central nervous system; we may not be exploit­ ing the situation sufficiently if we consider thinking and mental life as the fundamental outcome, the teleological view. Suppose that, thanks to psycho-analysis, one could devise some kind of questionnaire and get the individual concerned to complete it. If we could, then we would notice that there were areas where the questions were not answered and that, from the vertex of psycho­ analysis, there would seem to be certain opacities connected with what we call memory and desire. But suppose we looked at these questionnaires, with their blanks and their answers, from a vertex which was able to throw light not so much on the mind as a product of the brain, but on the mind as a symptom of the physiological and anatomical apparatus. Then it might be possible to say, 'This

1973

SAO PAULO

65

questionnaire, which I can now look at, has these different areas of opacity in the way that an X-ray film of the lungs shows opacities'. Suppose such a questionnaire, based on the extremely important nature of the central nervous system, revealed a kind of mental X-ray which showed that the patient concerned was liable to develop, say, cancer or a duodenal ulcer; the parasympathetic nervous system could reveal things not about the mind, but about the future of that particular corporeal body. That is, psycho-ana­ lysis would not be concerned only with the human mind, but also with revealing the physical condition of the patient. I am not suggesting one as opposed to the other. I do not want to get mixed up in another war between two groups of psycho-analysts. But there might be analysts who were concerned to reveal the physical health of the patient in a way which no medical science or pro­ cedure could, as well as those who were concerned with the oper­ ation of the mind with regard to the mental world. Thus, there could be a physical psycho-analysis just as there could be a psycho­ logical psycho-analysis. Q. None of your ideas has aroused more enthusiasm in me than this one which you have just presented. I believe that if these ideas were more common they would stimulate considerable inves­ tigation and increase progress in the realm of psychosomatic rela­ tionship. I would like to persuade you to investigate the physical forces underlying the psychic forces. What you call alpha-function may derive energy not from a sensorial system, but from the blastodermic sheets and therefore from organs and tissues derived from the endoderm. The hypothesis which I propose meets with an impressive agreement in statistical works. B. One of the problems which confront psycho-analysts, par­ ticularly those who are concerned with the organization, develop­ ment and survival of the total activity, is that if these institutes do not develop psycho-analysis nobody else will. It may be this unwillingness to jeopardize psycho-analytic training that makes us appear to be intolerant of other disciplines, but I hope it is no more than an appearance of intolerance. From my own experience responsibility for psycho-analytic pro­ gress is very difficult to ensure, but if we do not do it somebody else

66

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

will do it even worse. There are many people ready to claim that they are psycho-analysts and that the psycho-analytic institutions and training forces are at fault. Others might, of course, do it better, so it ill becomes us to be dictatorial or possessive and to go about saying, 'We are the only ones'. On the other hand, it is also dangerous to say, 'We don't know much about it; these other people may well know better'; that comes near to what has been called 'la trahison des clercs'. It is, therefore, important that psycho-ana­ lysts and psycho-analytic institutions should see to it that psycho­ analysis survives. At the same time, any psycho-analyst, when qualified, should be free to use his developed capacities in what­ ever direction he wishes, including the investigation of things which we might regard as physical and of no particular interest to us. No harm is done if he already knows enough about psycho­ analysis to have earned qualification and the approval of other analysts. Nor would it be harmful if physical medicine were carried out by psycho-analysed people. For example, it could be beneficial if a psycho-analyst acted as the chairman of a discussion between certain physicians, and, say, a number of sufferers from rheumatism; he could contribute something to helping to direct thought about these painful complaints according to sound meth­ ods of thinking. Philosophers have always felt that people should think accurately; there is no reason why psycho-analysts should not join in pursuing that particular aim. Q. In psychosomatic pathology one no longer accepts the con­ cept of alternatives. What do you think about the following state­ ment? 'The unconscious is the essence of the somatic' B. Experience certainly leads me to suppose that the problem of, for example, the asthmatic patient cannot be considered as one enclosed only within the skin of that patient. On one occasion I was filled with admiration (not unmixed with a certain anxiety) to see, as I walked into the hospital ward, how the asthmatic had been able to mobilize the hostility of the other patients. That psycho­ somatic complaint not only ultimately killed—as it often does— that particular patient, but nearly killed me too. The whole ques­ tion of unconscious and conscious, which has been useful so far, needs a great deal of reconsideration.

1973

SAO PAULO

67

Q. How did you come to realize the advantages of suppressing memory and desire during the analytic session? B. I found that I could experience a flash of the obvious. One is usually so busy looking for something out of the ordinary that one ignores the obvious as if it were of no importance. Indeed, one of the reasons for thinking it is time to give an interpretation is that nobody has seen something that is obvious. With regard to memory and desire, you may, for example, feel that you would like to be at home. If that idea becomes more and more possessive you then think, 'How marvellous it would be to be at home!' If you are spending your time thinking that, it becomes very difficult to pay attention to what is happening in the present. The perception of the immediate experience becomes opaque. Similarly, if you think not nostalgically about the past, but what is the same thing in the future tense, 'How nice it will be when I'm grown up', or, 'When I'm qualified', it becomes difficult to attend to the present moment which is neither the past nor the future. Even nostalgia and anticipation have to be carried out in the present; it is in the present that we have those desires, and in the present that we have those memories, and in the present that we live. So, while we are thinking about the past and the future we are blind and deaf to what is going on at the present moment. I think Freud had something of this kind in mind when he spoke of 'floating atten­ tion'. If you are tired and try to pay attention to what the patient says, then you do not hear what he says—things take on an opaque quality. There is much to be said for Freud's idea that our patients suffer from memories—memories which they may know, which they may be able to formulate, or which require analysis to reach formula­ tion. We suffer from memories of which we are conscious or uncon­ scious; this again raises the question: what modifications are needed in our ideas about the unconscious? As usual there are no questions in analysis which have been settled. They are only settled for the time being until we come back to them next week, next month, or in two hundred years' time. Q. Can this method of observing what occurs in the session, when suppressing memory and desire, be differentiated from the

68

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

non-scientific method, that is from mystical practices suppressing the lower ego to reach knowledge, truths, which are unknowable in other ways? B, M y knowledge of mysticism is through hearsay and I am, therefore, not qualified to express an opinion which might have greater weight attached to it than it deserves. There is an ever­ present danger of our not very great knowledge of psycho-analysis conferring undeserved authority on what we say. Q. Could you tell me something more about projective identi­ fication in the patient-analyst relationship? B. Melanie Klein's theory is that patients have an omnipotent phantasy; the way one can verbalize that phantasy is that the patient feels that he can split off certain unpleasant and unwanted feelings and can put them into the analyst. I am not sure, from the practice of analysis, that it is only an omnipotent phantasy, that is something that the patient cannot in fact do. I am sure that is how the theory should be used—the correct way of using the correct theory. But I do not think that the correct theory and the correct formulation happen in the consulting room. I have felt, and some of my colleagues likewise, that when the patient appears to be engaged on a projective identification it can make me feel per­ secuted, as if the patient can in fact split off certain nasty feelings and shove them into me so that I actually have feelings of persecu­ tion or anxiety. If this is correct it is still possible to keep the theory of an omnipotent phantasy, but at the same time we might con­ sider whether there is not some other theory which would explain what the patient does to the analyst which makes the analyst feel like that, or what is the matter with the analyst who feels as he does. The trouble with theories is that they so soon make them­ selves out of date. Even in physical medicine there was a time, not so long ago, when any doctor would tell you that a certain patient was suffering from dropsy. Today we would say there is no such disease; it is a symptom drawing attention to an underlying con­ figuration. If one looks at this underlying configuration and uses the stethoscope, one can hear something about the heartbeat or palpate something about the abdomen which will indicate what the disease is. Referring back to my previous suggestion, perhaps we could look at a questionnaire which might draw attention to the

1973

SAO PAULO

69

fact that one peritonitis is different from another peritonitis. In other words, it might reveal another underlying configuration. Of course anybody could say, These psycho-analysts are terrible people; like doctors, they are always inventing new diseases. At one time there were relatively few diseases. Now they find things they call myasthenia gravis. One more disease; one more thing to learn to get qualified! A l l scientists are a nuisance!' Q. Is the O, as used in your books, the same thing as zero? B. When I use the letter, O, I mean it to indicate noumenon, the thing itself of which nobody can know anything. Knowledge, I consider, only begins when we are dealing with phenomena. The zero should be kept in conformity with definitions of the mathe­ matician and should not be diverted to our purposes without an attempt to define the use to which we are putting it. O and zero are certainly not the same thing, for zero represents a stupendous discovery and its value should not be lightly eroded. It would be helpful if there was a zero in analysis corresponding to the Vest', the pause, in music. It is easy to find the wrong word or symbol, like O, which may look or even sound like zero and yet be about something different. If I write a book its survival depends on somebody having the time, or energy, or interest not only to read it, but to try to make out what it is all about; it may prove to be a waste of time. One tries to write a comprehensible book, but it is likely that one may not be successful. If the writer is not sincere and 'discovers' something which brings him acclaim but is in fact bogus, then it is, of course, an even greater waste of time. For example, in the field of archae­ ology, Dawson claimed to have discovered the Piltdown skull. Although many people thought it was a fake, others said, 'How unfair that these people should not believe in an honourable man like Dawson and his discoveries; they must be jealous or envious'. Ultimately, the Museum of Natural History reinvestigated the Piltdown skull and discovered that it was a fake. Even eminent archaeologists had been wasting their time on a fake for a con­ siderable number of years. In the same way, people who make bogus discoveries in psycho-analysis are a nuisance, and so are people who do not believe these discoveries. It takes a long time to find out which is the bigger nuisance—the doubter or the believer.

1974

Rio de Janeiro

ONE

I

t is difficult for all of us who practise psycho-analysis to realize how obscure this subject is to people who are not used to attaching any importance to the problems of thought, or who are not used to thinking at all. In the psycho-analytic world we have our own divisions of time; we talk about periods like infancy, childhood, adolescence, middle age, old age, puberty, and so on. A l l that is so familiar to us that it is hard to realize that there are many people who are not familiar with those ways of marking the passage of time. I want to consider periods of mental time which we can recog­ nize, but which others who are not familiar with our world cannot recognize so easily. Although people are familiar with terms like 'puberty', even 'latency periods', they are not used to regarding them as actual experiences of the passage of time i n the way in which we count 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 10 a.m., 23.00 hours, 24.00 hours. Some of these periods, like infancy, childhood, puberty, are times when human beings often undergo mental perturbation. Being

73

74

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

unfamiliar with that world they are frightened at what is going on. These conditions are not diseases; nor are they illnesses. Puberty, old-age, youth, adolescence—none of them is an illness, although they often are periods in which dis-ease is experienced. Neverthe­ less, mental experiences are common-place during certain of those recognizable periods—recognizable, that is to say, to psycho-ana­ lysts and a few others. But they are none of them illnesses except by analogy. During those periods people will have an experience, say, of nightmares; they become frightened of nightmares. They may even speak of these experiences to their relatives—brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers—and make them frightened too. The fear is communicable. If the anxiety is sufficiently stirred up and communicated they will say they want to see a doctor, or a psychiatrist, or a psycho-analyst. This becomes significant if the nightmare is experienced by someone notably awake. These times of upheaval are alarming to the patient, but they are not illnesses. To take a biological model: it is as if a tadpole became very upset because it was turning into a frog. There is nothing abnormal about it; it is not an illness but a change, and the tadpole would like someone to explain what is going on. The human being experiences changes to which there are no guides, and it is not recognized that that is exactly what those who are familiar with mental phenomena are concerned with. It is difficult to bring together those technically qualified people with those for whom the experience is the turbulence. It is true that sometimes the technically qualified person might say, T h i s experience which I am being told about is not really ordinary; it lies outside the spectrum of what one would call normal development'. That is a matter about which he knows something and could help if he were given a chance to do so. But at the same time, we do not pay enough attention to the fact that these experiences require a wholesale medical approach, such as putting the person into a mental hospi­ tal, or prescribing a never-ending psycho-analysis. I am familiar with hearing psycho-analysts say that everybody could do with a psycho-analysis. I would like to be sure that it was psycho-ana­ lysis—that is why I devote so much time and attention to it—but I think this is a somewhat rash statement. I would want some

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

75

evidence that the condition does not fall within the normal spec­ trum. A potential analysand may be a fit, happy and well-adjusted child, liking that stage so much that he wants to prolong it. We are all of us familiar with patients who want to be cured, as it were, permanently, for ever—which is a very long time. That is like being a chicken's egg [Freud, footnote to 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning', 1911, S . E . vol. XII] and wanting to be permanently the shell. It is a nice shell; it has a nice appearance; why not be an egg-shell for ever? Suppose that in the course of development the chicken begins to hatch out; the more the person is identified with the shell, the more they feel that something terrible is happening, because the shell is cracking up and they do not know the chicken. It would be worth asking oneself: Why has this person come to me for analysis? Are they sent by their parents, their relatives, their husbands or their wives, or have they come independently, and, if so, what about? Why do they want me to agree to see them so many times a week, for so many weeks, for so many months, for so many years? What we do when that person comes to see us will depend on the answers to these questions. For example, you may think, after talking with the patient, that he is in danger (although he says he feels all right and does not want treatment). If so, you could make clear your own or some other analyst's availability. What appears to be a stable and satisfactory condition may be a state of turbulence. Converse­ ly, a spectacular story may not be as alarming as the narrator thinks. Then the psycho-analyst has to decide from his experience if there is anything he can communicate. His answer to this question depends on his assessment of the capacity of his com­ municant to understand. In practice, the psycho-analyst has to fall back on his own judgement. This point is basic, simple and propor­ tionately difficult to communicate to others. The psycho-analyst is not a luxury but is essential, because he is familiar with this peculiar world of personality. In the physical world there are certain advantages. The patient can say, 'I have a pain' and, pointing out the place, It's here'. The physician can use his eyes and his finger tips; he can feel the patient's body and say, 'I

76

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

feel a tumor—an enlarged spleen'. He can say to students, 'Feel that abdomen and tell me what you feel'. They are fortunate! What are we, who are concerned with the mental life, to say to people? What are the nearest things to physical signs that we are ever likely to get? M y own experience suggests that the answer is probably 'feelings'. When a patient says he is terrified, or he sees things, or he can only wear white clothes, or he cannot stand hearing even the best symphony orchestra playing and has had to give up playing the violin, the analyst can say to himself, 'Yes, I think I know what this patient means. When he says he has that feeling, I can understand what sort of feeling it is'. Otherwise, most of the time we have no sensuous experience—that is, literally the kind of experience which is possible thanks to one's physical equip­ ment and the central, sympathetic and para-sympathetic nervous systems. Character has no sensuous symptoms. One must, there­ fore, undergo a training which intensifies intuitive capacity. [Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III, 11. 51-55]. The psycho-analyst can then give patients help which they cannot get in any other way. In practice the psycho-analyst needs to be able to question himself as often as, and as long as, he is unsatisfied, but should not spend too much time looking for the answer in books. The time we have is limited, so we must read people. We cannot do that if they will not come to the consulting room. The minimum we can ask is that the patient will come, or that somebody will bring him and take him away at the end of the session. We cannot do anything about the times when the patient is not in the room, but while he is in the room we can accept responsibility. For example, we can try to stop him from throwing himself out of the window—I do not say we would succeed, but we could try. If he needs more care than we can give him during the few hours we see him we must enlist the aid of psychiatrists who have the equipment of a mental hospital behind them. Q. Could you explain how you would avoid a patient's throw­ ing himself out of the window during a session? B. M y athletic equipment is not what it used to be and I cannot now promise to do much physically to stop the patient. But I would try to get between the patient and the window and would like, if possible, to go on interpreting while I had to do it, so that the

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

77

patient would not feel that the only thing he could do was to throw himself out of the window; that is a form of communication which is very expensive. Could one give an interpretation early enough to make that unnecessary? I think that one must sometimes appre­ ciate that the patient is apparently prepared to pay the cost of talking that kind of language, although we know that if he were successful he would be dead—another instance that the practice of psycho-analysis is more dangerous than talk about it. Q. Could you expand your statement about reading people rather than books? B. In order to read a book one learns the rules of written grammar and the aesthetic rules of written communication. Although somewhat complex, these rules can be taught to boys and girls; if they spell things in a certain way other people will understand what they mean. Even so, this is a limited statement because you cannot tell, say, James Joyce or Ezra Pound how to write English and what the rules are of writing it. Nor is it possible to say what the rules are of writing poetry. After a certain point it becomes something to do with the aesthetic capacity of the person concerned. Analysis poses an even greater problem; it is difficult indeed to say, if one is challenged, what better way the patient could communicate than by throwing himself out of the window. Nobody can tell us how to read people in the way they can say, T h i s is how you learn to read; you learn your grammar; you learn your alphabet, and you put that together' and so on. A l l that we can say is, T h e best way we know is to go to an analyst and get analysed, and then you may know a bit more which will make it possible for you to read an actual personality in the way that you cannot at the moment'. Q. How can we develop intuition? B. Suppose a small boy or girl comes to you and says, 'Aren't I grown up?' because they are dressed up in their father's or mother's clothes. They say, 'Aren't I just like Mother or Daddy? I'm just like a grown-up'. As the parent, and the analyst, knows, they are not. But we could say, 'Yes, you are just like a doctor— look, you have a stethoscope', or 'just like Mummy, nursing your baby doll'. It is difficult to say, 'No, but you are becoming like a grown-up', because the child cannot understand.

78

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

The analytic training authorities may not be able to say why the candidate is not a psycho-analyst. They may say, 'Yes, you are just like a psycho-analyst', but that is very different from saying, 'You are becoming a psycho-analyst'. They sound alike, but there is a huge difference. One must be able to distinguish between 'just like' and 'becoming'. Many people say, 'Oh, yes. M y husband and I have been married now for twenty years'. They have not. If you have experience you can look at them and see that they are just like a married couple, but they are not a married couple; they are a very good model of a married couple. But unless there is something seriously wrong with them the subject is not closured; being mar­ ried is, in fact, a continuing, open-ended process. There is no future in being just like a married couple; they are probably becoming married, or becoming grown-up. Similarly, the human being may be just like a sexual animal at the age of ten or thirteen. But if we respect the human personality, development does not stop at puberty or adolescence; if we believe in the existence of a human mind, there is no question of being just like a human personality; you can only be becoming a human. Q. If intuition is so important, why, in the training and educa­ tion of an analyst, do they not include artistic activities—poetry in particular? JB. Probably because of lack of time; certainly not because of lack of importance. One hopes that aesthetic experience has been acquired before embarking on analytic training. Q. Do you consider identification as a basic mechanism for the apprehension of mental phenomena? B. The question is posed in sophisticated terms. Making use of the Grid I would say, 'This question belongs to F , G, H—that class of statement'. If I ask myself, 'What does this question mean?', I do not think I could tell you, because it depends what language I must use. It is no good answering that question in the sophisticated terms with which all of us here are familiar. For example, if someone says, 'You see that tiger and that kitten—they are both cats'—a biologist might understand, but a layman might say, 'But look—can't you see the difference? That is a tiger! That is a kitten! They are not the same'. To a sophisticated, biological scientist, they are both cats. So, when asked a question like this, one needs to

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

79

know: What is this question? A m I being asked for a sophisticated answer? My reply in the same kind of language would be 'Yes'. In more pictorial language you would have to imagine yourself asking the question and imagining the answer you would comprehend. To sympathize with the questioner is fundamental; in technical lan­ guage, 'sympathizing with' is known as 'identification'. In Grid terms I would say it depends on your kind of vertex, or, in more ordinary language, your point of view. In the practice of analysis whatever terms are used should remain constant throughout the same universe of discussion. To alter the definitory hypothesis without notice makes nonsense of the whole discussion, just as a change of key without corresponding change in key signature makes nonsense of a piece of music. A psycho-analyst might say, 'This is a psychotic patient; when he says he is terrified it does not mean what is meant by this other patient who is a neurotic. They both say that they are terrified, but I know that patient A is talking about a different thing from patient B'; an apparent quantitative change becomes a change in quality. For example, a patient says, 'I am suffering agonies because I am blushing so badly'. He is pale and there is no visible sign of a blush. But the analyst should know that the patient who shows no apparent capillary action is, nevertheless, capable of having that intense experience. I would regard that patient as being not at all ordinary; the language that patient is talking is not the same as the language used by this other patient who says he has terrible difficulty with blushing and can be seen to be doing so. I could ask, 'Could you tell me a bit more what you mean by 'identification' and give me an example. What do you call a patient who is identified with another patient?' After a time some pattern might emerge which would enable you to say in your language what his language was meaning. One might say, 'Yes, I agree with you. I use that sort of language myself, or, 'No, I wouldn't use that kind of language myself; that's not what I would say'. This is one of the difficulties about scientific meetings amongst ourselves; we often talk in a way which sounds exactly as if we talked the same language. It is very doubtful.

80

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

Q. What kind of help can the experienced analyst give to a patient whose problem he does not consider as severe as the patient does, and who does not really need treatment? B . You are in your consulting room; you say that you are a psycho-analyst; you have your name on the door; for some reason a person has come to see you. You are at his disposal, you are free for fifty minutes, and during that time, if he will tell you what he wants, you will answer it if you can. I do not know why that patient thinks it worth his time and his money to come and see me, and I would not like to say that I know that he is spending all that time and trouble without some reason until I have heard more of what he has to say for himself. Suppose he says he is terrified that he might kill his children, or his mother or father. One would like to know how the patient comes to know that. I would say, T o u have known yourself for a long time so you must have some kind of evidence which has led you to suppose that that is what you would do. You have evidence which I have not—that doesn't mean that you are wrong, but you haven't made it clear to me.' One is not saying the patient cannot or will not do it, because he can do what he likes. I might continue, 'Although you haven't made me fright­ ened by what you have told me, there must be some reason why you have frightened yourself; you have frightened you—so much so that you have even come here today. You must have some evidence which has frightened you, although you haven't made it clear to me what that evidence is—so far.' Take a different case: the patient says, 1 told my wife that I was going to commit suicide and she got very frightened. I know I won't do anything of the sort.' As the analyst, I can say he may know that he will not do anything of the sort, but I do not. A n d he may know that it is perfectly safe to threaten suicide, but I do not. How does he come to know so much about people that he knows it is only an empty threat? I, as a psycho-analyst do not know that. If he said this to me, instead of to his wife, I would take that statement seriously; or, putting it in other terms, I would have respect for his statement even though he was inviting me to have no respect for it, to pay no attention to it. He may think that he need not bother about his threats to commit suicide, but I do not know that and, what is more, I do not believe he does either. Neither do I believe

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

81

that that patient is such a good psychiatrist that he can really promise me that he will not commit suicide. I can well believe that he can promise, because promises are nothing new to me—I am quite used to them—but I do not believe I am going to have that promise fulfilled. So, although the patient does not take his own statements seriously, the analyst has to. He, at least, knows that people do fantastic things like killing themselves. He cannot say, 'Oh, this is all nonsense', because he knows that patients will and can do these things; they are old enough; they are strong enough; they understand gas taps, knives, strangulation, hanging. So there is no reason why that patient, who might not be able to commit suicide if he was an infant, cannot do so now he is grown­ up. He may feel that it is all just fun to frighten the analyst or his wife in that way, but what he does not know is that he might do it. What is the psycho-analyst to do when the patient will not take his own threat seriously and invites the analyst not to take it seriously also? You will not find the answer in a book. The only thing that can give you that answer is your experience and trust in your flare and intuition; you could Say that an empty threat is trans­ formed not into a substitute for action, but into a prelude to taking that action. The psycho-analyst is in a very lonely job; he may have nobody to whom he can tell that. He cannot tell the patient; he cannot tell the patient's relatives, because they would probably be more upset than informed or illuminated. So he has to put up with knowing something about which he can do nothing. This is where the practice of psycho-analysis is absolutely different from books about or talk about psycho-analysis. There is no substitute what­ ever for experience. People get medically and psycho-analytically qualified, and they may be just like psycho-analysts or doctors, but they are not psycho-analysts or doctors. They may be becoming doctors, or psychiatrists, or psycho-analysts, but they are not doc­ tors, or psychiatrists, or psycho-analysts. They are only 'qualified'. Q. Could you say something more about the difference between what you call mental experience and sensuous experi­ ence. B. In one sense this is a simple question, and like all simple questions it becomes impossible to answer. Let me put it like this:

82

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

Question: 'What is that^ Daddy?' Answer: T h a t is a cow.' Question: 'Why is it a cow, Daddy?' Well, why is it a cow? Does any philoso­ pher, biologist, psycho-analyst, medical man know the answer to that question? Only two questions—what is that? why is that a cow?—and you are right away in the unknown. The world of the unknown is before you: you are out in ultimate space. That is how feeble our knowledge is. It is just two questions deep—that is a l l — and then you are out in the mental stratosphere. However long one lives one still will not know the answer to 'What is that?', 'It's a psycho-analyst'. 'Why is it a psycho-analyst?' You could say the mental experience and the sensuous experience have been making love to each other—hence the psycho-analyst. These answers are rationalizations, that is, rational answers; but the question may not be answerable in rational terms; it may be outside the scope of rational answers, or rational knowledge.

TWO

he discussions we are having here could be represented pictorially by a helix; we keep on coming back to the same JL point, only on different levels of the helix. Everything we say is related both to the ordinary course of the analytic work we do and to the various theories which are touched upon. If you feel you are unfamiliar with a theory I think it is an illusion due to the fact that we are at a different point in this heliacal progress; it only looks or sounds unfamiliar because it is stated in a rather different way from last time (or next time). Last time I spoke of various events which could be regarded by people who are familiar with mental phenomena as being marks either in time or in space at different points in the helix, like puberty, infancy, old-age, or middle-age. These are imprecise state­ ments and they are probably imprecise measures of time, yet I think that we have to be familiar with the fact that our methods of mental investigation, and the mental investigation itself, do not really conform with any precision to any of the known disciplines, so far. It is sometimes said that psycho-analysis is not scientific

83

84

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

because it is not mathematized. But it is not mathematized because the mathematicians have not provided us with a mathe­ matics suitable to our subject, not because our subject is unscien­ tific. It could be said that we are not aesthetic. It is not true; the known aesthetic disciplines are not adequate to our subject. If someone wishes to paint or to draw they can go to an art school and learn certain elementary, basic disciplines. That is probably good enough unless somebody comes along called Leonardo who will not fit into any of these artificial categories which are in existence. You could interpret what he says in aesthetic terms; you could interpret what he says in terms of the discipline of engineering, or certain kinds of mathematics. But there is nothing, not even a major group of disciplines, that would be adequate. The same thing applies to philosophy. A Plato, or a Socrates, or an Aristotle could be seen to be talking about some central and basic point. That is what I have tried to signify by a letter O—to signify it, merely to indicate that this is 'some thing'; but what it is I do not know. Kant might call it 'the thing-in-itself. Some philosophers would disagree with that, but I think, nevertheless, that there is a great deal to be said for the idea that he did regard noumena and things which are noumenous as related to the thing-in-itself. If the discipline were what we might call 'religious', the thing-in-itself might be called 'godhead'. The analogous point in the helix, 'god', is that point at which the godhead corresponds to the point at which it intersects with the human intelligence, and can, therefore, be described in the sensuous language which is used by human beings. For example, in the sixth chapter of Isaiah you will find a literal description in which he says that in a particular reign of a particular king he saw six seraphim, each with six wings: two with which they flew, two with which they covered themselves and two with which they covered their feet. A l l this is extremely literal. It is the kind of language which you and I might use for saying 'Well, this morning I got up and went out on to the beach. It's a particular day of the month; it's a particular day of the week; and there I saw . . ,'—whatever it was. Of course, it is impossible to say what Isaiah meant, because we are so separated in time from him and his statements. If someone—say, William Blake—gives a literal description of contact with God, what are we to say about that?

