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Presenter: When this patient, a man of fifty, comes into the room he has a ritual way of doing it. He takes off his coat and hangs it on the chair.
Bion: How long has he been seeing you?
P: Less than a month.
B: Did you know anything about him before he came to you?
P: No.
B: So he is really a stranger.
P: Yes. When giving his reasons for coming to analysis, he said, “There is a part of my character that I must tell you about. When I am away from home I am happy and I like to joke with people, but when I get home I change. I lose my authority, I complain to my wife about everything; if something is moved from the place where I put it, I get angry. I blame myself because my wife is a nice person.”
B: He seems to feel that he can express these various unlikeable qualities to an analyst. So both at home and in the consulting room he tends to behave in a way which is not typical of the way he behaves in the street or in public. One could say, “Well, what of it? It's a usual sort of story” – except for one very important point. Why is he mentioning it? Why is a man of fifty bothered by it? And why is he coming to see you? That is unusual.
There is no reason to suppose that, if this story of his is true, he will behave any differently in the consulting room with the analyst from the way he would behave with anybody else. Of course his description of his behaviour may not be accurate. But I don't think I would ask him; I would assume that what I could see and hear for myself in the consulting room would almost certainly either bear out this summary he has given, or he would have to alter his views
about that summary. If he says his behaviour with you is different, you could say, “Why do you reserve this special behaviour for me?” But I would rather leave the matter alone; I would rather have the evidence of my own senses.
P: He said that he had the feeling that he was beginning to control himself, even at home; he was being less aggressive with his wife. I said that he was talkin