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This essay considers Bion's and Meltzer's enumeration of both artistic and scientific qualities inherent in psychoanalytic practice in relation to the problem of learning from experience. Their work encourages practitioners to value the liberating potential of psychoanalysis as an art form. This is emphasized through the complex cognitive implications of Bion's ‘reverie’ and Meltzer's ‘aesthetic conflict’, suggesting that psychoanalytic advance will consist in the marriage of artistic modes of cognition with a scientific body of knowledge.