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‘Why am I such a bad analyst…? Sometimes it is a suspicion that it is the inadequacy of psychoanalysis itself and not just me. But this is based on a mistaken idea of psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge or a therapeutic procedure rather than a research … expedition’ (Bion, 1968, p. 62).
Bion's feeling of self-doubt cures itself with a romantic fantasy. Wouldn't it be nice if psychoanalysis was a natural kind, one that could be practiced in ‘unsaturated’ form? A journey of pure discovery! But the textual nature of the BJP ‘Clinical Commentary’ section confronts us with a sobering reality: the custom-dependent, rhetorical nature of psychoanalytic theory and practice. My discussion of A's psychoanalytic work with Simon will keep this problematic aspect of our work in the foreground.
In the introductory case summary, A, the presenting analyst, skilfully conveys a sense of difficulty. There is a kind of deliberate ambiguity in the clinical picture. Are we being offered a synoptic view, or a digest of what happened in the first session? The opening paragraphs contain strong assertions about the patient, but these are framed as first impressions. The second paragraph in particular condenses a range of disparate elements (which might be called ‘psychoanalytic-theory-descriptions’) into a suggestive mosaic which evokes some of Betty Joseph's striking clinical formulations about patients who ‘chunter’ (Joseph, 1982, especially pp. 133–134, 137). We learn that the analyst ‘assumed [Simon] had managed to seize power over his parents’ and that Simon was in the grip of ‘a very concrete representation of a fantasy’ about them. Despite the ordinary spelling of fantasy, this phrasing implies that Simon's psychic life is governed by a primitive incorporation of both parents, as if he keeps them frozen in constant battle in his internal ‘crypt’ (Abraham & Torok, 1984). It also suggests a double-binding transference, in which the analyst is enthralled but paralysed, kept at a spectator