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

85

What language do we use? Do we say, 'He is hallucinated, he is deluded, these things are hallucinations'? We cannot express any such opinion because, as far as we know, our point in this helix is so different. We say it is now the twentieth century of our particular era; but what is the century on the time scale of astronomical time? What year is it in the Andromeda nebula, in that particular universe, that particular galaxy? This is one way of giving a pictorial representation of our problem. To return to the universe of your consulting room: when your patient was talking to you today, what date was he talking from? When you were thinking about what the patient said, what was the date then? Let us consider it now from the point of view of geocentric space. Where did this event happen? Where did this free-association happen when you 'remembered' it just now? When your patient is 'free­ associating' what is the date or time in psycho-analytic space­ time? Who will find a mathematical language which would be adequate to solve this problem of communication? The analyst may say, 'You are now feeling afraid of me'. The patient may reply, 'Oh, no I'm not—I'm not feeling at all fright­ ened', to which the anayst can only say, 'Well, you haven't led me to change my mind, nor do I wish to say that I am right and you are wrong, but I still think my interpretation was correct. Later, perhaps, we shall have a chance of seeing whether what you were thinking was right, or whether what I said you were thinking was right, and, as well as that, you may be able to decide that you were really thinking what I said you were. So the interpretation might have been what we call 'correct'. But there's another problem: if it was correct, were you right to be thinking or feeling like that? Were you quite right to be feeling afraid of me? Or is it possible to compare the feeling, which we are now agreed that you had, with the facts which are also familiar to you?' In that way the compari­ son can be made both between what the patient says is happening, and what the analyst says is happening. Furthermore, the patient can compare what he is feeling with other feelings that he has as well; these two points in the helix can be 'mapped'—the one with the other. I would have you focus on this difficulty: the lack of co-ordinates for psycho-analytic space-time. This is a term I am borrowing from

86

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

the philosopher, Alexander. A philosopher (philosophical vertex) confronted with the need to think of things popularly supposed to be in time and space, and a psycho-analyst confronted with a need to speak of similar matters, would be helped if the similar experi­ ences could be formulated in terms suitable to both. This is not the state at present. Other disciplines, such as religion, art, mathema­ tics, science, have a need to formulate steps in the progress towards the same end. Croce supposed that aesthetic could be a universal linguistic. He was wrong. Can we, as psycho-analysts, suggest any better? Analogy may help. I am not, however, using the term, 'analogy', in the way an artist in words would use it. It has to be understood that the importance of the analogy lies not in the two objects which are compared (for example, a breast with a penis), but with the link made between the two. Speaking psycho-analytically, what we are concerned with is the relationship, not the things related. This is close to the view of the pure mathematician who will say that he is dealing with the relationships of objects. It seems to me that this is something like (at least, analogous, to put it no higher) what Freud meant when he used the word 'transference'; he was not just inventing a word; he was convinced that there was a thing itself which required naming in order to talk about it. Coming back to us and our patients: it is useful to make use of this word, 'transference', when we want to talk about psycho­ analysis, but in the analysis itself we should be able to see, or feel, or intuit the thing itself. I ignore what is related to what, to focus attention on this 'bit in between'; that link is 'transference'. The analyst, together with his analysand, can have an actual experi­ ence and say, 'I think I see what you mean'. If he says that, he is using a language which has been produced to deal with the world of sensuous reality (the reality which is discernible if you have sight, hearing, sense of smell, touch and so on). It is inadequate for our purpose. We are having to use a language which was invented for one job, to do a different one. We have having to use a language which is concerned with phenomena, when what we are concerned with is noumena. We are having to talk about things which could be described as phenomenal, while having to use that same lan­ guage for things which are noumenous. This is a serious problem.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

87

If we invent words, nobody will understand what those words mean. If we do not, their sensuous history is evoked. As with a 'dead' metaphor carelessly used, its ghost begins to walk. Neolo­ gisms are the privilege of the mentally ill. They are not available for use by the psycho-analyst. We borrow from other disciplines to augment our vocabulary. Suppose we borrow from mathematics: Euclidean geometry is no good to us. That is all very well for geocentric time, geocentric space, but not for psycho-analytic space. Brouwer and Hayting have propounded the mathematics of Intuitionism. Their approach is still controversial, although it is now much more elaborate and to some mathematicians it appears to remain consistent to its own definitions, provided those definitions are used in that particular universe of discourse. Is it of any use to us? Must we be painters, artists in words, mathematicians? The 'simple business' of seeing the patient tomorrow is formidable indeed! We have to use an inadequate tool, and we even have to invent our own particular way of talking while we are actually talking. It would be convenient if I could get used to a way of talking which was consistent in its own universe of discourse and which could be comprehensible to someone who was not me, but was in the room at the same time. If I could, in addition, use the same language here the reader could say, 'I think I see what you mean'. That experience is an important one, because it makes lateral communication possible—in contrast with communication between analyst and analysand. When your patient talks to you tomorrow you may feel, 'I don't know what he is talking about. I know of no interpretation that would fit anything he has said so far.' As you go on listening, or, as Freud calls it, exercising a free­ floating attention, you may begin to feel, 'I think I see what he means'. Those words do not matter; the feeling does, because it is going to turn into another feeling which will turn into something which you would be able to turn into an interpretation. So, when you think you understand what he means, or you think you see what he is getting at, that will be an interpretation one day: perhaps tomorrow, perhaps next week, perhaps in a year's time. Some of it will be clear at once, and then you can give that interpretation. But by the time you can give an interpretation it is

88

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

not important, because the work for that has been done in the previous weeks, months, years that you have been with that patient. The immediate interpretation, now, goes backward and it goes forward. 'I think I see what you mean.' Or to put it in other terms, 'I think I remember something like what you are saying. I think that one day I shall understand what you are talking about.' It glances back; it intuits 'the shape of things to come'. It is that peculiar experience which is not an interpretation, not a memory, not even a prophecy. A 'present' experience is past, is present and is future; it is timeless—unless someone can invent space-time, psycho-analytic time and space. There is a story which I would like to tell, a verbal representa­ tion of a pictorial image. It is said that General Marshall Lyautey was talking about the need to grow wood, oak wood, for ships, and he was told this was absolutely impracticable. He asked why and was told, 'Well, it would take a hundred years before the oak was fit to use'. 'In that case', said Lyautey, 'we haven't a moment to lose.' That is our position. It will take a hundred years to answer these questions which I am sure we all have in mind, and there­ fore, we haven't a moment to lose. Q. Could not understanding be used as a substitute for experiencing? What, in your opinion, is the relationship between the two? S . I may be misinterpreting Freud, but I think what I am going to say is compatible with statements which Freud has already made with regard to free-floating attention. In the course of analysis it is wrong for the analyst to allow himself either memories or desires, the one being the future tense of the other, because memories and desires are opaque. They hide what is going on. This, I believe, is equally true of understanding. While you are trying to understand what the patient says he goes on talking and you do not hear what he says. Freud's statement could be made in a more detailed manner—on a further point on the helix—by saying one should avoid memories, desires, or understanding. It is easy to say; it is very difficult to carry out. To remember, to foresee, to understand, may all be relevant and desirable, as for example when reading a book or participating in a lecture, but during the

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

89

practice of psycho-analysis none of them is a valuable activity; they are breaches in the analytic frame of mind. Q. What can we do, what language should we use if it seems to us the patient does not understand our language? B. This problem becomes most acute in situations where the patient seems to think in a different way from oneself. For example, most of us, if we chose to write down our thoughts or ideas, would write from left to right using the rules of articulate speech as understood and taught to us in childhood, It is the nearest that the accumulated wisdom of the race has come to turning thoughts and ideas into written communication. But sup­ pose one meets somebody who writes from right to left, or from bottom to top of the page; and suppose that they do that because it suits their method of thinking better than going from left to right. Suppose those people think from bottom to top, or from right to left; suppose a Chinese uses a method of pictorial representation, hiero­ glyphic communication, and combines these hieroglyphs accord­ ing to the rules of that particular way of thinking. If a member of the western civilization translates that communication correctly with regard to the pictures, the hieroglyphs, but not with the right grammar, and tries to put together these pictures as if they were part of a universe of articulate expression when in fact they are not, the result would be a curious translation, frighteningly apparently correct, but wrong because the grammar is not the grammar of articulate speech. It is the grammar of hieroglyphic communication. Our problem is, what is the 'grammar' of reality, and what grammar are biological objects like us to create so that the reality may approximate to it? In psycho-analysis we have to manufacture our means of communication while we are com­ municating. I often think that we are hindered by expecting too much of our ability to psycho-analyse while psycho-analysing. In short, there are twin dangers—'too much' and 'too little'. It is western poets who have come nearest to using the correct grammar. Ezra Pound has frequently been regarded as psychotic; his poems have been said to be rubbish. But he shows every sign of understanding Robert Browning, even a poem like 'Sordello', said by Browning himself to have had a meaning which was once

90

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

known both to himself and to God, but now known only to God, because he had forgotten what it meant. The relationship between the Browning who wrote 'Sordello' and the Browning who wrote T h e Ring and The Book has been severed; they no longer talk the same language—and that is in the same person. This comes very near to what happens in analysis. The grown man cannot bear to be reminded of what he was like by the behaviour of his children, because he cannot bear to be reminded of a part of his still existing mind. He does not like the experience of living with his family and he does not like psycho-analysis. We are trying to introduce him to a character which we think it would be worth his while to respect, namely, himself: either himself as he was once, or to introduce what he was once to himself as he is today. These two people dislike each other and do not want to be introduced. Not only do they hate each other, but they hate this psycho-analyst who is trying to introduce them. 7

To return to the precise question: the analyst has to ask this of himself during the whole of his career, and precisely during the individual session. Q. How can we develop intuition? When is intuition predomi­ nant as a means of knowledge in relation to projective identifica­ tion? S . I do not think I know the answer to that question. I may be wrong, but I do not think anybody else does either, because most of childhood is spent in trying to be just like the grown-up and that happens to be, as I said before, a closed system—it has no future. While the person is busy trying to be just like a grown-up, by accident he is becoming grown up. While he is trying to be just like an intuitive person, he does not notice that he is becoming an intuitive person. That process does not end at puberty, or middle­ age, or any milestone to which we give a name, because it is an on-going situation. A l l of us are becoming intuitive—unless, of course, we try hard to be just like an intuitive person; that is aiming at a closed system. It does not matter how exactly like an intuitive person we manage to get, except that it interferes with our becoming intuitive and with our still being able to be becoming intuitive.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O 9

1

Plausibly, one could say there is a hurry, because we die and, as far as we know, when we are dead we are dead—unless we take the viewpoint, or Vertex' as I call it, of a religious person who does not consider the termination of the physical life is quite what it appears to be. Even the analyst has reason to pause here, because as short a time as four hundred years ago you died at the age of thirty anyway, and what was wrong with that? It was natural; your teeth fell out, you decayed, you had tumours, you had all sorts of things which were normal. But today we do not expect to die at thirty in the normal course of events. We should regard that as pathological—if we knew the pathology we could match it with the fact of death, or assume an unknown. With the mind it is not so simple; what the mental counterpart of physical toxicity is we do not know. It seems to be possible to guess that some methods of thinking are less lethal than others—if we knew what they were. As it is, are we right to think that the years of our life are 'threescore years and ten, or, if by reason of strength, fourscore years', as the poet says? That may be a delusion which is based on our inability to distinguish the toxic or pathological from the life­ giving, or vital, or healthy, because we know so little about the mind, or psyche, or spirit—whichever term we borrow to talk about this thing which is not sensuously apprehendable, which does not fall within the spectrum of the sensuous range. It is ultra­ physical, or infra-physical; it is outside the spectrum with which we are so far familiar. It does not mean to say that the thing­ in-itself, life itself, the noumenon, is co-limited with our mental capacity, that because we can only think that far the mental world is only that big. It may be vast. It may be that if we had what, for the sake of convenience, one would call intuition, one could per­ ceive, or be aware of, the existence of a mentality which is not bounded by my skin. My skin is convenient as a method of saying what the boundaries are of my physical make-up, of my anatomy and my physiology. It is unlikely that that forms an adequate description of the boundaries of my mind. I may not be able to touch, or hear, or see you, but at the same time it is possible that mentally we are able to make a contact between ourselves and something which is not us. Using grammatical speech we could say

92

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

'you and me' is different from 'me and it' or 'you and it'. There is no mental relationship between the animate and the inanimate. But there is a relationship between the animate and the animate. It is difficult to say where those two meet, where those two objects intersect, like two circles, or, using more mathematical terms, where one set is related to another set in terms of overlapping, so that there is something which is common to both sets—the set which one could say is 'you and me'. Q. Would you give an example of the use of psycho-analytical practice of the psycho-analytical space-time concept. B. I cannot give an example of it, but in so far as I have some knowledge of myself I am aware that I am reaching out with something which is more than what I can touch and feel. I do not touch my patients. It is true that I speak to them and I see them, but I do not believe that that gives an adequate description of the meeting between the patient's mind and mine. I can understand someone saying that they had an experience like thought-reading. They might say, 'It's a funny thing, but yesterday I thought you were meeting my friend at about the time when you were meeting my friend, but I had no idea that you were going to meet'. It might be compatible with the idea that there is some mental phenom­ enon which is not bounded by what I can see and what I can hear, what I can smell and touch and feel. Although you and I are in different places not known to each other there may, nevertheless, be some overlapping. I could not prove it nor would I be satisfied with the example that I have just given. I suspect it is one of these things called 'extrasensory perception', but that it is probably too crude. As our intuition continues to develop we get nearer to a situation where we seem to be aware that the boundaries of our mind are not our physical boundaries, nor yet the boundaries which are imposed by our central nervous system. That is more like a guess, or a 'hunch', than anything one could call evidence or fact. But it may be a fact one day.

THREE

I

n the paper which Freud wrote in 1937, 'Constructions in Analysis' (1937, S.E. vol. XXIII), he spoke about the import­ ance of what he called construction. He had often written about construction before, but he gathered it all together in that paper and stated openly that he felt it was more important to give interpretations which are really constructions than to give par­ ticular interpretations. There is still a great deal of danger about the use of terms like 'omnipotence'. There are patients who say, 'I don't know what you mean when you say "omnipotence"'. This seems, at first, an unrealistic, or even hostile comment, but in fact it deserves to have considerable attention paid to it. In analysis patients who are feeling helpless are also feeling omnipotent. Conversely, if they are feeling omnipotent they are also feeling helpless—the two are, in reality, not separated. Words like 'omnipotence' are very compressed statements which have a con­ siderable penumbra of associations. In so far as omnipotence is associated with ideas belonging to some kind of religious belief, it is important to know which religious belief.

93

94

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

If we read a poem like Paradise Lost, or an aesthetic statement or poem like the Aeneid, or the Odyssey, or the Iliad, we tend to think that we are reading, or being taught, English, or Latin, or Greek literature. When those aesthetic constructions were made they were not literature. Paradise Lost was a serious attempt to make a religious statement; it was the simplest and easiest way in which Milton could convey what he considered to be great religious truth—it was a great poem incidentally. Similarly, when Virgil wrote the Aeneid he was not trying to write good Latin, or good literature. He was saying what he had to say. Consequently we tend to forget, and even our teachers tend to forget, that what is important is what the writer was trying to convey; those particular poems endure because they retain a capacity for having a mean­ ing. The stupendous nature of the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid is their durability, the fact that through hundreds of years they have delivered a message to those whose understanding has not been restricted to a knowledge of Greek or Latin. A knowledge of Greek or Latin is only a preliminary sine qua non. If one is inclined to say that a patient is behaving in the way that we would regard as omnipotent, we cannot understand that behaviour until we know what religion the individual is actually expressing, and what the religion is to which he is devoted. I take this example, not because it is exceptional, but because it seems to be a good instance of the expanding nature of the analytic profes­ sion. The patient we shall see tomorrow, like the patient we see today, makes apparently simple statements and it is hardly worth interpreting the conscious, rational meaning of what they say. It is necessary to tell the patient that, in addition to the actual meaning with which he is familiar, there is a further meaning; and when we give an interpretation we do not mean that the free-association was therefore wrong. For the sake of convenience we can think that the patient is being 'omnipotent'. That is a psycho-analytic theory or, maybe, a religious theory, and it tells the patient pre­ cisely nothing if we tell him what he already knows. What we need to do is to draw attention to something which is obvious to us, but which he fails to notice. But before embarking on giving inter­ pretations about the patient's omnipotence it would be useful to

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

95

have some idea of what religion this rational twentieth-century person adheres to. For example, it is clear from a small boy's expressions of admiration that a particular teacher or player of games is so important to him that one could say he 'worships' him. As analysts we have to take that statement seriously; we have to appreciate that to that small boy the football player is his god. There is nothing wrong with that; it is appropriate in that particu­ lar universe of discourse. But supposing that small boy grows up and becomes a man of twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, and still worships a football player. One could say his religion has not progressed; his capacity for devotion, his capacity for awe, for worship, for admiration, for mystery, has not developed; it is a vestige which is no more use to him mentally than it would be if some anatomical defect had left him with a pronounced (hyper­ trophied) tail. Most human beings have no more need of a tail than they do of a vestigial religion. But if indeed they have a vestigial religion, that vestige is as mentally pronounced in the world of the mind as a tail would be in the world of anatomy and physiology. The religious belief which was once right and normal has become inappropriate. Many of our ideas which were normal and appropri­ ate at the right time are not so when they go on retaining their vitality and power at a time and in a personality in which they are out of date. What date? That brings us back to this difficulty about psycho­ analytic space-time. I know nothing whatever about it except that I wish somebody would discover it, because until they do psycho­ analysis is going to be held up and unable to progress, because we go on using a time scale which is out of date. We go on using a space scale which is out of date. Space-time which has been elaborated by Samuel Alexander in his book Space, Time and Deity (1920), was in many respects before its time, but is not a great deal of use, just as the geometry of Riemann or Lobachevsky was not much use until there was a geometry which was not geocentric, but was of some use for outer space. It has to be galactic—to use astronomical terms—and even with galactic space we now know, thanks to radio astronomy, that there are radio stars and radio universes which are audible. That is not of much importance to us, but it illustrates

96

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

the difficulty of finding or inventing a space-time scale for the mind. Consider some mental travel: M31, the Andromeda nebula, probably something like one and a half million light years away. Now consider your consulting room tomorrow. What a journey from outer space beyond the confines of any time that we know, all the way to eight o'clock tomorrow morning in Rio de Janeiro! Mentally we can make these journeys; mentally we can traverse these immense spaces; and we can talk about the Homeric psychol­ ogy, or the Virgilian psychology, or religion. This requires mental mobility not only in today's sessions, but in tomorrow's sessions with your patients. I hope I have given you some idea of what an enormous amount of work has to be done to see this patient, to achieve a frame of mind which is suitable for being a psycho­ analyst, or a psychiatrist, or a philosopher—anybody who is con­ cerned with the human personality. It gives some idea of the urgency of this problem, of why we have not a moment to lose, otherwise the human race is probably just another discarded experiment; it ceases to survive because it is out of date—unless, of course, it can somehow or another find a way of becoming up-to­ date. Most of us think that psycho-analysis is important, not because it is so good (we know that even the whole of existing psycho-analytic theory does not get much further than scratching the surface of our problem), but because if we are right in thinking that we have minds we shall have to do something about them. Q. I would like to hear you speak about the omnipotence of questions. JB. I think it is impossible to say that one is not presupposing the omnipotence of questions. We can easily suppose that ques­ tions are really an outcome of omnipotence; so long as we have to depend on ordinary human beings to be analysts we shall never escape from many of these very same mechanisms. We need to be aware of our animal inheritance, whether that is a capacity for sexual activities or murderous activities, and even aware of our capacity to change from wandering about on all fours to walking about on our hind legs. We need, as far as possible, to get a catholic idea of our potentialities both for evil and for good. 'Evil and

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

97

good'—again, what is the frame of reference? Are those religious ideas, or are they aesthetic ideas, or are they scientific ideas? Does the question relate to psycho-analysis, religion, or the bringing up of children? Most of us have to face the problem of telling a child how to run its life. Most psycho-analysts would agree that we do not want to pretend to run our own lives so well that we can run somebody else's too. That is why an analyst needs to have some working idea of his capacity and the limitations of his psycho­ analytic knowledge likewise. Such self-knowledge might save us from the danger of trying to tell others how to live instead of trying to demonstrate how they are thinking. Q. What is the relation between construction and psycho­ analytical time-space? How should one understand the patient's or analyst's feeling of loss within psycho-analytical time-space? Where does the feeling of omnipotence fit in this sense of loss? In your clinical work you use constructions (the Grid). Would these constructions be given to the patient instead of interpreta­ tions? Is the space and time between that which we feel and that which we think filled by confusion, persecution and depression, or by good feelings? B, I am used to hearing patients say that they feel 'terribly frightened'. What is the scale by which the degree of fear is meas­ ured? It is said that the patient shows 'excessive anxiety', or is 'excessively pleased with himself, or pays 'excessive attention to detail', or his 'misunderstanding is abnormal'. Hitherto psycho­ analysts have been able to cope, more or less, with the kind of problem with which they were confronted; nowadays we are called upon to deal with problems which lie outside the range of what we have previously considered to be psycho-analytic activity. We are constantly dealing with these problems without any frame of reference. The analyst may feel, 'I can't cope with this patient, he's too hostile'. What is the right degree of hostility? Where is the scale of measurement in which here is very little hostility, and here is too much? How does one measure it if not by the feelings the analyst has in the session? 'Plus' or 'minus' could be used to indicate deviations from the psycho-analyst's 'norm'. This could be

98

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

said to be unsatisfactory, subjective, unscientific. Nonetheless, there is nothing better that I know of. In all this we are having to make do without any proper scale of measurement, without any proper watch which tells you the time. This becomes serious when dealing with a patient about whom it might once have been said, 'Oh well, he is abnormal, he is too ill, he's really a borderline psychotic'. In real terms he is disliked because he involves too great an excursion from the limits of our spectrum. We must develop, we must achieve a standard of maturity which lies beyond animal maturity but leaves cultural sex as a goal. Animal sex­ uality is achieved before mental maturity; the latter has yet to be achieved. If there is such a thing as mental maturity or passionate love, then one cannot say what the date is at which somebody is able to achieve passionate love as opposed simply to being sexually mature. The Grid is a feeble attempt to produce an instrument. A n instrument is not a theory; it is made up out of theories, in the same way as a ruler which is marked in inches and centimetres has been made in conformity with a number of theories. But the ruler can be used by different people for all sorts of purposes. When I was a boy at school the teacher would say, 'Hold out your hand', and then use the ruler to strike the palm—it hurt. It was not really what the ruler was made for, or why it was marked in inches and centimetres, but it worked. That is about all I can claim for the Grid. Some people may be able to use it for different purposes. Someone may find a way of inventing a grid which would be of some use to psycho-analysts practising psycho-analysis; it is yet to be discovered, for I certainly do not believe that the grid I have drawn up fills that need. I think it is good enough to know how bad it is, how unsuitable for the task for which I have made it. But even if it inflicts a certain amount of mental pain I hope you can turn it to good account and make a better one. Q. Do you think that psycho-analysis must be made mathe­ matical before it can be considered a science? B. I would not be impressed if psycho-analysis were mathe­ matized—not at all. But I would not like to discourage anybody who felt disposed to try, because I can see that psycho-analysis is

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

99

not by any means perfect, or even a good instrument. As far as I am concerned it is the best I have come across. I hesitate to say this, because there are so many people ready to believe that one does not think much of psycho-analysis. It depends on what is your scale of what is 'much' and what is 'less'. The operations of the human mind are far from efficient. So much so, indeed, that our mental capacity runs to cleverness more than wisdom; we are such clever monkeys that we can blow ourselves off the face of this earth or off the face of this universe long before we discover that it is danger­ ous to play with atomic bombs. Some people were afraid that if nuclear fission was effective a chain reaction would be set up in which the whole of the substance which we need for breathing and living would be destroyed in one flash. Luckily for us we have not been quite as clever as that—so far. Tomorrow perhaps, somebody will be brave enough, stupid enough, indifferent enough to say, 'It would be so exciting—I'd like to light this dangerous match and see what happens'. To make an artificial division between being clever and wise, one could say: it seems to take longer to be wise than it takes to be clever. I remember talking to an atomic physicist who seemed to feel that all this business of Greek and Latin and poetry and literature was a lot of nonsense, that Oxford university wasted a terrible lot of time. I would not quarrel with that, but that does not mean to say that I think, therefore, that one should encourage our monkey­ like tricks without also encouraging the growth of wisdom. I can see that far quicker than a study of the humanities would be an atomic termination of the human race—drastic, effective and quick. Whether it is an improvement on psycho-analysis is a matter of opinion—may the best man win! When I was a small boy I would have preferred it if my teachers had learnt to use rulers for measuring centimetres and inches instead of hitting my hands with them. I would rather scientists used atomic physics in some way which was helpful to me, instead of using it for turning me into a cinder or a gas. It is difficult to know what it is that promotes the growth of wisdom. Psycho­ analysis seems to offer the best hope of finding out what promotes growth—whether of a tumour, or healthy tissue, I do not know. In

100

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

the meantime, while we are elaborating psycho-analytic tech­ niques, perhaps we can learn how to grow wise people to be psycho­ analysts and not just clever monkeys. Q. I should like to hear more about your use of the term 'mystery'. To my mind it brings echoes of Agatha Christie, the enigma of the sphinx, the origin of man, and so on. What do you have in mind when you use the expression? B . What I mean by the term is a capacity to have feelings of respect for the unknown; to have a capacity to respect something of which we are ignorant; not to be so frightened of what we do not understand that we want to say, 'Oh, I don't know what he's talking about—put him in a mental hospital', or, 'I don't know what this man is doing; let's have him executed'. While it is true that most people are less good murderers after they have had their heads chopped off, we know very little about them as a result. One would like to have a chance of learning what the violent person or thing is before it kills us. But violence seems to be so much quicker than thinking, especially the kind of thinking which is directed towards action rather than the kind of thinking which is a sub­ stitute for action. Somehow it seems to be a slow process, perhaps too slow for the job. However, all this is more an indication for adherence to and devotion to the job rather than for not attempting it. Someone who feels that they have learnt the explanation of everything, even the human mind, seems to be less of a person than he who is still capable of learning. People who are addicted to psycho-analysis seem to become two-dimensional—they are flat; they are not people, they are the plans for people. If we could analyze people properly (whatever that may mean), they might have a respect not only for their own minds, but also for other people's. Included in that mind would be the capacity to be awe­ inspired by the human mind itself in the same way as I would like to be capable of being awe-inspired by a sight like the aurora borealis. I would not think that I had improved if I said, 'Oh well, this is simply an electric display; it's an electric phenomenon'. That is clever, but not wise. Suppose someone, listening to the radio, becomes curious about the background noises, the interference. In time they become

1974

R I O D E J A N E I R O 10

1

sufficiently curious to build enormous radio telescopes in order to listen to the interference. This all depends upon a capacity for the respect and the awe of natural phenomena. There is no chance of progress in psycho-analysis until there are enough people who respect the human mind, whether they like it or not, whether they think it is the wrong kind of mind or not, or whether they disap­ prove of the way that particular kind of mind works. It is, there­ fore, important that psycho-analysts both now and in the future should be capable of respecting the human mind, the human personality, and even respecting it if they do not know what it is or anything about it. This is a part of what I call remaining able to be mystified. We must be able to tolerate mystery and our own ignorance. Q. What would be the difference between omnipotence in the universe of a Catholic and of a Methodist, both within and outside the consulting room. B. It would be necessary to have some experience of Catholics and Methodists: better still, experience of one particular Method­ ist or one particular Catholic. I think only a psycho-analyst would be likely to find out. He might find that they worshipped the same God, or that one of them worshipped a golf professional and the other worshipped a football player. But he would still have to remain able to say, 'Well, I have only investigated two people and they seem to have led me to find out something that everybody knows anyhow'. It is difficult to feel that after a lifetime's devotion one has nearly caught up with the ideas of a great number of people who already have those ideas. It is most unlikely that any of us will discover something new. I have never found out anything which has not already been discovered. But people have a great capacity for believing what they want to believe and that the object is worthy of belief. The desire to believe in the creative person obscures the capacity to discriminate between uniqueness and originality or creativeness. Nietzsche says in Thus Spake Zarathustra that the function of a nation is to produce one genius. That gives a good idea of the scale: sixty million human beings might be able to produce one genius. And it would be a good thing if these collections of sixty million people would allow the genius to survive, should one turn up,

102

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

without executing die of indifference. which is to be the problem is unique

him, or blowing him up, or simply letting him But an ability to lead sixty million to agree on unique genius is rare; in psycho-analysis the and specific.

