Book
Elements of Psycho-Analysis
Elements of Psycho-Analysis (1963) is the second of Wilfred Bion's four theoretical books on thinking and psychoanalytic method, following Learning from Experience (1962) and preceding Transformations (1965) and Attention and Interpretation (1970). Troubled by the distance between what an analyst experiences in the session and the theories used to describe it, Bion looks for a small number of elements, comparable to Euclid's axioms or the letters of an alphabet, whose combinations could represent both psychoanalytic theories and the clinical facts they concern. He proposes as elements the relation of container and contained (♀♂); the oscillation between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions (Ps↔D), in which a selected fact suddenly gathers scattered data into a coherent whole; the links of love, hate and knowledge (L, H, K); and reason and idea (R, I). A genuine psychoanalytic object, he argues, extends in three dimensions: in the domain of sense, since it can be observed; in the domain of myth, since it can be represented by a personal story such as the Oedipus myth; and in the domain of passion, the intense emotion that shows two minds are linked without violence. To classify statements made in the session, by patient and analyst alike, the book introduces the Grid, a table with two axes. Its vertical axis traces the genetic development of thought from beta-elements and alpha-elements through dream thoughts and myths, pre-conceptions, conceptions and concepts to scientific deductive systems and algebraic calculi; its horizontal axis records the use a statement serves: definitory hypothesis, a falsehood held against anxiety (column ψ), notation, attention, inquiry and action. Bion reads the Oedipus myth as a story about the drive to know and the arrogance of curiosity, and treats its components as elements of a pre-conception. The book ends with an account of reversible perspective, in which a patient appears to accept an interpretation while silently reversing its premises, so that a dynamic conflict is made static and pain is evaded. The aim of analysis, on this view, is not to relieve pain but to enlarge the patient's capacity to bear it.
Main ideas
- Psychoanalysis can be reduced to a small set of elements whose combinations, as letters form words, represent both its theories and the facts of the session, so that analysts can communicate with less ambiguity.
- Bion's provisional elements are container and contained (♀♂), the oscillation Ps↔D between the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, the links L, H and K (love, hate and knowledge), and reason (R) and idea (I).
- A psychoanalytic object, and an interpretation that addresses it, must extend in three dimensions: sense, myth and passion, where passion is intense emotion showing that two minds are in contact, free of violence.
- The Grid places any statement in the session by two coordinates: its genetic level, from beta-elements to algebraic calculus (rows A–H), and its use, from definitory hypothesis through ψ, notation, attention and inquiry to action (columns 1–6).
- The growth of thought rests on two mechanisms, ♀♂ and Ps↔D; in the second, a selected fact, a notion Bion takes from Poincaré, abruptly gives coherence to elements that had been dispersed.
- The Oedipus myth is read as a model of the K link, stressing curiosity and its arrogance, the Sphinx's riddle and Tiresias's warning, and a private version of it is treated as a pre-conception through which the child comes to know the parental couple.
- In reversible perspective the patient seems to agree with an interpretation while silently shifting its frame of reference, turning a dynamic situation into a static one in order to evade pain.
- Analysis should aim not to relieve the patient's pain but to increase their capacity to suffer it.
What it shows
- 1962
Wilfred Bion introduced Container–contained
Sketched in Learning from Experience (1962), given its sign ♀♂ in Elements of Psycho-Analysis (1963) and extended to the individual and the group in Attention and Interpretation (1970).