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The discussions we are having here could be represented pictorially by a helix; we keep on coming back to the same point, only on different levels of the helix. Everything we say is related both to the ordinary course of the analytic work we do and to the various theories which are touched upon. If you feel you are unfamiliar with a theory I think it is an illusion due to the fact that we are at a different point in this heliacal progress; it only looks or sounds unfamiliar because it is stated in a rather different way from last time (or next time).
Last time I spoke of various events which could be regarded by people who are familiar with mental phenomena as being marks either in time or in space at different points in the helix, like puberty, infancy, old-age, or middle-age. These are imprecise statements and they are probably imprecise measures of time, yet I think that we have to be familiar with the fact that our methods of mental investigation, and the mental investigation itself, do not really conform with any precision to any of the known disciplines, so far. It is sometimes said that psychoanalysis is not scientific because it is not mathematized. But it is not mathematized because the mathematicians have not provided us with a mathematics suitable to our subject, not because our subject is unscientific. It could be said that we are not aesthetic. It is not true; the known aesthetic disciplines are not adequate to our subject. If someone wishes to paint or to draw they can go to an art school and learn certain elementary, basic disciplines. That is probably good enough unless somebody comes along called Leonardo who will not fit into any of these artificial categories which are in existence. You could interpret what he says in aesthetic terms; you could interpret what he says in terms of the discipline of engineering, or certain kinds of mathematics. But there is nothing, not even a
major group of disciplines, that would be adequate. The same thing applie