The questioner would have to determine whether the question was particular and unique, or general. If specific, the answer would have to be found on the specific occasion. Q. Could the development of a capacity to experience time in analysis be effected through successive experiences of omnipo­ tence and impotence? B . It is possible that the time could be measured by the oscilla­ tion from one to the other. One is certainly familiar with people who say, T can always wake up at the time of day I want by thinking about it overnight; if I want to wake up at five in the morning, I wake up at five in the morning'. I do not find that inherently improbable. What it is due to I do not know. It may be dependent on something physiological like the heartbeat, or some­ thing like an oscillation from omnipotence to helplessness. I think it might be worth investigating if you have a patient who shows that sort of oscillation. As it is, at present one depends on a thing like a piece of machinery which says a quarter past eleven, and we all have to be awe-stricken by it; we have to be impressed by the fact that that piece of machinery has got round to those particular positions of the hands. So I suppose we had better bow to our little watches.

FOUR

I

want to discuss something which seems to be far removed from the topics with which we are concerned. In recent years there has been a mechanical development in astronomy ana­ logous to the discovery of the telescope. Hitherto astronomy has been limited by what can be seen by the visual apparatus of the human being when extended by powerful instruments like the two-hundred-inch reflector at Palomar. It has now been further extended by the discovery of radio astronomy. Radio astronomers have discovered what they call 'black holes' in the spatial counter­ part of the astronomical field; they believe that the 'black hole' is the space where a star has become so concentrated that it has fallen in on itself—it has collapsed. Where there used to be a star there is now a 'black hole* which, they suspect, is the source of immense power. I am familiar with a psycho-analytic theory of the human mind which sounds like the astronomical theory of the 'black hole'—as far as I can understand astronomical formulation. Why should a psycho-analyst invent a theory to explain a mental phenomenon

103

104

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

and, independently, the astronomers elaborate a similar theory about what they think is a black hole in astronomical space? Which is causing which? Is this some peculiarity of the human mind which projects it up into space, or is this something real in space from which derives this idea of space in the mind itself? Perhaps someone may have time and the inclination to investigate this 'black hole'. Of course, the investigation might result in a negative discovery, a discovery which made it unnecessary to look further; or perhaps psycho-analysts have already suspected a pecu­ liarity about the human mind, and if their suspicion is correct it will lead to still further psycho-analytic investigation and theories. I have used this idea of modern cosmology as a model for psycho-analysis, but I would also use psycho-analysis as the start­ ing point of an investigation of the human mind. Let us look at something which is not millions of light years away, but very near indeed—oneself. Freud, when writing to Lou Andreas Salome, said that when he was investigating a very dark subject he sometimes found it illuminating to investigate it by artificially blinding himself. In the third book of Paradise Lost Milton says, 'Hail, holy Light, offspring of heaven first-born! Or of the Eternal co-eternal beam May I express thee unblamed? Since God is light, A n d never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity—dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate! . . . Won from the void and formless infinite!' There seems to be no doubt, and Milton certainly had no doubt, that he was blind—'so thick a drop serene hath quenched these orbs which roll in vain'; although they can feel the warmth he can see nothing. A capable eye specialist would nowadays have ideas about the nature of Milton's blindness. We cannot really say whether Milton blinded himself artificially, or whether he realized, unconsciously, that he could not investigate these 'things invisible to man' while he was blinded by the brilliant light of facts. One cannot psycho­ analyse Milton, but it is puzzling that he could apparently turn the experience of being blind to good account, exactly as Freud could not investigate these dark and obscure places unless he artificially blinded himself. When we are seeing our patients tomorrow would it be a good thing to know as much as possible about psycho-analysis, to have

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

105

as brilliant an illumination as possible to bring to bear on the facts which we shall come across in tomorrow's session? Or would it be better to blind ourselves artificially so that the dark should be so pervasive that any very faint object will show up—like the expres­ sion about looking for a black cat in a dark cellar without any light. We can consider, as our patient talks to us, which we had better do: know all that there is to be known by one person about psy­ cho-analysis? Or be as forgetful as we can of the various facts in order that our intuition, however feeble, can have a chance of seeing something, however faint and however obscure, in what the patient is saying to us? We need a kind of mental binocular vision—one eye blind, the other eye with good enough sight. The English admiral, Nelson, once decided that it was wise to 'turn a blind eye' to a signal which had been made, to disobey orders, so that he could say he had not seen the signal. He put the telescope to his blind eye. Are there not times when it would be just as well if we did not pay too much attention to what we had been told to do? Where no interpretation that we know and that we have been taught (rightly taught by our forebears) seems to illuminate the situation, would it be as well not to see what we are told to do, but to use our own initiative? A most dangerous thing to do! It is arrogant, and in some ways you have to be a bit of a fool to ignore everything that you have been told and imagine that you would know better. But even in our own childhood our parents were sometimes wrong; they knew much more than we did about how to bring up children, but sometimes, when we were being really naughty, we may also have been quite right—no credit to us. Can we mobilize that today when we are grown men and women and are still feeling that we have a lot to learn? We are both the children, as it were, and the grown-ups. Shall we forget what as children we learnt was right, or shall we forget what as grown-ups we have also learnt is right? How can I put to you that I think you ought to use your intuition, however feeble and however mislead­ ing and however dangerous the possible wrong path may be? To look now through the other eye—to return to astronomy. While most people were saying, T h i s is a terrible radio; I can't possibly hear the programme; the music is drowned by inter­ ference', some difficult, perverse, stupid, ignorant individual

106

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

decided not to listen to the beautiful music and decided instead to listen to the interference. Can you imagine anything more per­ verse, more stupid than that—not to listen to Bach or Beethoven, but to listen to the interference? Nevertheless, not so many years later somebody built enormous radio telescopes to listen to this interference, to listen to the background noises. So much for our crackpot, stupid, psychotic, perverse and tiresome people! Why are they the people who are picked out to make these discoveries? Why did Galileo go against all the authorities, including important religious authorities, to say that the universe was different from what the representatives of God on earth had said was the fact? We cannot very well say, 'Don't let's bother about sane people; the people we really want to encourage are all our lunatics'. But we certainly cannot afford to say, 'Here are the sane; there are the lunatics'. It is a fact that the rebellious psychotic of one moment is almost instantaneously transformed into the sane, charisma­ invested Establishment of the next moment. In this narrow sphere which I might call 'myself, I have to try to have some opinion as to whether I am talking nonsense, or whether I am saying something which it is worth somebody's time to listen to. In the world of thinking when one is doing the kind of thinking which is a prelude to action, and not a substitute for it, one has to decide, even though one has not much to go on, whether it is worth while bothering people by mentioning an idea that one has. It may not be nonsense. That is the dilemma which confronts every one of us in this tiny universe which is the universe of ourselves: a universe which seems to be rather bigger than what, if we could fall back on anatomy and physiology, one could say was 'oneself. I could have a good idea who I am if I was allowed to consider that my boundary is the same thing as the boundary of my skin. But I wonder whether my mind is really inside my skin with the rest of the works. If we have this psycho-analytic prejudice which is based on the theory that there is something which it is worth calling the human mind, and that it is worth investigating, it may be as important as all these radio interferences which are worth while attending to instead of the programme which our betters have decided is what we ought to listen to.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

107

Our patients tomorrow mean to tell us some things and we ought to listen to what they have to say. There is no question of ignoring that. But one could say to the patient, 'As well as what you are telling me, I would like to draw attention to what you don't mean to say—some stuff which you may think is rubbish. I would like you to have some respect for your mind as you know it and for parts of your mind which you have so far thought were rubbish', and which, according to Melanie Klein, infants split off at an early age (or think they do) and get rid of (or think they do) in the way that they learn to get rid of urine because it is not milk, and faeces because it is not good to eat. One neither drinks nor eats one's mind, but the habit of splitting off can continue; there can still be a wish to be able to say, T don't want to have anything to do with all the bad stuff that I have ever got rid of. The analyst is saying, 'Do have a look at this bad stuff; do have a look at the stuff which you have thought is bad at some time in your life and have tried to get rid of. In psycho-analytic practice 'looking at' is inseparable from experiencing 'turbulence'. This mixed, chaotic confusion may per­ haps be the contents of the mental 'black hole'. That is why indi­ viduals often prefer 'hearing about' than 'experiencing' psycho­ analysis. So before getting rid of the 'black hole', have one more look at it before you decide that everything that your fathers and mothers told you was rubbish; before getting rid of all our con­ scious, rational knowledge, let us have a look at that too. In short, let us have a look at the interferences. There is a complication; you will not be surprised that we shall now look at it. The baby in us hates the grown-up; the hate is mutual. Tomorrow one of our patients may show every sign that he does not want to grow up—he thinks it is a bad idea. He would rather remain a baby all his life. I myself am glad that I am not an official of a psycho-analytic society; let someone else be grown-up and do that job. Equally, the analysand does not want to be reduced, as he fears he will be, to the state of mind of child or infant. But it is not something which is over and done with once and for all. We remain human animals: sometimes young human animals; sometimes one can say we are grown-up human animals. Can they be made to work together? Can they co-operate enough to

108

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

produce, to use metaphor, binocular vision, bi-mental perception? Are we on the right track as analysts? We assume that there is a mind, that it is worth spending time and money on it, that it is worth spending time on that particular specimen of the mind that we shall come across tomorrow. That is what we think. But we are a very, very small minority. Q. You have stressed the importance of respect for mystery, and of the psycho-analyst's intuition. How can one reconcile this with the preference given to medical background in selection of candidates, since this training generally gives an organic-based, rather than an intuitive, attitude. Would it not be better to give preference to those with a humanities background? B . This problem always exercised the British Society and was a matter for continual debate. In general it was agreed that one third membership should be lay members, the main requisite being that all the members should show some signs of a sincere devotion to the work. If a person was medically qualified it showed that they had undergone a discipline. The lay member, likewise, was expected to know what it was to be part of a mentally disci­ plined organization, such as having studied enough to get a degree in, say, philosophy. There is a lot to be said for the medical disci­ pline as a preparation for the practice of psycho-analysis; doctors are familiar with anxious and frightened people. But on the other hand, they may be handicapped by a materialist prejudice. To exaggerate: you can palpate the abdomen and you may feel a lump in it; if you cannot palpate the mind, then it is absurd to say there is anything wrong with the mind. We must hope that our selection committees may exclude the worst and not exclude the best. This problem of selection has to be a matter of endless review; we have never answered the question once and for all, nor can we find an answer which absolves us from the need of thinking out every case on its merits. Q. I would like you to tell us something about the black hole of silence in an analytic session; also something about the curious light of hallucination by which one perceives the invisible. B. When we listen to a piece of music, included in it are the pauses, which in English one calls 'rests', but they are part of the

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

109

music. I was once asked about groups, 'Do you ever do anything except talk?' I said, 'Yes, we are silent'. I think that the questioner, who was a doctor of philosophy, thought I was being funny. But I was being serious. A group of people are not always talking; they are sometimes silent and that silence is a part of what they are doing. In English we even have an expression, 'a pregnant silence'. It expresses it very well. There are some silences which are nothing; they are mathematically zero. But there are times when a zero is put between the figures 1 and 1 and it turns it into one hundred and one. Similarly, there are some silences which turn the preceding sounds and the succeeding sounds into a valuable communication. A good poet uses ordinary words and ordinary silences, but the use to which he puts them turns both the words and the silences into something which is extra-ordinary. In ana­ lysis you may be able to distinguish the silences which you have a chance of observing. In 'practice' you can; in 'theory' you cannot. It is difficult to distinguish between zero, meaning nothing, and something which is important, between a silence which is empty thought, and a silence which is pregnant. If I were talking about physical sexual intercourse and the consequences—pregnancy and so on—these words would be all right. But I am not meaning to talk about anatomy or physiology: I am talking about a mental experience. The problem is to interpret the silence, or to interpret what seems to be a silence. John Rickman described to me a patient who covered himself completely with the blanket, with the exception of one eye—that was all that Rickman had to interpret. It is no good trying to look that up in analytic books; it is no good asking anybody else what the interpretation is. You have to go there, you have to have a patient who behaves like that, and you have to be able to stand it long enough for something to emerge. Freud describes how a mathematician has to look at a mass of meaningless, disjointed, disconnected facts until he thinks he sees a pattern and can write that pattern down in a mathematical formula. What kind of analysis is required to interpret the behaviour of a patient who uses silence extensively, the patient who comes to you, says nothing at all, and walks out apparently satisfied at the end of

110

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

the session? If we are going to restrict ourselves to verbal inter­ course between the analyst and analysand, I do not think we are going to get far with that kind of patient. The analyst's 'restricted' statement and the patient's 'silence' leave too big a gap and no link between the two sides; 101 remains 11. It is not one hundred and one; it is not eleven. Someone will have to invent the language of silence—the unexplicit silence. I had a patient who, when I spoke to him, would watch my words float over the room until they made a pattern on the curtain—so he thought. When his behaviour became comprehensible to me, although he never said a word, I could try to put it into words and it seemed to have some result. That is the kind of problem we are up against. We say, 'This patient is being hostile', but we may be using the wrong psycho-analysis to interpret that silence. When you see your patient tomorrow, not only do you have to pay atten­ tion to what is going on, but you may have to invent the tools with which to do that analysis while you are doing the analysis: like a Galileo who has to invent a telescope, make a telescope, and grind his own lenses in order to study the matter he wants to investigate. Q. What would 'interferences' be in psycho-analytic terms? B . When you are talking to your patient you can sometimes see and feel that he is not attending to you. A t the same time you can feel that he is attending to something; the conversation between the patient and analyst is being interfered with. That is what I mean by interference. Are you going to pay attention to what he tells you, or what your books have told you, or are you going to pay attention to the interference? This is the difficulty about practical psycho-analysis; this is the difficulty about tomor­ row's sessions. It is no good saying, 'You are not free-associating', or, 'This patient doesn't talk to me, I can't do anything about him'. You can be silent; and you can listen. You can stop talking so that you can have a chance to hear what is going on. What you have to listen to then is psycho-analytic 'interference', just as somebody had to listen to radio interference. There is little chance of progress in these areas which we ordinarily call psychosis, or border-line psychosis, until we listen to what is happening—in this sense of being able to be silent when it is necessary.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

111

You have illustrated the need for a language in your question, only you are asking me to invent the tool with which to ask, as well as answer, your question when you ask me, 'What. . .?' There are no psycho-analytic terms known to me, any more than they are known to you. We both have to borrow from other disciplines. Q. I would like to hear more of your comments on curiosity. Are there different kinds of curiosity? B. What / think about curiosity, or different kinds of curiosity, is not important. You must have respect for yourself and your capacity for listening to, or looking at what is going on in your consulting room. That is the place where you will find the answer—not from me, not from any book, not from any colleague. When you sit there being curious you may have a feeling that the patient is now being silent in a different way. Suppose the patient begins to talk and ask you questions. You may feel, 'This curiosity is a request for help'. The same question may be repeated over and over again, like the patient who said to me, 'I don't know what I mean' [see p. 13]. While you listen to the patient being curious you could say, 'This patient is asking these questions to make me angry'. Later, 'This patient is asking me these questions because he wants to evoke some information about me'. In that way you could note the different kinds of curiosity. That would be on the right track—asking me is not; going off to the library is not. The best place to find the answer to that question is in your consulting room listening to the patient being curious. I shall look forward to the book of your lectures on this subject. That is more important than the book you are reading now. Q. Do you think the feeling of beauty can be taken in analytic work as an indication of truth, as Einstein considered it an indica­ tion of scientific truth? B. I think you must be referring to something like Keats's statement 'Truth is beauty, beauty truth'. Scientists tend to feel that they are concerned only with the truth, only with the facts. Recently there has been considerable criticism of Linus Pauling for saying that vitamin C was a cure for the common cold. Doctors said, 'What nonsense this is!' It is a dangerous thing to tell a Nobel prize winner that he is talking nonsense. He may be—nonsense is

112

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

nobody's private property. But a Nobel prize winner will be likely to have a very good answer to that challenge, and Linus Pauling was able to show medically qualified men, often highly medically qualified, that he was not being unscientific. Suppose one changes what I call the Vertex'. We move off the scientific vertex to the aesthetic vertex. The definition of truth may be all right in logic, in scientific method, but that definition may not be applicable in the universe of discourse to which we have changed when we have changed the vertex to aesthetic, to the standards of beauty or truth in the aesthetic sphere. If I were to draw a picture of a human being I think you might be justified in saying 'What on earth is that? That isn't like any animal I have seen on earth.' But suppose Picasso drew it. One could say, 'Well, if I want a portrait of my wife, or my husband, I don't think I'm going to get Picasso to do the job. I don't think that is at all a pretty picture.' But the extraordinary thing is that when you are looking at a genuine Picasso you get a feeling, 'You know, I think I see what this chap means—it's not quite what I could interpret as "that's my wife", but I can say "that is about something; that isn't about nothing'". That painting by Picasso is not adequately mathe­ matized by the zero 0. You may feel that you do not really know enough to be able to understand what Picasso shows you. You may give your analysand a correct interpretation, an inter­ pretation which you are sure expresses the truth, and yet the patient may say, 'I don't understand this psycho-analytic non­ sense!' You can only say, 'Well, you feel that it is nonsense; but perhaps you may feel it is "non-sense" later'—and leave it at that. Many of our interpretations which are obvious to us as psycho­ analysts may seem extremely obscure to the patient. He may sincerely say, 'I think it's nonsense'. But sometimes analysis is accompanied by the growth of mutual respect. The parents may have had something to teach the child. Today the grown-up child knows more than he used to know, but he is also the child who could teach him something. After all, the child must have known enough to have grown up and still to be surviving. Sometimes analysis is accompanied by growth of the analysand's respect for himself.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

113

One can identify oneself with the analyst, or one can identify oneself with the analysand. One can feel, 'I can understand that he doesn't understand my interpretations, but as a matter of fact I have no reason to alter my interpretation; I think it is true. I can quite see that he thinks it's nonsense. Time will tell.' Time is telling.

FIVE

W

e have all experienced the patient who says, 1 can't think of anything to talk about'. That is an extraordin­ ary state of affairs, for no one has said that any subject is debarred from discussion and there is a whole universe to talk about if the patient feels so inclined. The psycho-analyst is not in the same position although he is present for the same fifty minutes and in the same room; his working occupation limits his range of discussion. The minimum range suggested by Freud was discus­ sion of the Oedipus situation, the interpretation of dreams, and sex. The work would indeed be limited if it in fact applied only to that threefold area, but each of these main topics splits up into a number of subdivisions, and these in turn become further sub­ divided, and so on, until before long there are an enormous number of possible interpretations. It depends upon whether you take the restricted view of the common root of the interpretations, or the various varieties. The mental domain is wider still when it is considered that the main categories change according to the ver­ tex: for example, religious, aesthetic and scientific.

115

116

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

The conversation which takes place in the consulting room should resemble real life; painting should produce pictures which in some way remind you of the world we live in; similarly with sculpture. But people change, and a Greek who admired the sculp­ ture of Hermes of Praxiteles would not understand a sculpture by Rodin who attempts to portray the character rather than the physical appearance of a person. Already these topics have expanded in an alarming manner into a vast area of discussion. It diminishes equally rapidly when the patient says, 'I can't think of anything to talk about'. What are we to say, what are we to think about this situation? Does the patient regard the range of talking as too limited? Is he somebody who says, 'I can't talk. It doesn't give me any scope. I could play my violin to you—then I would have something to say.' We may think, T h i s patient is denying something', but that can be an over­ simplified and restricted interpretation. It is not enough to say he is denying reality—we need to know what he is affirming. We already have seen that if he is affirming reality we need to know what he is excluding. (I am doubtful about terms like 'excluding' or 'denying' in the consulting room, though they are useful in discus­ sion about analysis). After the patient has said that he has nothing to talk about we wait—in 'expectant' silence. What are the possibilities? As you see the patient lying there saying nothing, it may occur to you that his silence is intended to find out something. Is he saying nothing so that the analyst will have to ask a question? The analysand will then find out what the analyst is thinking, or whether he is in a bad temper or not, or if he cares whether the analysand has come or not. You may feel, 'This silence is evocative. I think this patient is waiting to see who lets which cat out of the bag first.' We know nothing about whether it is right or wrong, but if you wait, your 'hunch' may become a certainty. If someone asked you why you thought the patient was being evocative you could only say, 'If you had been in the consulting room with me you wouldn't have any doubt about it any more than I have'. In a scientific meeting it is difficult indeed to explain that. That is why people often get irritated; it is just the sort of experience calculated to make every­ body feel bad-tempered.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

117

Freud says that it is important to be able to pay attention to the patient; to watch, listen and hear what is going on until a pattern emerges. Poincare says that a lot of meaningless and unconnected, discrete facts make him, when he has contemplated them for long enough, think of a mathematical formula; then he realizes that the mathematical formula explains many facts which have not been explained before, and then, if you are lucky, it also explains a whole lot of facts which you had not considered. In analysis one sometimes hits on an interpretation which makes clear a lot which one has not understood so far; not only that—it also explains a lot of things which happen in the next three or four sessions and which have not happened before. When this occurs the analysis seems to progress rapidly. We are so used to analysis taking a long time; but some things happen with incredible speed. For example, you give the patient an interpretation for what seems to be the hundredth time—without the slightest effect. He says much the same thing as usual, 1 haven't really got anything to talk about'. You try again, and just as you are getting exasperated and are thinking, 'Oh, dear! Number hundred and one, hundred and two, hundred and three'—counting interpretations is quite as effective as counting sheep for sending you to sleep—the patient starts talking to you and you think, 'My goodness, he's woken up! He sounds alive. His intonation is quite different. Instead of talking in that terribly dreary, boring manner which makes it almost impossible for me to stand the experience, he is talking in a lively, interesting man­ ner—this same patient who had nothing to say.' You are liable to be so surprised, so gratified that you either forget that the situa­ tion is probably just as dangerous as it was before, or you fail to recognize that the patient has altered and fall into the pattern of looking forward to a never-changing, never-ending analysis. You need to be able to stand the fact that the situation which has in fact changed a great deal—the patient has changed a great deal—has in some respects not changed at all. If, for example, you are satisfied that that patient is a dangerously irresponsible man, he is almost certainly still a dangerously irresponsible man, but the variety has changed. He has four, or fifty ways of being irrespon­ sible and dangerous—instead of only one. To put it in more theoret­ ical language, the basic things do not alter; art, science, religion do

118

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

not alter. These are fundamental characteristics of the human animal. The superficial variables, to use a mathematical term, do alter. lean describe thissituationinasimple,pictorial way, thus:—ip(£). xp stands for psyche and is constant; £ is a variable; it goes on changing, changing, changing the whole time. The totality, say a man or a woman, remains recognizably the same, constant, other­ wise you would not know that this patient had come to see you yesterday, the day before that and so on; nor would the patient. But there are also elements which are variable in spite of all the constancy. In analysis we have a chance of seeing the perpetual mystery of this peculiar process, described by Confucius (trans­ lated by Ezra Pound) who talks about adult wisdom consisting in seeing how things grow and change, grinding in the 'mortar of the mind'. The interesting and pleasurable component of psycho-ana­ lysis is that one has a chance of watching the way that people grow. In family life, similarly, someone with a chance of paternity or maternity can watch how children grow—a fascinating and rewarding experience. The child does not have that experience, because it cannot understand that it has much to do with growth. It is one of the reasons why a patient can be dominated by the feelings of fear of his being extremely destructive, of his feeling that even if he loves something he loves it in the way that he loves his food—he chews it up and turns it into faeces and urine. That is fairly easily and quickly understood by the child, but it is a long time before a child is able to learn that as a result of what he eats he does in fact grow. By the time he is able to stand against the wall and see that last time he was four feet three, but that now he is four feet three and a half inches tall, the conviction that he destroys what he eats has become firmly established. Analysis would be like being able to introduce him to the idea that he has grown, and introducing that idea to his feelings of depression, hopelessness, boredom and anger. He has often heard T o u are a naughty boy; why do you break everything up?' He cannot say, 'I have only been breaking up my breakfast—or my lunch or my tea—because I hope to be bigger'—as a child he cannot argue like that. These two people— the destructive, hopeless, despairing person, and the creative,

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

119

constructive one who grows—do not meet unless we can manage to introduce them to each other in analysis. We are not attempting to show the patient how bad he is or to make him feel he will never be any good. We are trying to show him why he is so depressed, and that although he may know nothing about it he actually makes something out of his food which is not only faeces and urine. The girl has a chance of feeling that she may be able to make babies and that can bring a certain degree of relief. The boy, on the other hand, hears that his little sister can make babies, but that he cannot. It is easy for him to understand that; it is much more difficult for him to understand what good he is. Even in genital intercourse the man can feel that his contribution is slight indeed; even if he can have intercourse, what he does is very little com­ pared with what the breast does—or his mother, or his sister. The analytic experience is not simply to find out about the boy or girl, the man or woman, in the sense of finding out what their faults and mistakes are. It also means giving them a chance to see that it may be perfectly true that they smash things up, but it is not the whole of the truth. Q. Do you not think that the difference between theory and practice in psycho-analysis is due to the exercise of the profession by human beings, and that the difficulties over theory and practice are partly due to the analyst's fears of his own unconscious—thus he shies away from theory and memory? When you suggest forget­ ting theories and preconceived notions, are you not asking us to rely on the working of our unconscious, our mental apparatus, where not only Thanatos but Eros lives? B. If we were not humans we would be no good as psycho­ analysts. If we are human beings then it would be foolish to think that we escape the failings that we shall find in our analysands. In analysis we hope that we may be able to see the immediate diffi­ culty which the analysand is having; but there is no one to whom the analyst can turn to help him with the mistakes that he is making. One can only hope that our own mistakes will be at a minimum. At some time we are sure to have a patient who stimu­ lates our weak points. In other words, we are the analysts who the patient should not have. But we do not always have the parents who would be the best kind of parents for us; nor do we always have

120

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

the kind of children who would be the best possible thing for us. When it comes to a question of choice, we do have a chance to choose the company we keep. We can choose what sort of profes­ sional society to belong to. We can choose, to some extent, the kind of parents with whom we would like to mix—even if they are somebody else's parents. That is why, in childhood at any rate, the disadvantages of having a particular mother and father are modi­ fied by the fact that we can work out some of our problems with a grandparent, or an aunt or uncle. Let us hope that something of the same kind applies to grandchildren and nephews and nieces. If we are not having quite the experience that we feel is good for us with our children, at least we might be able to have a better time with our grandchildren and nephews and nieces. The alternative is to make the best use of the kind of parents or children we have. Some people can do that. It is not that they are better off; they are better off because they can make good use of their misfortunes. Some­ times the individual has the misfortune, so to speak, to be very fortunate. A girl can be so beautiful that everybody automatically admires her. To be as beautiful as that a girl requires a great deal of wisdom. So often she seems to be a fool. It is difficult to realize that you have to have a lot of wisdom to make the best of your misfortunes; it is much more difficult to see that you may have to be very wise to survive being well-endowed. Such a person may get so used to having everything without any difficulty that when they have to deal with the real world, which after all stays very much the same, they go to pieces—they have had so little experience of making the best of a bad job. They only have the experience of making the best of a good job, or even of making the worst of it. Q. Could you say more about your reference, during supervi­ sion, to 'unborn babies'. B. The poet Bridges says in The Testament of Beauty that wisdom consists in the 'masterly administration of the unfore­ seen'. The unforeseen is, in my analytic experience, one example of 'unborn baby'. In analysis the 'unborn babies' are the ideas which have not yet cropped up, but may do so at any moment. They may be good ideas, or they may be bad ideas, in much the same way as a baby might turn out to be a nice child or a nasty one. The ana­ lysand should become capable of coping with the 'unborn babies',

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

121

the ones which have never been born, but which might be born at any time. If one has respect for persons, then every patient is po­ tentially an 'unborn baby'; any idea is an unborn idea if nobody has formulated it so far. This discussion is full of examples of what I mean by 'unborn babies'. I leave it to the reader to 'administer' those which he had not foreseen. Q. Bearing in mind your references to the respect due to the human mind and personality, what do you think are the factors or motives that should lead one to fail a candidate? B. In all my years of experience of selection in the British Psycho-analytical Society I cannot say I have found the answer to that question. We do not qualify everybody and sometimes I think that amongst the ones we have not qualified are, unfortunately, people who are a great deal better than those we have qualified. We have to make these decisions, making use of such intelligence as we have, but we may not have enough wisdom or intelligence to make the right decision. It is a human failing; the wrong people are chosen to be members of a football team, or to be surgeons or physicians, or parsons, or prime ministers. The supply of prime ministers is small, but it is extraordinary how, even so, we can choose the worst ones. A friend of mine used to talk about what he called 'self-selected unsuitables': someone is put forward for a job because he has chosen himself for that job. There is a large supply of them. In the army there were people with self-inflicted decor­ ations—inflicted on themselves as a way of getting out of certain very unpleasant difficulties. I would not feel disposed to qualify somebody who disliked people unless the people were likeable. Most of the time we have to deal with people who have failed, or who are not very good at their job. Those are the people that we have to make able to be good at their job. Someone may have made a mess of everything he has ever had—education, fortune, married life, all of it—and yet will expect an analyst to make a success of him; and the analyst is expected to make a success of making a success of such a person. He will not do that if he dislikes people. Q. I would like you to say something about the use of counter­ transference in analysis.

