Chapter 4. 1973 São Paulo. Brazilian Lectures

Q: I would like to hear more about category A of the Grid (beta-elements) and column 6, thoughts transformed immediately into actions.

Bion: There is a good deal of evidence to support the assumption that there exists something which we call the human mind, thought, personality. For example, ‘sensuous evidence’, meaning that which appears to be based on the information given by our physical, sensual feelings; this in turn suggests that there are physical bodies, that is ‘corporeal evidence’. That material could fall in this category of beta-elements. We are not assuming that that is human thought at all. We can use the category as a way of making it possible to talk about these elements. If we want to talk about the analogue of small, elementary features of thought, we can use the category of alpha-elements about which we are equally ignorant and for which we have no evidence whatever. Beta 6 would represent not thought, but action with actions. Freud supposes, in ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’ [1911b], that if no thought were possible, the individual would go straight from an impulse to an action without any intermediate thought. Confronted by the unknown, the human being would destroy it. Put into a verbal formulation of a visual image, it is as if the reaction were, “Here is something I don't understand – I'll kill it”. But a few might say, “Here is something I don't understand – I must find out”.