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Presenter: The patient started analysis with me three years ago when he was twenty years old; he was a second-year medical student and had failed his anatomy examination. He complained of anxiety. His parents are Jewish: he says he doesn't feel like a Jew but accepts that he is because people tell him so. But he doesn't follow the Jewish religion.
Bion: How does he know that he doesn't feel like a Jew? What does a Jew feel like? If you say, “I don't feel like a well person”, it means that you must know what it feels like to be a well person. If I were told, “I don't feel like a Jew”, by this patient, I should feel suspicious about it. It must in fact be that he doesn't want anybody to know he is a Jew. In a sense it is like saying, “I don't feel like a Jew; I feel superior to a Jew.”
In any choice whatever, you are bound to choose what you are not choosing. To quote an Arabian poet (recalled by Lawrence of Arabia), “For Lord I was free of all thy flowers, but I chose the world's sad roses, And that is why my feet are torn and mine eyes are blind with sweat.” The Arabian style of poetry and the Arabian discipline get nearer to what I am drawing attention to. At some point these various choices are made: instead of “all thy flowers” I could say, “all the options”; we cut down the number of options to the number of things that we choose; but we also choose not to choose the rest.
This patient chooses not to be a Jew. It is a matter of some importance if he chooses not to be one of his parents' children; and if he feels, “I don't want to be like my father and mother”, it is more serious still because it means, “I don't want to be like my father or my father's father before that.” That is a repudiation of his ancestry. So with what is apparently a simple statement, probably made at a time
when he didn't know very much – he might not even know that the Jews have a very ancient culture and history but just chooses not to be one of these inferior creatures – he has wiped ou