122

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

B. Counter-transference is a technical term, but as often hap­ pens the technical term gets worn away and turns into a kind of worn-out coin which has lost its value. We should keep these things in good working condition. The theory about a counter­ transference is that it is the transference relationship which the analyst has to the patient without knowing he has it. You will hear analysts say, T don't like that patient, but I can make use of my counter-transference'. He cannot use his counter-transference. He may be able to make use of the fact that he dislikes the patient, but that is not counter-transference. There is only one thing to do with counter-transference and that is to have it analysed. One cannot make use of one's counter-transference in the consulting room; it is a contradiction in terms. To use the term in that way means that one would have to invent a new term to do the work which used to be done by the word 'counter-transference'. It is one's unconscious feelings about the patient, and since it is unconscious there is nothing we can do about it. If the counter-transference is operating in the analytic session the analysand is unlucky—and so is the analyst. The time to have dealt with it was in the past, in the analyst's own analysis. We can only hope that it does not use us too much and that we have had enough analysis to keep the number of unconscious operations to a minimum.

SIX

D

emocritus of Abdera first put forward the theory that the brain had something to do with thought. Even today, some two thousand years later, we are still in a rudimentary stage of knowledge of the functions of the central nervous system. There are extensive accumulations of knowledge and experience of the anatomy and physiology of the brain. It is hard to say, however, what are the anatomical or physiological structures of the mind— assuming there is one—or what relation exists between the mind and the central nervous system. For example, has the sympathetic system, or the para-sympathetic system, anything to do with the mind or the personality? Is the mind (a theoretical concept) as important as the anatomical and physiological central nervous system?

As psycho-analysts we are concerned with trying to formulate why, and in what way, we think the 'mind' important. We assume that the vast amount of psycho-analytic literature is a product of the mind, a way of delineating the mind as a reality, as the reality that corresponds to the theory that there is such a thing as a mind

123

124

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

or personality. One might argue that if there is a mind then it should be possible to find some event which could be regarded as the product of the mind, a result of the existence of a mind. Suppose that the psychotic person could produce some physical representa­ tion, would that representation betray the presence or the nature of that particular kind of mind? Would pictures drawn by a psy­ chotic all betray a similarity so that if one looked at hundreds of pictures one would say, 'Yes, I can put fifty, sixty, eighty of these drawings together and I think they would all of them show certain characteristics'? A n d if I could interpret what is the pattern of those characteristics, then I would discover that they were all the product of a certain kind of mind. Criminologists are confident that finger prints provide a means for identification of a physical being. They can compare, apparently to their satisfaction, the number of points which have to correspond to identify the one print with another. We have no similar scheme by which we can com­ pare one mind with another. This is so even in what appears to be such a gross difference as might exist between male and female. The refinement which I visualize might show the mind could betray still more subtle, physical states, or even the germ of the physical state, before it emerged so grossly as to be discernible to sensuous investigation. Note that I am postulating the prediction not of psycho-analytic developments, but of psycho-analytic developments which might betray a physical future. They are not mutually exclusive. The statistical formulation known as the Pois­ son distribution is an example: the distribution which is charac­ teristic of extremely rare events, events which are scattered over a great area of time, or a great number of human beings, but are characterized by certain mathematical patterns. That would be something much too subtle for interpretation by a single individ­ ual, but it might be possible if the knowledge was accumulated over a period, shall we say, of a thousand years. In this way the accumulated wisdom of the race could discern certain patterns which were characteristic of the individual. Clearly this depends on something more durable than the individual as known to psycho-analysts. Thus, we might be able to say, T h i s pattern is a pattern which is characteristic not of some physical disease which has not yet

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

125

betrayed itself, but is characteristic of a certain kind of mind which has not yet betrayed itself. It depends upon what we could call 'direction'. In one direction it could betray a state of mind as yet unborn. In tomorrow's session it is necessary to know what state of mind is unfolding itself in front of the analyst. Further questions to be resolved are: is it a past, future, or contemporary state which is casting its shadow on the present screen on which we hope to delineate it? Stating this in psycho-analytic terms: the screen is the transference; the interpretation is to determine what it is that is being 'transferred'. In pictorial terms: there is the shadow; where is the source of illumination? The reader must translate these statements into language which experience shows him is most serviceable to himself. We are all concerned with seeing patients, but what we see may not be comprehensible to us as analysts, because our lives do not last long enough. However, as parts of a race or a nation our work might be significant. As individuals we do not know much about what part of the whole we are, any more than one of the micro­ scopic parts of our anatomy knows what part it is of the human body. Our work as psycho-analysts depends on our having great respect for the individual, but it is difficult to say in what way that individual matters as one cell out of a totality. It suggests that we need to be very sensitive to the observable facts. We should now be inventing a method of communication which will be comprehen­ sible to our successors. It is not a matter of much importance to any of us as individuals, although it might turn out to be important one day, just as the heliocentric theories of Aristarchus turned out to be of great importance many generations later when people were able to produce a telescope, or a microscope, or take photographs of the spectra and notice the Frauenhofer lines and interpret them. A l l that depends on what turns out to be a combined operation of people who could never have known each other. Consider a matter like the Frauenhofer line typical of sodium: it is now known that the Frauenhofer lines have widths—not exactly what had been expected—and consequently that particular form of spectrum has to be analysed in a new fashion. It has a resemblance to the old fashion, but it is a new fashion. The Frauenhofer line is an example of 'interference' which someone has noted and studied

126

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

instead of white light. 'Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, stains the white radiance of Eternity' [Shelley, Adonais]. We human beings, for all our self-importance, are a 'stain' on 'eter­ nity'. Present day analysis may one day become comprehensible to our successors. If we are sufficiently sensitive to what goes on in the consulting room we may some time be able to understand what we see. I say, 'what we see'; of course we do not 'see'; there is nothing, as far as we know, which is visible in the range of ordinary sight. Let us use a term like 'insight' and say, it is still not within the range of ordinary insight—although it might be within that range if we can go on observing it through time and through generations of people. If we pay sufficient attention to what is being communicated to us by the patient other than verbally, say, by the use of gestures, we might increase our understanding during the short space of one working life. If we could remain sensitive to the importance of the individual without being blinded by our own importance as the analyst, we might increase our contribution to human life—as did the inventor of the wheel, that unknown genius. For example, a patient comes into the consulting room and does not say a word; perhaps he keeps on coming for six days, or six weeks, or six months without saying anything. If one can stand it, then after six months one might begin to think, 'I have an idea about the pattern of this silence. I wouldn't like to say at any given moment why his silence today is not the same as his silence on Friday, and it won't be the same tomorrow. But I think that if I can go on listening to him being silent'—in the way that Freud talks about the importance of going on being present in the consulting room with the patient for long enough—'I begin to be aware of a pattern'. Although we cannot say whether we have heard any­ thing, we could say, 'It has an effect upon me—not on my counter­ transference—and I think I have had a respect for the silence of the session'. If we cannot respect the silence—'I can't be bothered with this person; I can't come here day after day and have him lying on the couch, saying nothing'—then there is no chance of making any further progress. It is difficult to explain to someone not present why we think that we could hear the difference between one silence and another. The patient, however, is present.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

127

As a somewhat gross description of the difficulty, let us suppose I have watched a child patient for six weeks; someone says, 'Why do you waste your time doing that? Anybody can see it's an autistic child.' F u l l stop. Finish. The diagnosis is simple—It's an autistic child'. A l l I can say is, 'Well, / am an autistic analyst'. If I want to make it sound respectable I can say, 'I am a specialist in treating autistic children', or, 'I am a specialist in treating adolescents', or, 'I am a specialist in treating latency children'. That may make it respectable, but it explains nothing. If I were honest about it I would have to say, 'I listen to people who are silent for six weeks' and run the risk of being likened to the lunatic in the old joke who said, 'Come inside', to the 'sane' person 'outside'. One has to toler­ ate the pressure from outside and be prepared to tolerate what it feels like to be inside that 'silence' as the patient can. The tempta­ tion is to rush to premature, precocious comprehension and diag­ nosis such as 'autistic child', 'adolescent', 'adult'. We have to say, 'Well, yes, he told me all about going to see the latest football match. I wasn't listening. But I did hear what he was not telling me, and that silence made quite a different noise; the pattern of what he didn't say showed that. . . .' When we see our patient tomorrow we must listen to what he says and to what he does not say; one has to 'intuit'. 'I was listening to the silence; I was listen­ ing to the interference; I was listening to what came between him and me; I can now draw you a picture in words (or in painting, or in any other technique of human activity), a representation of what I intuited during so many minutes, or weeks, or years.' We need to be wide open to what is going on in the session. (This is what I think Freud means by 'free-floating attention'.) The unobserved, incomprehensible, inaudible, ineffable part of the session is the material from which will come the future interpreta­ tion that you give in so many weeks', or months', or years' time. The immediate interpretation was settled some time ago—one does not know when. We must concern ourselves not with what the patient is 'like', but with what the patient is 'becoming' during the session, and we must be able to stand the pressure of watching that process. Q. I should like to have your comments on the following clini­ cal material. The patient was a twenty-year-old man, a teacher of

128

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

electronics, physics and mathematics, unmarried, the youngest of three children. He complained bitterly of his father's jealousy of his relationship with the mother. He said it had ruined his child­ hood. He was especially fond of food; a well-prepared meal drove him almost into a state of ecstasy. He said his mother is a wonder­ ful cook. On the other hand, he sometimes existed on the simplest rations, feeling no need for dainties or liquids. Sometimes he had his meals away from home, choosing the worst food or bad cook­ ing, eating without appetite. He became fascinated by a young man whom he described as having a long face, a thin pointed beard, a thin moustache and long, silky hair. He followed this young man to his apartment where they had promiscuous intercourse. He said the young man's face was round and not long as he had first thought, and was similar to his father's face. He said my face was also round. I said he was thinking that my face was also longish. Later I said he was repeating a recent similar situation. He looked deeply depressed and remained silent and withdrawn. I said he was reliving a situation he had lived through before, but of which he could not speak—the primary relationship of breast feeding. He then looked at the Picasso painting, 'Maternite', and said T h i s picture disturbs me'. I said he was now establishing a relationship between the time he had lost in infancy when he could not talk, and the present when he is able to communicate. He said he talks a lot, but the content of his speech is null. He could not distinguish between what he had lived through in the past when he was unable to define his impressions, and the present. On returning from a journey undertaken to participate in a meeting of the faculty of the school in which he taught, he told me this story. He was driving his car at medium speed when a drunken woman jumped from the sidewalk directly in front of his car, and he, unable to brake, hit her. Witnesses said she had deliberately thrown herself in front of his car. As a result he was extremely upset and avoided any reminder of his past. At present he is going through a difficult period in which he tries to escape from reality, avoiding a deep and intense existence. He cannot listen to music—which he formerly greatly appre­ ciated—and abhors food. He avoids looking at the breasts of any

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

129

woman; he relates the bad food which he eats in restaurants to the breasts of any woman. This is the present situation—the difficulty of establishing this relationship so distant in time and so near his reality. When an interpretation makes him feel this relation with the past he becomes confused. B. This patient is terrified of a guilty conscience with which he cannot cope. He feels he is responsible for the murder of the woman; he feels that he is reduced to travel to prove to himself his mobility and freedom to escape from 'the woman' who, as he always expects, is able to catch him up wherever, whatever, and whenever, and get herself murdered by him. His escape by aid of the onlookers is felt to be adding insult to injury by evading being held responsible for the murder of the woman. I suspect that he feels similar guilt about any progress in the analysis which might be conducive to further life; the more profitable, the more guilty and the more likely to be 'fascinated'—being fascinated meaning what we would call repetition compulsion. But with him it would be continued acting-out until a disaster, which is irretrievable, is precipitated. One of the problems with this patient is, what can he see? In the consulting room the analyst can have an idea that what the patient sees must be much the same as what the analyst sees—so one would think. But either the patient cannot describe what he sees, what this experience is, so that the analyst is able to under­ stand what he is able to see, or he is unable to see what the analyst sees because he is seeing something different. He cannot in fact be seeing something entirely different; he is in the consulting room and the analyst has no reason to doubt, therefore, that the patient is able to see, hear and smell much the same kind of thing as the analyst can, because they have both come to the same consulting room at the same time. There must be a certain similarity between what the analyst sees and what the patient sees. In that case, why does the patient not say something, or make noises, or make signs which indicate that he and his analyst have the same experience at the same time and in the same place? The possibility is that for some reason so far undemonstrated, in addition to what the ana­

130

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

lyst sees (not instead of it) the patient sees something else, hears something else, feels something else. What is this patient seeing, or feeling, or apprehending? It is reasonable to suppose that he sees, feels, apprehends at least two different stories at the same time. The same fifty minutes, the same consulting room, the same day, he sees the same thing as the analyst, but he sees, he appre­ hends something else which is different. If it were a question of visual sight the analyst could say, 'You have put two different slides into your projector at the same time, so you get a confused image'. He seems to be having an experience which differs from the analyst's experience. One could account for that by saying, 'Well, the analyst is one person, this patient is another. Therefore, they don't see the same thing, any more than one person on one side of a mountain sees the same thing as another person on the other side of the mountain.' But this, again, is a pictorial method of talking, or even a pictorial method of thinking. As far as one can tell, when this patient says he is confused it could be comprehensible if he saw or experienced two or more experiences at the same time and at the same place. If he tried to say what he is experiencing he would either have to invent a new language, which would be incomprehensible, or use a language which says two different pictures at the same time. In so far as the analyst is capable of understanding what the patient is talking about, he likewise gets an impression of two or more different stories about the same fact and at the same time. Assuming for the moment that that is correct, what is the analyst to say to the patient? This is where the practice of psycho-analysis is so different from the theories about psycho-analysis. (It is also a situation which, if the analysis is still going on, raises the problem of the wisdom of talking further about this case in a meeting, not in the intimacy of psycho-analysis. Indeed, the whole problem of the scientific meetings of psycho­ analytic societies is implicit in this particular question and answer.) I do not know what the analyst is going to say, because the language the analyst has to use was not invented or manufac­ tured for the purpose of analysing patients. The language that the analyst has to use is the language of ordinary conversational communication which is useful in everyday life. But it is not appropriate for purposes of having an analysis. Anyone who had

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

131

never heard of psycho-analysis would say of the analyst and patient, 'There are two people having a conversation—simply one person talking to another'. But there is a good deal of reason to suppose that a psycho-analysis is a unique experience. What is to be done about that experience? What language is to be spoken in the course of analysis? What was Aristarchus to say about his guess that the world goes round the sun? What would he have said to an ancient Egyptian who believed that the sun goes round the world, underneath, and turns up again on the other side next morning? He had to wait two thousand years for someone to invent a telescope. What is the analyst to say if he has to wait two thousand years to give this patient an interpretation in the correct language? I believe that if I listen to this patient, if I am prepared to hear what he has to say, if I am prepared to see what I can see if the patient comes to me, then, although the patient cannot understand what I say to him if I am using ordinary language, he may be able to understand the meaning of the fact that I have not run away, I have not shut him up in a mental hospital and I am ready to arrange to see him tomorrow. None of this is expressed verbally, but it is possible, nevertheless, that the fact that the analyst has stayed in the room so far and will probably still be in the room tomorrow, may itself constitute a language which the analyst does not understand, which the patient does not understand, but which the two people together will have to make explicit. If that is right, then today's session, tomorrow's session and all the other sessions which have yet to happen, may have an effect on the patient. If the analyst is prepared to listen, have his eyes open, his ears open, his senses open, his intuition open, it has an effect upon the analysand who seems to grow; the session provides the mind of the patient with what, if it were a matter of physical experience, one could say was 'good food'. The analyst also has to be able to tolerate ignorance—his own— and his being in the presence of a mystery, a half-truth [see pp. 45 & 47—negative capability]. This seems to make it possible for the mind to have an experience in which it can grow. If the baby has a mother who is able to tolerate being frightened that the child is dying, or that it is mad, or stupid, then the baby seems to feel

132

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

better for having such a mother. If she cannot tolerate it, neither can the baby who consequently seems unable to grow mentally. If it is going to grow it has to do so in a peculiar way; this, in turn, has the effect of making it grow a certain shape. Later, someone will say, 'psychotic', or 'schizophrenic', or 'borderline case'—it sounds just like a diagnosis. But can the analyst tolerate growth? Can the community toler­ ate growth? Can a nation tolerate growth? Or does it get so fright­ ened of it that it has to say, 'Thus far and no further. No more progress please. I don't like it'? Or can the nation, or the group, or the individual say, 'I'll put up with it. I can tolerate watching something grow'? It is not a brilliant achievement, but it does include the risk that the growth is pathological—mentally car­ cinogenic. That possibility contributes to the frightening quality of the analytic experience for both parties. That quality contrib­ utes to the need to prove that the analytic development is benign. It also contributes to finding a mental drug which may enable analysts to go to sleep no matter how dangerous the situation.

SEVEN

he following true story illustrates a number of points with which we are probably all familiar, and may get more familiar as time goes on. I was asked to see a young man of twenty-one who was said to be very intelligent; not much the matter with him and probably a suitable case for psycho-analysis. A psychiatrist friend who knew him also spoke highly of him; although he seemed recently not to be fulfilling his early promise, he was most amusing, entertaining and, once again, just the person to profit by psycho-analysis. The mother of the patient was opposed to psycho-analysis which she felt was unnecessary. She said that her son had always done well, there was nothing much the matter with him and she disap­ proved of this process of psycho-analysis. But she did not maintain her objections. The father did not hold with psycho-analysis at all. He felt it was one of these fads which, like most fads, young people wasted time and money on instead of getting on with their work; he

133

134

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

thought the boy would be better employed getting on with his university career. Most people who knew him, or knew of him, also agreed that he was very amusing and on one or two occasions, notably on his twenty-first birthday, he had made witty and amusing speeches. I agreed to see the patient who was then just over twenty-one. He was, indeed, co-operative; he missed no sessions and spoke freely. He said he did not get on well with his sister who was, in his opinion, a terrible liar. I had occasion, before he came for analysis, also to see the sister who spoke freely, easily and intelligently, and told me a long story about herself and her educational achievements; she was two years younger than the patient. The father asked me on one occasion what I thought of his daughter. I said she seemed to be a gifted and interesting person; whereupon he looked at me as if he thought I was what he expected—and that was nothing welcome. It was clear that he thought me an awful fool. When he was leaving he said, 'Doctor, you realize, don't you, that this girl hasn't spoken a word of truth from start to finish—the whole thing is a fabrication'. He obviously felt that I must be a fool not to have realized that none of this story was true. The father also told me that his son was about to get engaged to a girl of whom he had a poor opinion. He said, T hope you will be able to put an end to all that nonsense. You can take it from me that this girl is a bad lot and is out to get his money which she thinks he has a great deal of. As a matter of fact, he hasn't got a penny and I don't intend to let him have any, because I don't think he is at all sensible. I have had this girl watched by a private detective agency and they have given me a report on her which confirms my worst fears.' I said I was sometimes not very con­ vinced by these detective agency reports. The father thought this was also pretty stupid of me. I said, T h e detective agency knows that you are suspicious of the girl and it is very easy for them to find out plenty of facts which would make you anxious, so that you would be likely to want to go on employing them'. He was dis­ turbed by this statement, but then dismissed it as probably being nonsense.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

135

The patient told me that he was not in the least interested in this girl and had no intention of having anything to do with her. At the same time he thought that she was a nice girl and would be a good sexual partner. I had a letter about this time from a friend of the patient, who said what a good fellow he was and he hoped I would help him because he was in great trouble: 'he has so much money that he has lost enormous sums in each year of the two or three years that I have known him'. By this time I was beginning to wonder who was talking about what. I summed up the situation to myself as being one in which, to use the English expression, they were all 'off their heads', but I had no idea which head belonged to whom. So I settled down to listen to the patient's story. It seemed coherent; he occasionally showed a lot of animation, but said nothing particularly witty or funny. He said that his sister was hostile to him and disapproved of him because he liked the smell of faeces. As the analysis went on he used more and more vulgar words and expressions which are not usually used in polite conversation. I asked him whether he spoke like this to everybody, or only to a person like a psycho-analyst. He said he saw nothing wrong with that language and he liked the smell of faeces. He be­ came indignant about it—'I like the smell of faeces; I think it is nice'. I pointed out that we did not know why he came to see me, and he said, 'I thought you knew. M y difficulty is that I blush terribly. I thought you would have noticed it by this time.' In fact, he was always pale; I never saw any colour in his face. He said that it was extremely painful—so painful that he hardly dared to appear in public anywhere and had, in fact, recently given up going to see his friends, or going out with them. Somewhere towards the end of the first year of analysis—I was seeing him five times a week—he started mentioning that he had been drinking at the fountain. It seemed a strange expression, but I put it down to his being by way of a poet and a writer. From time to time he repeated that he had been drinking at the fountain until, to confirm my suspicions, I asked him, 'What do you use for a fountain?' He replied, 'Of course, an ordinary wine glass'. It emer­ ged after a time, bit by bit, one part of sentence one week, another

136

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

part of the sentence a week later, another part another week, that what he was doing every time he said he was drinking at the fountain was drinking his urine. A t this point I wondered what kind of desirable, witty, intel­ ligent, co-operative patient I had; and what it was about this patient that made him have no difficulty in using these uncon­ scious (as I thought then) motives and methods of behaviour; why it was that this patient had no difficulty in understanding what I would consider was incomprehensible unless one was familiar with psycho-analytic theories. In short, this patient had no diffi­ culty about psycho-analytic interpretations, but could not under­ stand what we ordinarily call conscious speech. If he was to understand conscious statements he would have to get to them by a process which was like analysis; but whereas ordinarily I would expect to have to interpret ordinary English language to find out what the psycho-analytic interpretation was, with him I would have to translate ordinary psycho-analytic interpretation to find out what the fact was. At this time the patient lived in his room behind drawn cur­ tains, and had so arranged things that nobody ever called him on the telephone because it disturbed him that people could come right into his room through the telephone and interrupt the peace­ fulness of his life. That was the way he liked to live: he liked faeces; he liked urine; he liked living out of reach of anybody in this dark room. He explained that he could not bear being called on the telephone because he always became so terrified that it must be bad news. I would have liked to say, I f you arrange that nobody should call you on the telephone, naturally you would think it was very bad news if they did; naturally you would be frightened if the tele­ phone bell rang'. It would indeed be natural in those circumstances to be terrified of the telephone, terrified of what he would hear, and most anxious not only to be blind, to live in the dark but also to live in a situation where he could hear nothing. But I said, 'I think that you are able to hear my interpretations, but I don't think they mean anything'. 'Yes, that's right, that's right. You're quite right' he said, 'they don't.' I said, 'I think that you are really not liking

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

137

being alive at all and you are wanting to feel that you have gone right back into the mother's inside, in this dark, smelly, dangerous place in which there is no good milk, or good food; only faeces, smells, poison'. 'Yes' he said, 'that's right.' I thought, how satisfy­ ing it would be if I were a good analyst and if I could be right. But I don't think I'm right; I don't think that this patient needs to be fed on psycho-analysis—not by me. I also discovered that the patient did not want to be got rid of by me. I had that patient for the rest of my life; he was not going to stop coming to me. Why he was coming to me I did not know. Perhaps he liked analysis because it was such a dirty subject, such dirty language, such filthy, poisonous s t u f f ­ but I did not know. On one occasion, while seeing another patient, there was a telephone message for me. I said, 'Call again later'. 'No doctor, this is urgent. Do you know anybody by the name of M r X?'(my patient). 'Yes.' 'He has just met with a serious accident crossing the road. Will you come and see him?' 'Yes I will—later. I am busy. I will see him later'. Here was my dilemma: If I, as a doctor, would not see that patient anybody would say, 'This is a very funny kind of doctor who won't go and see his patient when he has had a serious accident'. On the other hand, if I went to see this patient I knew he would be furious with me for interfering in his private affairs. He did not consider it was any of my business to interfere with the way he lived, or with an accident if he happened to have one. I found out from him later on what had happened. He had wanted to cross the road, so he crossed the road. It was very busy and a car that was coming was unable to stop and knocked him down. I pointed out to him that he felt that if he wanted to cross the road he need not bother about the traffic or other people who were using the road—he could just set off. 'Yes' he said, 'that's right. Why not?' In short, he did not differentiate between the world of fact and the world of nightmares. He did the same thing in real life as most of us would do if we were fast asleep and having a nightmare. He did not have nightmares; he behaved as if he were living in one. He lived in a world in which chairs, tables and so on were what we should ordinarily call the furniture of a dream; but the furniture which you would expect to find in a dream was the furniture of real life.

