Chapter. 1 São Paulo 1978 (Ten Talks). Bion in New York and São Paulo

Bion: I am not going to talk about psychoanalysis because I assume that everybody here is familiar with the analytic experience. I am convinced that there is no substitute for actually undergoing analysis with an analyst. People are often misled by the fact that we talk in the way which is familiar in ordinary conversation, so that technical psychoanalytic terms like ‘Oedipus complex’, ‘projective identification’, ‘identification’, have almost become part of cultivated speech; it is not understood that it is essential to undergo a psychoanalytic experience. Those who think that they know all the psychoanalytic jargon believe that they can talk just like a psychoanalyst to a patient who comes for help. But ‘just like’ is not the same thing as ‘psychoanalysis’; the result is a great proliferation of different kinds of psychoanalysis, usually ‘new and improved’ – using those words sarcastically.1 That kind of treatment evokes a powerful, emotional situation and the so-called psychoanalyst reacts emotionally himself. The further immediate result is that psychoanalysis gradually gets a worse and worse reputation. If this process continues long enough psychoanalysis will not be able to survive. Thus we bear a heavy responsibility. I propose to talk about the problems with which the psychoanalyst has to deal when he is psychoanalysing. Freud was impressed by the motto of Paris – Fluctuat nec murgitur – which he translated roughly as “Storm-tossed but not submerged”. The person who is a good imitation of a psychoanalyst is submerged by the storm he evokes. The more desirable state is a difficult one which I will try to describe like this: The analyst, if he has had a real analysis and

training by a real psychoanalytical institute, is a feeling person. So in this stormy turbulence he shares that emotional experience because he is a feeling person. He is also trained to