Book
Transformations
Transformations (London: Heinemann Medical, 1965), subtitled Change from Learning to Growth, is the third of Wilfred Bion's short theoretical books of the 1960s, after Learning from Experience (1962) and Elements of Psycho-Analysis (1963) and before Attention and Interpretation (1970). It asks what a psychoanalyst actually observes, and how an interpretation stands to the experience it is about. Bion borrows the idea of transformation, and of what stays invariant under it, from geometry. A painter's picture of a field of poppies transforms the scene, yet a viewer recognises the field because certain features survive the change. In the same way the patient's associations, the analyst's interpretations and analytic theories themselves are transformations of something never directly given. Bion calls that something O: the ultimate reality of the session, the thing-in-itself, absolute truth, which cannot be known but only become, and which evolves until it can be met in experience. He gives a notation for the process of transforming (Tα) and its product (Tβ), for patient and analyst alike, and uses the Grid from his previous book to place the elements of a session. He then distinguishes kinds of transformation. In rigid-motion transformations, as in transference in its classical sense, feelings and ideas move from one setting to another with little deformation. Projective transformations, rooted in projective identification, deform far more. In transformations in hallucinosis the psychotic part of the personality treats its own evacuated products as self-sufficient and superior to anything it could receive from another. Transformations in K concern knowing about something; transformations in O concern becoming it, and Bion argues that the passage from K to O, on which psychological growth depends, is feared and resisted. Along the way he discusses the psychotic's intolerance of the 'no-thing', the point that marks where the breast was; hyperbole, the exaggeration by which an emotion is forced out to reach an object felt to be distant or unreceptive; and a psychotic breakdown as a catastrophe whose invariants can be traced in the states before and after it. The book points towards Bion's later insistence that the analyst must be at one with the emotional reality of the session, not merely know about it.
Main ideas
- Psychoanalytic work can be described as a series of transformations: as a painting of a poppy field transforms the scene yet stays recognisable through its invariants, so the patient's associations, the analyst's interpretations and analytic theories transform an experience, and the analyst's task is to find what remains invariant.
- O stands for the ultimate reality of the session, the thing-in-itself or absolute truth. It cannot be known directly; it evolves into phenomena that can be experienced, and can only be 'become'.
- Bion proposes a notation for transformations, separating the process (Tα) from its end product (Tβ) and the patient's transformations from the analyst's, and uses the Grid to locate where each statement in a session belongs.
- Rigid-motion transformations, like transference in its classical sense, carry feelings and ideas from one setting into another with little distortion; projective transformations, based on projective identification, distort far more and belong to more disturbed states.
- In transformations in hallucinosis, the psychotic part of the personality evacuates experience and treats what it produces as complete and superior, rivalling the analyst and refusing anything that would have to be received from outside.
- Transformations in K yield knowledge about an experience, while transformations in O mean becoming it. Growth depends on the passage from K to O, and that passage is resisted because becoming the reality of one's own experience is felt as dangerous.
- Using points, lines and space as models, Bion describes the psychotic's intolerance of the 'no-thing': the point marking where the breast was is not borne as an absence that could be thought about, but is felt as a bad, destroyed thing occupying the place.
- Hyperbole is a transformation in which emotion is exaggerated so that it can be forced out to reach an object felt to be distant or unable to receive it; it is bound up with rivalry, envy and idealisation, and tends to escalate.
- A psychotic breakdown can be studied as a transformation: comparing the quiet, hypochondriacal state before the catastrophe with the violent, persecuted state after it, the analyst can look for what is invariant and so recognise the same underlying configuration in different forms.
- Different psychoanalytic theories can be read as transformations of the same clinical realities from different starting points, so that the analyst's interpretation is judged by whether it preserves the invariants of the emotional experience, not by its fidelity to a school.
What it shows
- 1965
Wilfred Bion introduced O
Introduced in Transformations (1965); the stance of approaching O without memory or desire is set out in Attention and Interpretation (1970).