138

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

Another occasion; The telephone rings. 'Are you Doctor Bion? Do you know M r X?' 'Yes.' T h i s is the police. We have this gentle­ man locked up in our cell. Will you come and fetch him?' In this way I was prevented from thinking about other patients, because I was always expecting the telephone to ring with a fresh piece of news about M r X . ©f course, I could cut off the telephone and darken the room, not see anything or hear anything, so that I could devote myself to him. Who was analysing whom? Was I curing him, or was he curing me? I do not tell you the answer, but leave it for you as an exercise in conjecture—you may have such an experi­ ence in your practice. Perhaps your friends or relations will say you are such a good analyst—they have just the right patient for you: young, witty, twenty-one, intelligent, just your 'cup of tea'. Such is fame—for psycho-analysts. I used to wonder if I had chosen the wrong job; if I might not have been better off as an ordinary doctor. But ordinary doctors have the same kind of patient. Ordin­ ary fathers and mothers have the same kind of children. Ordinary sisters have brothers like that. Ordinary brothers have sisters like his sister. They all come to psycho-analysis in the end. If we live long enough, and if psycho-analysis lasts long enough, there will not be any shortage of patients. There may be a shortage of cures, and psycho-analysis may get a bad reputation because we mix with such extraordinary people, and because we treat them in such an extraordinary way that any father or mother would disapprove. So long as there are psycho-analysts and psycho-analysis there will be no difficulty in finding somebody to blame. I was able to draw the patient's attention to the feeling that if he became important enough, if he became a famous patient, then at last he would feel that it was worth killing himself if enough people knew about it. I could imagine that patient saying, 'But I like murder; I would like to murder myself; I would like to be there and see the funeral'. One day I received a message: the patient had left his room and had been found dead in the fields some twenty miles from London. I cannot say that I felt I had done well. On the other hand, I cannot say that I even felt sure what the mistakes were that I had made. But I certainly could not believe that anybody would regard

1974

R I O D E J A N E I R O 13

9

that as a satisfactory analysis of a witty, intelligent, clever, co-operative and friendly young man. Q. Do you normally ask your patients questions, or just wait for free associations? What do you do when relatives of your patient want to speak to you? When a patient has to go into hospital for a time, do you yourself visit him there, or do you suggest that someone else should do so—for instance, a psychi­ atrist with some psycho-analytical knowledge? B . In the practice of psycho-analysis it is difficult to stick to the rules. For one thing, I do not know what the rules of psycho­ analysis are. There are plenty of people who will say 'Don't you know the theories of psycho-analysis?', and I could say, 'No I don't, although I have read them over and over again. I now feel that I only have the time to read the very, very best psycho-analytic theories—if only I knew what they were.' However, that is what I would try to limit myself to. The practice of real psycho-analysis is a very tough job indeed. It is not the kind of thing which should be chosen as a nice, easy, comfortable way of life. Theories are easily read and talked about; practice of psycho-analysis is another mat­ ter. If the analyst engages on something that is not psycho-ana­ lytic practice, there is no one to take his place as the practising psycho-analyst. I would ask any question if I thought I was likely to get an answer. I would not expect to get any information from the patient I have been talking about—or from his father, or mother, or sister. Psycho-analytic knowledge can only be obtained psycho-analytically. Other information, however important, can­ not be substituted for psycho-analytic discovery. There is nothing that can substitute for what the analysand and I are able to discover together, however inadequate. The analyst must discover what the minimum is that he needs for his way of working; what anyone else needs is irrelevant. There is a thing known as 'classical psycho-analysis': the ana­ lyst has an analytic situation in which he practises analysis; he has patients who are suitable patients and gives them suitable, certified-correct interpretations. I have never known that state. The analytic situation is the situation which the particular practi­ tioner finds is adequate for himself.

140

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

Sometimes the seriously disturbed patient can tell me some­ thing which is important; sometimes he tells me the right thing by accident. But it does not matter whether it is on purpose or by accident if I am wiser for the information. I remember talking to a veterinary surgeon and saying, It must be very difficult—your animals can't tell you anything'. He replied, 'Well, luckily they can't tell me any lies either'. Silence, either of analyst or ana­ lysand, is golden—depending on the capacity of the pair to use it. A Brazilian analyst reminded me that sometimes there are patients who can be silent in five languages—it is well worth remembering. Visiting, or not visiting, the patient is governed in principle by the conditions I have adumbrated; the particular application of the principle can be decided by no one except the practising psycho­ analyst at the time. Practice depends on practice. Q. You have said that an analyst can observe silence for a long time and feel differences between one silence and another. How can one compare today's silence with that of another day when one is working outside memory? Can it not be done only be setting aside that other rule which you have recommended? B. I strongly recommend you to 'forget' that rule. It may stop you from using your intelligence. It is much better to use such intelligence or such wisdom as you have. M y patient did not need to be told not to use his memory. He drew the blinds, he arranged that nobody would talk to him and that he would not listen to his analyst's interpretations. In the end he found the cure—he died. A n d after that, as far as we know, he could hear nothing. But that is a drastic kind of treatment and a very definite ending of the session. If one has a prejudice in favour of continuing to be alive, then you are bound to have difficulties and you are bound to find it difficult to follow any rule. A l l that you can hope to do is to use such experiences as have worked with you. I do not mean, therefore, that psycho-analytic training is not help­ ful, or that childhood is not helpful, or that your mothers or fathers cannot tell you something that would be useful. But the time for learning anything is so limited, and you are likely to waste it trying to be just like a grown-up, just like all your brothers and sisters, just like everybody else; it is protective colouring. There is no practical solution to the problem unless analysis finds it.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

141

Q. If a teaching analyst, who has been inadequately analysed, has a candidate in analysis, and this person in turn qualifies and eventually becomes a teaching analyst, the standard of psycho­ analytic practice is, of course, certain to fall. What is your experi­ ence or knowledge of this situation in England and the U S A ? B. I remember a case in which the parents who were liars and drunkards had a most charming child who never ceased to make progress. I would hesitate to recommend drunken parents for everybody. Why the child did so well is a mystery which I still do not understand, and even if I could hear all the masses of psycho­ analytic jargon which is freely available I still would not know the explanation. Conversely, a patient whose environment appears to be nearly faultless, may seem to have learnt only the expertise which makes it possible to destroy the favourable circumstances. Though I have no scientific basis to answer the general question which has been posed about England or the U S A , I suspect that the particular instances to which I refer have a wider application. Freud never suggested that dreams are good things, or that anxiety is a good thing; only that if you carry out certain pro­ cedures it is possible to make good use of a dream—the dream itself is not good; it is not bad; but some people can make use of it. Adverse circumstances are not good; war is not good; peace is not good; they are neither one thing nor the other. But some people make good use of the experience. The sooner we can learn to make the best of a bad job the better; analysis has to be done in this real world, for good or i l l . Q. In the case you cited, the analyst's role seems to help the patient to die, since he cannot help him to live. What do you consider to be the analyst's role in present-day society, from the point of view of helping to live or die? B. The analyst's function is to psycho-analyse. It can be like being a mirror held up to the patient which would help him to see all of what he looks like. In accordance with what I have just said, I hope that instead of being 'just like', both parties might start 'becoming'. Trying to teach the patient psycho-analysis or psycho­ analytic theories is a part of education, not psycho-analysis. If the analysis effects an introduction of the patient to himself it seems to initiate 'growth'. After spending their life up to date trying to be

142

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

'just like' somebody else, we are suggesting that they should be themselves, whatever they are, because they may have some redeeming features.

EIGHT

he confusion which I described in lecture seven is such a prominent feature of human activity that we shall have to -Adiscuss the matter further. First, we must beware the danger of prematurely seeking a solution which would remove from discussion what may well be an essential feature of human mental activity. The discussion is not intended to terminate, but to illuminate the object of the discussion. As an analogy, it would be dangerous to substitute a portrait for the person portrayed. The situation I want to describe, using the ordinary time-scale of weeks, months and years, is somewhere between the ages of sixteen or seventeen and twenty-three or twenty-four: Putting it in more pictorial and less mathematical terms, the period of ado­ lescence. But the term 'period' falsifies the situation by simplify­ ing it. I am trying to consider a state of mind which is in no way pathological, in no way diseased, and in no sense stable, although disease and pathological events may be a part of the 'phase' stud­ ied. I can imagine that a time may soon come when there will be no

143

144

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

general psycho-analysts, only specialists in some particular aspect of psycho-analysis, such as particular phases to which particular psycho-analysts are appointed. But to use these categories and fail to observe that they are related to the limitations of the human mind, and not to the limits of the subject studied, contributes added confusion to the confused situation. This is particularly so when we have to study the human personality. Analogies taken from anatomy and physiology may illuminate, but cease to do so if their character is not observed. There is no realization which approximates to the verbal description of this phase of turbulence. For example, in adoles­ cence the turbulence occurs when the personality is still enough of a child to remember what it feels like, and is already grown up enough to suspect what it feels like to be grown up. Although we do not show signs which are anything like the gross transformations which occur when a tadpole turns into a frog, there are periods of transition which are much more marked than the periods in between. We can talk about pre-, post-, or delayed adolescence, and each division can be broken up into finer and finer subdivisions. These temporal subdivisions are survivals of a previous culture, as in the sixty-minute hour, or the three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle. You cannot recognize when one minute transforms itself into another minute—not unless you have a look at a watch or some piece of machinery of that nature. In psycho-analysis, equally, you cannot see any of these divisions unless you look at something like a psycho-analytic paper or book. Reality is much more confused and there are no signs that the human being has devised to which reality approximates; the only certainty is that the signs denote a human characteristic. Yet a fruitful source of confusion arises from the failure to discriminate a peculiarity of the human mind from the reality in which we have our being. Freud has mapped out a great number of characteristics and periods which can be seen to be recognizably human, characteris­ tics of a human mind and a human personality. That very work now makes it possible to see certain periods in greater detail. Practical analysis is what I would call actually experiencing some period or state of mind of that kind, either one's own or that of another person who comes to share the analytic experience. A

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

145

person in the adolescent period experiences survivals of childhood thoughts, feelings and ideas which have not died. They are ves­ tigial, but they survive with a great deal of vitality. In language, a wonderful invention as Freud supposed, there are vestiges of its generation. Grammar displays some of these: for example, meta­ phors. Some are dead, some are still alive. If someone says, 'I smell a rat; I will nip it in the bud', those are two metaphors, both all right in their context, but bring them together and these dead cliches, these dead metaphors, become alive and the result is ludicrous. Some of these dead or dying states of mind survive with sufficient vitality to sort [to correspond or agree with] well, but some do not sort with coming states of mind, post-adolescent states of mind which are also coming alive. So what with the states of mind which are supposed to be dying, and what with the states of mind which are supposed to be coming into existence, a confusing situation is produced. It is not easy to say whether the state of mind at which we are looking, or which we are studying, is falling into decay, or is coming to maturity. That is what makes a period like adolescence so difficult both for the adolescent and for the observer. The observer (analyst) is in a peculiar position because he is supposed to remain stable, to remain in the same universe of discourse and to use the same language, and if he says he is speaking metaphorically he is expected to use metaphors which are coherent in that particular universe of discourse. He should not be like a musician who writes down the music but does not indicate that he has changed the key; the 'change of key' in discus­ sion should be indicated. The analyst should be able to say, 'I am not talking about surgery; I am not talking about religion; I am not talking about art—although all these may be used by me in the course of my talking. I am talking about psycho-analysis.' Unfortunately we have to use the already existing language. We may use the word 'envy'. People who are not psycho-analysts are sure they know what envy is; people who are psycho-analysts are not so sure. I thought I knew what psycho-analysis was twenty years ago; today I know too much to know that, or at least know enough to know that I am ignorant. I do not advertise it too much, not least because if I do somebody who thinks they know more, but does not, will usurp the vacant position.

146

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

Someone says, 1 know what envy is; I know all about envy'. But do they, one wonders, know what psychotic envy is? Or, to fall back on medicine to provide a metaphor, do they know what sub­ thalamic envy is, or sub-thalamic hate, or infra-thalamic, or ultra­ thalamic? I am here and now improvising a language with which to express my thoughts and ideas. It is difficult to express what I am trying to convey, even in the privileged position of being able to address myself to people who are familiar with the world of thought; people who may be analysts, psychologists, artists, or musicians, but who are all familiar with some aspect of the func­ tions of the human psyche. The analyst who tries to pass on his knowledge or experience to someone else always runs the risk of that person saying, 1 can't bear this nonsense; I'll shut my ears', or T can't stand this stuff; I'm not going to any more lectures, speeches, psycho-analysis and so on—all psycho-analysts are mad'. However, we have to put up with being accused of knowing nothing whatever about our subject. Unfortunately, it is very nearly true—but not quite. I suspect that we are not in fact unique in this matter, that if we could establish a contact with the reality of, say, medicine, we might say that if you need a doctor the outlook is black indeed. You will find plenty of people who are qualified, who are entitled to the label, entitled to have the name, but there are very, very few doctors in reality. There are many people who have been to art school and have a degree or a certificate, but there are very few artists. Once in a while there is a Picasso and he runs the risk of being exiled from his country; it is an accident if some outstanding artist survives and continues to be able to live in the world as it actually is. The work that has to be done by psycho­ analysts is, therefore, of the utmost importance, because if it is not done the individual will not survive. The crisis is there whether we recognize it or not. It may appear to be calm and simple like a latency period, or childhood, but if an analyst has a close look at the latency child with such intuition and intuitive apparatus as he has, he will see that the latency child already has the germs of being pubescent. I do not know whether you could say the same thing was true of the infant, but the expression, 'the child is the father to the man', is certainly succinct: the child is never wholly a

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

147

child; there is some aspect of the child which can already, to an observant, trained eye, be seen to be grown up. We are already being forced into studying only a small part, a short period of the human mind. I say 'short', but it is not short or long, although it has some kind of dimension. After qualification we can set out to discover who we are and what we can do; all of us can mobilize that aspect of our personalities which comes easiest and most naturally to us, and thereby be led into a domain to which we are peculiarly suited. Then our troubles start, like a tennis player who goes to a professional coach, when he has finished his training he is nearly as good as he was when he was a natural player. But he may be potentially able to become better and he may be able to discover, shall we say, that he has a strong back hand, and he will use that against his opponents. Similarly with the analyst: when his training is finished he can begin to learn who he is and what he can do. It may take a long time—hopefully not too long. We live only for a limited period so that it is a matter of some urgency. After a time people learn what we can do and come to us; we get the kind of practice to which we are adapted and to which we adapt ourselves. I would like to stimulate in you the idea of exploring one of these nodal points to which you could give a name—like adolescence, or puberty, or latency. The advantage of picking on something like adolescence is that the adolescent has a lively sense both of the past and of what is coming. That is why adolescents are afraid they are going mad, or afraid they have got stuck, or afraid that they do not want to have anything to do with psycho-analysis, or afraid that they do not want to do engineering, or afraid that they are 'homosexual'—one more recruit for jargon. This period of tur­ bulence is often detected by people who are not psycho-analysts. They say, 'This boy (or this girl) is behaving in a very odd way; these adolescents are tiresome people—most worrying, but it's adolescence'. Or they may say, Tt's only a child', but nobody is only a child. There is no grown-up who is so grown up that he is not a child still. There is no child who is not part adult already. The human being is physically mature at an early age, but I do not think we would agree that the individual is psychologically or

148

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

mentally mature at that time, or that that stage could be said to end at a particular point. It would be premature or precocious of us to say that the mind ceases to grow at the age of eighteen, or at forty, or fifty, or sixty. At the age of eighty it becomes more plausible; it seems reasonable to say that the person has just about finished, or has already declined mentally. But it is not obvious that we know the date at which mental maturity has been achieved and that from that point on there is a decline. Leaving for a moment this relatively simply state of adoles­ cence, let us consider some time like (physical) infancy. Since infants cannot speak the kind of language we are used to, although they can make noises which are like adult speech, the specialist in infant mentality will have to be able to tell the difference between the infant noises which have no future and the noises which might turn into human speech one day. When you hear a baby scream or shout, you will have to be a specialist to say that that particular scream has no future to it, and that particular scream is turning into something. If we can develop our powers and capacity for discrimination we may be able to see, and to be correct in thinking that we can see differences. In a melancholy passage from the memoirs of Max Planck, the atomic physicist, he says that he discovered that you cannot teach our contemporaries anything. Progress does not consist in their learning anything. What happens is that they die and younger people come along. This sad discovery of his is something which any analyst must be aware of. Q. Y o u have spoken of the problem of communicating with a patient, calling attention to the merits of telling him what he can understand. The analyst can often see that the patient cannot understand. How can one talk to such a patient? Is there some means of communication other than that of using the language we use? B. I think there must be a way of doing so, but it is difficult to know what it is. Children certainly seem, sometimes, to under­ stand what we are understanding. There is a story by Beatrix Pot­ ter, The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, about a family of rabbits who 'were all very improvident and cheerful'. Children seem to have no difficulty in being told that, and yet it is impossible to believe that

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

149

the child knows what a term like 'improvident' means. In the same story we hear that 'lettuces are very soporific'; it presents no difficulty whatever to children. What they understand by terms like 'improvident' and 'soporific' I do not know, but that story would certainly be wrong and the child would resent it if some simple word were introduced instead; these long words are part and parcel of the story. But it is not all a matter of'words'. From the point of view of the child there is absolutely no substitute for parents who have a loving relationship with each other. No amount of talk or theory is going to take the place of the parents who love each other. That seems to put something over to the child which is—to use some more long words—infra-verbal, ultra-verbal, pre-verbal, post-ver­ bal. There is no way of describing what sort of Verbal' it is. This language is communicated by what I have fancifully called 'beta­ elements': something which is not words. What is the language which is not a verbal language? While the verbal gap between child language and words like 'soporific' and 'improvident' seems to be immense, the non-verbal gap appears to be very small or even non-existent. The question posed may well be a starting point for investiga­ tion. It is an example of what makes the practice of analysis exciting. Q. You have often referred in your seminars and supervisions to the importance of the patient's not missing going to the analyst's consulting room. You have also asked why the patient goes. Could you go into this more deeply? B. Very frequently analysts seem to allow themselves to be preoccupied with why patients fail to come and thus do not recog­ nize the reciprocal mystery—why they do come. The investiga­ tion should not ignore either polarity. Sometimes patients keep on coming when one feels that it is hard to see that it is worth their while in time or money, but they must be getting something out of it, and they must think it is worth while. It is a fact which the analyst should never allow to disappear below his conscious hori­ zon. It is absurd for analysts to talk about the hostility of patients and so on—we know there is plenty of hostility; but the surprising thing is that there is apparently such a great supply of friendli­

150

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

ness. People actually do their best to co-operate. They get to the consulting room, even when they feel sure that they cannot do anything when they get there. Q. I would like to hear more about your reference, during supervision, to the patient's perceptions of his earliest experi­ ences, starting with birth. B. I would like to be able to hear a little more of the subject myself. I can hear something of it by listening to what people who come to me for analysis tell me. It is a most absorbing subject, but I have neither the experience nor the knowledge to enable me to know much about it. I have no doubt that what we call autistic children are in fact children in a frame of mind, or state of mind, which we have failed to notice so far. It is as if we failed to notice that children are children, both grown up and inexperienced. In so far as I describe a self-contained system in those last words, it may also be a description of an autistic phase, as Freud uses the term 'autistic' [Freud, 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning', 1911, S.E. vol. XII]. Such an investigation may prove the answer to the question. As parents we often behave and talk as if we expected the child to know 'all about it'. 'Can't you see', we say indignantly to the apparently naughty little boy or girl, 'that that is very naughty?' No, they can't. They may have picked up a valuable vase and hurled it at the cat, or beaten the dog over the head with it and smashed it, but they do not see that that is 'very, very naughty'. They may be able to say that it is an extremely satisfying experi­ ence. It may not be very good for the vase, it may not be very good for the dog or cat, but the child can feel very much better after it has done it. The child can say, 'Can't you see how nice it is to do this?'; the parent can say, 'Can't you see how naughty it is to behave like that?'—no, they can't—neither of them. They are like two people passing each other and shouting across the gap, but one of them is going in one direction and the other one is going in the other direction. (The psycho-analyst may observe a psycho-ana­ lytic 'Doppler effect' as they pass each other. This effect is what requires to be noticed.) The words are the same, but the meaning is different. 'Very improvident and cheerful': mothers and fathers think they know what that means; so do the children. The words

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

151

seem to be the same words, but again, the meaning is different. To say, T h i s is an autistic child', says almost nothing; it is very nearly, on the part of the grown-up, a noise which may turn into communicable words one day. The newly-born child does not use any language that we know, but mothers are sometimes able to understand the language; the baby screams and the mother knows the correct reply. Sometimes it may be verbal; sometimes she may pick up the child and not say a word; sometimes she may say, 'I don't know what's the matter with the child', and hand it over to the nurse, or even, one is sometimes afraid, to the psychiatrist or psycho-analyst. I certainly have no prejudice against psycho-analysing children, but I have a prejudice against the substitution of the analyst for the mother. They may be complementary, but you cannot substitute one for the other without a loss. Q. You have warned us to use not only our eyes to see with, but also our other senses to detect, for instance, our patients' physical excretions. But even so we are still not sensitive enough, since our minds, and those of our patients also, seem to excrete things which ought to be sensed through organs we know nothing about. Could this be one of the mysteries we ought to focus our attention on? B . I do not think that any analyst is improving if he loses his capacity for mystery, for unsolved problems. This is not only a long question, but I am afraid the answer is terribly long. I can give a kind of short answer by telling a story of a physician who had a beaker full of some substance which he showed to a class of stu­ dents. 'Now', he said, 'it is very important that you should not be frightened of examining and seeing and testing and using your senses to find out what something is—even something like this. Watch.' He dipped his finger in and tasted it; then he passed the beaker around. There were all kinds of ugly grimaces and looks of horror and disgust. The doctor said, sadly, 'I am afraid that you did not observe that I substituted one finger for another'. I do not know what the 'moral' of that story is, but my 'meaning' is in it.

NINE

Q

Why is so much emphasis laid on the analysis of envy as if this were the earliest anti-life emotion; before envy • made its deadly appearance in human life we had been sentenced to death for pride. If it is pride that is the basis of the extravagant and undisciplined desire for spiritual possession— and this desire is to be like God—why do we not look into the content of idealization which pride seems to be? Why do we omit to analyse boasting and vanity, described as two of the twelve degrees of pride?

B. I feel that the question itself depends on a certain cultural procedure about which I am doubtful. It seems to belong to the domain of a culture in which things have a beginning and a middle and an end; and an essential part of the same culture is a narrative account which also has a beginning and a middle and an end. I think it serves a purpose; indeed, we still talk a language belong­ ing to the same kind of domain of verbal expression. But suppose one encounters some quite different form of expression. One could call it, say, the form of expression which is common to a Chinese

153

154

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

way of verbalization using ideographs expressing ideas by graphic description. The direction from bottom to top, or from right to left, may be suitable for a mode of thinking which is fundamentally different from ours, but it becomes difficult to communicate when we are talking the language from top to bottom, or from left to right—or from pride to envy, or envy to pride, or sex to rivalry. In practical analysis the analyst may see which comes first—unless, of course, we defer to reality and wish to express an order, if there is one, which is general. There are disciplines which have satisfied themselves of the order. In the practice of psycho-analysis we are concerned with finding out. But the whole question of logical thought has to be revised. In so far as we are still learning, what we know is open to revision. For example, one can say today that it is an erroneous idea to imagine that the sun goes round the earth, but it was 'correct' once. Freud described the investigation of the human mind as an assault on the narcissism of the human being. Indeed, we may very much resent finding that the mind is deposed from the position of importance which we attach to it. We cannot help attaching importance to it; we are human beings; we are members of a particular kind of animal used to regarding itself as extremely important, and the human mind as an important part of the totality of the human being. It is a revolutionary change to suggest that perhaps it is not so important and that perhaps it does not matter that we are not even able to grasp the problems with which we have to deal. The problems which reality poses can turn out to be beyond the capacity of the human mind; the human mind with its logical, scientific, religious, artistic capacity is not up to the problems which it has to solve. To depose the human mind from its position of centraiity, from the supposition that the world of thought is homo-central, is a blow to the narcissistic beliefs of the human being. One could regard it as a situation in which we are suffici­ ently capable and advanced to grasp the magnitude of our prob­ lems, but not sufficiently advanced to know what to do about them. This, I think, is the situation in which the autistic child finds itself. The phenomena described by people who have studied this problem could be explained on the grounds that the autistic child is

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

155

aware of a universe for which its equipment is totally inadequate; the infant is somehow so highly intelligent that it is capable of seeing the vastness of its problems, but is without any equipment with which to deal with it. The human race may be reaching a similar point (but on a different 'level' of the helix) at which the relationship of the most gifted members of the race, vis-a-vis the problems, is analogous to that of the autistic infant; the most gifted, most capable of our thinkers may be baffled and inade­ quately equipped for the realities of the situation in which we find ourselves. To revert to the question of whether envy comes before pride, or sex before generation. We know that the physiologist would regard generation and sex as contemporary. If someone believes there is a beginning and an end, and finds it helpful, I know of no reason why he should stop believing it—until he finds a better. To take another example: I have no objection to saying, 'Let's get up tomorrow at sunrise'. I do not believe the earth stays stationary while the sun rises in a certain position, goes round and sets in another. But I would not want to reform the ordinary way of talking. I still think it is useful for people like us. But on the other hand, I would not advocate the abolition of heliocentric astronomy on the grounds that it is in conflict with geocentric language of getting up in the morning. It is a useful language for certain simple purposes, but unsuitable for more complex situations such as the launching of a space probe through the atmosphere of Jupiter, through the close contact of Mercury, and then on still further into space to investigate the nature of Saturn. There must be mathematicians who are capable of working out these (to me) incredible mathematical problems; 7 can be hard put to it to use ordinary arithmetic to work out a simple thing like the time it takes to travel from Rio to Los Angeles, or from Los Angeles to London. But someone is able to do these things and it is difficult to believe that that person's mind might be inadequate for the prob­ lems which are posed by the investigation of a thinking mind. I have no objections to classical analysis, or to the theories of Freud, Abraham, Klein and so on—not unless I am told I must think so far and no further. Trying to impose that kind of limitation would be as futile as telling the earth to stop going round and round the sun

