You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Presenter: The patient, a woman, has been in analysis for two years. From the first I had the feeling of being in the presence of an unprotected and defenceless person, although she did not express this verbally. In the session I am reporting she said that she had a phantasy that she came from an egg and that in leaving the egg she hurt herself. She said that before the analysis she lived without being conscious of more than half the things she did to herself. “I had no idea if it would be good to leave the egg or not. I just jumped, and plop! I hurt myself. After starting analysis I tried to leave the egg more carefully. I think you were right to say that unless I want to know the truth, the analysis can't go on. It is like the chicken hatching from the egg; if the chick isn't ready to leave the egg, it could hurt itself by trying to force its way out. I think I shall know when the egg is right. Can you hear me? I feel you are so far away from me that I can't see you.”
Bion: You had not left the room; nor had she. So what had happened? The physical senses don't seem to throw any light on this. However, I have a very great deal of respect for what the patient says. What senses is she talking about? Is it possible that she has eye-sight which tells her one story, and in-sight which tells her another?
The baby seems to be aware that it is dependent on something else – something not itself – such as a breast, a bottle, a father, or a mother. It seems also to know when there is nobody else in the room. It is an unpleasant experience, this feeling of being dependent, incomplete, and at the same time the feeling of being all alone. This patient can be aware of being all alone with a psychoanalyst in the same room; she is dependent and all alone with the object she depends upon. When she came out of the egg, or her mother's inside, she could experience these feelings but would not then know how to
communicate them; today she can communicate them verbally, but she has forg