Catastrophic Change

In this paper I describe a configuration which constantly recurs in psychoanalysis. Although I may resort to formulations which appear to be descriptions of events in psychoanalysis or history, I do not claim for them the status of historical narrative. They are what I call C category elements, descriptions made up of sensuous images derived from a background of experience or reported experience reassembled for my purposes. I shall give no psychoanalytic interpretations; these should be given only by the psychoanalyst in the course of a psychoanalysis when the facts which are to be interpreted are available and when he only is available to give them.

Description 1. This consists of two signs ♂ and ♀ which I call the contained and the container. The use of male and female symbols is deliberate but must not be taken to mean that other than sexual implications are excluded. These signs designate a relationship between ♀ and ♂: The link may be commensal, symbiotic, or parasitic.

Description 2. A word contains a meaning; conversely, a meaning can contain a word – which may or may not be discovered. This could be represented as the word (♀) containing the meaning (♂). Or vice versa, the meaning (♀) containing the word (♂). The relationship is established by the nature of the link. A constant conjunction of elements in a psychoanalysis can be bound by the attribution to it of a word, or a theory or other formulation. The word by which it is bound can have such a powerful pre-existing penumbra of associations that it squeezes the meaning out of the constant conjunction it is supposed to mark. Conversely the constant conjunction can destroy the word, theory, or other formulation which the formulation is intended to

‘contain’. Thus ♀♂ can be so powerful that they destroy the meaning I want them to contain. Conversely the conjunction they are to represent may be so powerful that the sign cannot contain it. Equally the link may be symbiotic or commensal. Describing it in yet ot