156

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

in this puzzling manner. The universe does not obey orders from anyone, however self-exalted. As I say, I have no objection to the ordinary method of talking or writing, but I have every objection to supposing that that method is good enough for our problems. Psycho-analysis—the best psycho-analysis—is not good enough. I cannot agree with anyone who says, 'Psycho-analysis has been good enough for my analyst; it was good enough for my analyst's analyst; and what is good enough for my analyst's analyst, is good enough for my analyst's analysands'—and so on, until the mind dies. We may not know what sense is, but we often recognize non­ sense. If the first thing I am aware of is envying my brother or my sister, or their envy towards me, that is what matters to me as a practical baby. But someone else may find that the first thing they come across is something which is not envy or hate, but arrogance or pride. What is the starting point of a circle? One can only say it is where I happen to be aware of starting. Q. If 'getting better' in psycho-analysis depends firstly on integration, on synthesis of the personality, is the synthesis offered by the process of analysis enough, or must certain tech­ niques sometimes be used to promote synthesis? B. I could say, first question: why start with this question today? Why the second question second? Why not the second ques­ tion first? Second question: why synthesis? Why not analysis? Why analysis? Why not catalysis? Or why not catastrophe? I do not know any reason why not. Except possibly something like the very, very, very unimportant answer, namely, that that is where the questioner started; that is what hit me first. Using more pictorial language, that is the point at which my young brother, when he was not much more of a baby than I was myself, happened to hit me on the head with a hammer, and I died—finish; full stop. Why or how we come to have survived so far I do not know, but since we have we can start our process of thinking anywhere between birth and the present. If the first thing you are aware of is arrogance, or the first thing you notice is murderous hostility, you can start the investigation there. But in infancy the first things to which we give names are those which are susceptible to our physi­ cal senses. For example, the infant becomes aware of the vast

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

157

space, the incredible spaces, the incredible numbers; and then we discover that the vast spaces are only the boundaries between 'self and the cot in which the baby lies, or these vast numbers are the name we give to a feeling of 'threeness'. The baby soon becomes aware of a stomach-ache but is not sure what is hurting it, or who is hurting it. Of course, if the baby is a thorough-going Kleinian it might say, T h i s stomach-ache is inside me', or it might feel it was being attacked from outside. Unfortunately we cannot ask the baby—not yet. Q. As the founder of group therapy you have brought psycho­ analysis within reach of many middle-class people previously unable to afford the high fees for individual analysis. Even so, there are still a great many people who cannot afford group ana­ lysis. Would you favour a socialization of psycho-analysis to deal with these people? To what extent does payment affect treatment? B. It would be a great mistake to imagine that I originated group therapy. I come very far down the list of people who have engaged in group therapy long before it even had a name of that kind. Would I be in favour of socializing psycho-analysis? In other words, would I favour putting the cost of psycho-analysis on a particular group or not? Who is going to pay for analysis—group analysis or personal analysis? Who is going to pay for having no analysis, group or otherwise? A n d what is the price of that going to be? Many people, whether they like it or not, will have to pay for there being no analysis (assuming for the moment that analysis is worth paying for anyway, in view of the cost in time and money and effort and all the things which are not included in the ordinary scale of measurement which is provided by a financial system). I could state the problem in terms of Peguy's approach. Referring to the French motto, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity', he said that liberty and fraternity are in an absolutely different class from equality. Equality is mixing in an element which is of feeble consequence compared with the other two. People are not born equal; they start life with different equipment, Peguy pointed out that equality of riches and opportunity is hardly a social problem but destitution is. The fact that people are poor does not do much harm to the community, but destitution is more than an individual

158

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

problem. A destitute person rots the society, the group; destitution within a group of any sort will sooner or later destroy that group. The social problem of destitution, therefore, should never be dis­ regarded, should never be neglected. This is not socializing psycho­ analysis; it is saying, however, according to P6guy, and I think there is a great deal to be said for his formulation, that destitution is already socialized; it is a socialized quality. I do not know what the benefits of socialism are, but as usual it is much easier to see what the liabilities of socialism are, particularly the socialization of destitution—that is something which no state, community, or group can afford. I do not know how payment has an effect on the treatment, but I consider that the treatment ought to have an effect on the pay­ ment. That is to say, one would like to produce a situation in which, as a result of psycho-analysis, destitution was decreased; that people who were incapable of earning a living or increasing the wealth of the community, should become capable of doing so. John Ruskin said that wealth meant something like that which increased the health and happiness of the community—the life­ giving properties. It is the capacity of the group to produce life­ giving material which should be increased. Money is an invention which, like language, has been proved to be useful. How to use it has not yet been discovered. The present economic failure may convince us that it is time we thought about its use. If, in analysis, we find a way of making this discussion redundant we shall not contribute anything to the solution of these problems. 'Payment', therefore, may serve, as it is doing here, to stimulate the discussion. In this respect it is no different from other stimuli of which the participants become aware during the course of the investigation itself. What it costs you to read this book, and what it costs me to write it, can only be answered if there is a scale of measurement and facts to measure. Q. Has the number of mentally-ill people increased, or are they only now being detected and treated as a result of therapeutic techniques based on psycho-analysis? B. I remember one of the leading neurologists in England, at the time I was a medical student, not having the slightest idea what was the matter with a patient who was submitted to him, but

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

159

a young medical student suggested that the patient was suffering from what is nowadays called myasthenia gravis. In the short space of my own lifetime myasthenia gravis has become a medical entity; it is a recognizable constant conjunction of symptoms like 'myasthenia gravis'. Most competent physicians would now hope to be able to notice if one of their patients had such a disease and could probably diagnose it. You would have to be unfamiliar with the world of thought to imagine that doctors have been guilty of increasing illnesses; they have only increased the awareness of the illnesses. If psycho-analysis did nothing else it would have done a great deal if it made people able to recognize the existence of certain constant conjunctions. There will always be people who hold us responsible for having caused neurosis or psychosis; that but for us no one would bother with the whole thing, and nobody would know anything about it. But there are many physical dis­ eases which would gradually wipe out the human race if no one knew anything about them. As I said before, only a matter of a few hundred years ago people thought it was natural and normal to die at thirty. Why draw attention to something as normal as that? Today people say, 'Why draw attention to anything so normal as dying at seventy or eighty?' You cannot do anything about it, but someone may later. Somebody may discover a cure for myasthenia gravis which is better than administering physostigmine, which is not a cure, but relieves the symptoms. Medical advance is a co-operative procedure, not only amongst doctors, but between generations of doctors; if we can record our findings and pass them on, then in four or five generations when we are all dead, someone may learn something. But that depends on our having noticed something first—very unspectacular and most unlikely to make anybody famous. Q. We live in a competitive society; the agitated life in big cities is the cause of neurosis. Might one say nowadays that every­ one is neurotic, or is this an exaggeration? B. We could say that all of us are neurotic, but is it worth saying? One could say that we are all human; that might some­ times be a useful remark, however inadequate. There was once a cartoon in The New Yorker in which one of the seconds in a boxing match said his man would not fight until he had heard the other

160

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

one talk—his way of being quite sure that the other boxer was actually human. It provided a rough and ready test of classifica­ tion. In the mental world we have similar problems. Will someone who is so intelligent, such a clever animal that he looks just like a human being, ever become human? Will someone who does not look like a human being—like the autistic baby, or the latency child, or the adolescent—become one in time? We need to know how to tell whether someone is becoming anything. Even in illness it is useful to know whether some cough, or ocular defect is the sign of the onset of disease. It must, however, be remembered that it could be the onset of growth. Our problem could be stated: can we discriminate between benign and malignant? Both possibilities have to be entertained. One idea has to be balanced against another. A one-track mind does not give practice to the driver in a multi-track world. We do not know what mental disease is, except in the general sense of dis-ease, un-comfort. Psycho-analysts are people who attach great importance to happiness and consider that unhappi­ ness can reach a point which could be called destitution. That degree of unhappiness could be regarded as communicable because it surpasses the confines of the individual; the lack of happiness becomes so great that quantity changes into quality. We should support or provide for the destitute, the person whose unhappiness has reached the end of the spectrum. The question pre-supposes that the problem is a topographical one, that it is due to competition and rivalry. But if there were no rivalry that again would become a growth-inhibiting disease caused by a lack of stimulation. Similarly, the human unit, the couple, depends for survival on a relationship between the two parts which is self-propagating, growth stimulative. On the other hand, in the individual, or group of individuals, destitution is inseparable from greed. The extremely wealthy man, who can be seen to be greedily wanting more wealth, shows himself to be destitute. Q. According to Freud the experiences of life in infancy are important in the formation of the adult; from these come in great part social, sexual, emotional, economic adjustment. What advice would you give a mother so that she can bring up her child free of

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

161

repressions and inhibitions which might provoke neurosis later on? B. There was once a joke in Punch magazine: M r Punch's advice to those about to marry—'Don't'. I feel rather like that about this question. I would be inclined to say to the mother, 'I think you had better not have a child'. I would hate to live in a world which was peopled by individuals who had no repressions or inhibitions. This is one of the difficulties in analysis; people come to an analyst having already had a 'cure', and if the cure consists of their being incapable of repressions and inhibitions they are muti­ lated people. A n y analysand wanting an analysis is already up against a problem, because it is not clear or certain that inhibi­ tions and repressions are all bad. Supposing that we can interfere with this matter at all—we can also be interfering in the capacity to discriminate. Discrimination consists in being able to exclude the irrelevant. When that capacity becomes extreme it turns into an inhibition—the 'voluntary' has become 'involuntary'. One can imagine what could happen if psycho-analysis was allowed to proliferate like a cancer—go mad, as it were. There is already a great deal of behaviour which is supposed to be based on psycho-analytic principles supposedly advocating no discipline at all. Anyone who has had an analysis knows that it is an extremely tough discipline. We do not advocate that people should come to have a nice time for fifty minutes a day, for five days a week, for five years. We do try to introduce the individual to the fact that even if we did not exist they would have a feeling in favour of a discipline. One of the dangers of letting a child do just whatever it likes is that it does not simply do just whatever it likes. The moment it is aware that not even its mother or father can watch what it is up to all the time, and it is therefore free to do what it likes, the child at once and automatically reconstitutes the miss­ ing parent. You have probably seen one of your own children solemnly go and stand in a corner as a kind of punishment for some crime that we have heard nothing about. But that reconstituted parent has insufficient knowledge or experience to be a parent—it is simply part of the child. So that the failure of the parent to impose some discipline means that the place of a potentially sen­ sible or wise person is taken by an inexperienced conscience and a

162

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

disciplinary system which is so severe that the child may break down under its own discipline. A premature and precocious disci­ plinary framework produced by the infant who is not in the pos­ ition to produce any framework is, possibly, part of the self­ contained system which Freud called 'autism'. The result is a discipline which is so ferocious that the child cannot grow under it and would ultimately perish unless something were done to mod­ ify, but not abolish, that discipline. The personality or the group compelled to be 'autistic' is, therefore, liable to be dominated by immature and premature structures, with dangerous conse­ quences. Unfortunately, however experienced we are we still know very little indeed about how to bring up children, of what­ ever age. We are beginning to know that we do not know—that is something. We are beginning to be able to plumb the depths of our ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, license, but it may take a long time before we know much about bringing up children—which seems an extraordinary thing when you consider that we do reproduce our kind. Sometimes we reproduce our own kind only too well—our children are exactly like us.

TEN

The tenth lecture differed in kind from the others. It could for that reason have been omitted, but I thought that, with added comment, some readers might find the account illuminating. The added material is marked by a marginal line so that the reader can ignore it and gain some idea (in so far as the written word can transmit a live experience) of what an unrehearsed episode can evoke, to what further experience it can become an Idea generator', and how he would deal with the same experi­ ence. A t the end I have added a few questions on which the reader can exercise his mind should he so wish. Presentation

P

of clinical

from part of a

material

session

atient "I am not satisfied, I don't feel alive—although I pay for the treatment and play my part. Analyst You do not pay the price of tolerating the frus­ tration which is part of life.

163

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

164

P. I used to dream that I was not born; the dream has become reality to me. (He blames his mother for having pushed him out. He speaks of a maid he has, who left a convent where she lived. He thinks she did wrong. In the convent everything was solved for them by God.) I had a job for six weeks. Why did I do this work, if I wanted to be dead? A . You want everything in life without anguish. P. Who conceived me with so little tolerance? This person must feel guilty. A . Since you do not accept the blame you cannot feel alive. P. (speaks of the rage he feels when thinking of the use of a cutting knife. Then starts to talk in a whimpering voice) You can't say that. How could my mother do this; I liked her so much. I'll never be right. A.

You see me as your mother who does everything.

The analyst and patient are continuing a relationship of which I know nothing; the dialogue is new to me. Why does the analyst say this? Has he some first-hand evidence? If so, what? Or has he been told that psycho-analysts talk like that? Why does the patient talk like that? P. (in a childish voice) I can't teach him. I don't know, it was so nice there; why did she separate me? When someone has a companion he thinks maybe the companion does not want him any more.

Who is he 'teaching'? He is certainly not teaching me because I don't know what he is talking about, but I must hear some more. A . What you are saying again shows your wish to be free of suffering. P. I see a baby—myself at my mother's side, very happy. I see myself in a lake, on a plant, I'm in paradise. I don't understand why they threw me out. I know it is madness to think like this, but they threw me out. I was doing so well, why did they disturb me? Could

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

165

it be that I awoke within my mother's womb? The scientists say we have no conscience. I think I am mad. What is the patient talking about? If he thinks he is mad he is probably suspicious about the nature of what he is 'seeing', but people often speak of having a vivid visual imagination—why does he suppose this vividly described story is not just the product of such an imagination? Perhaps the analyst will throw some light on this when he continues the conversation. P. I awoke within the place I so much liked. I had no reason to be in a rage. I had little it's true; I didn't want anything. I had everything, love, security. One feels full, suddenly everything is over. I was angry with my mother because all was ended. How could it happen before I was born? Is it possible to be conscious in that hour? Could it have been when I was born? I was conscious I was entering a world full of problems. My mother, instead of giving the best she had, was giving the worst. Small people already know everything. Later you forget. A small child knows more than an adult. The child knows that the first contact with life is the most important. The adult confuses things. We seem more conscious in childhood. Surely this is some story about childbirth that the patient has heard? Or is it some recent re-hash of so much 'psycho-analytic' fashion? The stuff about 'childhood' and the 'knowledge' of the child is suspicious. P. A t forty I am rebellious. I still speak of being born. I knew this on the first day; I don't need to live forty years to know this. This certainly sounds like sarcasm—if I were to tell an actual patient that, he would probably be 'righteously indignant'. P. Today you told me that I have no tolerance for frustration and that must have happened on the first day. Crying the first day, my mother could have thought there was no motive for crying, for I had just been fed. But the fact is that I screamed, rebelling against

166

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

being born. M y mother becomes wicked, an egoist, beastly—I can't take this separation. You say that I could have, but I haven't, because I bestowed everything on my mother, I never thought I had arms and legs. Having these things, I never thought I could function by myself. Mother has—she functions for me. She says I oppose functioning, in spite of conditions. (He mentions his office where he has an assistant engineering designer whom he thinks of as the mother.) I don't need to do anything. He has to do every­ thing. I know nothing; he is the one who knows; when mother (the designer) is present I know nothing. The analyst knows every­ thing. I know nothing. This sounds 'genuine' sarcasm, but it is mixed up with bits of the patient's actual experiences and not just what he has read out of a book. P. (He gives the impression of thinking about something which gives him pleasure.) It is very pleasant. Mother is a wrap­ ping and inside the wrapping it's good to be in there. It is much better there; mother's legs carry me; it's her responsibility. Chiefly what he has read in a book. But either the patient is playing a game with the analyst, or I am being made a game of for pretending to the knowledge of a 'lecturer'. But even a hoax can be interpreted. If I were analysing a patient I might have the conditions which would enable me to hazard an interpreta­ tion. No doubt he would like me to say it's a 'hoax'. Or if I did not, then he would think I was saying he is 'mad'. P. When small, with the parents near, I felt no fear. There is tranquility. I find this security wrong, stupid. When the designer says he has to sign some paper, he then asks who is going to break down the walls for the reconstruction (of a building). I don't want to have the responsibility of walls falling. That is part of the mother. This answer I myself as an engineer could give. I know more, much more than that, but I don't know. I don't accept doing it. Two plus two are four or not. I must exert myself to say that. It may be two or not. I had to struggle to reach that, which is so obvious. Really I'm

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

167

going to remove the walls which are between the beams. The building is not supported by what I am going to remove. This is logical, but for me it is not logical. Another bit of'truth'. 'Logical' is the way rational people talk and 'rationalize'. But this requires understanding by someone who is not restricted, 'imprisoned' in the logical modes of thought. A . You reject that two plus two should be four, so what is correct and true for all the world is not true for you. I think the analyst is very near the patient's wave length; can his formulation be understood by the patient? His next remarks sound as if the patient was near enough to the analyst's wave length to erect his defensive barrier and to continue the com­ munication. 2 + 2 isn't 'logical' mathematics, but two similar numbers get together. But 'he' never thought of that—too homo­ sexual. Two homo-numerical is quite proper. P. I reject that because I did not invent it. That is why it may be wrong. Someone discovered it and that someone could be wrong. A . You feel it is the parents' mistake for having sexual rela­ tions. They should not have had them—because of this you are not able to gather together your pieces, for if they come together you will be full of hate and envy—you will be yourself, P. Do you think so? I don't know, I never thought of sexual relations; what has that got to do with it? Two plus two are four, but I did not invent that. I did not invent sexual relations. They say it produces children—I don't know. I didn't invent it. I know it's stupid to think like that. I'm suspicious. I don't know of what; of a person's being able to say something that is wrong. They say that if you put one brick upon another you will make a wall. That might be wrong. I'm always in doubt; can I accept this or not? I J

7s it creative? Or is it just a defensive wall? The patient would like to know—and so would I! (This concludes the clinical material.)

168

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

Bion What is this patient's problem? Why is he coming to see the analyst? Presenter isolated.

The patient wanted treatment because he felt very

B. But there must be some problem about this; the patient must have some reason for coming to see an analyst. For example, if it is because he is lonely, merely coming for a talk acts as a 'cure' which, being ephemeral, has to be repeated; if repeated and if unobserved this leads to a never-ending ana­ lysis and ever-receding progress. B. The question which confronts us is, what impression does this give you? What do you think you would say about the reasons for this person actually coming? Why should anybody want the analyst to see him? We do not appear to know. No one has any idea how such a situation has arisen. What does this man want? Q. I would like to ask your opinion about the client who gives a positive reason for seeking treatment, but whom the analyst can­ not decide whether to treat in one interview, or the client who cannot put his problems into words. I feel it is the business of the analyst to help the client to formulate and to know what he wants and what sort of treatment he needs. I think this is an analyst's responsibility. B. I would emphatically disagree. A l l I purport to do is to have such training as I can get for the benefit of those who want an analysis. I can try to get a consulting room and the conditions in which to work, but after that I would certainly not be prepared to analyse whoever happens to come. I would have no right to analyse them. If I were asked to analyse them then I might try to do it, but it would be dangerous to start analysing somebody when you have not even been asked to do so. Anyone who comes into your office must expect to be asked to explain his business; it is not a public highway: it is a private room and if they come into it they must be prepared to say what they want. I would certainly not take the risk of starting to analyse and give interpretations to such a person. I should consider that I was liable at once to have an action for

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

169

damages brought against me. It would be just as serious as a surgeon starting to operate on a patient without the necessary authority. Q. The audience is in difficulties because you are trying to debate openly and frankly, and it finds itself in the position of the patient who says the only trouble with him is that he feels isolated. This is reasonable because it is not clear whether the audi­ ence has come for a lecture 'about psycho-analysis', a seminar on a psycho-analysis, a group therapy session, or an investiga­ tion of a particular psycho-analyst's (my) capacity as a psycho­ analyst. A l l 'answers' are therefore ambiguous because it is a matter of ambiguity to guess what the question is that is being 'answered'. Q. I remember a particular case from my own experience—the only case of this nature in my twenty-four years of practice. This patient, a woman, came for a preliminary interview, and I asked her why she wanted analysis. She said she had difficulties with relationships. 'What does that mean?' I asked her. 'What do you mean by that word, or those things? Can you tell me anything else?' 'No', she replied, 'Only that'. I said I thought this was not much for me to assess whether treatment was indicated. I won­ dered if we could work on the basis of so little information. She replied that she could not say more than that. I told her that I could do nothing on such a basis, since I could not understand why she was here. She said nothing, and I said nothing either; we found ourselves in a position similar to that here now, where both sides have fallen silent. After some time, about half an hour, I said, 'I think we must close the interview. It seems to me that you don't want to be analysed; you don't want to, or cannot reveal yourself; on this basis I can't accept the job of doing an anaysis. We must abandon the idea.' She insisted that I ought to treat her. I refused, and closed the interview. J5. I am not surprised to hear it. In that situation the analyst would be running a very serious risk indeed. It may be very well for the patient to say, 'It's your business to treat me', but it is not any doctor's business to be told by a patient what he must do, or how he

170

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

should do it. If you feel willing to risk obeying the patient's instruc­ tions you can go ahead, but I would not do it myself. If I had a referring letter I would like the person who referred the patient to say why they were doing so, and what for. Q. What about analysis undertaken to become a psycho-ana­ lyst? Is this not very like that case, where there are no medical grounds for having treatment? The candidate can take refuge in this idea that he wants analysis only because he needs it to qualify. S . If the person wants to be an analyst I would suggest that they should go to some proper analytic authority or institute. If I were the authority I would say to the applicant, 'Can you tell me on what grounds you are presenting yourself here as a candidate, and why you wish to be considered for the vacancies that we might have?' In exactly the same way, if I am in the position of an analyst who purports to analyse people, I would expect to be told by somebody, either by the person concerned or some responsible person, on what grounds they thought this person should come to me for analysis, or why they should think I was the person to analyse him. Other analysts can do what they like about it, and I can see that they might handle the situation differently, but I cannot. I can only handle this case with such capacity as I have, and my capacities do not include a capacity to do what I call 'analyse' this patient. I do not suggest that somebody else could not analyse him, but I do know enough about myself to know that I could not—not on those grounds. I would not be prepared to take that risk. Q. I would like to re-read the first phrase that this patient said. 1 am not satisfied. I don't feel alive.' However, he said he would pay and do everything else he ought. B. I would like to know what he is not satisfied about. Q. He is not happy because he is very lonely, because he cannot communicate with anyone. He has no friends, feels unhappy because he is not taking full advantage of life, does not enjoy anything and so on. B. I understand that, but I can say, 'What do you expect me to do about it? If you aren't satisfied because you don't do these things, go and do them.' I cannot do them for him. It is a fantastic

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

171

situation—the patient says, 'I am not satisfied because I haven't come here today'; I say, ' A l l right, come here today then'. Q. Do you feel that if the patient could do it he would do it; he comes because he himself cannot do it? B. Where is his nurse? Or where is the person who brings him? If he comes alone he is responsible for coming. He cannot say that he comes because he has been brought. If he has been brought I would say, 'Let me see the person who has brought you'. Q. From what I understand, it would be enough, instead of analysing the patient, to tell him to do the things he finds difficult to do. This would solve everything. That is to say it is not accepted that the patient is unable to do certain things for deep, unconscious motives, or that he needs the analyst's help to succeed. B. I do not admit that a patient who maintains the right to say he has come of his own free will cannot get to me. I cannot admit that a patient is entitled to say he cannot get to me while at the same time he has come. If he cannot do all those things I would say, 'Who was it who brought you? Can you ask them to come in and see me about it.' I have another example in mind. Suppose you were a pharmacist; someone comes to your pharmacy and says, 'You are a pharmacist. A l l right. Give me those pills.' The pharmacist surely has the right to say, 'No, I'm sorry, I don't do that. I need a proper authority, a proper reason before I can give you these pills. Otherwise I shall be in trouble with the law.' It is true that you might be in trouble anyway. The man might draw a gun and demand to have the pills handed over. Why is an analyst any different in this regard? If someone wants an analysis the analyst can at least say, 'No, I know something about analysis, and I don't do this to anybody just because they happen to want it, any more than I would hand pills to anybody who happened to want pills. I would need to be given authority to do it.' Suppose I launched out as it was suggested that perhaps I ought to do—started analysing—and found myself, the next thing, in a court of law. 'But doctor, didn't you know that this patient had been to psychiatrists and analysts before?' 'No, I'm sorry, I didn't.' 'Did you find out?' 'No, I'm sorry, I didn't. I just started analysing him.' 'But why?' 'The patient said he wanted some analysis.' The

172

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

analyst is supposed to be a responsible person who does not analyse anybody and everybody. Q. I cannot quite understand what it is that you demand when starting an analysis. Could you go into this further. B. First of all I would want to know on what grounds the patient came to me for analysis. I would want to have some proper reason for analysing him. I do not know what other people do—in any case, it would not help me; other people are not me, nor are their patients my patients; but I do know something about myself and the risks that I am prepared to take. I am not prepared to take this one. Under no circumstances would I agree to analyse any­ body unless I was given what I consider to be the minimum reasons for proceeding. Q. Could you give an example of what you consider to be these minimum reasons? B. I do not even know the minimum reasons for being a sur­ geon, or for being a physician, but I have a fair idea about what / am prepared to do, and I know that I would not be prepared to analyse this patient; not on the grounds of anything that has been said to me so far. Q. If an adult comes to me and says he is in trouble, feels isolated, cannot make himself understood to others, is unhappy, cannot work, wants to better his life, and is able to pay for treat­ ment, would you not think all this was enough? I do not under­ stand what is missing that is so important. B. Nor do I. That is what I am trying to find out. But I do know that there is a terrible lot missing as far as I am concerned. Everybody else may be perfectly satisfied. They may feel they have all the information, knowledge and experience to proceed. It may be my experience that is missing. But I do know that it is missing and I would not proceed until I had more. Otherwise, it seems to me that one is in a position in which anybody is free, as soon as they are landed with a hopeless case and have failed to help in any way, to send him to an analyst. Analysts are there; they are a sort of communal rubbish dump for all the people, things, jobs that nobody else wants. I have nothing to say about other people who take on the patient, but I would not.

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

173

Q. From what you say and what I understand, it seems impos­ sible for anyone to be treated by you. But you still seem to have patients. So it is my impression that you are not telling us exactly what you demand, what this element, this condition is, for some­ one to be your patient. B. I do not see 'patients'—I see particular individuals, and when a particular individual comes to me I want to know what he has come for. I do not ask him, as I have just been asked, to tell me exactly what he wants, but if he will tell me in the best and simplest— not the longest and most complicated—way, I will do my best to understand him. If the particular person is of unsound mind, or not of age, then I would want to know their parents, or their nurse, or their doctor; perhaps they would come to see me and tell me what they want me to do. If the patient is totally irresponsible I would like to see a responsible person. I am not going to risk my whole career and my professional reputation by taking on a case about which I am not told the minimum of information. If the doctor thinks that this patient is a suitable person for me to analyse I would say, 'Can you let me know what makes you think so?' A n y doctor would have reason to be ashamed of themselves if they sent a patient like that to me without a covering letter, or without a nursing attendant. If I were given adequate reasons for analyzing that person then I might try to do so. But there is nothing, so far, which would lead me to suppose that there is any excuse for this person taking up my time. Q. You have talked about mystery in these lectures. I hope you are not going to leave us with this mystery which I feel we have now. I do not understand what the conditions are which you, not we, lay down before you take on a patient. B. Which patient? If you do not tell me which patient, it is you who are leaving me with a mystery. Q. I feel very much in accord with you, but I should like to know more about my own reasons. Referring to the patient you

174

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

talked about in lecture seven, you interviewed the father, the sister, had a letter from a friend and a recommendation, I suppose from a colleague, maybe a psychiatrist, to attend this patient. Was any of this information of any use? The sister lied, the father told the story of the girl friend which the young man denied. In what sense was this information used? Did it help you to decide to take this patient into treatment? Did he come alone? What care and attention did he have? B . The thing that helped me to take that patient more than anything else was sheer ignorance and unjustified daring. M y qualifications for seeing that patient were precisely nothing. After seeing that patient and realizing what I had agreed to, I think I was a wiser man. I did not want another one of those. There was not a single one of those persons whose statements could be relied upon. The only thing that could be said about analysing such a person was that the analyst who did it was extremely ignorant and foolhardy. Q. I should like to state what I feel are the conditions you hope to find in a patient to enable you to treat him analytically. Today's patient seemed only to complain. In a case of mine the patient did not wish to exert himself; in another, the patient was satisfied to remain a fetus. I suppose that a minimum requirement, besides the patient wanting to be analysed, is that he should wish to analyse himself too: to work with you. B. I am sure that the minimum conditions vary immensely, but I do not know what they are. I do know what they are with me, but not with other people. I cannot tell other people what the minimum conditions are for them because they may require far less in the way of conditions than I do. But I can know when a situation which is developing, or has developed, is one which is beneath, as it were, the threshold for me. There is everything to suggest that it is a miracle that this patient, having reached years of adulthood, is still in existence. But nothing in the course of that life has done him any good. I would like to know on what grounds it is supposed that I could. The most exalted surgeons, physicians, psycho-analysts, psychiatrists, might all know that they could treat that patient, but I know that I could not—not so far—not on

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

175

that amount of information, or with that amount of co-operation. That does not come up to my minimum requirements. I do not want to have my career cut short at any time. Something of this kind happened in an actual case in England. A member of the Board of Control—a position of considerable prestige—was sued by a para­ noid patient and had punitive damages awarded against him. He was, in fact, ruined by that case. As a result, no doctor in England would certify a patient under any circumstances. The law courts, the parliament, the lawmakers had to think again, because doc­ tors were not feeling that the minimum conditions in which they could do their job were in existence. They were being asked to do things which might leave them and their families ruined. What were their minimum conditions? I do not know, but I have no doubt that those doctors did know. It was too dangerous to have anything to do with paranoid patients. But you have to examine a patient before you know whether he is a paranoiac, and the conditions for examining such a patient did not exist, because nobody was pre­ pared to put themselves and their families at risk. Sooner or later, somebody will have to think again before they decide that psycho­ analysts are people on whom you can put any job which no one else can do, and at which nobody else has succeeded. In my opinion this is one of them. This patient is dissatisfied, according to him, because he does not do what he has to do. I cannot do it for him. If he is not prepared to use the knowledge he has, what is the good of my giving him any more? Q. A patient, referred to you by someone, comes to your con­ sulting room; he says he wishes to have treatment—perhaps become an analyst—because he has difficulty in tolerating himself because he is a pervert, having committed atrocities against others. Would this case be within the minimum condition of acceptance? B. There is nothing that you have told me about this patient so far which would make me hesitate in taking on that patient. I might be entirely mistaken—just as I might be entirely mistaken in saying that I would not take on the previous patient. No one can tell me—it is even difficult for me to know myself—whether the rewards are adequate. We are faced with a similar though more

176

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

extreme problem in the process of getting engaged or married. You can say, 'Well, so far he seems a nice fellow, or a nice girl. I wouldn't mind our going out to dinner together.' That might ripen or develop into a situation in which you proposed to each other that it would be a good thing to make it a more permanent arrange­ ment. 'Will you promise to go on having dinner with me for the next fifty years?' is a tall order. Fortunately, the analytic relation­ ship is only a temporary one; in intention, at least, it is to last only for a matter of a few years at most. Only the analyst knows how much he can stand of analysing a patient, or how much he can put up with that patient's behaviour. Referring to the patient just mentioned: I would say, 'If you wish, we can give analysis a trial'. If the patient says, 'Yes, all right doctor, I will. But will you tell me what psycho-analysis is?' I would have to say, 'I'm sorry, I would tell you if I could, but I can't. There is no way of knowing what analysis is—with me at any rate—except by coming to me.' But with the previous patient I could only say, 'I'm sorry, but I would be asking you to waste your time to come to me. There seems to be nothing to justify the expense of your time and money.' The trouble here is that we are discussing something in the absence of the patient. One is having to fall back on some idea of what it would be like if such a person came to us. Of one of them I can say, 'That doesn't sound to me what I want'; of the other, 'That one sounds possible'. Q. When I am practising psycho-analysis, although I do not deny the importance of environment and external circumstances, I try to show the patient that his recovery depends a great deal on his own resources. The patient's attitude has to be altered. What is your opinion on this matter? B. That seems to me to be a perfectly fair description of the situation. We do not think we can satisfy the patient and we cannot foretell the future. But we can say, 'Together, in this consulting room, there's nothing we can do about your circumstances. But if you think that you might change and become more able to put up with the world as it exists, come along and try.' But the first thing they have to find out is whether they can put up with analysis. The first patient is asking the analyst to commit himself to behaving as

1974

RIO D E J A N E I R O

177

if he can still do something for a patient who has already said, right from the start, T can't put up with analysis. I can't even permit the analyst freedom to exercise his own judgement'—not so blatantly, but that is about what it amounts to.

Questions

to aid the

oflgnatian

generation

Exercises*

1. How would you differentiate (a) a lecture (b) a seminar (c) a group psycho-analysis (d) supervision (e) psycho-analysis (f) psychotherapy? 2. What is your opinion of the patient described? What would you say to (a) him (b) his dependents? 3. What is your criticism of the 'lecturer'? 4. How would you have dealt with the situation had you been (a) the lecturer (b) the audience (c) the patient, if you heard your analysis had been discussed in a meeting?

*Reference to Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). See his Exercises.

Spiritual

1974

Sao Paulo

ONE

T

he urgency of our work forces us to discriminate. We there­ fore have to consider only such topics as appear to be most economically relevant. Our problems more than keep pace with such progress or advances as we make. If one tries to match oneself against these problems a critical situation becomes more and more critical faster than we are able to develop our techniques and our ability to deal with it. We need some quick and efficient method of recording what we do—assuming that past experience would add to our store of wisdom. Not so many years ago people who wanted analysis seemed to have plenty of time and money with which to meet the requirement of the situation. Today even governments of states are confronted with problems which are beyond their control, or their capacity. Consider something which was once regarded as a simple matter of mechanisms of exchange and economics: when I was a small boy I once discovered a coin in one of my pockets. I had no idea that I was so fabulously wealthy—it not only made my day for me, but the next day too. Nowadays we feel well off at one moment; at the next our

181

182

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

valuables have seeped away from our 'store'. It appears that even states experience this descent from affluence to poverty. As for the emotional forces with which we, as psycho-analysts, are concerned, we can discern the same phenomenon in mental or psychological terms. The spirit of the country swings from a sense of affluence to a sense of bankruptcy. Which are we to consider the 'generator'? The economic situation leading to recession, or the emotional situation leading to economic recession? We, who pur­ port to study the motions of individuals, need to state the 'direc­ tion' which the progress is taking, but we have no co-ordinates by which to indicate this primitive base. The subject becomes even more harassing in a state of emotional turbulence. We shall have, later, to investigate the turbulence. With regard to our mental resources, one would like to believe that we have enough knowledge or experience to run our lives in a rational manner. I wonder, in fact, how many people feel that they know how to deal with today's problems and the problems which we shall have to face tomorrow. A l l this seems to point to the urgent necessity to limit our analytic activities to the absolute essentials. We cannot say that everybody needs analysis; even practically it is out of the question, for our resources of time and money are limited—not only the physical resources of the earth which are now seen to be exhaustible. Provisionally our solution will be to consider the essential prob­ lems of the patient who we shall see tomorrow, and go straight to the central point of those problems with as little dispersion of our capacities as possible. We are limited to this as we are only psycho­ analysts, and not because we are unaware that our contribution is only to a minor part of a minor part of a vast domain, or because we think our importance is in any way comparable to that of our leaders. Our psycho-analytic philosophy is based on respect for the indi­ vidual. The anatomical and physiological aspect is clear to us, but is it accurate to imagine, for example, that I am these hands? Where does my personality end and someone else's start? Where does the analyst come to an end? And where does the analysand start? Where does the individual and particular become the gen­

1974

SAO PAULO

183

eral and non-specific? What are we to say about a mental disci­ pline? If we were athletes we should have to be able to run, or swim, or play games and so on. But what games are we to suppose that a psycho-analyst ought to be able to play? What mental diet are we to regard as being productive of mental health? (Later we shall have to discuss what mental athletics are necessary for those who use their minds.) These questions at once confront any author­ ity who is concerned with an institute of psycho-analysis. We do feel the need for some kind of common language; we should like to be able to talk to other analysts from any part of the world. But should any one of us be able to talk to someone who had learnt his psycho-analysis from the time of Homer? Our education tends to teach us that the works of Virgil, Plato, Milton and so on are simply beautiful literary works of art. But I do not think that that is what they were written for [ibid., p. 94], It is very difficult to get past this screen which obscures their original purpose and meaning. It will not be long before people do not understand what Freud was talking about. Can you know what you yourself were driving at in notes written six months ago? What is the message that Henry the Navigator would bequeath to us by his voyages? Historians of human thought can only conjecture. The problem is further complicated if we cannot even pass information on to each other. In trying to teach our sons and daughters something we think they ought to know it is extraordinarily difficult to know how to remind ourselves of what we were like when we were twelve or thirteen, and to believe that our passionate feelings of love for our boy friend or girl friend were somehow inferior to our capacity for passionate love after we have been married ten, twenty, thirty years. What do we investigate in 'psycho-analysis'? Do we simply want to be able to say to someone, 'Ah, you will be wiser one day—I used to think like that once', or would the young version of ourselves say to our grown-up selves, 'You have turned out as badly as I thought you would'? It is difficult to be sure that we could maintain that we have improved. Analysis makes it possible to reactivate the thoughts and ideas and feelings that we had once, and bring them together with the thoughts and ideas and feelings that we hav6

184

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

today. With the patient we 'see' tomorrow our concern is a mystery, not that which we know. A n 'ordinary' conversation is, and can be recognized as, a 'mystery'; it is rash for analysts to talk as if they had, or could, plumb that mystery, and a falsification to think we approach a problem that has already been solved. Analytic experi­ ence is a disaster if the human being becomes indistinguishable from a watch, or a computer, or any other machine. It may be appropriate for a child to talk to its doll or its blanket and feel that it has company. It is inappropriate for psycho-analysts to be so frightened of real life that they do not talk to each other, but talk jargon to a 'construct'. There is no future in being just like an analyst, or just like a grown-up. Our problem is not what tomor­ row's patient is just like, but what they are becoming. We may now discuss the turbulence to which I referred earlier. Adolescence is not a disease; it is a time of such mental turmoil that a great deal of which we are usually unaware comes to the surface. The analyst should consider whether the adolescent is waking up, or growing up. He should, in spite of all the news about the dreadful things which are happening, be able to come to a correct assessment of what the situation is. You may feel, from your own experience, that the boy or girl is in danger. On the other hand, you may feel that they will come through the experience more grown up, more responsible. The analyst is expected to pro­ nounce on this situation. 'Well doctor', the parents say, 'what do you think of him?' It is a dangerous situation because analysts are supposed to be able to give an answer which is closely related to the facts approximating to some psychiatric or psycho-analytic theory with which one is familiar. But the facts that he sees may not be the ones to which the questioner is referring. One should be able to say something like, 'I think it is possible he might benefit from analysis', or, 'I don't think I would advise you to try analysis for him just now'. But we may not be able to say what we think, because the parent, and still more the boy or girl in question, would not be able to tolerate the information that we have to give. A n extreme possibility, such as suicide or murder, may be clear enough to be discernible, but in real life even extremes are not 'extremely' discernible. A patient may say he has terrible night­

1974

SAO P A U L O

185

mares, but passes it off, saying, T m not really worried about it—I know they are only nightmares', or you say to him, 'I hear you said you were going to murder your young sister'. 'Oh, that! I was just joking.' It is probably true, but on the other hand he may not be in a position to know about these 'jokes'. The youngster who has just been teasing his parents by saying he is going to commit suicide, likes to believe that it is just a joke; the parents likewise. The psycho-analyst does not believe that this story starts at the age of eighteen, and knows that some of these 'jokes' have to be taken seriously. 'But doctor, surely you don't think he ought to have analysis five times a week'—and you have to say, 'I think it would be just as well, if it is possible. It might help.' Q. Your reference to the question of taking notes reminds me of your teaching regarding the analyst's working without memory and desire. There would seem to be three types of memory: first the dream-like memory; second, that which comes rapidly or sud­ denly into a session; and third, a memory or conscious recollection of the past, of some analytic experience. Your comments would clarify this for us. B. Clearly, unless one used one's memory or desire or ambi­ tions one would make no progress. During the session the patient's difficulties do not stop; he is still fully aware of his difficulties and of his need to have attention paid to them. It becomes a serious matter if the analyst is present in mind but preoccupied with trying to remember. 'Trying to remember' is, in my opinion, being 'analytically' essentially absent. It is precisely during this short fifty minutes that one should not allow oneself either to 'remem­ ber', or to 'hope', or 'wish for', or even to 'understand' what the patient is talking about. Therefore, the analyst may not be able to make notes, but he should be able to 'make the notes' essential for psycho-analysis. I cannot offer any suggestion as to where or how these notes are made, but in my experience they are made. I have previously pointed out that I do not know where the parallel lines of a railway track meet when one sees that they come together in front of the observer, and behind him if he looks back. I look forward to reading a paper by the questioner investigat­ ing these different forms of memory; I hope to use his categoriza­

186

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

tion when they have been clarified—for example, criteria for discrimination of an hallucination from a dream. These problems cannot be investigated in books, or scientific meetings, or in the presence of the analyst's conscious theories. That is why I depre­ cate memory, desire and understanding while the analysis is going on.

TWO

O

ne technical term which is often used, and probably abused, is 'counter-transference*. It is a term which should apply to the unconsciously motivated feeling which the analyst is having about the analysand in the analytic situation. The term should be correctly used, as should all terms used by the psycho-analyst.This is not a pedantic matter; it is dictated by the fact that our chosen tools, as it were, are words. If we use them wrongly we soon find ourselves in the position of a sculptor using a blunt instrument. Someone mentioned to me a boy patient who 'doodled* on the table as if he were writing or drawing. The analyst might find it worth while doing something of this kind on paper dating it, say, April 15th, and putting it aside. Then at a later date, say, May 1st, instead of looking at notes made in a more conventional manner, one could write down one's interpretations of the squiggles or marks made on April 15th. In that way one can make use of one's conscious activities of May 1st to interpret the unconscious produc­ tions of April 15th. Drawing upon his own conscious and uncon­

187

188

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

scious, the analyst would not be confusing two different analytic procedures; they are both recognized frames of mind and there is, therefore, a technical disciplinary framework. In contrast to this there are analysts who carry their profes­ sional activities into their homes and cause a great deal of trouble by interpreting in psycho-analytic terms the behaviour of their families. I am not suggesting that we should stop being psycho­ analysts, but while you may have some psycho-analytic idea in your mind about the behaviour of a son or a daughter, or a husband or a wife, you do not have to interpret them. If I started interpret­ ing the behaviour of members of my family I should certainly be afraid that the family was being deprived of a father and getting an analyst instead. That may be a lucky thing for the family—or it may not—but giving psycho-analytic interpretations is part of one's professional life; there is no harm in that, but there is great harm in depriving a family of its father or mother. The same thing applies to professional activities; we should not confuse analysis and supervision. If you are supervising it is important to make a sharp distinction between the conscious activity of supervising the candidate or analyst, and analysing him. If you start analysing him when you are supposed to be supervising him, you deprive him of his supervision. You are also interfering with his analysis and his analyst. The failure to consider these problems is causing a great deal of trouble both to the psycho-analyst and his family, and to the psycho-analyst and his colleagues. This is not a theoretical idea; it has been forced on me by what I have been able to observe for myself. Q. I would like to hear your opinion about the question of the importance of supervision in the development of the young ana­ lyst. B. In the course of our professional life we can see very few personalities. Indeed, we meet relatively few people in a life time; but that situation can be to some extent corrected by activities such as seeing plays, reading biographies and reading fiction. Perhaps I should say 'reading other works of fiction besides biogra­ phies'. As analysts we must be aware that accounts which purport to be portrayals of reality are, in fact, the writer's interpretation of

1974

SAO P A U L O

189

reality. This kind of reading provides a wider experience than we can have by learning only from those few people we manage to meet. Much the same applies to scientific meetings and supervi­ sions; you can get an idea about how other analysts work. You are not obliged to say whether you regard the scientific papers as works of fiction or not. But you can form some opinion of the kind of fiction that those particular analysts write, or the kind of reality which they describe. In this way you can augment the small amount of direct experience. I consider there is a place for meet­ ings and discussions about psycho-analysis provided we are not misled into thinking that they are analysis. Psycho-analysis is a unique experience; it is, therefore, a serious deprivation if the analyst or analysand makes the mistake of thinking that it is just an ordinary conversation. In a certain sense so it is; but if it is experienced it is both an ordinary conversation and a unique emotional experience. The importance of supervision consists in the degree to which a peripheral activity augments the centre of the activity. Its nega­ tive contribution is proportionate to the extent to which the periphery has usurped the place of the centre. Q. Is there any use in recalling a session in order to discover what prevented the patient from seeing something of the emo­ tional experience? B. Trying to recall that experience is not the same thing as an experience which obtrudes spontaneously. Suppose you say, T h a t reminds me of a dream I had last night'. One could say that at one moment there is no memory of this dream; at the next moment the whole dream is present. When you start recounting it you take time over it, and it has a beginning and a middle and an end. But that is not what it had when you said, T h a t reminds me': the beginning and the middle and the end apply to the conversation— not the dream. The more familiar we are with the domain of mental life, the more we become aware of these subtle differences. It is worth while, therefore, having respect for the 'way' in which we think or dream. Too often the individual objects to awareness of some event; hallucination is one notable example. Bigotry and intolerance

190

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

emerge as defences against the unwanted event. The 'denial of sex' was one of the most striking examples in Freud's psycho-analytic discoveries. Q. Could you speak about the feelings in counter-transference which are dependent on the feelings of the patient: in other words, the influence of the transference in the counter-transference. B. They are very much the same as the influence in the trans­ ference of the presence of a psycho-analyst and the effect that it has upon the patient. The conditions do not exist for doing anything about the counter-transference. In contrast, the analyst can try to analyse the analysand's reaction to his, the analyst's, presence in the room. Q. You have referred to the analytic experience as being unique. Do you consider that the emotional experiences we have all the time have the same characteristic? B. I think they must have, otherwise the emotional experi­ ences of the analysis are of no consequence whatever. Our theory is that it is worth bothering about what happens in the consulting room and in the relationship between analyst and analysand, because we think something similar probably happens elsewhere. In analysis we can try to discuss it; elsewhere we cannot. If you can say to a patient, 'You are feeling that I am angry with you', that may be true but it is of no importance. It does assume a certain importance if the patient feels that much the same kind of experi­ ence to which the analyst has drawn his attention happens in any number of situations outside the consulting room. To put the same thing in different terms: psycho-analysis, however wonderful and however erudite, and however brilliant the analyst or analysand, should resemble real life. Putting it differently again: if someone draws a picture and says, 'That's what my wife looks like', one should be able to feel, 'Yes, it looks human—I've seen people like that'. Of a drawing by someone of the stature of Picasso we might say, 'Yes, I think I know what he means—although the person in the drawing appears to have three eyes and two noses. It may not be much use to a surgeon, but perhaps it does matter to a psycho­ analyst. This may not be a good drawing if I want to know how to dissect out a seborrheic tumour from the face, but it does teach me

1974

SAO PAULO

191

something about human beings/ Similarly, you might say of a play, 'I think people do behave like that'. The fact that Shake­ speare wrote it does not matter; what does matter is that it reminds you of human beings. In the same way psycho-analysis cannot be any good unless it reminds you of people. Q. In the counter-transference situation the analyst uses his own models to deduce the model that the patient is using. This we do in order to avoid theorizing, but every model used suffers from transformation. After some time the model may not be useful any more, no matter how creative the analyst may be. Instead of getting another model would it not be better to use another kind of system of investigation? B. I think it would be better to get another analyst, because the analytic interpretations which are stimulated by counter­ transference have a good deal to do with the analyst. If the ana­ lysand is lucky they may also have something to do with the ana­ lysand. Sooner or later, an analysis which is based on the counter­ transference will come to disaster, or at any rate failure, because all the interpretations will have little to do with the analysand and a great deal to do with the analyst. In physical medicine this would become apparent fairly early if the surgeon operated on the strength of counter-transference and not on the strength of the anatomical and physiological findings. Unfortunately, that is not unknown. We, as analysts, try to avoid it. Q. We should like you to say something about groups. B. The kind of experience which one has in psycho-analysis— when there are two people present in the room at the same time— can seem to happen where it is a relationship between a whole lot of people. For example, just now a number of people laughed. They must have had the same experience, or so one would think; all those people who laughed experienced the same emotional experi­ ence at that moment. If that is the case, can a single person like myself here, or any other single person in the room, say they have an idea of what the interpretation would be of that laugh? This is typical of an unspoken interpretation of 'the group'. One would have to develop a sensitiveness to what seemed to be the emotion common to the majority of the group; the group analysis would

192

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

have to depend on the assessment of the 'gist' of an obtruding emotion. It bears a similarity to psycho-analysis, but it is not the same thing. Groups are sometimes structured; the psycho-analytic institute is typical of the 'structured' group. In group practice I used to try to avoid structuring the group so as to leave any structure that might exist a chance of emerging spontaneously.

THREE

Q

The psycho-analytic institute here recommends that students should study Kant. Possibly this results from • something you have written in which you refer to Hume and Kant. Would you clarify for us the relationship you see between certain theoretical formulations in relation to the prob­ lem of thought, and the works of Kant.

B. Kant was attracted by the fact that people think a[nd that we do not all think in the same way, nor do we all see the same phenomena. Philosophers are curious about thought itself. Most activities are apparently self-explanatory; even in extremely primitive times there was an awareness of the existence of something 'not self and a curiosity about this other object; the self also obtrudes into consciousness and adds to the non-self experience. Objects which are not oneself can become names with the names which we ordinarily associate with things. Sometimes, in the course of analysis, one becomes aware that the analysand has had, and is still having, difficulties which appear to be associ­ ated with an awareness of himself. In practice the analyst can

193

194

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

suspect that this difficulty, although discernible today, must have been apparent to the patient long before he can have had any equipment adequate to deal with what he was aware of. Our problem today is associated with the detection and comprehension of symptoms or signs of that awareness. You need hardly doubt that any analytic belief that that is happening would be sure to be both controversial and difficult. If you watch a baby lying in the cot sucking its fingers or thumbs, or—that extremely admirable athletic ability—pushing its feet into its mouth, do you think the baby might be experiencing embryonic, philosophical conjectures about its experience? Assuming that one does think so, in our hypothetical 'tomorrow's baby' are there vestiges of such a preoccupation? We know what a stir was created by Freud's suggestion that there was such a thing as infantile sexuality. We can scarely hope to escape similar con­ troversy about any suggested extension of'infantile mentality'. Q. In your book, Attention and Interpretation, there is a dif­ ference between the liar and the thinker. I would like to hear more about truth being independent of the thinker, and the lie needing a thinker. B. In so far as we understand facts, it is evident that the fact does not owe anything to us at all. But a fabrication by the indi­ vidual concerned is a different matter. If one simply tells another person the truth about some phenomenon such as where a pencil is, that is not a particularly exciting discovery or statement. But if you tell them where it is not and you see the individual concerned engaged on a wild hunt for the non-existent, that is a creative effort. You can see children's excitement and pleasure at having made an April Fool of someone. They learn at the same time that it is a matter of consequence as to whom you make a fool of, because grown-ups are such unpredictable, dull people who do not think it at all funny. So the process of discrimination arises in the course of activities of that kind. Waging war, or just arguing with another person, is helped and furthered by deceiving that person. When we hear the patient talking to himself, is he trying to help himself or the analyst, or trying to deceive himself? These primi­ tive activities have not disappeared from the realms of human behaviour. One still finds it useful to help somebody by informing

1974

SAO PAULO

195

them correctly so that they could further one's own aims or objects. The distinction between the lie and the truth, and the uses of both those kinds of communication, are borne in on the human being. This kind of activity has precipitated the preoccupations of phi­ losophers who regard accurate thought as of first importance. Today, when it is not clear that man's wisdom has increased in proportion to his physical power, the psycho-analyst has taken over the responsibility for extending the philosopher's approach to clear thought. Q. You have spoken several times about things 'never being the same'. Can there be a difference more convincing than that between a dream and an hallucination, between a dream as an association and an hallucination, and between a dream and a lie? B. Those are certainly important distinctions, but I would not give them priority over other differences if and when they are observed. The point I meant to make was to emphasize that 'things' do not remain the same; history does not repeat itself. It is always new. The child who bumps its head on the table is interpreting correctly when it hits the table; later he hits someone else. Today we are attempting to achieve a different approach. The 'difference', when we wish to establish our own responsibility for our own pain, is very great because it is fundamental. Q. Due to insufficiency of alpha-function there are sensitive elements in an excessive number which disturb mental life. This is corroborated in recent studies in experimental psychology and neurophysiology; also the studies on the average evoked responses, evoked by sensitive stimuli on the E E G . Such studies show that in paranoid schizophrenics we often meet a predomi­ nance of the articulate attention; the attention tends to select some sensorial data and to focus on them. The same studies show that the opposite happens with non-paranoid schizophrenics. In the latter we may conclude that there is an insufficiency of alpha­ function, a great number of sensory elements not selected and not elaborated. I should like to hear you speak, first, about the pro­ gress that psycho-analysis has been making on the study of the alpha-function, chiefly on the alpha-function on paranoid and non­ paranoid schizophrenic patients; second, about the implications of

196

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

such progress on the concept of the paranoid-schizoid position which appears to be adequate for the elucidation of the paranoid states, but inadequate for the elucidation of the schizomorphic non-paranoid states of mind. Z?. The problem which has been stated has itself been one which has to be expressed in terms of such language as is avail­ able. As far as I am concerned I have to pay attention to a pattern of sounds which are made by somebody who is not me, and I have to wonder what the pattern of sounds means. It is indeed very diffi­ cult. Part of this can be simply and obviously explained, but all those parts of the problem which are obviously and simply explained are hardly worth bothering about. If they really are obvious and simple, what is the problem? But as it is, the problem is difficult to state with the existing language, and the person who formulates that question is liable to be ignored on the grounds that we do not know what he is talking about. That is a simple answer, and an entirely useless one; it may indeed be dangerous if the problem that is stated, however inadequately, is in fact a serious problem. As I say, all this could be explained on the grounds that I do not understand the Brazilian language. But that is not really the problem. I do not think any amount of understanding Por­ tuguese would get me much nearer to answering the question. For example, the speaker said, 'Studies show'. At this point I feel, according to the language that I talk, studies show nothing. One can look at these things, one can listen carefully, and if one is lucky one can see a kind of verbal pattern; but after that one has to interpret the study. It is extraordinary how many people think that we have learnt something when we see a smoke drum (a drum covered with smoke—soot—on which a pattern can be made) or, to use some learned language and long terms, 'an encephalogram'. I am sure that makes everybody feel a lot better. A h ! Here is some­ thing scientific! Here's the graph. Look at it! It so happens I have nothing in my hands. . . . Very often one cannot have anything which is so consoling as an encephalogram, especially when it comes to the human mind—you cannot smell it, see it, touch it, or say what its shape is. Then how do you know there is one? Never­ theless we go on behaving exactly as if there were people who have minds which we can interpret. While no one in Homeric times

1974

SAO PAULO

197

seemed to think there was such a thing as a mind, or a soul, or a spirit, they had no difficulty in believing that, say, Agamemnon had appeared to them in their dreams—they did not doubt the validity of that dream. In fact, it was a great deal easier for them to believe in the interpretation of a dream than in what an actual, live person told them. There is nothing new about the interpreta­ tion of dreams. I would like to consider briefly the problem of the use of a language which is totally inadequate when applied to states of mind and mental pain. The language of physical medicine is now becoming, for us, more of a nuisance than an asset. At certain stages like adolescence, infancy, middle age, old age, certain dis­ comforts become apparent to the individual; he does not like what is going on and will want to fall back on the idea that it is just like some kind of pain he is used to—there is always consolation in feeling that we are familiar with and know what we are talking about. But explanations made in rational terms limit our freedom and exclude consideration of the irrational and an approach in which logic and logical thinking may be irrelevant. Our preoc­ cupation with books and discussions may itself be a sign of mental turbulence in which we participate without any appreciation of the forces that draw us together as if we were puppets without awareness of the puppeteer. During periods like adolescence there is a great deal of turmoil. I have to talk about turmoil, whereas an artist like Leonardo can show his preoccupation by producing many drawings of turbulent water, or hair. What he was preoccupied with we cannot now possibly know, but one could say that he could draw a line round it. I have deliberately picked on adolescence because we are all famil­ iar with that sort of upheaval; we probably remember it in our own lives. But there are numerous other ages like latency, infancy, and the number of these 'names' is increasing all the time. Not so many years ago most people would not have heard of autism. Even we who have heard this term might be hard put to it to say what it means. However, there are psycho-analysts and others who have become curious about a constant conjunction—a state of mind becomes sufficiently noticeable for one to feel that certain features are constantly conjoined. But we do not like coming across some­

198

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

thing which is novel and which we do not understand; we are bound to want to feel that we know what we are talking about, so we fall back on the old, well-established cliches—This child is ill', T h i s child is seriously disturbed'. It is doubtful that there is any evidence for those statements. Unless we are tolerant of our ignor­ ance there is no hope of doing anything about it. If we are patient enough, tolerant enough, we may be able to look at what frightens us, and although we may still not be much wiser we have to put up with that. We have to start by tolerating the fact that we are extremely ignorant; we have to come off that particular perch hitherto occupied by homo sapiens and consider the possibility that our ignorance is so abysmal that even the autistic child might teach us something.

FOUR

W

hen we give an interpretation in response to the patient's free-associations it is not the same thing as transforming the free-association, and yet it could be said to be not very different. Is it really an interpretation, or are we transforming what the patient says into something entirely dif­ ferent? Freud considered that a great many ordinary sexual facts, with which everyone is acquainted, are treated as if they do not exist and then transformed into all kinds of phenomena which are said to have nothing whatever to do with sex. It might be worth considering another phenomenon with which we are all familiar, that is, money or mechanisms of exchange, the exchange itself being a kind of transformation. If you have money with which you buy a car, or a house, or landed property, it could be said that you are transforming your money into a car. If you buy an analytic session you could say you are paying for so many minutes of a psycho-analyst's time. Judging by the present day economic chaos, workable exchange mechanisms seem to present difficulties for the human race. A n adequate currency is essential in com­

199

200

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

merce; it is no less essential i n language. P s y c h o - a n a l y t i c a l l y the inadequate c u r r e n c y is our preoccupation—not w h a t works, but w h a t does not work. W e h a v e to be adequate psycho-analysts, but we do not h a v e to be u n a w a r e of our inadequacy; a d m i r i n g estab­ l i s h e d so-called 'classical' a n a l y s i s is not p a r t of p r a c t i s i n g psycho­ analysis. T h e B a b e l m y t h is a good description of a way i n w h i c h a n a l m i g h t y god c a n create such chaos t h a t people cannot

even

co-operate i n the b u i l d i n g of a tower. Different languages m a k e it difficult for one n a t i o n to t a l k to a n o t h e r — a m a t t e r of importance to us who w o u l d l i k e to feel that analysts throughout the w o r l d could t a l k a c o m m o n language. M a t h e m a t i c i a n s have not achieved this. I n t u i t i o n i s m is s t i l l controversial; so is q u a n t u m mechanics. I hope it is true of psycho-analysis. I have not been convinced t h a t our capacity for controversy is yet adequate—'no' is not a n a r g u ­ m e n t against 'yes'. W e h a v e a sophisticated m e c h a n i s m of exchange, b u t this does not m e a n t h a t it is adequate. P r i m i t i v e language is often h i g h l y complicated and

inadequate. H i g h l y complicated, sophisticated

psycho-analysis deserves s c r u t i n y , but not awe. T h e infancy of money, cowrie shells as used i n religious a n d other activities, h a s been t a k e n over, but its use for the purpose of commerce h a s been obscured by its worship a n d by the awe w i t h w h i c h its devotees still r e g a r d it. In short, its 'infancy' survives today w h e n its 'scientific purpose' h a s been submerged. Often this is easier to observe i n a group t h a n i n a n i n d i v i d u a l a n a l y s i s . T h e two modes of observation are not exclusive; they could be comple­ m e n t a r y . 'If he's content w i t h a vegetable love, w h i c h w o u l d cer­ t a i n l y not s u i t m e , W h y , w h a t a most p a r t i c u l a r l y pure y o u n g m a n this pure y o u n g m a n m u s t be!' [Gilbert a n d S u l l i v a n ,

Patience].

T h a t sarcastic observation, divested of its sarcasm, m i g h t describe a r e c u r r e n t emotional phenomenon. It was the e a r l y system of religious exchange, bride-purchase a n d w e r g i l d [see p. 4] that was t a k e n over b y people who wished to m a k e f i n a n c i a l exchanges; i f y o u p a r t e d w i t h s o m e t h i n g v a l u ­ able y o u were

compensated

by b e i n g g i v e n some money

in

exchange. S o m e t h i n g w h i c h is consciously a n d r a t i o n a l l y k n o w n a n d w h i c h is governed by a p p a r e n t l y r a t i o n a l laws, is i n fact

1974

S A O P A U L O 20

1

closely geared to emotional experiences of the utmost signifi­ cance—like marriage, death, murder, religion. That is tapping very powerful emotions. The financial chaos which threatens to overwhelm the whole of economic commerce may be being influ­ enced by deep emotional forces which will never be approached by any rational, economic conference. Coming back to what the analysand is paying for: we do not know why anyone asks for an analytic session, nor do members of the public know why someone says he or she is an analyst. What is the mechanism of exchange by which you change the patient's free-association into an interpretation? There are all kinds of interpretations and all kinds of facts which have to be interpreted. You may care to think of some of these kinds for yourself. A n example would be the man who looks at the sky and says, 'I think it will be fine'. We do not usually bother whether he is a qualified meteorologist or not, but we do decide whether to take his word for it, as if he were an authority on the weather. The problems to which I am trying to draw your attention are as familiar to you as that, but the domain in which we operate is not familiar. Freud foresaw correctly that the symbolism of dreams would be sure to change, because the unconscious knows how to defend itself by changing the symbolism as soon as it has been recognized. The analyst may not be as flexible as the unconscious. The language that he has to use is certainly not flexible, but has to be one which we are accustomed to use in everyday life. Mathematics are per­ haps the closest approximation to what Croce called a 'universal linguistic', speaking of aesthetic, as any of us are likely to meet. We do not usually tell a highly qualified mathematician, 1 don't know what you are talking about', as if it were his fault. A psycho­ analyst, on the other hand, would be surprised if he did not detect that note of contemptuous hostility when he draws attention to what is unknown. As psycho-analysts we should be wrong to imagine that we are free from the same contemptuous hostility when we do not understand. Freud said it would be unrealistic for a psycho-analyst to com­ pile a dictionary showing what various psycho-analytical symbols meant, because he foresaw changes; we, his successors, are not so open-minded. It is un-psycho-analytical to adhere to some rigid

202

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

system as a substitute for using our minds. The analyst must have a training, but it is not a memory training in learning the meaning of psycho-analytic symbols. Even in language itself a dictionary is not all that is needed; one has to understand the nature of lan­ guage as well as the actual language in which one is attempting to speak. In analysis there is not time, as there is when reading a book, to consider what sort of transformation, interpretation, mechanism of exchange to use before we can give the analysand the interpretation. While the analyst is trying to understand, more free-associations occur and he has failed to hear them. That is why I say that 'understanding' is inappropriate during the analysis. The analyst needs a certain disciplined agility of mind in order to interpret or transform what the patient is saying into a currency which he himself can use. Although money, like language and art, has turned out to be a valuable invention, it can be and has been debased. The skill to manipulate it can be acquired without the ardours of thinking the problems through. As psycho-analysts we are inviting the 'yes I know' group, however large, powerful and wealthy, to suspend the operation of that valuable but dangerous frame of mind. Fear and hostility are aroused at the prospect of what might take its place. The mental 'black hole' is a case in point [see pp. 103 & 104]. We know that we believe, to speak analogically, that only when a 'debased currency' has been discarded is there room for some­ thing better. We cannot guarantee that it will be better; not even analysed people, or experienced men and women, are better characters than they were when children—'better' is a matter of opinion which is possible after the comparison can be made. Q. The experience I have had in relation to your work has wakened me to the field of reality and truth. The reality or the truth and the experience itself fits into an area of infinite space. Your communication brings a need for order and reasoning, and in this there is the process of restriction and the loss of something more. You attempt a new form of becoming able to know—not of knowing, which the mind is already used to. That is a poison which creates the expectation of the habitual or normal. I think you are providing, fragmented and scattered, a new sense of knowing, or a

1974

SAO P A U L O

203

new form of meaning in which that which is significant remains in the dark. Does this bear any relation to your experience? B. Although we are accustomed to think of psycho-analysis as a revolutionary change, we hate revolutions and changes when they affect us personally. Consequently, there seems to be a con­ stant warfare between the attraction of something new and one's wish to remain in a familiar field, or state of mind. If we keep in contact with the actual practice of psycho-analysis it is constantly a surprise to find that we are, in fact, still involved in a revolution­ ary experience. I am reminded—in astronomical terms—of being able to detect the continuing appearance of a colossal explosion which took place three or four, or a hundred light-years ago. The psycho-analytic experience is still exploding, and we can still experience moments when we are suddenly aware of being caught up in a mental turbulence. It may be worth re-considering the dis­ cussion of the 'black hole' [see p. 103 et seq.], considering it afresh in the light of your personal experience 'tomorrow'. Every time an analyst sees something freshly, everything that he has considered becomes worthy of re-consideration. This 'repetition' is an inevit­ able concomitant of growth; it must not be confused with 'repetition compulsion', although sometimes it may seem to be similar. I leave it to the reader to consult his own experience and the extent to which it throws light on the present and future, and not simply the past. Can he 'detect' turmoil? We are unlikely to welcome the capacity to do so. This continuing mental activity can be so hated or feared that the person who experiences it thinks that he is having what he calls a 'mental breakdown'. The practising analyst must get hardened to mental breakdowns and become reconciled to the feeling of continuously breaking down; that is the price which we have to pay for growth. We cannot fall back on the idea of being cured, because that is an old-fashioned and inappropriate term. We have to be reconciled to the feeling that we are on the verge of a breakdown, or some kind of mental disaster; we have to have a certain toughness to stand this continuing experience of mental growth. The alternative to it is to try to reconcile oneself to the fact that one is over and done with, that one has reached the final upheaval of mid-life, or old-age, and so forth. But then you

204

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

have to pay the price of feeling that there is nothing more to come. So you can take your choice: mental stagnation and decay on the one hand, or perpetual upheaval on the other—like living in the middle of a mental breakdown, without being clear whether one is breaking up or breaking down. Q. I would like to hear you speak about transformation in hallucinosis. S . Hallucinosis is a word which one uses as a compact sum­ mary of an emotional experience. It has a somewhat pejorative meaning, but the thing itself has to be treated with more respect than to be deposited in a psychiatric dustbin. I would like to see the state of hallucinosis treated with the kind of respect which we expect to accord neurosis, dreams, nightmares and other mental phenomena; we can then hope to learn more about it. I would like to say to the questioner: don't bother what I think about it, but have a good look at it when you feel that you have a chance of examining a state of hallucinosis. If we can respect hallucinosis we may be regarding a future mathematician—not mere mental debris. Q. You have said that one of the difficulties the analytic institute training committee has to face is a question of who to qualify as analysts. You suggest that this should be someone who could come to feel that he is not invulnerable to a mental collapse. I would like to know what you think about the question of intuition to which you give a great deal of importance for the analytic job. I want to know if it is possible to see or recognize the qualities of intuition in someone who is to be qualified. B . I find it difficult to believe in the intuition of anybody who is afraid of, say, hallucinations, or breakdowns, or any other frame of mind, because intuition is indivisible—either the person has intui­ tion or he has not. He cannot say, 1 will have just a little intuition, but I don't propose to have anything to do with people who are hallucinated'. If it were possible for a candidate to talk in those terms I should say ' A l l right; you can leave out psychoses and all that, but if you do you will very soon find yourself wanting to know nothing about terrifying dreams', and from that time on the indi­ vidual concerned is firmly set on a course of rejection and retreat. I do not think I would be impressed by a candidate who thought that

1974

SAO P A U L O

205

his troubles were all over when he was qualified; I would wonder what those troubles were that were all over. In the same way, our troubles are not all over when we have finished our childhood. Childhood, and even analysis, is only a sort of prelude to real life. Marriage is not the end of your troubles; there may be an end to playing games like 'fathers and mothers', but when you have finished playing your games then you become a father or a mother—that is the real thing. One thing you might learn in the course of your childhood games is that they are, after all, games. So, when you come to your real troubles it might be helpful if you could mobilize the kind of feeling you have when playing a fas­ cinating game. It is not necessary to regard married life as a tragedy, the kind of thing which makes people say, when a friend gets married, There goes a good man'. Q. Although Freud rejected philosophy as a rationalization which could obscure the truth, we know nowadays that our phi­ losophies are various points of departure—mathematics, history, the power of reason, or irony, as in the case of Socrates. Do you consider that we are seeing the beginning of a philosophy of the soul which is also threatened with collapse? B. With regard to Freud's idea of philosophy as a rationaliza­ tion, I do not think that we can afford to kick away the ladder up which we climb; although the classical, philosophical views of Plato do begin to prove inadequate, they nevertheless served their purpose. If one sums up Plato's writings about injustice as a belief that every cobbler should stick to his last, then all would be well if every individual stuck to the work for which he is best suited. It is not a bad idea, but it does become inadequate. By the time of Saint Augustine the classical philosophical approach had to be extended in the way in which he attempts to do in The City of God. That was partly an attempt to repudiate the responsibility of the Christians for the fall of Rome, suggesting that there was another kind of city of greater importance. Today we could say that there is a frame of mind which is more important than that which can be summed up as 'every man sticking to his last'. Analysis suggests that clas­ sical, philosophical disciplines and views are not enough; they have to be augmented by recognition of the unconscious and unconscious motives.

206

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

Philosophers are aware of 'rationalizations' though the term has not been in frequent use. They are concerned with correct thinking because they are aware of incorrect thinking—although they may not have devoted much time to the elucidation of the 'incorrect'. Usually, incorrect thinking has been relegated to grammarians and rhetoricians as if they were an inferior class, not worthy of the title of 'philosophers'. Incorrect thinking has thus been enabled to flourish undetected until it has now reached its present dominance and power. We may not now be able to arrest its triumphant progress. As one of the depressed classes, thinkers (whatever else they may call themselves) labour from a position of weakness; from my reading of history I doubt that this is anything new, although it may be novel to advocate awareness of discom­ fort.

FIVE

Q

What is your opinion with regard to the teaching of psycho-analysis in universities or medical schools? If • psycho-analysis is confined to the experience between two people, how can this experience be made use of in large groups? B. The difficulty is to know what it is that the university, or the institution which is not psycho-analytical, expects from the analyst. The accounts that I have had in the past from people who have responded to the invitation to make some contribution to the university curriculum appear to be somewhat unhappy. The ana­ lyst often seems to find that something is expected of him which is based on a misunderstanding of psycho-analysis. This may be because we have made much more progress than we realize and are, therefore, familiar with a way of thinking and a way of teaching which is considerably separated from the ordinary con­ ventional methods. My experiences of psycho-analytic training were, in fact, very depressing. Like the first railway coaches which were made to look as much like horse-drawn vehicles as possible, I found the whole apparatus of training was just a copy of the

207

208

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

methods suitable for conventional training in conventional experi­ ence. But as I became more and more acquainted with psycho­ analysis, the more utterly unsuitable this seemed. Some of it was due to the fact that we were all tired people, listening to people who were even more tired at the end of a day's hard work, who then fell back on doing what everybody else did. As I sat in small, over­ crowded, uncomfortable rooms I thought that this was more suit­ able as a penitential exercise than anything connected with a cultural activity. And the more I became acquainted with psycho­ analysis, the more frightful this experience seemed to be. I do not feel optimistic about these requests which are made to our institu­ tions, or about the effect it would have on our members. I would not discourage anybody from going to a university, or joining such a course, but on the other hand, I would not encourage them to believe that they are in for an enjoyable experience. It takes only a short time to discover that the students and other colleagues have a low opinion of psycho-analysis and the intelligence of the people who engage in it. This peculiar gap is very difficult to bridge. The fact that psycho-analysis is fundamentally based upon a respect for the individual is liable to exacerbate the respect that we must also feel for the community of people. It is one reason why a study of the group may be a valuable adjunct to the psycho­ analytic study of the individual, and vice versa. I think it is premature to pronounce an opinion on how these streams of experience are to be harmonized when groups and individuals meet. The problem is worth studying. Q. I would like you to speak about your analytic experience with schizophrenic patients. B. I once would have thought that I was having some experi­ ence of schizophrenic patients, but I am wondering how I would describe that experience now, and how I would regard the patients who I once thought were adequately described by the term 'schizo­ phrenic'. I even used to take it for granted that the categories into which they had been placed were adequate. But as time went on I thought that these diagnoses were meaningless. I could not help being suspicious of a diagnosis which seemed to include a large proportion of all psychotic patients. Kraepelin [Emil Kraepelin, German psychiatrist, 1856-1926] himself seemed to feel that

1974

SAO PAULO

209

there was something wrong with the diagnosis. Of course, should the patient make any progress it can always be said that the patient was obviously wrongly diagnosed—however authoritative the diagnosis. It is possible, but I think there is something wrong with the assessment of the progress. If that were applied to physi­ cal medicine one would have to say that any case successfully medically treated cannot have been ill in the first instance. In fact, there is something wrong both with the diagnosis or its implica­ tions, and the whole experience of the analytic approach, material on which to form a judgement. If I have, they have all been patients who were aware of the relationship with myself. How they would or could formulate the experience of that aware­ ness gradually unfolded with the passage of time. I have tried to describe it in occasional papers. Today I do not regard any diag­ nosis as an abridgement on which I could rely for illumination. I hope that my analytic approach would stimulate both the analys­ and and myself. Q. What is your opinion of the case in which the patient cannot make any further progress due to an impasse in the analysis? B. The analytic relationship between the analyst and the ana­ lysand is not unique. What would be the point of it if it were? The relationship between those two people is reminiscent of the rela­ tionship of any other two people. The impasse needs analysis both to enable the analysis to proceed and to familiarize the analysand with a problem which he is sure to meet in real life. Why do husband and wife sometimes seem to come to an impasse? If we have the chance of analysing one of such a pair we are sure to meet the impasse at some point; if not, what has it to do with real life if we never have a close-up view of something which is so common? Similarly, if frustration and anxiety are a part of real life one ought to come across them in analysis. It is the analyst's function to help the analysand to some experience of an impasse, frustra­ tion, or anxiety, and if possible to enable him to become familiar with dealing with it. Q. Continuing the remarks about these impasses in analysis: when should analysis end? B. It does not end; the relationship between a particular doctor and a particular analysand does. The ending is an event of no

210

BRAZILIAN L E C T U R E S

importance; everything comes to an end. The only reason it becomes important is because the individual has difficulty about termination. After all, we all die at some time. It is difficult to see why anyone attaches the slightest importance to it, except that one could say that dying is a dangerous thing, because most of us feel that if we died we should end up by being dead. That event assumes such importance that it is liable to obscure the short experience which intervenes between the time we are born and the time we die. We do not live for more than a few short years and it seems amazing that so much attention should be paid to such a trivial and unimportant affair as the finish. People regard the termina­ tion of life as a sort of prize-giving; they are waiting, as it were, to receive their prize—or perhaps a very bad report. So, while time and energy are devoted to this unimportant event, life flows by. Q. What are the similarities and differences between inter­ pretations and constructions, principally in relation to your theory of transformations? 5. The view, expressed by Freud, which I found has a great deal of meaning for me is that many of these interpretations are almost meaningless, but these constructions are not. I remain unexcited by being told that I am omnipotent, or that I am help­ less. I do, however, feel slightly more interested if somebody says that I think I am God; if it means nothing else, at least it means that somebody is being rude. To that extent it is an improvement on being told that one is omnipotent. But I would go further; I would like the individual concerned to tell me what sort of god I was behaving like. There is a large variety of gods which one's behaviour could resemble. If the individual, instead of being rude or hostile, would tell me which kind of god I resembled, I would find that construction much more meaningful and comprehensible. There is much to be said for a short story which I can understand and which, therefore, is a vehicle which communicates meaning. For example, if somebody said that I am like the god of Babel, that I am so jealous and envious that I would not like anyone to climb up a higher tower than the pedestal on which I was happening to sit myself, that I would like to make them so confused and on such bad terms with one another that they would not be able to construct a

1974

SAO PAULO

211

better and higher and more glorious tower—if I were given that sort of interpretation I would feel that I had a clearer idea (although I might not like it) of how I appeared to somebody else. That is why I am more in favour of the construction than some word that I could look up in the dictionary leaving me no better for the expenditure of time. Q. What is the analyst to do if the patient suffers a psychotic episode and has to be hospitalized? B. If the minimum conditions for analysis still exist I continue to analyse the patient. Putting the patient into hospital has little to do with the patient's personality; it has more to do with the public, or the family, or the people who are feeling inconveni­ enced—perhaps seriously so—by the patient. If the patient is going about wanting to murder his fellows that is very inconve­ nient indeed. Extremes of this kind are easy to comprehend; it is more difficult when the person in question is a nuisance—like Solzhenitzsyn. Should he be hospitalized in a psychiatric 'cancer ward', or just exiled? This matter of diagnosis is often a question of what degree of irritation or annoyance or inconvenience the per­ son is creating. However, as analysts with a prejudice in favour of the individual, we would like to know what kind of nuisance the person was. Even if we narrow it down sufficiently to use some term like 'psychosis' we would like to know which particular variety of psychosis. Q. Is it possible for religious feeling and psycho-analytic thought to co-exist in the same person? B. Psycho-analysis is primarily a method of investigation, and we are, therefore, sure to come across some evidence of the views or beliefs of the individual. But I regard that as an irrelevance; in theory we are not supposed to impose our views on other people. I can see that there may be psycho-analytic views about religion, but they are departures from a method of investigation. Just as in any investigation we have certain preconceptions, it is impossible to ask a question without betraying your knowledge about that question. For example, any question regarding sex shows that the questioner knows something about sex, and at the same time shows that he does not know much about it. When it comes to an

212

BRAZILIAN LECTURES

investigation of a religious belief the same thing is true of the analyst; it would be clear that he was showing his religious belief and religious ignorance. Q. I would like to hear something of your experience of alco­ holics and your ideas on the subject of alcoholism in general. J3. Alcohol, like any other form of food or drink, can be turned to good account or to something harmful. There is nothing par­ ticularly wrong with alcohol, but there may be something wrong with the individual who is taking it. There is a long history of the belief in the value of alcoholic drinks, wines, and a long history of the greed which affects the quantity taken. No one asserts that food and drink are harmful, but the consumer can take either food or drink in such quantity that the actual food or drink ceases to be adequately assessed by the quantity and becomes a qualitative change. The harmless substance becomes toxic. It is one of these instances in which change in quantity leads to a change in quality. The same thing can be said about psycho-analysis; taken in moder­ ation it is good for us. But what is moderation? In everyday life one likes to believe that the parents have an idea where to draw the line: not so the child. For a certain period in life there should be somebody who says, T think you have had enough'. It is awkward when there is no authority to make that statement, because the individual is no longer a child, and cannot justifiably be put in a mental hospital. Although 'alcohol' is not a crime a considerable number of families have been ruined by the excess of one member. Similarly, the predominance of one or other quality of an analy­ sand may amount to an 'excess' to the ruin of that individual. That does not mean that the quality was a defect. Excess of brilliance of illumination, literal or metaphorical, can be as 'blinding' as obscurity. In short, to say that the person is addicted to a drug may save him from the need to submit to or seek investigation, or it may indicate the 'area' in which investigation is to be pursued. From the exercise of judgement there is no relief. To return to the subject of the universities; would it be a good thing to introduce a psycho-analyst into a university, and would an analyst be in a position to say, 'I think that your university is poisoning the youth of this nation'? I understand that Socrates got into some trouble in this matter; he was effectively dealt with on the grounds that he was corrupting the youth. Plato, in his Apol­

1974

SAO PAULO

213

ogy, argues very strongly against that view. However, it did not do Socrates much good. What is to be done about the poisonous food which may be destroying the future chances of the human race? Nobody has found a way of telling what kind of knowledge becomes toxic when one is talking about the mind or personality. It is a matter to which we should pay attention. It is something of a race against time.

Born in India in 1897, W. R. Bion first came to England at the age of eight to receive his schooling. During the First World War he served in France as a tank commander and was awarded the DSO and the Legion of Honour. After reading history at Queen's College, Oxford, he studied medicine at University College, London, before a growing interest in psychoanalysis led him to undergo training analyses with John Rickman and, later, Melanie Klein. During the 1940s his attention was directed to the study of group processes, his researches culminating in the publication of a series of influential papers later produced in book-form as Experiences in Groups. Abandoning his work in this field in favour of psychoanalytic practice, he subsequently rose to the position of Director of the London Clinic of PsychoAnalysis (1956-62) and President of the British Psycho-Analyti­ cal Society (1962-65). From 1968 he worked in Los Angeles, returning to England two months before his death in 1979. His other writings include Learning From Experience (1962), Elements of Psychoanalysis (1963), Transformations (1965), Second Thoughts (1967), Attention and Interpretation (1970), Two Papers: The Grid and Caesura (1977) and two post­ humously published volumes of autobiography, The Long Weekend (1982) and All My Sins Remembered (1985). The Brazilian

Lectures,

delivered in Sao Paulo and Rio de

Janeiro during 1973 and 1974, reveal Bion in his most vital and challenging mode both in respect of the material he presents, and in his responses to the questions from his audience.

Karnac Books, 58, Gloucester Road, London SW7 4QY Distributed

in the U.S.A. by

Brunner/Mazel, Inc., 19, Union Square West, New York, NY 10003

Cover illustration: 'Improvisation' by Jean Atlan Cover designed by Malcolm Smith

ISBN 0 946439 78 8